Red, thick blood stains pale, scarred skin as he lay on the ground. What once was deep, smokey gray armor turns aluminous with the liquid of life. Feyd-Rautha lays there, on the ground, dead.

Or so everyone thought.

As his corpse cools, Feyd-Rautha is alone, left to rot. He came to the realization that death lacked any glory. It's lonely, and isolating. A shimmer of a tear rolls down his pale cheek, salt mixing with the metallic taste of blood.

Titles weren't worth dying for.

He gasps for breath, blue eyes slamming open. He coughs and looks down at his wound. A hand goes to it and he hastily tears his cape-like fabric to staunch the injury. He was alive. He savored the pain, forcing it into his memory.

Now, a year later, he stalks the halls of the very place he had almost perished, enjoying the life of a dead man. He's spent the year planning. Feyd-Rautha is a man of revenge, and he hasn't tasted the sweetness of it in far too long. After his close-call with death, he had learned one precious thing: patience. He could wait. And wait. Slowly, he'd take action, chipping away at the following Paul Atreides had built for himself. It was the slow knife that cut the deepest, after all.

His imagination tickles him with the fantasy of watching the Atreides boy's face as the life is drained from his pet, all at Feyd's hand. His face sickens with a maniac smile.

For Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen had turned from the seventeen-year-old boy, bleeding out on Arrakis, into a man; a Baron. He's powerful, and power-hungry. Now Arrakeen is his: as far as anyone knew, it lays abandoned, populated only with the stiffs of the fallen, himself included. He had figured out a code to communicate with his military back on Giedi Prime. He was ready.

His plan has one last requirement: a Bene Gesserit pet. Someone powerful, but easy to manipulate. That was fine, he reckons. He can be a snake as well. If he had a witch in his possession, he could undermine Paul Atreides, seek revenge from within.