Tropical Gothic Lady Elfleda, Beth, Pythia... So many names, so many guises. A perfect tapestry of deception.
There is a place in England, some say, where Æðelflæd fell from grace. Where she was snatched, in innocence and family wept. Her wages of sin would be great and the joy in sowing those fertile seeds of corruption, even greater.
Yes, there is a place where she was taken from one world and made a bride in another. Born to nobility in one, given throne in another. Should one walk there, strange things can be heard. Echoes, so they say, of a time now lost. A time of sorrow and a herald of shadowsome deeds most foul.
But that was long ago and it was not there she chose to appear now. Back then, to have come so far would have seemed unthinkable: A foreign land of exotic vegetation, chirping crickets, softly crashing waves and shifting sands. Here, those gothic features of ebony and pale seemed rather out of place, but environmental blending did not feature as a concern to her.
It was an outlook; her gaze travelling over houses and beach, alike with an objective air. When she breathed, it was not into lungs, but with the scent of potential colouring her mind.
Yes, this place had some - and there would be more.
Back into the shadows she disappeared, parting a sea of animal life, from rodents to the smallest insect, out of her path.
The Corruptress had come and not for reasons of comfort.