[ WP ] Evil is its own kind of beautiful .

*Subjugation. * 
 
 It was such an elegant word, he thought. Befitting of the cruel deeds he had done, suiting them in both definition and cadence. 
 
 `` Subjugation,'' he murmured quietly, each syllable separately lavished upon his tongue. Alone atop his tower, the conqueror was looking down upon the razed and rebuilt capital of his newly captured kingdom. Yesterday had been his master stroke, the final step of his perfectly laid out plans. Today, he spent upon relishing his achievements. 
 
 He had killed the old, just king with his own sword, having the man brought before him unbroken, before thousands of his subjects. He remembered the way the dark blade had sunk *into* his neck, instead of slicing through it. Eyes bulging in shock and agony, the old fool had become a dry grey husk within seconds, blowing away into dust that scattered across the crowd. The collection of merchants, noblemen, and craftsmen had coughed, cried, and stayed sullenly silent. 
 
 A mote of dust blew by him then, captured in a beam of sun that broke through the grey clouds, spinning in an invisible eddy of air. He wondered idly if it was some of the old king, or if it was perhaps some other member of the royal family. They had all perished in the same way, of course. No loose ends. That was part of the plan. 
 
 Eyes following the potential speck of corpse, his wandering stare was guided in this way to the dark black mountains of the city limit. The natural barrier was the reason for the fame of this place, both because of its beauty and because of its supposed safety. For nearly a thousand years, the royal line had made its seat here, in the most secure of citadels. They had built a white castle with white streets branching out from it, and over the centuries filled in any new or rebuilt buildings with the same droll color. All who lived claimed that those who built the city strove to match the splendor of the place it inhabited, and believed that they had more than succeeded. 
 
 Years past now, he had seen the city for the first time, when he had traveled here as a supplicant to the very king he had toppled. Only a middling lord then, though a self-made one at that, he had come to ask for the royal blessing upon a political marriage. It had been his hope that if it were granted, the hesitant family whose firstborn maid he sought to wife might be pressured into acquiescing. Their station was slightly higher than his own, even disregarding the complications his recent rise had involved, but that was not the issue that held them back. 
 
 No, what gave them, and the king, such distaste for him was his *subjugation* of any dissidents he came across. They hated how he broke what would not bend to his will, be it man or beast or building. The old king had had the gall to call it `` evil'', and send him away, telling him to feel glad of how he had so mercifully decided not to order him dead on the spot. 
 
 As he had left the capital then, fuming with rage, he had grown to hate the bright city, with its holier-than-thou king and powdered-up gentry. He had thought, spitefully, how badly out of place it all was, pretending to be so pure and white when it was naught but the dark, cruel crags of the mountains that kept the city safe. His plan had been in the early stages then, less ambitious, but that day more than anything had made him decide to become what he had yesterday. A conqueror. A subjugator. 
 
 Looking down once again over the city, he saw it as he had that day, descending from the royal chambers he now occupied. The clashing of black and white was no longer evident, he realized. The charred black and grey of the ashes, the dark crimson of blood and his war banners, had remade the white city entirely. None of the old color could be seen, beneath what he had made. Now, the streets and buildings, the castle and chapels, all matched the black spires of the mountains around them, almost seeming to mimic them in their new cracked and twisted forms. 
 
 Art imitates nature, he thought, smiling. The evil without has become the evil within, and evil is its own kind of beautiful. 
 

