There is an old saying: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." It is a lie, and he is the proof. Once, Vortigen had loved her, and she had loved him. But when she had been attacked by wolves, a stranger had saved her life, only to be left a helpless cripple. Vortigen had done nothing, rooted to the spot in terror for his own life. Touched by the sacrifice of her unknown savior, she had given her heart to him instead, and Vortigen was left alone. In bleak despair, he had offered his service to to the most powerful sorcerer in the land: an eternity of fealty, in exchange for the woman he loved. To keep his oath, he would abandon all: his home, his family, his honor, the man who had saved his life, and even his soul. But she would be his forever. She, appalled by the monster that he had become, had turned him away in horror, and in one instant, all the love in his heart disappeared, succeeded by a blazing hatred, black and terrible to behold, dark as the fires of Hell which cast their glow about his new palace. Burning with rage, he dragged her to the palace which was once to have been her bridal chamber, but was now to be her tomb. Chained to the altar of his vengeance, she had tried to flee his approach, until, planting his foot on her chain as she ran, he had cast her to the floor. She tried to crawl, but in her terror her limbs would no longer obey her, and as he drew ever nearer, step by step, she now had nowhere left to run. Something wicked this way comes ... and it is here for revenge. * * * * * * * * Sorry there are no "monsters" or any of the other ultra-creepy looking things that tend to pop up around this time of year. I'm not very big on the whole monster idea, so I decided to depict a different sort of monster: the very real beast that lies hidden within, hinting, cajolling, seducing, counselling, promising the fulfilment of every desire, if we but hearken to the dark whispers that it sows in our hearts. I have been working on the composition for this image in my head ever since the contest was announced, but I was finishing another project and so didn't start actually working on this one until the beginning of the month. As far as actual working time goes, I think I put about 25 hours into this. If you count cloth simulations and rendering time, though (this is the result of cloth simulation 5 and render # 20 on a slow computer), that would add another 35 hours. I'm not really happy with it; the sacrificial table color scheme was giving me a lot of trouble (I still don't think it matches the color scheme of the "temple," but that might just be color-blind me...), and I don't really like the texture and lighting of the cavern walls in the background, but I ran out of time to fix it, so here it is. When I first conceived of the project I started making a whole multi-tiered scene with lots of platforms, steps, braziers galore, and lots of fountains (to reflect firelight, to give an excuse for all sorts of nice "dancing water" dappling on the scenery, etc.), but being new to all this still, I ran into all sorts of problems with directions of the normals and water simulations (in Blender, not Poser); my fountains looked more like erupting volcanoes than anything else. Although you don't get to see any of that, that would have added another 15 or 20 hours to the project if it had worked out; as it is, it was just wasted time ... but maybe I'll get back to it and finish it someday. The whole thing was supposed to be carved out of black obsidian, hard and dark as his heart; buried deep within a chasm, lit and wreathed by the fires of Hell far below. Unfortunately, I had to settle with old marble. The one thing I was particularly happy with was the way the chain turned out. Unfortunately, most of its 360 links (posed one-by-one) ended up hidden behind his back; as the chain goes up the stairs it drapes nicely down each one. Maybe I'll have to try rendering from a different angle in the future. To put this project together, I used Poser 9 (for most of what you see), Blender 2.71 (for modelling), and Gimp 2 (for texture creation/editing and minimal postwork). I used DAZ Studio 4.5 as well to create the pose that he is in, since the DSON importer works very slowly on my computer (sooner or later I'll have to get a more powerful one), and the outfit I wanted him to wear was made for Genesis... I'm still pretty new at all this (this is only the second piece of work that I've ever shown), so comments and suggestions are appreciated. If anything seems to be an abnormal color, let me know; being color deficient myself, it's a little hard to work out that kind of stuff for myself. The "inspiration" for the image is a scene from a totally imaginary book; it is part of a series that exists only in my head, but it has served as a source of inspiration for most of my work. I doubt that I will ever get around to sitting down and typing out the book, so I make do with creating images of different scenes.