How quickly word of this new epoch in Limbo’s leadership would spread was an estimate ultimately null and void, resigned to “sooner rather than later” should the innate nature of Limbo’s inhabitants be as potentially volatile as believed. In what were endless attempts to overthrow a governance established to keep them in line and to keep them trapped in the hellish domain, word would spread across the craggy and rocky terrain, stretched out under the starless skies, with rumor there were shifting tides and those in power were no longer going to be so easy to overthrow as could have been believed in Darkchilde’s absence - not when there were more powers among her ranks, a structured hierarchy of varied magics that would only ensure further spread of her power and control.

But as his eyes observed the empty and barren landscape in front of him, he thought not of the political implications to be found in the surprising relinquishment of power, avoiding the notion that demonic beings could rise up from the pits to overthrow him and anyone else who stood in the way of usurping power from Magik and foregoing the factional entanglements between one dimension and another, and instead focusing on the canvas that was before him - one that, with the right paintbrush, could become something far greater than anything he had the pleasure of seeing translated into coded frame; and, unfortunately for the beings of Limbo who would have much rather crushed the eldritch being before there was a chance to establish himself among the rank and filing, Henry Lee was no stranger to a landscape of fear.

It was the only plausible architecture for such a hellish place, arid and starless, and he could picture it even as he sat on the edge of a rocky cliff that towered firmly, almost tyrannically, over an empty abyss - the towering spires of long-laid stone on cobblestone streets worn down the a rain that didn’t exist; the twist wrought iron of lamp posts with their lanterns swaying to and fro with an invisible wind to cast menacing shadows across the grooves and etches on the ground; the dark surrealism found in such normal plotting and landscaping of a town standing empty if only because of the ominous secrets held within its underbelly. It was as forbidding as it was intriguing, an invitation to stay lingering in the ghostly appeal of dim gaslights found in the windows of family homes and shopfronts mysteriously unmanned while the would-be sewers, darkened shadows, and crawl spaces of old world architecture contained those very denizens that fell within his domain.

His thought only entertained the notion of giving the residents of Limbo that fell in his jurisdiction a place they never wanted to leave in a far more benevolent means of quelling the uprisings to be as he imagined the pathways, the twists and turns, that would be those streets of cobblestone, lanes narrow enough to form pedestrian paths through an urban labyrinth that seemed never-ending; but nothing was so idyllic or peaceful even if outside appearances said otherwise. He knew that well enough, casual and collected, if not aloof, on the outside while torrential chaos raged underneath, a slurry of intrusive thought and manipulated emotion, even unintentionally, from the other side, tucked away in those mentally constructed compartments with locks he knew not the key to - though the real question about their origins had been simple.

Did he want to open them?

The thought came and went just as readily as the layout for this nonexistent town, this Lovecraftian slice of Limbo forged plotted and pathed of the mind, seemed to blow away in the wind, the kick up of dust an erasure to what could have been as a means of starting anew. It was a blank slate, much like the worn pathways of his mind had been after the siege of Krakoa - something that, had he any clear recognition of beyond inauspicious dreams of otherworldly creatures storming the gates, might have only further validated his position in Limbo. A warmonger, he may not have been when picking up a pencil was far more favorable to a much calmer mind than a sword, but he had been capable. He had been ruthless. He had, through the creatures escaped from the dark dimension they had been trapped within, feral in nature and ever-on the hunt, executed the task required of him to the best of his ability; and, on that moment of reflection that mirrored the possibilities of Limbo, he found himself nonplussed by his ultimate failure.

What was failure but another opportunity to try again? To learn from the mistakes made and consider alternative options in future circumstances? To, as one could say, get back up on the horse after falling off with hopes the adage of insanity hadn’t caused havoc on the expectation of a different outcome?

Ringing with a subversive melody in such a place as Limbo where the inherent nature of the environment itself spoke of spiritual corruption, stretching the power of the magic he wove, and where he had been granted a slice of such a malleable terrain, it was hard not to feel a sense of elation at his fingertips. It was in his shoulders, that levity found, even as he pushed himself up to his feet, and it trickled down through his arms through his veins and into his fingertips, seeping further into his core as readily as his heart pumped blood into his body. There it radiated, that sense of surety that seemed lost in the comings and goings of everyday life, because here he could at least be more and do more than he otherwise could as long as a common goal was kept in mind: No one escapes.

And no one would.

With words carried into the expanse of still air across the sweeping plane before him from scripts unknown to many, found in archaic tomes of eldritch magic, the ground started to rumble, splitting and breaking and cracking away as such basic materials found within were molded and manipulated like clay into something recognizable - first crushed rock into slabs of stone, stacked into those tall spires and paved pathways once imagined along an invisible line of streets and alleyways, careening one way and the other to forge a small city from the very dimension it lied within. Ruins of otherworld design burst forth into existence, a point of distinction between one district and the next that echoed the would-be town’s boundaries compared to those he knew belonged to others; and among it a center point, a space to call his own, to sleep, to be when his presence was required. It was no throne, no grandiose divulgence of power that surely would have found a fitting place in Limbo, this rearranging clockwork tower that served as much purpose in protection from any would-be uprising as it did a semblance of comfort.

Because, certainly, if the denizens of Limbo didn’t know of the powers that be who had found themselves in the good graces of Darkchilde, these foreign presences who had once walked among them from parts unknown now thrust into positions of power, Henry knew they would now as the dust stirred up from his wake settled over the humble borough created for them.