She was Fatale, child of Night, daughter of the dark; she who prowled the pitiless chill of winter and the wilting, scorching climes, leaving famine in her footsteps and plague in the path behind. The sweat of her toil watered the roots of every poisonous herb, and the gore of every predator’s kill dripped as the lacquer on her fingernails. The venom of viper’s fang and spider’s bite was the blood of her veins, the stench of decay her reeking perfume, her breath the musty exhalation of an unsealed tomb. And in her eyes, the deep dark pits of her blackened eyes, she held the thing most feared: inescapable, irrefutable nothingness. She was magnificent. She was horrible. She was Death. And she would have vengeance, such as the world had never known.
–“The Curse,” from Songs of the Metamythos
