If thou openest not the gate to let me enter,
I will break the door, I will wrench the lock,
I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors.
I will bring up the dead to eat the living.
And the dead will outnumber the living.

How often did her mind drift to Baphomet? He was the father of her sons and daughters. He was her equal in battle. He was her everything. Why was he not her imprint, his soulmate? Was it because the Gods could not hurt her more when they took him from her? She could not think too much on such things. She remembered what she had been reminded of so many months ago. Was it nearly a year now? She must not think, but act. She must not feel. Not outwardly. Not in front of the rest of the pack. She had mourned privately. She had starved herself. She had taken time away from the rest of the pack to shed her tears, to mourn her equal being taken from her. And when the proper mourning period was over, she ate but the food tasted bland. Even the bloodlust that ran over her did not fester into the deaths and bloodbaths. Surely they happened, but they did not bring her the pleasure they once did. Everything was tasteless without Baphomet.

Ragnar did not fill that void, though her calmed the raging storm within her and he could not compare to Baphomet. Still, though he irked her, she could not deny that he also calmed her. It was a strange feeling to be sure, and though she wanted him to stay within Iromar, he thought otherwise. His heart belonged to another the way that hers did. It was only their souls that were intertwined. It did not seem as if Fate had dictated that they would be together. Ishtar did not understand it and found Paldor to be largely useless in that matter.

The moon was large, bright and full that night. Ishtar felt restless. The treaty with Diveen did not sit well with her, and went against her first, basic nature. They should be sending war parties, stealing and battling. Not sitting by idle. The needed more to join their cause. Surely there would be more able bodied wolves that the Angels had wronged! She slips from the den, leaving Riddle to sleep by himself the way that he did the way many nights when she felt this restless. She felt horrible, he had not had the steady hand that his siblings had received. Instead, she had tried her best to raise him and keep the pack around them functioning. She trailed along the borders, knowing that the alligators would be extremely slow on this night, as the day had been rather cold. She freshened a few scent markers and then continued on.

It was when she was closer to the swamps, closer to where her beloved Baphomet had been so violently taken from her. She slowed the pace, thinking for a moment that she heard his voice on the air. Black ears pricked towards the sound, and the yellow-gold eyes searched the well lit night for the owner of such a noise. She whispers silently, "Baphomet?" The word seemed foreign on her tongue and hung heavily in the air around her. She lifted her voice up, an answering howl echoing through Iromar. It proclaimed her as Queen. It proclaimed her as dominant. As awake. As alive. Could that be the same for Baphomet? There wasn't a body found. When she saw the behemoth standing before her, she stood still, her tail raised dominantly over her back and ears pricked forward. A snarl arises on her lips, and a growl erupts form her throat. "Who dares to imitate my Beloved?" She did not think that it was Baphomet. It could not be. She had seen the blood. And there had been so much blood. So very much blood.

ISHTAR.