From the Diary of Reaver:

(Recorded in his personal carriage, en route to Bowerstone)

Another year, another tiresome trek to find a young rube to bring my Dark Seal to the Shadow Court. Although, I must say that the timing was rather convenient. It spared me the displeasure of getting involved in the Queen's noble "Battle for Albion." Not that I did not see the importance of winning that battle, of course. The Queen may be whimsical and blinded by her ridiculous sense of morality, but there can be no doubt that the kingdom has flourished as never before under her rule, and despite the loss of my conscripted laborers, my own coffers have never been fuller. She pays me with her own gold to renovate the entire country, which has now expanded to include another continent. I left a good-luck note for her in the War Room in Bowerstone Castle before setting off for the more desolate corners of Albion, where I acquired a strapping lad of sixteen who asked no questions of me and was only too eager to run my little errand when I promised him a sizeable monetary reward. I believe I shall use the money to purchase something nice for our dear monarch…remind her that I am her most loyal servant and ready to take up my post once more. I am quite sure she will need me more than ever, now. War is such a wonderfully profitable thing.

"Well, well. She was right, after all."

I shook my head as I walked through the streets of Bowerstone Market—streets which, aside from a few heaps of sand (I could not explain that, and did not really care enough to try), were almost completely unmarked. Had the "great darkness" actually descended here? How very fascinating.

I paused before a newly erected monument in the city's center and found surprisingly few names etched into it. All told, Albion had lost only a handful of souls to the Crawler. I arched an eyebrow and suppressed a bubble of delighted laughter. A deliciously whimsical queen the little Hero certainly was, but a fool she evidently was not. Not once had she taken my many attempts at advice, choosing always to side with one bleeding heart or other, at great expense to the Kingdom. I had left a letter in the War Room of the castle wishing her the best, but absolutely certain that the city was doomed. But she had done it. She had brought Albion into a golden age on the eve of darkness, and she had conquered that darkness with astonishing efficiency. I reminded myself, not for the first time, to avoid landing on the wrong side of her mood.

"Oh my…"

I knew one of the names on the monument. Sir Walter Beck. The big man's incorrigible sense of nobility had been a great thorn in the side of the former king, Logan—but that situation had remedied itself without my help. Never come between siblings…

"The poor little sweet must be quite crushed," I mused. "Won the war, secured the love of the rabble, and all it cost was every piece of gold you ever earned and the life of the closest thing you ever had to a daddy-dearest."

Well, what was done was done. It was time now to resume my labors as Head of Reaver Industries. I stopped by a stall and bought a bouquet. Appearances, and all that rubbish. The young Queen would likely be grieving.

Rather than the glare of well-nursed hatred or meek flick of downcast eyes which I was by now accustomed to receiving from the common clay of Albion, the fellow at the flower stall gave me the brightest—and I might add, the most idiotic—beam I had ever seen on a man. I considered abandoning the idea of flowers for a moment, shrugged, and asked the fellow for a price.

"Make it a nice one, won't you?" I added, bored with the whole affair already. "It's for Her Majesty."

The man's eyes took on a slavishly adoring quality I had only ever observed in housepets and a lunatic woman by the name of Benjamina whom I had caught digging through my garbage two years ago. "F-for the Queen? Please! Please, friend, take my best arrangement. Free of charge. It's the least I can do."

My my, you have won them over, haven't you?

"Oh, of course. I daresay you would throw yourself before a speeding carriage for Her Ladyship."

"Without hesitation, sir," the stallkeeper said. "She saved us all. She's…she's like some kind of goddess, or something, if you follow me. She's a true Hero. My brother—he's a soldier, he is—he said he saw her fighting in the great battle, and that she had wings! All white and feathery, like an angel's, they were."

"No doubt. Tatty-bye!" Ignorant stooge. No doubt it was another "super-Hero" rumor sparked by those insufferable sewer-people, the Bowerstone Resistance, now that the Queen's mantle sheltered them from the stamping-out they so richly deserved. Now they had the Crown—and by extension, me—in a veritable headlock, bleating on about fair pay and the rights of urchins and beggars, continuing to take, take, take while returning virtually nothing to society. The more the Queen gave, the greater their demands became. It was in their best interests to make her out to be some kind of deity.

I could not deny that it was an easy lie to swallow. She was, after all, a master of Strength, Skill, and Will, the three disciplines of Heroic blood. I myself had once been called the Hero of Skill—though anyone who may have known about that was long dead, now, which was just how I preferred it—and I had to admit to myself that it was possible that the Queen might be as swift and dangerous with a firearm as I. Add to that her ability to summon the elements and shoot them from her hands, and a gargantuan strength at odds with her slender frame, and what else could the uneducated miscreants call her but a goddess? Then, of course, there was her exceptional beauty. That flawlessly angelic face, and, far more importantly, those long legs, that shapely bottom, tiny waist and mind-bogglingly ample bosom… Her enticing features had been a welcome addition to my most delectable dreams ever since I had first watched her conquer my Wheel of Misfortune in a deliciously décolleté gown. If only she and her oh-so-fiery friend, Page, had taken my gracious offer…. It would have been a night of unparalleled bliss.

But the saintly Queen was not an immortal. Like her mother before her, she would eventually grow old and die. I would not. Mine was a lifespan to rival Scythe's, or that of the old seer-hag, Theresa. But my advantage was that while they simply failed to die, I failed to age. …Provided a certain matter was attended to each year, of course.

The flowers nestled in the crook of my arm were still damp with the dew of morning. They were fresh and vital, truly young. Like the Queen. Like I had been, hundreds of years ago, when I had borne another name in a quaint little village that no longer existed. A village that I had, in fact, destroyed, in my fear of my own mortality. But that man was long gone. He had been so weak, so delicate, so disgustingly pathetic. Reaver had taken his place, and he was stronger than ever, today.

As I mounted the steps of Bowerstone Castle, unchallenged by the Queen's guards, I realized I had crushed one of the lovelier blooms in my hand while the memories of Oakvale whirled through my mind. The ruined thing released a sweet, pleasing aroma as I opened my fist and let the petals fall. I smiled. It had given me a very entertaining idea, indeed.