Once again, Ardyn sat atop a throne of despair.

Well, not a throne exactly. An armchair, perhaps, or a very tall stool. Regardless, he’d perched at the edge of one of the only rooftops still intact after the earthquakes, one leg dangling over the side. His other knee was bent carelessly towards him as he leaned back on a palm. This town was starting to bore him. It wasn’t that it lacked chaos -- no, there was plenty of that -- only that the he’d run short on those who could appreciate it. Within those first nights, the survivors had quickly fled or died. In the end, he was left with nothing to toy with but the odd mercenary seeking to quell the tides of the monsters that lurked here.

They’d found little success. Well, not under the cover of night at least.

Ardyn’s eyes flicked to a violet-hued monstrosity lurking in the shadows below. While his daemons were in fact far more agile and dangerous than the shambling husks that had come before, they also had the unfortunate habit of fleeing the light of the sun. By the time that Ardyn had realized his error, he’d already made a considerable dent on the daemons’ more diurnal cousins which left the streets nearly traversable by day. A rather sad state of affairs, but he supposed what he’d lost in quantity he’d gained in quality. The rotting corpses would have been cleared in a matter of weeks. He doubted his daemons would ever truly lose their grip on these haunted halls.

Ardyn yawned, stretching his arms over his head. He had only half finished when he paused. A new sound had overtaken the gibbering of roaming daemons. Was that a sword?

It certainly seemed so though he couldn’t tell from so far away. Regardless, it was by no means a monster, and Ardyn rose to his feet, smirking. It seemed a cure for his boredom had fallen into his hands.

”What a shame it would be to waste it.” Ardyn chuckled beneath his breath before setting his eye on the distant sounds of destruction. In moments, he’d lost his form, dodging from one rooftop to another in a stream of darkness.

It seemed another hero had entered the fray looking for battle. And Ardyn would hate to disappoint.

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