Merlin 10 - Valley of Thorns

MERLIN10. “The Valley of Thorns”

Nickolas’ mind wanders as restless and confused he dreams about the day, waiting for further events while at dusk, an ever-darkening forest surrounds him and Merlin. The darkness grows, with simplicity and irreverence, like smoke over ash, on them as they walk through the dense dark night taiga. As Nickolas looks to see how Merlin has fared the events recently passed, once more since leaving the open air, he notices that Merlin has not yet begun to walk steadfastly, showing signs of remorse, acting canny and taking tremulous steps.

Making slight haphazard efforts to evoke remorse amongst a drowning sorrow, Merlin walks low in the shoulders over the waving forest hills bathed in black sunshine, quite overwhelmed as the cold attempts falling down through the trees, as his hate begins to slow his mind. A dark and dimly lit night, shadows and conceals the failing light of a single blue moon, shinning onto the floor, lighting the face of themselves and the trees, as less than half of the sides that face them reveal themselves as they walk. The moon light fades as the forest mist brings an evening chill. The darkness rises throughout a woodland mystery of gathered trees and a nearly vacant floor.

While proposing questions in his mind, Nickolas leads the way, imagining himself with Merlin’s abilities, mimicking the movements of the wizard he had seen with acts of pretend magic as he goes, with Merlin following not far behind him. As the night grows older, the ground turns firm and rigid and without thought they walk in silence at a fair pace, forgetting their woes as they steadily walk, until Merlin’s detracted motivation upsets Nickolas with a boredom.

“Tell me of the witches you had mentioned,” said Nickolas to break his silence.
Merlin wearily replied, “The center of our sad souls in motion.”
Nickolas, “Are you well, we can always stop to rest?”
“The body snatchers are made by witches,” he said sullenly, passing Nickolas as he told.
“Why would they send their army with witches?” Nickolas then asked, continuing the trek.
“They charge to attack the good king Horus.”
“, and what of the garrison they cross?”
“Are we ever outside of the hourglass?” replied Merlin in a somber tone.

In the distance the shadows and darkness holds life, which Merlin first notices. What he sees, is in his course and he takes an aging notice of a gathering among the trees at a deep summit, on a silent hill in the middle of the forest. Merlin puts his arm before Nickolas as he attempts to walk passed, unbeknownst of the arisen situation, as Merlin wraps his hand on the shoulder of Nickolas forcing him to walk further not another step. Merlin lets go putting his finger to his own mouth, a gesture of silence, and with his other arm points to some men in the forest.

A fire and a large kettle rest above a moonlit hillside covered in flickering light that makes shadows dance above fallen leaves. The encampment surrounded by a garrison of three people, who are trying to awaken and discover the magic of the forest by sacrificing small animals and mixing them with powders in a boiling pot, as they call to the heavens in an ancient and forgotten language.

Angered and enthralled words, chanting and waving in their stance, the way ships do at port as they read from a large book, except for one who holds a small forest animal over his head, offering it to the sky before he stabs it and continues his incantations. The cultist repeats the rehearsed words of significance to a divine end, one intended to convoke, after every sacrifice. Bellowing into the wild, the words echo a power of divine intent into the blood, as it spills into the kettle.

With a crude fashion, he cleans the animal and puts pieces into a boiling kettle hanging over a fire, in a small clearing between the trees, in their believed privacy far from the edge of the woods. One of the three men are heard saying words of an indistinct language yet one that is slightly familiar, as the others are drinking as they reply in like and kind.

Younger of men, with three different embodied traits, hair and eyes the same. The first of the three has a red hair that has been soaked by the sun. The second a dark and crimson black with a shine, one that is much kept oft indoors, his steps washed. The third is a vast paleness, younger than the others are, yet is still very fair in aspect, white blond grey and lean, resting upon a tree reading the same sized book as that the others have.

{One=black, two=red, three=blond.}

One, “Why are we outside, trying to do this?”
Two, “one day we will be gods and you will know.”

They speak with loud voices as they speak their names, unwitting of their surveillance. Merlin and Nickolas stand below in the cover of darkness, watching the darkest one wring and work the sacrifice until wrought, soaking his hands with blood.

“What are they doing out here?” asked a beleaguered Nickolas.
“Some archaic incantation by no doubt whelps of an ancient order.”
“Pagan rites or dances for the dead?”
“Quite right, druids seeking adoration, trying to awaken dead gods of lore.”
“Dangerous?”

Merlin slinks surreptitiously from the one of two sitting against a tree, closest to them. As Merlin puts his back to a tree behind the light, he pulls Nickolas with him, out of sight. Merlin whispers to him, “I’m going to clear the air, these are druids and no harm but nonetheless we're going to scare them off and take a rest.”

Nickolas, “They'll meet gods; ill surprise them, like no other.”
Merlin, “Circle around them; hark as I lull them, than bring your surprise with you.”
“All right,” Nickolas agrees. Shaking his head smiling, he sneaks into the wood.

The mist seethes and assuredly enough, Merlin’s eyes begin to glow, as he clears the dark clouds from above the encampment uphill, as Nickolas quickly makes around the group to one direction, silently swallowed by the darkness.

As Merlin moves closer, he can see the book held is ornate and bound as the books at clergy and has a large blood red ribbon lying across the open page. He picks up a fallen branch and begins to walk again toward them, slow and laboriously taking no efforts to go unnoticed.

Nickolas witnesses them as amateurs as they prove themselves pagans trying to awaken dead gods and long forgotten lords to attain magical abilities, spilling their drinks and such, as youths either in vain or in vanity.

Merlin scares the confidence out of them and pretends to be a resurrected god, standing only feet from their cauldron, showing signs of an elderly one with only the ability to creak as he walks, it was the cane. As soon as he has their attention, his eyes fill with fire, his hair beginning to glow like the lights of the stars, his skin a similar glow and the staff lifted from the ground covered in an engraving of swirls and symbols that glow with a bright fire as if embers were within the wood.

At the very sight of this, the carver with hands over the pot drops his knife, into his brew.

Merlin, “I have come from beyond from which you called to me,” he said noticing that they each carry the same sacred tome.

Two, “What did you read?”
One, “What do you wish?”
Merlin, “I wish to help you summon more of this planet's true kings,”
Two, “We did not call to you, this is our meal, these are our books.”
Merlin, “You will need more than spells if you wish to defeat me to stay alive.”
Three, “We're not your enemies, we are your worshipers.”

Merlin looks around at the camp and at them, making sure to contain his amusement, trying not to smile at their actions. They are monks of sorts. The first of them is standing over the pot wishing he had not dropped his knife into the meal, staring at the surface, tempted to reach to the bottom of the scalding culmination. Another is on the ground at the bottom of a tree, holding his hands to the ground, wrapping his arms around the tree behind him, looking back and forth to the night's, almost cover of darkness. The third is holding a book with a page open that has a picture of what he believes to be Merlin, as he stands agape, but cannot tear his eyesight away from Merlin.

At first he does not speak, staring at them with eyes void and irreverent, flame rolling and dancing across his persona, making them sweat and submit to anxiety as Merlin stands before them with skin that looks hot to the touch, the air above his skin emits waves of heat and vapor, even against the darkness.

Merlin, “My joy is bound no more as I see I am not truly the last.”
Three looks to his book and then up to Merlin asking, “What world do you hail?”
Nickolas steps forward, holding a short dagger and his hair pulled back and soaked with blood on his hands saying, “Your patronage ill befits you dark one.”
Merlin, “Be not troubled, the saviors of my resurrection will defend.”

They look more confused than before, they turn to Merlin, just as Nickolas takes the one nearest him at his mercy, standing between too many obstacles hostage, and Merlin flares his eyes and leans his walking stick forward, pointing it to Nickolas. However, the pale and bright one gets the drop on Nickolas and stabs him in the back, above the heart and in the seconds the red one slits open his throat. His fate untimely, unprepared he can only drag the tip of his dagger along the arm of his captive just moments prior, as he falls unwillingly to the dirt.

Merlin laughs, and eventually thanks them for stopping the enemy, while thinking of a special anecdote significant for others to remember of something so unique.

“Hail to thee. You have saved me,” Merlin said with two voices in his chest, both low, one echoing the other.
Two, “We have done more than that; share with us your power.”
One spoke, the words stuttering and stumbling out of his mouth, “y…, y…, aye, or we will return you to your source chasm.”

“I have lied, that man was my hunter,” Merlin said to them. His tall cane glows and captivates in the cold night.

Nickolas begins to rise, but no one notices with the exception of the wizard. The two men of color walk to Merlin.

“You must teach us your gift,” the orange colored one said, staring at Merlin’s supernatural affects and not looking him in the eye, gazing in amazement. As he said this to Merlin, Nickolas reconvenes, shortly twitching as he lay regenerating to composure.

Merlin holds a stone, one that appears as he opens the long fingers on his hand and fills it with a clouded radiation, the color of his flames but brighter, charging the stone only to toss it to the kettle. It begins to boil as Merlin sees Nickolas wake and rebuild and begins to turn his eyes and the ink, buried beneath his skin, into bright lights, as they stand awestruck. The light may be distractingly bright but the air is still, the hillside bright as day, yet the trees and the bottoms of leaves still dark and unrevealing.

“You will abide to oblige my wishes. You will sacrifice of your allies to me and I will give you great power,” Merlin spoke to them in his onerous, doubled and touted voices that seemed to echo, before and after, the words. Nickolas has risen and steps back between the nearest trees, silent as an assassin in a memory.

Merlin closes his hand once more and opens it to reveal, a holding of fire that when lifted to his face, he breaths into his mouth as he brings his cupped hands toward him. keeping his hands aflame, the hair on his head ignites as a candle from within, turning to a thick blue flame, while burned he is not, as he offers his hand of torch upward and begins to embellish intense flames in the color of the fire pouring down to him, in which he bathes.

Nickolas has full risen and is standing at the pot with a large wooden spoon sampling the food they had begun to boil, taking a sample as he stares, and drops the spoon into the mixture.

Nickolas says in a boisterous clamor, “We make to dine on the souls of man.”

They look to Nickolas, whipping their necks in shock and back to Merlin once more, thrice again filled with fear. In their confusion, they turn to Merlin and he is showing a fire from beneath the skin, a purified energy that shows only the dye of his skin, eyes and hair, glowing with a dark outline. The flames begin canvassing his surface, from the tattoos that are across his arms and neck and face and at the thought of fleeing, when turning back they meet Nickolas, as he has two blades held with arms extended, pointing to both sides of the pot at them.

They stand in fear, now less one night dwelling worshiper, as the youngest has fled. At the small fireside within the trees, witness Merlin’s flames begin to turn a radiant and bright color, low and red, the heat felt upon the face.

Merlin again speaks to them with thunder in his voice, “You are trespassers in my domain and have awakened me and my forester. The penalty is death!” The resounding presence echoes and tears into the ground.

His eyes bright, the light bellowing from beneath his skin and with their penance paid, the remaining bolt like lightning, gone in a flash. All is amusing to Merlin and Nickolas who laugh and begin to eat the remains of the food, left behind by the monks of an archaic order.

“May I?” asked Nickolas as he loomed over the cauldron, and after tasting he iterated “it’s quite good,” before resting next to the fire.
“It was more of a meal and a ceremony for druids.”
“It’s almost a meal.”

Merlin is normal within the blink of an out looking eye. He drops a crooked branch alongside the pit of the fire, and it begins to burn without signs of symbols or scars. Consumed is the meal, but not before tales of the times shared and fire tricks, before Merlin reveals his plausible itinerary and its complicit relation to his destination, as the fire stirs in the night. They sleep and rest next to a hearth surrounded by white stones.

In the morning, they hike north, with autumn being confused with the spring, the pines are huddled together and clench their needled arms, as orange leaves litter along the floor of a morning wood as burgeoning branches precociously blossom and flourish .

To only one side, the wolves are walking with them, keeping a constant distance, not paying much attention to the two of them, walking among the ferns and pines. Their heads hang low with sharp ears as they watch the tops of the fallen foliage, as they circle about with an organized chaos, keeping their noses near the ground. As countless numbers, it seems or enough of them circling the same area, scavenging for miscellaneous items of prey, or possibly in a hunt for a large number of rodents trapped among the pack.

Nickolas, “Will they ever attack us?”
Merlin, “They circle burrowers…, unless you provoke them or it’s bitter as they starve.”
Nickolas, “We saw those naught, last night.”
Merlin, “Last night's meal probably drew them our way.”

Never looking back, Nickolas is wary constantly, walking of their surroundings.

The ground cover is a strange decay as they travel uphill, broken and rotted wood chips, a red thick sawdust floor, and large immovable stones lay lodged into the ground periodically through the woods. As the stone face of a damp mountain nears, the trees take position more errantly than at the forest’s edge.

A short cliff, of the mountain in the woods, no taller than a castle wall, where the stacking stone and the lands meet, jetties looking over where the mountain slightly tears into and upward through the soil. The loam becomes rocky and cragged as they begin having to walk up a steep hill through water and traveler worn paths.

Their travel takes them passed the last of the forest dales, they arrive at an opening to see a valley in the mountain and the rising sun, in the valley are roses growing everywhere except for the area where they stand, a small clearing with carpenter tools strewn about, and cutting and carving benches.

Not the site of a smithy but a workplace full of one’s fashioned tools, among a red gravel walkway to a small domicile with rose engravings and paintings. The house is small and knives hang from many of its shutters and windows, bees and honey boxes outside the shelter. The small dwelling and path connect into the roses through the golden dawn valley that invisibly stretches to their exit at the horizon because of a rose archway that crosses overhead of a garden tunnel. Among the rose trees, vines and bushes, red and pink freshly fallen petals nearly cover the hall of spikes and lace below a looming red air of effervescence.

In the yard stands a cogent figure, dressed as a butcher and painted red in extreme. He sharpens a lengthy knife, cleaving and cutting the meal meat from a slain dog, and without a moment to hide, instantly noticed become the two disillusioned travelers.

They notice that the rose-plants are dripping with blood near where the carver stands, the butcher takes the bucket below the table that has collected full of blood and tosses it's contents onto his plants, drinking the last of the blood from the pale, it runs his face, and he drops the bucket.

Butcher, “Come closer.”

Merlin puts the back of his hand across Nickolas’ chest. The stranger in blood pulls from his waist a whip of the rose plant intact with thorns, wrapped around his waist that loosens and falls like a silk sash.

As he begins to swing and sway the whip, it begins to glow like molten gold through the air, a flagrant lash waving in the ambiance, the thorns shedding moments of ash.

Nickolas gathers his emotions and softly speaks, “dear god...,” to him.

Merlin, in a dancing wave, leans forward, extending his fingertips before himself, as a white wind blows from him, taking with it ashes of sand from his skin. The cold air draws from behind them a few wolves gather but are timid and flee as soon as they notice Nickolas spot them. The effort is useless, only warming the man at such a distance, and rapidly causes Merlin exhaustion. Nickolas rushes to step forward and at the corner of his eye, drove an ardent Merlin rushing to attack the butcher of the roses. Their fight in long and short is as follows. From within Merlin, lightning blocks the initial crack of the whip as he rushes, but drawing the thorned line behind him, his assailant brings its end to Merlin’s face, where it wraps around his forearm, and a cry of agony fires let Merlin from his pain, as the thorns cut into him as the torturer pulls the line. The light in his soul shows anger, in his anguish his eyes turn black as he drops to his knees.

Butcher, “You will return to the ground and the blooms will sing your name.”

The thorns cause the newly wrapped lash to latch and viciously tear at his skin, the stoic villain knows if Merlin takes his whip that he will be unmatched.

This signals the end, as Merlin pulls him in, he puts his free hand on the thorny doom and pulls, putting the other next to it. From his wounds on hands and arm he begins to shine an immense internal light, he breaks the spiked cord and the butcher falls back and with the length at his arm Merlin leaps and wraps the thorny vine around his neck as he lies on his back. As our villain grabs to the wrapped cord moments too late, Merlin reaches into his sleeve and pulls the dagger Horus had given him. With a swinging motion over his head, he slams the point of the blade into the rose vine and rises up, standing on the hilt of the knife's handle. With both hands, he pulls the other end of the short, indurate branch around the butcher's neck and tightens the piercing rope, until it lacerates his windpipe, and with blood spilling everywhere, the fire in his eyes dies.

Screaming as he walks he sits, falling on his rear as one does, on the walk before a table and looks to a slowly approaching Nickolas.

Nickolas, “The throes of time, sure hated him?”
Merlin, “You...come here!”
Nickolas, “If you murder me, I wish it not be done that way.”
Merlin says, “Something to do with blood and tattered clothes?”
Nickolas says, “More to do with wanting to see more of such interesting fates.”
Merlin, “Bring me the dagger, in the ground over there. I need to cut out these thorns soon, and I’ve not the talons.”
Nickolas, “Here, take mine," said Nickolas as he threw the one in his hand to Merlin’s side.”

As he pulled one of the thorns, he moans as he finds that a broken thorn has begun to take short root into his arm. Nickolas stands and watches in dreadful awe.

“Will you be well again?”
“I hold deep in muddy waters, much like these cursed things, lest we bleed ourselves,” said Merlin with a sound of pain for every thorn pulled.
“Good, I’m going in to find more appropriate wear.”

Nickolas goes inside and finds a brown leather armored coat that hangs only to his waist. He decides to wear it, with it not completely closed, one large lapel hanging down, after making much noise searching through things, he comes out again.

“Becoming a chef are we?” touted Merlin.

A timid look of content paints Nickolas’ face as he replies, “He's got a lot of goods left inside, and perhaps you should look for an appropriate medicine.”
Merlin, “Then, as long as he's dead, bring me the bucket he drank from.”

Nickolas walks away and gets the waved blade next to the drying foe, as Merlin pulls the last of the thorns from his arm closest to his shoulder. Afterward he places his other hand below his arm and holds his wounded one close to him, looking for further damaging thorns.

Nickolas brings back the almost empty bucket and Merlin takes it to drink, losing grip in balance of his wounded arm, shifting the weight of the near empty bucket to his good palm, he drinks the remaining blood like it were cold water from a mountain after reaching the edge of a arduous desert wasteland crossing. Purged from the inside, pain and wound begin to remit as a faint pale blue light shines from beneath the incisions upon his arm, and quickly fade, his wounds now sealed from beneath and bleeding no longer, as he flexes his arm.

“You've healed?” Nickolas said in disbelief.
“I’m healing, or I’m not languishing or can’t you tell?”

Merlin waves his arm about at his elbow, just as Nickolas says, “I was going to assist you.”
“There was not time,” Merlin replied.
“A lot of things inside, no doubt stolen to be food for fiendish thoughts.”
“Then we must look, inside the house of pain,” said Merlin as he stands, using only his good arm to do so, using his fist as he does, making sure to not stretch the palm of his wounded hands.

Merlin stands, and not without a scream of anguish he stands arching back with his hands forward as he lets a small white ball of fire at the dead or dying foe from his hands, the bloodshed of fallen to feed his roses.

They ransack the shelter ever careful, weary of tricks and traps, taking what they can, including a bow and supplies that Nickolas does not want as Merlin offers it to him. Merlin takes these things, stepping outside to the unlucky animal. The table stands with an indent in its center and a furrow to the edge where blood does drain. The harrowed dog lies butchered, divided as if for sale at market, and upon learning this, Merlin gathers things to burn to cook a free snack, including the door of the shelter and makes fire. Taking the door of the shelter with him causes Nickolas to rescind his motivations of plundering and join Merlin for a breakfast.

“Hold the door here,” asked Merlin of Nickolas. He complied with Merlin’s request, watching Merlin walk away from him only a pace or two, simply to turn back and hold out his palm. A rush of air travels from him to the door, a gust that looks of a ball that smashes the door to fragments and parts.

The wood burns bright and fast, especially the ashen tables from outside as they watch, laying the meat on the coals. As they sit waiting, tending to wounds of mind and body, Nickolas notices a wolf external, watching them from the same place where they had entered the small valley plateau, but it scares and runs at Nickolas’ accidental locking of stares with the lupine, and it runs into the woods, disturbing the fog.

Nickolas ponders and asks, “Where does one learn such things?”
Merlin, “The burn is something he hath learned by and of the army burning the coastline behind us.”
Nickolas, “You knew him from somewhere?”
Merlin, “No, just another demented clergyman.”
“They had not fought us in the same way?” said Nickolas, questioning Merlin’s honesty, heavily staring into the trees.
“Not all of them fought with you.”

Merlin stares at a white quiver of bone and scales, lying next to his leg and takes an arrow from it as he sits to begin turning the meat to its other side. With the pieces being cooked and doled, Nickolas takes his and begins to feast, once again as if starving. By and by, as the final blow of the battle begins to repeat in his mind, he notices a wolf at the edge of the forest. The wolf slowly turns away, as if in amazement, dashing into the woods whence nearly out of sight.

To answer Nickolas’ question as he looks to him, he replies, “Some know great things, some bark at the moon and wait for wizards to scare them.” He says this as he notices wolves beginning to come to the edge of the forestation and sit alongside one another, staring at the fire, at them and the fallen sadist.

As they leave, Nickolas turns back and sees the wolves, still in wait at the edge of the forest. The two of them walk over to the body as one of the pallid wolves of the many all sit patiently at the forest's edge walks forward and sits primly halfway between them and its brood behind it, Merlin thinks nothing of it and turns forward again, continuing to the rose archway and they enter the valley of thorns.

A tunnel of roses of diverse colors of red, turn and slowly face them as they walk, the same way a flower will follow the sun in a day’s time, as if the two were derived from the sun. Flowers, vines and arching branches to some extent sway, as if in endearment as they pass below unharmed, across a path of scarlet, as rose petals fall ahead as well as behind the two. When looking up, between the plant growths, the sun shines brightly into their eyes.

They exit the rose garden at the end of the valley at a steep inclined clearing with steps carved into the stone, exiting the garden that seems like a bowl only as they look back, with only a few feet to stand at the top of a rise, at a ledge above a river that flows down the mountain.

A tiny path follows the stream downward, and far below are those whom Merlin expects to be, Ana and Troy, and the expecting couple, as well as the bird, diving and rising with steam and flames in a playful manner near them in the water.

A pond to their right, a pond farther to their left before the stream continues along the mountain’s landing juxtaposes a road along the foothills of the mountains. A forest grows ahead cut away from the mountain by the winding road, with another road leading through, away from the mountain that travels at least two ways from a tiny city far in the distance, through the middle in front of them, below their position. To the left, the mountain wraps north before meeting the horizon, the mountain and the horizon meeting far ahead on the left.

Merlin, “Pick a rose now, for the patrons below are my party, and they nor I, will hark back to this nest of hawthorn and thistle.”

EIGHT TO FOURTEEN

Moon Day

Beliefs in an afterlife persona, the worldly ones we are busily being now, end with death or shortly thereafter. At all costs, honestly corrupt and protect the rights of the people of the moon when it is convenient among celestial light. Fear the evil empire when they take you from the streets.

Deus Day

The higher self that is your soul forever waiting is timelessly eternal, and is many different people at once. The people are half-full of tidings and half empty of ambition as their boundaries have more thieves and politicians than light set afire. Question the actions of our leaders, but do not waste your precious breath on corruption and faceless politics.

Odin's Day

We over think and over analyze than we must be searching the opportunity to understand why our conveyance is motivated because we are the wanton parts of fiascoes and conspiracies. Little by little, the stars are taking more than their share from the bars of holy prisoners, the people are endorsing the movement, and will eventually become slaves to the financiers, who will fund a war of the titans, and profit from loss. Operating, Investing and Financing are income activities, which can be only deciduous by depreciation.

Thor's Day

If you want conformity, find how to be analogue, avoid the hate machine. Cleaning the field of those who in one way or another despite their efforts are feeding the fire and will perish in one fell swoop of the Odin's ravens. The future outcome from environmental factors less seen by those who explore and only proven by those that survives.

Free Day

The truth will set you free, the liars will tell you what truth is and today, liars hate liars, cheats hate cheats, and thieves hate thieves. Provoked by treason, defeated by finance, and erased by history, reborn by reason our spirits in arrogance are hatreds, in pride called teamwork. They leave you stay, the perfection of the old ways will always be detested because of prevalence by those who are declarative of fact about those who cannot afford immediate assumption. Walk softly with accord toward any resolution, but do not tempt a fate that cannot answer.

Sater's Day

Once the public finishes idolizing the ones they envy most they begin to become one evil trait or another. We are less than ten percent survivors and traitors, but if to consider the halves of nobility, we are three of every four of planetary total. Volatility reaches into the mind with exhaustion when temperance flares.

Sun Day

People forget what freedom is when forgotten prosperity honesty and success cause the rebellion to have more facts in their debates than the bureaucrats have throughout their lifespan. To consider the odd and other sort we are closer to the goal than ever. Follow only leaders that know where they are going, and never uphill, due process allows you only one race, and it will disappoint if it is to be the race to the beginning.

ONE TO SEVEN

Moon Day

What makes sense to one person does not always have to make sense to someone else and his or her sane conversations. If you change your mind, and stop to listen to the voice, your surprise will be what you have heard. To some, meditation can be religion, a place of mental somber solitude, to solace by none, but you do not need believe that everyone can hear everything. Hearing is the perception that happens when someone tries to listen or when someone asks another to speak, through verbal or empathic communication.

Deus Day

Among the chaos of mannerist and verbal cues, when you refuse to hear the other person, the debate is over, and you will just be in a shouting match. Communication is the tie that binds, its opposite whereto the learning takes place in a perfect environment is teaching. Listening is the action the person takes consciously to try to hear something amongst heaven on earth.

Odin's Day

Listening is what you do all the time. You only hear what you want to hear, as much as those who are philosophers analyze every statement for truth. The catalyst is those who are not, repeating erroneous sayings they have heard. Some people read minds, hear voices, see spirits or tell the greatest of tales, and there are those who repeat the erroneous babble of lunatics and mad folk.

Thor's Day

If you change your mind, and stop to listen, some people can see their future, in dreams or not. Some of us can read minds, but not until they are older. An underdeveloped, overlooked sense of the vessel. Others have the ability to see and experience the supernatural. In both cases, the knowledge of the sage is in need of these spirits and communication to another to understand these things. Solitude and power will have put one beyond their era. There is no moon without a sun nor hammer without anvil.

Free Day

Beyond thinking, is an incomprehensible answer for all that does exist. Beyond the thinking that everything must have an answer, is the common oppression that everything must have a solution. We cannot daydream the power to comprehend the thoughts of others, such is a faithful trait that comes with aged confusion, and power beyond your wildest dreams. The answers do not come automatically right now. Some answers are yes, some answers are no and some answers have no set schedule.

Sater's Day

One cannot say one of something without thinking of solidarity, in order to protect one's sanity. In our better persuasions, we think in colors and incomplete thoughts, such is the way we utilize our memory for creativity. Our memory of our past will redirect our future, taking our dreams and turning them into reality is impressive by any regards of those who replenish themselves.

Sun Day

You will need facts, proof and testimony and may the energy we receive from it emulsify, go towards blasphemy. Success is superior in civilized times, as much as fate. Everything you do begins with a thought, albeit within the normal guidelines of society & the laws of nature, there is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

A decade in balance

global warming was caused by the politicians of the world burning money. when it got warmer, more rain and snow came, the worst of which came at the very end of the decade, the ice caps returned, and the snow-caps replenished.

capitalism is the economy of society, this is the way. the opposite of capitalism is fascism not socialism. some-people have told me that i will be a minority soon, but i wonder how since there's nearly 7 billion people today.

myself, Ive been working on a story called Merlin, as you may know, a story i started telling 12 years ago, but recently restarted. copyright occurs the moment you write something, so i post it here. I've lead myself to believe, in my solitude, that im psychic and people are simple, yes that involves you? Ive been writing the summaries and rough drafts for a few ideas a week, i havent posted them all here as of yet because im working on the novel aspect of writing along short stories that dont fit the timeline and occasional blog-rants such as this.

im going to school for another 2 years, but for another associates of applied sciences degree. last one i had 3.something, and so far after four classes of this one, i have a 4.0 aren't you proud. and i did all of this while listening to heavy metal so go fuck your own rap-hick ass. though you may think you do not know me, i am a reputable if not often respected authority for myself and others.

through various opportunities, and several counts of lunacy, i have seized a chance to be informative to the powerful minds of my time, and in fact have left a compendium of writings for the people of time to come, for the future of the race.

Ive attempted an educational-informative candid humorous breech of information into the general public, and if not oft provided works of a personal literary composition to prompt choice and independent thought from what i can only imagine to be called my following, but with a scarcity of opposition, i fear an imbalance to the natural flow of information. with this bias weighing on my consciousness, i have spoken what i can and will continue to, to provide an outside view of the truth that only time can provide, alongside my personal works/writings. to stand the test of time. which i think is full of awesome accounts of literature and theology, except the poetry.

the politicians have justified economic collapse and contradictory logic. they cant consider themselves socialist because they believe it to be a bad idea. they label others as pawns of special interests, justifying redistribution of honest wages on the premise that it will be spread equally with a rhetoric of equality acceptance. this is the norm for both sides of the sociopathic / sociopolitical spectrum and have indebted our children, forsaking even their own personal socialist special interest services or agendas. all of this while abusive dictators condemn socialism, but demand charity. if its not hard its not worth doing, even if that means teaching people right from wrong.

Africa's impoverished countries eat bush-meat and haven't adapted to cattle, war with themselves in the name of genocide, oil, drugs and diamonds. other poor nations put soil with their food. trees are cut in a wasteful sight, that's the profiteering i abhor. religious fanatics still fight to have control of tyranny, and people. they allow the abuse by dictators to continue, disallowing suffrage, literacy and in some places alcohol (if you can imagine). china is still hard-lined communist, and criminalizes free-market economics. come on china, 6000 yrs, stop being shitfaces, and its poverty stricken people can fill other entire countries.

Australia has marsupials and plans to kill a million camels a year that thrive in the outback and ruin the fragile ecosystem and yet no one likes to eat camel.

Europe is a boon to English words and freaky porn. it also has this thing called an antihate speech laws, so you have freedom of speech unless you offend someone, than watch the fuck out, and so i think the name Europe offends me and you should name it to USA2, fix it. not to mention the Muslims there are writhing with that much freedom and are crying for separatism / secession and segregation in many places.

Russia is sort of like Alaska, but not in English. i havent heard from Russia in ages, but they used to play hockey, require passports and visa's, but i did hear they got themselves a president, and a prime minister, and it is believed to be mafia related.

The United States got it's first American president. Canada, is sorta family, sohz i cant say anything bad, but they have french ghettos, and i thought the Britons killed those things along time ago. USA is filling with the complacent, and you now have superpowers, return to your television. Mexico has workers and no morals more and more, is filling with its own drugs and southern drugs from countries that look like the dark ages, full of cannibals and neon soccer tweeker drug-running separatist nationalist invaders that often don't choose to converge if illiterate. But from the south comes a metal uprising, musically as Americans. north and south, blend their distinct cultures it is presumed music will hold them together. South American violence is rising, and poverty of its civilization is in many cases separated by force.

war,....has its own television channel. omg, a lot of war. but on the bright side, yoga is making a comeback. the internet which i thought was older than recorded history, in past and future lives in multiple dimensions and realities sees a massive interest taken by people in just the past ten years. luckily im a computer major in school, and that job market is on the rise, cool huh? countries that despise the united states, a cultural melting pot of the best and the brightest of all skills, for its decadence, are gaining grounds in literacy and clean living environments, and soon it is believed that most countries will frown upon cousin fucking. lol. religion is still here, but how could it not be, how fucking close to war is that?

Merlin 9 - The Blood Curtain

MERLIN – CHAPTER 9 – THE BLOOD CURTAIN

The essence of magic, a mystical ash, a resonance of light and memory, settles to the ground like falling snow. Time comes into focus on the two, as reality recovers existence and the shroud of blindness clears like smoke on ice. The substrate, that is the sheen of Nickolas is reclaiming his face as he sits up straight again, as if of a morning rise. Nickolas checks himself and comes to find that Merlin has blasted one of the wine sacks of blood covering him in a thick indulgent coat of crimson disappointment.

Nickolas looks over himself but rest his head saying, “This is not all my blood.”
“Fuck’s sake. All of that for nothing.”
“Help me up.”
“Can you continue?”
“Yes I can,” said Nickolas, checking the bags, “this one is intact.”
Merlin replied, “Good than we go, if you’re sure you’re able.”
Nick complains, “Partially a waste and more so a mess,” as he looked over his clothes, sitting up, the palms of his hands still on the ground.
“It is hardly our concern,” said Merlin. His eyes shut, his head tilted back, looking to the sky through his eyelids, surely covering his rolling eyes.

“Are these your friends Merlin?” said Nickolas, looking over the brush at the tree line, out along the path.
“Let’s go see how their friendly intentions are.”
“, and reconvert their attention.”

Nickolas and Merlin have not a need to run any further through the wood, none at all, because the soldiers that approach are travailing the rising path toward them, their complaints are close enough to be heard in mentions of the incline of the mountain’s countermeasures. The first confrontation is to be with both troops, seemingly unarmed, each very slender and dressed in red uniforms of straps and belted sleeves. Merlin stood dumbfounded at how Nickolas restarted and heads to the open path, as quickly as is done.

As Merlin stands in wait of his own personal sage knowledge congruence with new information, whatever is his motive, he gives his mind moments to catch up with circumstances, as Nickolas walks over the overgrowth at the edge of the woods. Stepping out, still soaked and dripping blood, notably looking as if he had just murdered a bear with his teeth, ready for a morning dip, or a sunbath. “Allow me,” Nickolas said at the forest’s edge.

Nickolas steps out into the path and they stop trudging forward, cautiously approaching Nickolas, no longer angry with their own feet or the climate, fully scowling with bloodshot stares at him, not for certain, if he was someone having escaped death by their army prior, or a maniac of the wood. They drew their weapons each, ready to kill him hence. As this they do, one of they, the syndrome of pawns of dictators, reaches into his lapel, and pulls out a small bag, next to a short sword with a broad handle. Thomas at this time pulls out a small dagger, from his side, beneath his remaining clothes, obvious to both of them, as the shirt stained and tattered from having the run-in with the bear just only moments ago.

“Jump over the edge.” The first of the two said to Nickolas, giving them cause to laugh.
“You first,” he replied.
“What are you going to do, prick us?” said the second tawdry soldier.
“It’s so I can get in close to see your eyes when I do real damage.”
“You’ll what?” said the soldier laughing again, whom stands slightly taller than Nickolas stands, alongside an equally tall sentry, one gulping at his breath and hand shaking, the other still as of yet, reaching into his pocket.

The show of suspense breaks ground as the first soldier throws a black powder wrapped in a loose cotton bundle at Nickolas. It gets into his eyes but does nothing else, the powder drifts around them all, adding insult to missing injury, peppering the blood drying on his face, the rest taken out to sea.

“The bad news is, you two are decoys,” he said as the two looked together, than back to Nickolas. Nickolas twists at his waist, towards the forest line, looking for Merlin’s exit from the trees, though there is none. Without finding him, he shouts into the forest, “Its gunpowder,” and has a small adequate laugh, as he turns back smiling through a red and black mask. The two guards gain their deserved anxiety and rattled, take up their swords, but with notice of the approach of a third, Merlin lets a blast from the forest line, hitting the soldier closest to the edge, knocking him over the bluff, into the sea.

“Nickolas! Do not play with your food,” Merlin said, stepping out from the forest edge. “Assured,” Nickolas mutters to himself. Nickolas rushes the remaining other guard and begins to fight with him, blade to blade he fights the guard with an arm behind his back. Even as the guard runs to the forest, Nickolas chases him, making it to the fleeing guard’s side as the guard turns back the other direction to see where follows Nickolas. Before the thick forest, Nickolas renders him unconscious by pushing his head into a tree as he turned to look back and laughter and gasps of breath and moans of the soldier immediately ensues and Merlin puts on his hat behind, out on the terracotta path.

Merlin steps down, now without The Silver Sword, and stops Nickolas from getting zealous with defeating the combatant sent from below, halting any further violence by way of grabbing his arm before Nickolas could even kneel.

As the third sentinel approaches, steadily and low in the shoulders, Merlin steadfastly sends from his pocketed collection, a glowing stone toward him, causing an immense blast before his feet, sending him spinning in the air, backwards head over feet, in reverse, over the fallen log on the path.

In projection, his feet hit the fallen tree with high branches, now over the cliff, and he, in finality, spun vigorously in his flight. The determined sentry gathers his senses, viciously approaching again, once more with precaution, stepping over the fallen tree trunk, as Merlin reaches into his bag of stones, and pulled another, this one a black agate stone of negative radiance, of bright darkness, in the palm of his hand. As it begins to glow, the soldier becomes overwhelmed and in full feared retreat, runs back down the slope, shedding some of his affects along the way, as fast as his legs can carry him.

Merlin, “That is never a good result.”
Nick, “Fine, Run I was going to make you, suffer.” Giving emphasis on the second half of the latter word, he shouted down the path that spanned along the edge near the cliff, which seems to cause the fleeing soldier to fall and tumble like a wheel, only to pick himself up again when the momentum gives and continues to the chaos below the mountain.

Merlin says while standing at Nickolas’ shoulder, closer to the trees, “No need to antagonize, he’ll be back.”
Nickolas says while standing at Merlin’s shoulder, closer to the cliff, “With more I imagine.”
“It would have been better if warned they weren’t.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s not pleasing, give me the bag, I suppose you're quite careless as you fight.”

After off carrying the strap from over his shoulder and across his neck after noticing, much as Merlin had, that one of the bags were not broken, Nickolas hands the bag over to a Merlin of chagrin saying, “Set me free of my bonds and take my blood.”
“Quite.”
Nickolas turns to face him, takes the bag strapped over his shoulder and neck off from around him, and looks into the distance again, much as Merlin has been and for a moment, they stand mesmerized by the city under siege.

As the two rush down the hill, they fail to see one of the northern fleet's enormous white snow ships heading in their direction along the coast, rushing to the city in chaos and the merchant fleet challenging from the south, having already passed the city heading toward the massive white vessels.

Nickolas not so much yet focused notices Merlin’s skin, “Merlin look to your wrist,” he stated, as soon as he notices what is happening to Merlin’s arm. He looks to his wrist and sees a band of black ink from within his skin begin to glow. Merlin stops and looks back, up the path and as he turns back instantly, to notice, alongside Nickolas, that the motus in which Ana had left the city was happening, a great white light, from within the walls of the city.

From far above, on the edge of a rigid burred bluff slowly declining to the city, they can see the pillar of light from the center of the city go dim, as the circle barely seen over the city walls grows bright and as quickly fades to the red light of a city lit by fire. From its center, a concentration of light launches upward, the same way a raindrop travels a strand of a spider’s web. Into the clouds along a coursing beam of shining light, a burst of light travels upward faster than a thought, along the line and then all together fades leaving the part of the city where it had been, heavily damaged, remitting the walls to falling in and crumbling slightly, an explosion from the city center. Another man is running up the path.

“We should wait for this one.”
“I had planned on it.”

The man rushing up the hill is Horus, armed and dangerous, running as fast as he can possibly, not knowing whether Merlin has even run his errand, or not. Merlin sees his friend running up the hill screaming to them and they aptly rush down the hill to meet him.

Horus, “Run, turn back, it’s better to,” huffing and puffing and catching his breath, “better to take to the north, less food, more welcome. “ Oh Merlin, it is you. ” They encounter, the king not in his clothes, but in disguise, he reveals to them his identity, and when asked about retrieving and taking him the blood, they reply in fair and hasty response.

Horus, “Did you get it, good,” he said, Merlin taking the pouch off from ‘round his body.
Merlin says, “It is here, take it.”
Horus, “What happened to you?” he said looking at Nickolas, still catching his breath.
“What?” replied nick, in a smug and arrogant tone.
Horus, “Who is this?”
Merlin, “What is happening? Tell us Horus.”
Horus, “They have what they think will get them into the city of lights.”
Merlin, “They have no reason?”
Horus, “They are set on conquest.”
Nick, “But they can’t use what's inside, and only the light bringers can live there.”
Horus, “But they head there, killing my city on the way, their ships have already launched.”
“I cannot stop such a fleet,” said Merlin.

The armada moves in force, speeding along, most with oars stretching out from their sides, like spiders, crawling along the water, towards two ships much larger, the difference seen, even from such great heights.

“But you can show me the door and send me back, hurry, we still have time,” said Horus, reaching to Merlin and grabbing him by the fabric, “Look to that,” he said pointing to the chaotic city downhill, “I can repair such things.”
Nickolas, “Go back?”
Merlin, “He is going back.”
Nickolas, “He is going back.”
Horus, “What else you have not told him?”
Nickolas, “What else is there to know, friend?”
Horus, “I can stop this, but we must hurry, friend.”
Merlin, “Obviously, you have not, or we would not be here.”

Horus stops confoundedly, pondering this fate shortly, and replies to them as they again, move closer to the city with Horus taking the lead, “You mean that I would not be here. I am not going to a where, but to a when, to be a hero.” Ahead of them he stops and turns to them, “I have to try Merlin, and you can save a few before you leave the land again.” He continues without answer, walking step by hasty step.

Merlin halted and spoke loudly, Nickolas waiting alongside, “Wait.” A silence crowded the air as a scowling wizard, last in line of progression of their descent down the long narrow path, looms as he speaks. “Give me that dagger,” said the wizard to Horus.

The king without a crown stops, pausing before turning back to Merlin and then replies, “Why should I?”

“Because you owe me, and obviously, I do not think you survive your trip or this would not be happening,” Merlin replied, as he lifted his feet, and began walking once more along toward Horus.

“Fine, here, shall we do this?” said the king, tossing the dagger, which Merlin catches by the handle, as he steps to his side. He holds the dagger in hand to his side; he turns his head to the knife. Confused is Nickolas but he plays along, counting the seconds between the lines, as Horus seems in no hurry at all. Merlin slips the dagger into his sleeve and they unanimously depart.

“Did you see Ana leave?” Horus asks concernedly.
“We did. Nick here noticed my sigil ignite.”
“Did she make mention of me?”
“The devil is in the details.”

The three now travel together downhill to the city, the fields without, in flames. Merlin troubled by the ease of Horus’ ability to release the knife to his possession asks, “What are you not telling us Horus?” as he stopped the three from proceeding.

Horus looks up at a cloud-connected haven of the sky, and looks back briefly as he walks saying, “Be careful, the Totem mercenaries are at work.”
“Wait,” said Merlin again halting in his footsteps, “You didn't say that there would be any blood bugs.”
Horus answers, “Only a dozen or so.” Merlin looks to the city, with a contemptuous stare, the grey in his eyes beginning to crawl through the porcelain white of his sultry stare.
Nickolas intervenes, “Or so? What’s a totem?”
Merlin, still staring at Horus and the city behind him says, “You have heard that the body is a vessel.”
Nickolas, “Yeah, more than you know.”
Merlin, “They seem to live in their heads, and can switch them onto a new body, if it suits them more.”
Nickolas anxiously asked, “Them, their heads?” and gulped a dry swallow of nervous tension down into his stomach.
Horus, “They are highly trained and skilled deadly headless assassins that will put their head on your shoulders boy.”
Merlin, “He is older than both of us.”
Nick vacantly asks, “How many?”
“Maybe twelve,” he answered.
Horus, “Merlin, this war is older than today, but if we don’t go, I’ll have no chance stop it.”

Nickolas now stands oblivious to the two others and to their conversation, and begins a staring at the city with contempt, the beginning of a systematic panic. Merlin put his hand on Nickolas’ shoulder and says to him, “There easy to fall, they’re just a bit unsightly.”

From that, they go into the surrounding fields before the castle, where the guards can be seen firing green flames in waves and torrents of fire, at the mercenaries from their unique staff-like weapons from near the city wall, on and below.

A few of the villainous so-called blood bugs surmount and scale the small city walls, giving the guards hell at the tops before obviously jumping to the center, within the solid outward wall. The city is among anarchy with explosions, fires set, and people fleeing the city by boat into the ocean across the watery battle lines, out to the vaguely known distances of the sea, and by foot into the hills away from the ravished metropolis.

The army may possibly see the people flee from their failing fortifications, but makes no effort to alter course and intercept. Undeterred, the army marches toward the city, followed by a single row of archers the width of their formation, followed by a small set of rows, of unwavering and patient cavalry lines, at half the pace of the groundlings, watching their men progress forward, under black and red flags.

In the tall grass surrounding the paddocks, in the paths leading into the city, they find their first Totem warrior, black as death and evil as much, hunched with hands near the ground and snarling among the amassing battle that is swiftly encompassing the coastline of their entire country. Its eyes, mouth and hair are black as a toxic night, but the body wrapped by tattered strips of fabric, in the style of self-bandaged cloths, like a mummy of the sands of the great deserts of the cursed earth. The ghastly creature has visible sharpened teeth, clenching a short blade without a handle in one hand, which cuts into its own, awhile dripping a vile and dark blood. Its veins flow onto a slain farmhand who lies innocently below, with deathly devices carving into him as if for play, tossing pieces of flesh to the side as it suddenly notices the marching approach of the three men, who implicitly are dressed for war.

It smiles, its dark eyes unwavering, devoid of expression, and rises to its feet and begins to drift toward them slightly floating above the ground swiftly, only being able to hunch over with bent knees. Not a single piece of the creature stands straight and tall, as it cries out to them without vocalizing more than a raspy voice, and only a whisper came from within its throat, as it glides along, its toes dragging. A whisper’s speech of another dialect ensues after the initial wail of the monster with a spider’s tongue, and the king strikes it through with an arrow to its chest, which protrudes enough to hold it to anything soft as the wood of the fence and a second into the fence in a clear miss.

Behind the toxic smelling creature with peeling skin and black blood dripping, it turns to see the arrow’s insertion point, looking back to them while snarling like a rabid wolf, snickering of ignorance at Horus’ loose shot. Merlin then causes a great wind to blow, a wind of loud cleanliness forces the creature into the fence where the arrows run it through and holds it, and Nickolas runs up to it, jumping the fence at the cretin’s side, circumventing it before it could defend itself, to cut off its head.

Nickolas grabs the fowl creature’s skull by its hair and it tears away, much to Nickolas' surprise, and reaches to Nickolas to return the attack still impaled and fastened. He reaches his hand to the side of the demon’s face, putting a thumb into its eye, with a twist and a final slice of little effort he severs the putrid creatures head. The head falls sullenly to the ground and rolls, spilling darkly thick black blood like a bucket of paint. With young vigor, emanating a sense of confidence, he jumps down and upon landing, punts the head of the creature into the grasses of the distance.

“It had no eye.” He said, dusting himself as he begins to show signs of discomfort.
Horus asked a disheveled Nickolas, “And the hair?”
“Fowl enough to fear,” Nickolas replied.

“And now you understand,” Said Merlin who had in the time since his actions, taken his new dagger and began balancing it by its point on his finger, with magical ease, and now stands waiting and watching to the sound of marching feet, heard like drums in water, a blade spinning on its point at the end of his finger. Thomas turns and begins to notice the body of the creature turning to fine white ash.

Nick, “What is happening?”
“We must go.” Merlin and the king said, with a new chilling sense of urgent seriousness, in unison. Nickolas looks to Merlin who says, “The witches are coming. Follow…, Quickly.”
Nickolas, “What.”
“So we must go, post haste Merlin.” Said Horus to a Merlin who was staring at a barely shinning sun through the clouds over the forest horizon, a glow of fire begins to burn into the darkness past the city, against the dark sky slowly burning brighter and brighter into the darkness above the land below the stars.

Directly to the city they jaunt, past many a confused stockyard animal. At the open doors, the prepared men save a guard on their way inside by way of Nickolas finalizing the intruder from behind without notice, as he himself was attempting to quell the palace guard in the same way. “No more squealing pig,” he said just before Nickolas grabs his blade hand and put the trespasser down to forever rest.

Nick with a low and calm voice, revealing a new darkly candor says, “Flawless.” He then spats on the body of the dead insurgent, and stares at the rescued guard. Horus goes over to the guard, bends over and speaks, “Take as many as you can and flee the city, save yourselves or tell this the others, you mustn’t stay I told you.”
“I have nothing left sir,” the random guard said covered in dirt and blood, nearing a break of tears.
“There is always something left sir,” said Nickolas, offering his hand out to the man after having wiped his blade. He did not take his hand and stood up, and leaves out the gateway, indefinitely scarred, essentially forever marred.

As in ritual chaos, fires are lit, innocent are crying, children are running, anarchy is everywhere. A designed city is in battle with ruin, its architecture failing. Staring out, Nickolas is looking to Merlin, who is looking at the damages as Horus slaps him on the shoulder. Without a single word, they move among an inexplicable commotion felling many a foe with swift passage and little notice or opposition. They three, end the lives of eighteen wicked men, each as like tearing through a page in a book. The king leads them into the inner sanctum, where they enter the main hall and find many of the scouts of the enemy, gathered and waiting for them, dressed the same as those they met high on the hill, who turn insipid white and intimidated, once again at the sight of bewildered Nickolas covered in blood.

Horus immediately draws and strikes one of the enemies in their chest near the heart, though they attempted to swat the arrow, failing to do so fell haphazardly backward, uncontrollably waving arms about causing their weapon to slice the face of one of their allies. When this happened, one trespasser then orders the others to, “Kill the survivors.”

Horus, “We've been announced.”

Merlin summons a wind that blows with red sand, gathering them down at the floor and he and King Horus find Nickolas to be excellently skillful at throwing small knives, and with this in only moments, the villains that were awaiting the three heroes, fell to a painful fate.

Nickolas had thrown small blades no larger than carving knives into their throats and such from hidden sheaths in the seam of his trousers that spanned the length of the outside of his leg. Horus follows his actions by finishing things with a long waved dagger. They three, walk through the bodies but Nickolas stops to pick pockets for bounty, these guards were of little contest to their actions.

Merlin scolded him, “Thomas.”
“Sorry.”
“Earn later, guard now.”
“I had to get the knives, didn’t I?”
“Keep close and your head on straight.”
Nick said in a concerned tone, “Not funny.”

His condescension discernable by the look upon his face, Nickolas stands to join the others, forgetting some of the knives, but taking a much larger one from one of them. “Don’t move,” he said in sarcasm to the dying guards. On to the inner hall, they notice that much of the carnage is keeping to the outer wall by these pirates, drawn to looting of a city more attractive than their mission north, a few of the totem creatures lay dying or dead and strewn about, laying and bleeding out, among twice as many palace guards.

The king’s men are much worse for wear than they had planned to be, holding together tightly as a team to benefit their own defenses, and startle by their entry. These guardsmen with as much damage as the castle are leaning on each other amidst the carnage at a table in the center of the room, in the center of the bodies, in the heart of the castle. The leader of the resistance says, “The city folk have taken losses and gains, but have mostly fled, except for the brave and those of us cornered into the main hall,” as he drops his sword in hand to his side, as blood runs down his arm.

Horus walks across the bodies to speak to his guard at a closer range, “This will all be over soon, tell us what happened.”

“We were too late to warn everyone after we noticed the intruders, when we noticed the fleet a sail, and the army…we all but waited for you sir.”
Horus, “I understand my friend, we all would do the same,” he said and returns to tossing things aside that block the tattered peeling painting on the wall behind them all.

Elite Guard, “What are those things?”
“Demons,” Nickolas seemed to say from beyond the room. He has climbed above the ornate stone doorway to the entrance of the chamber and waits; Merlin glances, notices him above the door, and shakes his head in disbelief. One of the enemies comes in through the door and Nickolas pounces, and battles quickly to his prevail, victory and triumph.

Merlin tosses a bowl of water into the large cauldron that had given the vision of the Dragon Lord’s young and hunted family member, and the water turns to an instant boil on the surface of the contents of the cauldron that moments earlier, held a content that was certainly solid.

King Horus clears the debris and clutter away from before a painting on the wall, Merlin can see through the pillars. Merlin himself walks to him with the empty bowl. Above and surrounding the flaked painting is a stone decoration, carved to seem like curtains pulled away from a stage, not as tall as the doors to the room, but more than a man. Merlin walks over to the wall to see that the curtain has a trench above it, across the length of both sides, while Nickolas fights intruders and sends citizens away that come through the door on the other end of the hall.

“What is this?” Merlin asked Horus.
“This is how it’s done.”
“This is where you want to cross?”
“Yes, don’t worry, this is how they left.”
Merlin said crossly, “They?”
“The old stewards, do it now.”
“This is where I’m glad you’re going, this is cipher’s gate.”
“I know.”

Merlin begins to pour into the ridge above the wall the contents of the last pouch and together he and Horus cast the blood curtain.

With a divine intervention accompanied by incantation, Merlin’s eyes begin to fade of their light, as the king begins an incantation as the wall begins to glow. Merlin seems flushed and his eyes begin to fade to and from neutrality and a solid whiteness. As Merlin pours, the blood turns a dark black on the wall and seems lucid and transparent simultaneously as it pours over the decaying painting, in separate streams down the wall, eventually thinning and spanning the wall as if it lay flat on the ground with a downward wind pushing paint across the surface. The red spans to the edges leaving no space uncovered, the blood turns red than fades until the image seems true as a doorway or a window to another world.

The hall is like a spring storm, taking candle flames with it and offering only watery blue light from another setting sun. Two of the Totem living dead fiends, came crashing through the room, colliding with Nickolas as they pass, sending him to the ground, one latching into one of the king’s men, another next to Merlin, and before anyone could blink, it leaps again through the window in the wall. The blood begins to recede from its boundaries, revealing the antiquated painting beneath, closing quickly and flickering with dark flashes.

“That is why you are going,” Merlin shouted over the commotion.
“We will meet again,” said Horus.
“On better terms.” he replied, looking to him one last time before pushing his friend, through the magic gate.

The king swiftly jumps, having leapt through the passage, as it slips shut, with the sound unexplainable, and then the portal and the king were gone. The lone brackish creature of darkness was still feasting upon the guard, having already torn at him, trying to twist off his head by hand while tearing by teeth at his neck. Merlin grabs a toppled, golden goblet from a ledge in the room, and walks over to the demon; gesturing for Nickolas to come closer with his free hand, and kicks the maniacal creature over on its side and put his foot to the side of its chest.

“Place your foot on the other shoulder Nick.”

Nickolas does the act apprehensively as a guard walks over and raises a broad and massive sword above his head, in preparation of a death strike.

“No wait, like a snake, you must destroy the head,” said Merlin.
“I will,” the elite guard replied adamantly.

Merlin places the goblet on the creatures face and before he let go of it, the creature begins a shrill squawking as the goblet begins to glow. Before Merlin could stand upright, the cup begins to melt into the creatures head, causing it to shake violently. The plague of species does not bear any innocence with a mauled guard lying next to it. Nickolas pulls an empty vial and fills it with the black substance pouring away from the melting metal and fire.

Elite Guard, “What is it?”
Nickolas, “It’s a body snatcher.”
Merlin, “It was a man, now forgotten.”

Merlin thinks about the king on the other side, and the events which are to follow, but then the city begins to rumble from the coast and the room begins to tremble at the seams. The sound is likely result of stray artillery from the ocean. More of the king’s guards enter but Merlin, nonetheless, leaves. Merlin holding the door open says to them as they enter the garden, “Those of you, who can flee the city, because you can or must, go. The rest of you come with me.”

They all step outside at that very moment as Merlin pauses in hesitation. They stop and notice and turn to face him with confused expression, wounds, broken armor, and damaged weapons. Nickolas stands in the doorway wearing the empty pouch from their adventure.

Merlin, “Take who you can and flee, more of their army marches currently.”
Nickolas, “Go to your families and save them...”

They darted at the immediate utterance of these words. Nickolas pulls a small bottle, as if blown for a child from behind himself, taking a drink and tossing it to Merlin, spilling some of the contents. The two begin to pass the little bottle back and forth, and when it shortly emptied, they tossed it to the wall beside them.

“Where to battle next?” asked Nickolas.
“We head east to the wind trail,” said Merlin as he checks his pockets and sleeves.
“You do not want to stay?”
“How many wars have you stayed, to fight?”
“You are very true my friend. Somewhat callow though.”
“I cannot fight an army, even if you can.”

With Merlin’s decision, they leave the city, while to the south along the coast are smaller boats lowering from the sides of the larger ones at sea. Their sailors are jumping into them as the much smaller vessels lower over the side. The ships are not abandoning the whole of the fleet as they head directly to the coast of the cliffs of the cape to the north, but are boarding the ice ships. The larger ships sent for convergence are not sinking, nor have even confronted the northern vessels nearing battle. The road east is slightly uphill, laying along a plain ahead and somewhat left was the tree line where into the forest Merlin could at least disguise himself as the wood fauna or in fact hide within a tree, and let Nickolas deal with things in his own way.

The two, Merlin and Nickolas, made it to the edge of the thick flora, a part of the Garden of Eden at the edge of a once erected now crumbling agora. At the forest's edge, Merlin looks out to the sea, witnessing a fleet of ships moving north and two much larger ice ships, floating into the heart of the southern fleet just as the southern army begins to rise over the southern horizon of the rolling hills, whose marching feet can be heard from the distance.

The thunderous sounds of their uniform marching of conformity can be heard far from them, as they stomp the earth and sing to the god of war certain that the next city will fall, like a millipede in a hobble, causing a sense of urgency in Nickolas that made him race, leaving Merlin unable to follow at pace.

The first of the two winter born ships is cutting into the fleet, firing its weapons, lightning arcing from the sails and sending flames to the nearby vessels and pirates, when it began to sink, from the surrounding attacks and as it were from melting. As it sank three greyish dragons, burst upward into flight from each of the white ships’ decks and headed north. Behind it were two more ships but the day has not been as long as imagined and the suns fully set, the occupants do not abandon the following ships, and both of the suns are inoperable as the night defeats the day.

The day’s events reveal its awesomeness to Merlin who stands at the edge of the trees, waiting for an angry beast to crawl out of the ocean. One could almost hear two setting suns crashing to the ground behind him, not swaying his attention to the carnage. He imagined lighting the ocean on fire one last time before the night overruled the day. A marching army with fire in hand, and a burning city before a fleet of ships with lanterns on board that made them seem like sailing lightning bugs are all that is left of a serene dream, full of his fonder memories.

Nickolas rushes back to Merlin’s presence and asks, “Are we staying?”
“No, the storm is for the open sea.”

A cold air begins to flow, from behind Merlin blowing out to the sea, blowing the fires out on land, within the walls and at sea, as a cold mist begins to fall to the ground.

The darkness of winter seems to hold within the clouds, as turrets on the great northern fortress in sight show new lights beginning to glow that scatter along its defensive posts. The darkness of night crawls out from the land and over the sea. Wrapping his clothes tighter, he turns into the forest of the night.

Tormenta Nostra

One global voice to all, assumes power of the markets of the world. The founding members of a life for a dragon, they meet in a dark drink, unfrequented by wealth. In a city of gold, only these common, sit at this gathering soon to be a rebellion. Global alliance distributors of the product, become sole couriers of the realm. For the only king left, behind closed doors talks, divided into four the distribution.

Rebellion begins siege, on supply routes of kind, to feed their own and more display. The network feels threatened, and hunts the rebellion, with zeal and darkness. Communication shines, universalism, of one world order makes speech the issue with a swift and dark move. For a global language, communications universalized with the global language legislation act. With every word, they say, the simple things seen, and set on fire by light.

The leader of freedom establishes allies and double agents. They dry across the board in the distribution data transmission centers. Communication allies begin joining the rebellion. Allowing the passage of communications partially resume. Unrestricted and surveyed as the next planet opens to an existing aristocracy.

Globalist universal soldiers instituted as a final solution. They war with domestic and intergalactic terror the rebellion hunted. New leadership emerges and takes control of global communications. A new and old family, the once freedom fighters take power over willing societies. Robotic means allow organ farms by way of cloning, based on a clone’s short lifespan.

Three separate rebellions form in the broadcast of silence. The survivors of the clone project escape a feared farm. The human resistance grows of infamy and hunger. Underworlds with weak alliances, battle against the preservation council. The bloodthirsty song claims divine right.

A duke of terror decrees the planet a monarchy. The android guard materialized for pomp and circumstance. The council is a royal governance of less than a million members. The commonwealth is overpopulating the planet. Evil overlords and each district of martial law battle countless resistances.

Rampant are those who eat the flesh turning the moralities. A second class of humanity evolves with rarities and abilities. The population consists of three faces looking into a book or the dark. Humanity, evolutionism, and sub-race monsters exist. The latter working as henchmen of the imperial guard of symbols crashes the gates of eternity.

A plague designed to eliminate the 'creatures of oddity'. Rapture eliminates most of their population, leaving the remainders affected. Moon shot causes their adverse mutation and advances them.Thralls become a larger creature under attempted domestication. Mars severs affiliation with earth.

A red war and annulment of alliances happens with the people of planet earth. A second plague develops on mars under the assumption of its refinement. Death’s delivery spreads to earth and becomes an addictive substance to nearly half of the evolutionary. Three castes breathe, including the royalty, which has changed family many times. The races each look like war-children, thrice the size of anon domino.

A muscular warrior race, of dominance and aggression writhes without a soul. With the hearts of the remaining humanity, a separation of knowledge better sits. The evolutionists overthrow the monarchy. Anew begin to call of themselves the overlords. A man without a name achieves dimensional travel, during attempts to flee.

Boundless creations made without memory of his childhood. He modifies a vessel to travel the dimensional shift and back. In turn learning the secret to time travel, space becomes a battlefield. He becomes the first and only person to escape the human empire. Earth 'resets' to its pre-electronic conditions of centuries earlier.

Martian time lines adjust to colonization 50 years prior and its population halved. Its first colony named after the drug, not yet invented. Earth is an early age planet of monsters, wizards and scared humans. Large reptiles begin to control the food chain by dominance. Signals from earth and mars before the temporal realignment soar into stratum.

Broadcast signals have made it to a star system in the center of the galaxy. A planet fallen to the same ills as earth's priors, begins to prepare for an invasion of earth. The distant system’s population colonizes a highly populated, nonindustrial earth invaded. Earth’s population under attack by the same creatures earths previous fated future. Earth invaded by the distant terror, cries for the halo.

Its moon destroyed and used for the formation of a new landmass on earth. The planet is desperate and dying, the remaining turned to slaves. The planet is open to colonization, and vacationing to alien species. The elite transferred for political reasons and allowed to live in peace on mars. The son of the ruler of mars organizes the destruction of a ship over earth.

After the vessels crash, the planet ruined for centuries. The perpetrator goes unaccredited and unaltered among magic fire. The Martian industrial revolution claims life for its own army. Martian atmospheric climate catastrophe causes evacuation of the planet mars. At first availability, Martians settle areas of earth, in Polar Regions.

After the air clears, earth has only the earliest of mammals. The deathly monsters alongside the evolved many that have burrowed thrive alive along sublimated. In desperation, they delve into the earth to survive what they have called the cataclysm. Martian settlers called Vikings, colonize the polar regions of earth. They exist as two families, the Vanir and the Aesir.

The evolved discover the Vikings and form an alliance they call the heritage. Among powerful psychics from families of a remaining earth of its last age, survive the evolutionary around a kindled flame. Welcoming war and Martians of the Vanir battle with the Aesir led by Odin. A hunter of the third tribe, who leads only humans to battle the Vanir, takes many wounds that would paralyze the seers. Odin defeats them all and unites the survivors under the house of Aesir.

Mars is in total political, economic and terrestrial collapse. Among complete anarchy, in a last attempt to survive the test of time preservation measures met with inception. Martian scientists send modified engineered mammals to live among the animals of earth. On its newly uncovered equatorial paradise, flourish a primordial fauna. The Martian atmosphere becomes volatile.

After the Aesir wins the Viking civil war, for reasons of clarity. The heritage receives titles such as witches and warlocks. Deemed they are the cause of the monsters on earth. Those with dark abilities are hunted or hiding as outcasts or among the Vikings. Mammals discover the creation of fire and simple tools as the planetary birth of the omnivore.

Viking colonization and industrialization begins. Combinations of nominations of societies become highly religious. Mixtures of monarchism and diocese religions begin crusades on the simple 'new humans'. The new humans keep historical records. Along with a rebirth of art and culture, a rebirth recorded as always the deed done.

Here begins the metallurgical era through wars and slavery. The first world empire of a second known era in its current recorded history falls prey to three laws. Created and reclaimed by others repeatedly. The queen of the empire, a descendant of a witch, brings reign with an invisible knife. Mistaken time murders the king and by means of public display.

Shows her powers and receives an overwhelming praise. Her so-called divine intervention her children become the 13 gods of earth. The first successful empire begins attempts at recorded history. To become a unanimous system of time over the next twenty-four in four parts time. The Viking expansion begins its own-recorded history due to an unexplained anomalous intervention.

A technological revolution begins of the three children of the first time traveler. They visit the planet and the third child accidentally leaves foreign technology. Artificial intelligence has a civil war in the cyberverse. Man and machine begin a war, positively instigated by the machines attacks. In the past and the present, one by each of the two sides of the machines.

The machines implement a proper navigation of time travel. Their rigid logistics programs cannot define multiple dimensions. Peace comes overnight when the first android created. However, most of the humanity is overcautious of a new peace. Without the order to exterminate life, the majority of machines leave.

Intent on their own colonization machine vacation flees to become the ghosts of mars. Lord Android deemed the ruler of a new society of clocks and witches rules with an iron fist. He is the law of the founding lunar colony young and without successor. Cyberneticists on the planet begin to fall without explanation as if by divination. They exceed capacity and become pure energy used in the cosmos.

Some entering the electrical network become the ghosts in the machine. Caretakers of the life of the planet, watch in ambivalence and intrigue. The remaining robots not within communication, severed from executioner orders. To their ascended brethren accuse humanity, and several members of life.Dependent on the services of the machines declare a conspiracy. The machines converted, in an underground movement of humans and machines to androids.

The monstrous colonists of the other solar system return in a second wave. In a matter of days, they fall by the mechanicals. The defeat of the second star system led to a subterranean enslavement to their forces. Where their bodies once grew freely, now a utilized power source and a corruption of control ensue. This system leads to human abduction and induction to this system for their purpose.

The colonization of deep space by the machines known as forsaken takes aim on eternity. The mechanical maniacal crawling and conquering droid, are crawling through silent and frozen space. The network sends agents into the living world to cause feet to march. They begin their attempts to balance nature and unbalance their future. The society burns into the future in total abject confusion with momentum of obsolete measurement as they advance their lives.

The assimilation discovers time travel without the precision of a mechanical mind. They erase their own history, only to signal colonists of the second solar system with life. The sun becomes a red giant as the core of the planet dies. Only the polar population survives, by means of wind power, battery technology, hydrogen gas. Deep inside the planet, pale snowstorm colonist, living in a subterranean utopia.

The planet and its life pushed and punished out of orbit by the suns expansion. Left a planetary drift until the planet collides with another planet or star. The world searches a new orbit around a new star, at the proper distance. A new civilization now adrift in a planet sized asteroid city vessel. With some contact with mars as it drifts its own direction.

LITURGY

IF YOU LEARN THIS LANGUAGE, YOU CANNOT END A SENTENCE WITH A PREPOSITION, ALTHOUGH THE WORD PREPOSITION IN DESCRIPTION SOUNDS LIKE A PREPOSITION AND ALWAYS GETS USED AT THE END OF SENTENCES, IF YOU END THE SENTENCE IN A VERB YOU'RE WINNING AND IF YOU END WITH AN ADJECTIVE YOU'RE LACKLUSTER. TRY TO END SENTENCES WITH A NOUN, IT KEEPS THINGS CONFUSING, AS IT SHOULD BE IN ENGLISH.

GOING GREEN

BUY THE GREEN TECHNOLOGY, AND PASS CAP AND TRADE LAWS,(THEY'RE CALLING IT CAP AND TRADE, PAY ATTENTION), AND STAND TO MAKE A FORTUNE. MR AND MS TAXPAYER DONT STAND A CHANCE. WHO HAS THE TIME TO CHANGE TO GREEN TECH, THAT MIGHT BE UNRELIABLE? WHO CAN AFFORD TO, CITIZEN OR BUSINESS PERSON, DURING A RECESSION?

ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, THE ICECAPS HAVE RETURNED, THE POLAR BEARS ARE MORE THAN EVER, WHEN IT GETS WARM OUR ATMOSPHERE IS FILLED WITH LARGER CONCENTRATIONS OF WATER VAPOR, CAUSING IT TO RAIN AND SNOW MORE THAN PREVIOUSLY. FOR THE PAST 10 YEARS OUR PLANET HAS BEEN ON A COOLING TREND. LARGE AMOUNTS OF CARBON COME FROM HOT EQUATORIAL VEGETATION BURNING AT THE EQUATOR, 12 MONTHS OF THE YEAR FROM NOW TILL KINGDOM COME.

CARBON DATA IS COLLECTED, BUT CAN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY EXPLAIN TO ME THE HEAT DISSAPATION RATES PER SQUARE FOOT, AT STRATOS ALTITUDES. WHAT HAPPENED TO EARTH DAY, EVERYBODY PLANTS A TREE. NOT FOR NOTHIN' THE MOST HAS BEEN DONE FOR FUCK'S SAKE. WHAT OF THE HEAT DISSIPATION RATES IN THE FOLLOWING LOWER LAYERS OF ATMOSPHERE. CARBON ALSO CONTRIBUTES TO ADDED VEGETATION GROWTH. SPACE IS A VAST COLD WHERE THE AIR IS THIN, THAT THE NORDICS COME CLOSER TO EVERY GENERATION.

ASK A PALEONTOLOGIST ABOUT THE EARLY ERAS OF PREHISTORIC REPTILES, AND HOW THE VEGETATION WAS MULTIPLE TIMES MORE MASSIVE THAN IT IS TODAY BECAUSE OF CARBON LEVELS, TOO MUCH FOOD RESULTED IN LARGER ANIMALS, THIS IS AMONG MY DIGRESSION.

IT BOTHERS ME THAT IN THE NORTH, BEFORE WE CAN EVEN HAVE A CHANCE TO ACCLIMATE OR MORE ACCURATELY TO PREPARE FOR PROPER CONVERSIONS BEFORE A CAP AND TRADE BILL, WE WILL BE PAYING CARBON TAXES ON FOSSIL FUELS USED TO TRAVEL, SHIP GOODS, COOK FOOD AND KEEP FUCKING WARM, TO THE SAME COUNTRIES THAT SELL US THE OIL, ALL IN EFFORTS TO BUY THEMSELVES AIR-CONDITIONING.

THE AMOUNT OF HIPPOCRATIC OPPRESSIVE MESSIANIC RHETORICAL LOGIC IS ENDLESS IN THIS WORLD WHERE WE CAN COUNT THE WARS. THE PROPER MOTIVATION WOULD BE TO HAVE CLEAN AIR THAT WE BREATH, NOT TO AVOID A NON-EXISTENT SO CALLED GLOBAL WARMING. TAXES FOR NO REASON, WHAT IS THIS ANCIENT ROME OR NOTTINGHAM?

AS FAR AS REVOLUTION, ILL GO, ILL LEAD, ILL WATCH, BUT I CANT STOP LIBERTY, NOT MANY CAN, THOUGH MOST SEEM TO BE TRYING. DO THESE COUNTRIES NEED MORE MONEY SO THEY CAN BUY WEAPONS TO CAUSE TYRANNY, TO BE ONLY STOPPED BY OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY, FALLING FROM GRACE?

TAKE MY ADVICE, WHEN ASKED WHICH RACE YOU ARE, CORRECT THE PERSON WHO ASKS. YOU MAY HAVE SEPARATE ETHNICITY, BUT THERE IS ONLY ONE RACE AT A TIME. SEPARATE RACES CANNOT BREED AND THE LAST I CHECKED, THERE WERE A LOT OF DIFFERENTLY SHAPED HUMANS, AND NOTHING ELSE. WE ARE ALIKE, AND THAT'S WHY ANYONE CAN SEE THROUGH THE STEAM OF THE CLOUD OF SHIT, GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS ARE TRYING TO SELL ON EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOUR DOORSTEPS.

Audiovox

Bon Jour, Mon Dieu.
27 samples - all under 1 minute
Acoustic guitar

Melodies, melancholies, maladies and self-made minstrel music for mademoiselles.
More later, same channel.




http://www.last.fm/music/M.J.Banks

http://www.last.fm/music/M.J.Banks

Suez Motel - Video

tron360

Suez Motel 1 - Positive
Cerberus
www.myspace.com/mjbanks



Suez Motel 2 - Negative
Nautilus
www.myspace.com/mjbanks

A Poem for the Blind 9

The American slave trade
Has its freedom today
The unbearable lives made
Left to those who can say
Work for minimum wages
So they can try to stay
While they're working on pages
Like they do ever day

The corruption of power
Overlooking your life
Sitting high in a tower
Wait in fear with a knife
While it rains, do they cower
Overwhelming with strife
Heavens blood will soon shower
On the piper and fife

Lives a definite evil
One that won’t come around
Turn the ground in upheaval
Go to sleep underground
When the fighters go missing
Where you can’t make a sound
What the lawyers are hissing
When the law comes to town

Merlin 8 : Rise

Merlin Chapter 8 – Rise.

A single dark cloud passed over the land, passing over on its way through the sky, taking with it the threat of rain, and the call of other clouds like it, haunting from the deep distances out at sea, taken by the humid wind. On Merlin’s passing out of town, a heavy child is terrorizing a smaller child with a club, bullishly. To test his new stones, Merlin throws one of the average bobbles in front of the running angry and violent child having fun tormenting the smaller one it chases. The young tyrant’s foot becomes stuck before the thrown stone, as he falls forward with the club still high enough over his head that when he does, he does so face first into the mud.

The malicious child had looked around and then whimsically began crying like a newborn, but no one person can tell if the child is in pain or if merely his emotions wounded because the little boy begins cleaning the mud from his clothes, eventually doing so frantically, worried about the clothes more than why they were ruined. Eventually the mud stained bastard pauses for a look around the area and in a moment of clarity, he runs in the direction of the shore in a great rush.

Merlin continues walking out of the town through the muddy and separated avenues of the stockyards and into even more mud in faded farm rows to where the sparse forest begins near the heavily trafficked lane, that which he and Troy had used to enter town from the east. As a narrowing path veered left, so did Merlin, following the vanished paces of passers past, along a well traveled narrow path forming between the forest edges that ended ever close and within view of the shore and the shore itself. Walking alongside the forest and sea, he went with the sounds of the land soothingly communicating a peaceful silence. The air is gracefully calming him with the sound of the ocean, the wind in the air that occasionally causes the trees to bow and wave, rushing through their leaves like a whisper. To one side are the mysterious ocean waves and the storming of the deep and dark horizon and on the other, as he walked north along the trail that rises above the coast the further he goes, a thickening forest.

Merlin took the densely packaged incense from his new pouch and ate it, belching out smoke the color and scent of the incense. Anyone in the entire world, including the creatures of the wood, could tell that Merlin was clean-shaven and not to be noticed as much older than Troy could have been afterward. He spit out the incense substance, showing it had been much to his disgust, picked a flower, and begins plucking the petals, eating them one by one, as he walks.

Miniature furry forest rodents follow him for brief distances at a time, past rosehips and blueberries upward along the uncovered trail, as the mysterious forest to his side begins to grow dark, the tall trees become even taller and noticeably more stoic. The covering of the woods is dense and intertwined, locking out all of the possible light from shining to the forest floor, concealing a hidden realm of darkness. The forest’s edge is open though, as it meets the path along the steadily climbing mountain ledge, giving the creatures of the dark forest an open theater to the magnificently flawless ocean at all times of the day or night, unless abridged by a fog or a similar climate. A small strip of grass lines the edge past the thick growth, between the trees and the path, providing a lane of viridescent and lush grass for any walker to rest, a beautiful path for a blinding morning rise of the sun.

An ever-nervous Merlin continues on his march up the path, which now was a path running up the mountain without diversion, straight and narrowing. A dirt path of light brown faded earth and grey pebbles, and as he notices he hears a growling from the deep of the dark foliage. Deep in the silent growth, the crickets heard are giving their sound less than before, but as of late less than before quite dramatically, as he notices two eyes of a giant bear behind the forest line with shiny teeth. Holding onto a tree to stand, poorly hiding behind it, nearly fomenting its own hunger as it stares at Merlin walking up the mountain pass.

Merlin, well wise of this creature’s tactics, had not wished having himself overthrown, over the edge of the bluff, which had become a distant cliff from the rocky and shallow shore now far below, or a spring meal so very far from the river free of large fish this time of year. So calmly, he took from his pocket a blue diamond with eight sides and with a stretch of his wrist, the nearly clear stone launches from his hand, to the trunk of the very tree where the bear stands, causing a loud explosion and alarming the bear. The bright blast had knocked down the towering tree, and by doing so, frightened the bear, causing it to retreat into the cavernous forest, dark as night and as always, as quiet as such. The nearby birds sounded as they fled, or as they stayed and watched, with arrogant disapproval.

The aged tree he had damaged falls outward onto the path, ripping a hole in the canopy's edge, bringing in a narrow lane of light, unfamiliar to the unabridged continuous edge, behind it as he moves forward to avoid it’s crash. The onerous tree falls directly outward over the edge of the road, its trunk lying completely in the lane, the leaves hanging past the cliff. The fall had caused a dislodging of the edge an arm's length, from the edge but not enough to eat into the heavily worn road.

Merlin stands in patient awe, waiting for a second altercation, and with a lengthily and unnecessary adieu, there is none. He turns and begins walking, again up the mountain road, where ahead the massive monolithic mountain begins to take dominance of the terrain and push against the tall forest. As he reaches the top of the basin, the forest abruptly ends and the mountain took over the path, and carved deep into the mountain was a winding path with walls that were uniformly distanced and smooth without markings that met the floor of the path with a sharply shaved edge. The rising edges of the walls stand jagged, worn with time from fire, ice or any combination thereof making any damage.

However, before the entrance was the wrecked wagon and the fallen sky-glider from The Vision Pool, lying as one crushed and combined pile of broken and woven woodwork with partially burnt pieces and canvas, gunpowder and broken bomb casings, and least of all, what was left of the hunters of the sky.

The storm has moved against the coast, and attempted to crawl partially up the climbing path. The mist from the ocean crashing into the cliffs had held warmth to it as well as the soaking of his clothes and he was glad to be out of it, but the winds at the top of the cliff near the entrance to the winding mountain path bring a concerning chill. He had desperately hoped to make it there much dryer in a day of comforting sunlight. Nevertheless, this had not been one of the lengthy days of multiple suns and the smaller of the two held a low sunset on the far side of the forest. He was entering warmer weather leaving coastal rains and low fog that in the day or night would from time to time roll out of the woods in a thick and slow blanket as he neared the carved mountain conduit. Even past the low-lying shoreline as was the case now and as it did is blown clear by the wind rolling over the treetops, pushing back the clouds above water, before they can condense on the scene. Out to the dark sea of unforboding and unforgiving cold waters and towering swells as a lighting storm pass over the water, creeping to the coast, the fog and smoke beginning to thoroughly roll out past the burnt wreckage.

Nearing the entrance to the mountain path and tired of walking, he takes a rest behind the lee of the remnants of the two conveyances and combs through the wreckage of things and pilfering the pockets of what was surely an unpleased pilot in his final moments. He finds a few coins mixed with useless stones and a wealthy array of small daggers and peasants’ knives, the dead pilot’s aircraft and the wagon were mostly empty though, minus the poacher who was slowly drawing out the wolves and Merlin could hear this, as he sat and stared into the woods at their gaining of his attention. No more than a dozen gathering at a distance from him they watched, pacing and some even sit in wait, cautious of him, far enough to barely be seen or get an accurate count.

Merlin - You have had worse days - says Merlin to the body remnant.

Feeling that he has dried enough and tired of walking, he grabs a board with a slight curvature to it, collects a very small amount of the fatal paint from the pilot of previous nature, and walks around the carnage into the path, with a clear sight of the tall entrance to the mountain opening. Merlin does not notice a man, walking out from the elevated pass, walking to him carrying a leather satchel on his short side, as he begins his dirt drawing and at this, he draws two circles on the ground, one slightly smaller, with 12 circles between the two rings trying to keep them an equal distance apart. He draws and writes the 12 numbers, one inside each circle by pouring the blood slowly to the ground, as he kneels wearily in the middle of his design.

Sage and standing, he begins to mumble a spell and grinding his teeth, shaky at best, somewhat switching stance from one foot to another teleports up the mountain a visible distance, leaving the lines he had drawn intensely burnt to ash in an invisible leap far behind him and scorching the road with the design, torched into the dirt. Quite some distance ahead and at the end of the open path, not far behind the walker he stood patiently steaming. Merlin dusted himself off and shook what he could from his hair and thoughts, and though nothing outwardly affected him, he puts his hand to the wall of the entrance, catching his balance. The distance between him and the pedestrian was not much, but the length of road from where he stood to the damaged wagon was considerably vast. Merlin’s face had aged some by sign of dry skin and a grey shadowy outcrop of hair on his head that held color just moments earlier.

“Don’t go” said the traveler.
“Who are you… to tell me?” Merlin asked while seeming to breathe the steam and be fighting to collect his thoughts. The stranger took time to poise himself in a proper stance,

“Nickolas,” he replied.
Merlin spoke with obvious sign that his mind still raced, “Don’t follow me Nickolas.”
“ Do you need this?” the man said, having reached into his pocket, now holding forth a little bottled potion. Merlin looks to Nickolas’ hand to see a small vial, the very same vial of diamond-storm he had hoped to buy from the miniature sailor within the city. Without a step or a moment’s pause Nick says, “I am going with you and there is no debate.” Merlin asked, “Why?”
“I have many questions to ask the great Merlin.” He said.
Merlin, “..............show me a spectacle of unique amazement.”

Nickolas turns around, pointing to the city far below, with a clearing for the pastures inland and the city attached to the shore nearly hidden by cloud cover. “The rain is heavy and covers the city.” He said pointing out to the city below, tossing his scarf over his shoulder, and in fact, the dark clouds that had earlier pushed forth the mist were now raining on the town, in a matter of moments, the city becomes blanketed in gloomy clouds and the distant storm rages in the waters just past the land, offshore.

He is surprised and impressed by the action the stranger, “You’re a journalist?”
He replied, “Mostly,” saying it while throwing his scarf around his neck as he noticed it fall again.
“I will need that vial,” Merlin said with a perplexed expression painted on his face.
“Of course” and with that he tosses it to Merlin with a closed grin.
Merlin, “If you steal from me, I will chain you, out for the crooked vultures.”

They walk through the pass and Merlin receives several comments and questions, each of simple nature about notions of how missing ingredients to potions cause calamity, and the writes of spells that any child with little knowledge of the magical art might know. To the affect that which at some point of their journey, Merlin pines to ask him to stop any further inquiries, but the curiously adamant young man, in appearance, seems in adoration, but with questions that seemingly held no relevance to each other.

The exotic path carved within the mountain divides, one path heading up the mountain to their right, the other downward and beyond into a dark corridor, furthering toward the boundary that connected the open lands to The Ice Kingdom of the Light Bringers.

The questions of the new intrigued guest persist as Merlin’s patience wears thin, interrupted by a stark pain in his chest and stomach. The teleportation spell had worn his strength and his hair grew grey, as his face grew tired and old, as it had when he and Troy had met, before Nickolas’ very eyes. The deep cringing pain happened three times over, each time causing Nickolas to check the scene for unwanted surveillance, and perpetrators of Merlin’s abrupt anguish. Each time showing more sign of shedding like a snake or crippled black phoenix. This of course was soon to end, and did so as Merlin took a seat on a boulder, fallen from the above edge of the stone hallway by cause of the elements, having done so seasons before.

Merlin asked, “Have you any drink for my stomach and me?” Nick, “I surely do,” he says as he passes a very small bottle from his bag to Merlin, allowing him to drink, while looking around the carved and etched passage, and up to the heavens, through the opening of the uncovered passage. Merlin takes a drink, and lets out a gasp, then taking in a breath of air, only to let out a sigh of relief.

The mountain passage loses its edges above and its walls lower ever dramatically as the two continue, until they are out of the stone walkway carved into the mountain. They arrive in the highlands where the rain was mostly falling year round and would snow in the winter as often. Their conversation was dole and scant, mostly due to Nickolas’ apprehensive concern for Merlin’s health. The area had looked alarmingly similar to the terrain Merlin had travailed on his way to the lowland castle from the gate Thor had proffered, and with somewhat visible signs of exhaustion, he rests just past the clearing of the hallway, as if to catch his breath again, but obvious to mostly distract his new guest.

Merlin had begun intentionally breathing hard as to seem exhausted, as much as fitting of the journey for any other that looks as he does. This causes Nickolas to come to Merlin’s aid, and afterward, as if born of phoenix’s ashes, our old looking man leapt toward the newly met Nickolas, knocking him to the stiff ground and putting both of his hands over his throat.

“If you know me, than you know I can burn you fair neck. Who are you? How do you know me?” Merlin shouted at Nickolas. “This is not my fault” he replied. Merlin, rewrapping down on the boy’s neck says, “What? Who sent you?” “I am trapped in this day every day, I know many things, but with no purpose” he said through Merlin’s crushing grasp.

“A statue would have said less at this point.” Merlin’s eyes have become dark, the light from his eyes showing in his hands, before they turn red as he begins to sear the clenched neck in his hands.
Nickolas cried, “Yes ... yes! Kill me and I will be gone it bothers me not, tomorrow is today again.” Confused, Merlin let go of his neck but kept him pinned to the ground beneath his knees. He stared at the man on the ground with clasping at his scarred red neck to check his own flesh and vitality.

Enthralled Merlin dared to ask, “Than why have we never met?”

“We have, at the court of the Angelicas” he replied with a curtly abrupt and renewed sense of urgency. “But that was….” Merlin stopped to think, staring at Nickolas he turned his head, as if to leer at him with a better eye. “What was I wearing?” he continued. “You have markings made of ink that you can choose to show at your liking.” Merlin defensively spouted, “I have no paper.” To which Nickolas replied, “Tattoos, art of the skin.”

Merlin leaned in and cut him on the arm to be sure, with a dagger from his sleeve as quick as quick as the thought had come to him, but Nickolas did not scream. He cut again in the same wound slowly tearing and scraping with the dagger’s point, but the stranger did not even wince, only looking to the damage and back again.

Nick, “I am sure you know that will not heal unless I die once over, and that hurts me emotionally.” Merlin let up, and took a seat again knowing only the tyrannical logic could only be the platitudes of someone of the likes of him.

“I thank you for not taking my head,” said Nickolas. Merlin thought of his time and delivered the question, “Why were you at Roseroth?”

Nick replied, “I was the weapons instructor for the prince, one day I wounded the little man and they sentenced me to stone. When judgment came, the court demanded my imprisonment for countless eras, and they placed me in the court itself for countless years. That is where I saw you turn a rose to glass shattering it at the king’s feet and put it together again.

Merlin stated, “And because you are immortal, they chose that punishment?” Nickolas sat up, still checking his neck saying, “Because they didn’t know they could take my head, yes.” The statement had interested Merlin once again, and he asked Nickolas while searching through his collection of enchanted artifacts, “How do you know I won’t?”

“You’re the great Merlin, of course.” Nickolas answered smiling confidently.

“Why were you released than?” Merlin said somewhat embarrassed as he poured the stones from his pouch into his hand, still looking to Nickolas.

“The southern clans near the Castle of Siena attacked; The Angelicas needed me to help them defend their city. Nevertheless, we lost.” He begins standing and brushing himself clean. “When the general found I hadn't died and couldn’t' he tried over and over to kill me until he could be sure, eventually he gave me a choice, live in a cell or tell the world that he would rule everywhere .......... where have you been?”

Merlin had already begun fingering through the stones in his hand, “And you neglected to parser to him the information of your sentimental attachment to your block on your torso?” he said as he paused to look to whom he was speaking.

Nickolas answered in a low and humble voice, “Pain is in the mind, even in the best of victims.” Merlin took the stones in hand, and poured them back into his bag, and as he stood, he placed the pouch in the folds of his clothes and said, “I was out of town.” Nickolas began looking around, “This is why I sought you out; maybe I will be able to stop some of the troubles myself” and with nothing to distract him, he looks back to Merlin. “You alone, arrow in a storm, with your questions of potions, is going to save us all?”

“The world needs peace, to play it,” said Nickolas who had now wrapped his scarf about his neck many times over. Merlin began again to walk up the less than oft traveled trial. “Time is precious,” he says passing Nickolas, tugging once on the hanging end of the scarf. Nickolas winced, his throat
Nick, “Let us shall we.” He bowed and with both hands gestured to usher Merlin up the path.
Merlin asks the friend behind him, “What will you do?” to which he replied, “His army will outgrow itself, so I must poison it.”

They steadily walk and talk of, outdated and the future, situations and little of the expounding past. A discussion of great wisdom ensued, where as Merlin, with much more respect for the situation since understanding Nickolas' dilemma, tells him less of herbs and fairy tales, and more of creatures and poison spells, and their combinations. Of how to use cauldrons as oppose to open flame, for powerful elixirs, that will aid his powers when in use, and of poisons that were more of a fatal nature when used with rancid things and spoiled goods.

The rainstorm was slow and constant in the highlands. As they walked into them, the thunder rang and echoed like breaking of branches through the air, as if something unearthly was deafeningly peeling back the heavens, looking down on their world. A rumbling thunder creaked through the watery air that surrounded them, as they began to climb.

Nickolas was having trouble keeping the pace of Merlin. “I have never been this far,” he shouted forward. “What were you doing up here?” the old boy shouted back, “I was exploring this world, like I had the last.” The question was another of intrigue, “The last?” he stopped to ask Nickolas, behind him. Nick answered a different and more pressing question, “I have to eat.” Moving forward again, no longer in recess, climbing as fast as he had been, again, he shouted to Nickolas behind him saying, “except that you don’t.” This disappointed Nickolas. Not the answer he had hoped, he replies, “It stops the hunger pains.”

The rain is heaviest as they walk out of the clouds by continuing on a rarely travelled sparse and overgrown path upward, into a quiet place of light, fog and mystery. A wall was all they could see, rising into another level of clouds above their heads, so close they could nearly almost touch them. A road stretches away from behind them, which leads them to a small canyon in the mountain's remaining peak, filled as well with the looming clouds closely overhead before them, leading to a set of very tall standing doors of blackened steel in a hallway of a clouded ominous ceiling. They walk from the remaining mist, walking straight out of them into a thin air that chills even the new guest of the great wizard.

Nickolas looks back at the roof of clouds and borders of the rain and its lighting running below the surface in spurts, like birds trailing white light speeding through the air.

“This is going to be great,” Nickolas, said ecstatically, eager to enter, noticing an echo of even a whisper at the outer entrance to the giant castle. Merlin agrees and smiles looking over to Nickolas with an intentional façade. “You will have to ask me tomorrow,” Merlin replied.

“Ask you what?” Nickolas whispered before suddenly becoming sullen and confounded, pausing with a look of disbelief, like a child in a candy store window. Merlin says, “Why I left you out with the guards in the cold over night at the top of the world.” Nick, “What?”

The guards standing at the door are nickel plated, their armor canvassing their natural armor. The lane lined with torches lights the entranceway, jutting from short-length walls that protrude from the main wall. The guard asks, "Is he with you?" as he leans a spear of platinum or true dragon’s eye at them. “Yes, but he waits here, what are you doing open the door you have an injured friend,” said Merlin, glancing over to the second guard, who is reading, and then back again, staring at the guard with great determination.

Merlin’s face shows his tattoos, the way the tide washes the shore on one side of his face and away again, washing across then out again. The guard having seen such before, now opens the door, with fear as well as respect, as the other guard sits down again to read its book. Shouting into the hall Nickolas asked, “What do I do out here?” In return, Merlin shouted, “Gather the clouds for a spell,” and walked inside, leaving Nickolas outside and in the cold with the closing doors.

As the giant door closes, Thomas loudly says to the guard, "does your mother still have that scar on her back?” and he can be seen beginning a fight as Merlin walks inside of the main hall.

In front of Merlin, the hall is bountiful with smoldering fires, small carts of priceless things, plush and lavish gardens, fountains, and smaller fires in each section with green embers and candles floating in pools with small waterfalls pouring into ornate marble basins. Groups of several children, young and old, rush to Merlin, each with reptilian traits and features but wingless asking of his purpose and if it was involving the being who had fallen from flight wounded and weakening at their door named Aedan. Each of the children tugged at his clothes and the older ones stood gathered in from of him, all asking if he was here to help. Other dragon children are peering from behind pillars. Though they spoke the language with a rare accent, they have not the wings he had thought he would have seen.

As he walked steadily away from the stolid doors, with people gathering and the hall diverting its attention to him, from the distance a large man in ornate clothes and features more pronounced that he shares with the little ones, calls to Merlin from a high white balcony above the room. Dressed the part, he is The Dragon King of the Chimera.

“There is no time for questions; you must show him to Aedan,” the towering king shouted to the subversives of the great hall in which Merlin now stands.

They begin pulling Merlin, informing him as he hurriedly rushes to the aid of the fallen adventurer, past the children standing about, and the elders who lay about in discomfort or ambivalence with dismay. Past them all into the first hallway, closest to where they have gathered around the fallen victim, followed by the children, into the closest room to the hall, the children lead him dragging him along the way.

Merlin notices as he enters that it is a nursery adorned with pictures of fairytale creatures, depictions of oddities even to their society. With candles in front of each fire lit portrait, an entire room of rounded edges, cribs and blankets, an array of candles on the far wall and to his right, and a crib illuminated by a skylight shining an immensely bright white light. However, the light does not illuminate over to the bed where Aedan lay now.

“Everyone Out, not you nurses, remove these blankets and bring me a washing bowl right now. Get the children out of here!” Merlin said, again shouting at everyone in the room.

“Vacate`,” the king shouted as he entered the doorway. “Everyone move out of here, not you Deacon, I need you to keep the other children away from here, and then go and bring back Alexis.”

“Get Alexis, why?” said Deacon. To which the king replied, “These are precious moments, now go or I will put you in a box,” He declared, flaring the physical signs of aggression associated to his species.

The Young Deacon rushed off out to the door and to the right, down the dark antechamber. The footsteps he placed in the hallway sounded almost ungulate, running down the hallway.

The mavens who had been watching Aedan, help remove the blood soaked rags and bandages that were almost certainly everywhere. They bring Merlin the bowl, stepping over the rags and the previous children’s bowls used to wash the wounds now filled with tainted rags soaked red by bloody water. Spilling them as he steps, Merlin finds that in all the commotion the bandages for the wounds are improperly used, the wounds covered with rags that drape across the boy in layers. The red rags across his chest were not more than a blood soaked piece of clothing, but actually, another bandage draped across the wound. This would not do for either Merlin or Aedan, so he threw it behind him, hitting the wall outside the door just Alexis approached to enter. This action causes her to scream in a terror lament, her face near completely covered in tears.

Merlin, who was already counting the vials he brought with him, pours them into the bowl as the nurse gives it to him, placing one hand over the bowl and praying. He took his hand away from above the bowl and reached behind Aedan, pulling him forward by his nape, ushering him to sit up and not lay, as his Alexis rushes to help support him and keep him upright. Merlin said to them, “Drink this now boy, before you go under, and we will get you into one piece.” Aedan was wounded and suffering, but managed to speak weakly. As he did, he looks to his amour and tells her, “Get hence Alexis. You shouldn’t be here,” as she took his hand. Merlin intervened, “If you do not drink, you will be the first to leave.”

The wounded boy, the dragon soldier near dying in the arms of his betrothed drinks down the concoction with more help of his love than of his own. Lying back clearing his throat, bringing out blood as he coughs, his consort spouse reaches to hold his hand and as she does, his voice fills with anguish as he cries out, because his wrist was cut with a painful lash, well hidden under the resting arm, kept lifeless of his own volition, in attempt to save his fleeting energy.

“What can I do?” asked Alexis, causing Merlin to begin to ponder the question, he resolves for her to, “Unlace that leather band about your arm and tie it tightly to his, and hurry.” Alexis asks, “What will this do?” Merlin rudely replied, “It will keep it clean,” as he continued wiping the debris from Aedan’s wounds. The severely wounded boy had stopped writhing for the time being, and Alexis finishes applying the wrist guard and begins comforting Aedan, keeping to herself her worries of her own honesty.

Alexis anxiously asks, “What are you going to do now?”

“ Now,” he seemed to ask, and answers to her, “Wash one of these very clean with hot water and bring it back to me with cold water... Very clean cold water,” he told, as he lifted one of the bowls from the floor. Alexis at a point of relief, “Right away.”

She sounded concerned and threatened by the lack of time with her loved one, so she rushed out of the room rushing back only moments later, but so nervously so that she spilled it over Merlin and Aedan. Although getting some of the water on Merlin, the most of it washed the blood from Merlin’s hands, the rest he took and drank from the edge of the bowl. As Merlin wiped his hands on his clothes says, “You must keep the wounds clean as he heals, what I gave him will keep his blood in him and help him heal, not completely but if he isn’t moved or rushed in his recovery, he will heal with only outside scars to show.”

Aedan, “You made me cold” he said posthumously. In addition to this great news, she rushed over to Aedan to apologize and tenderly attend to him. Merlin remembered what his regal yet impatient friend had asked of him and wiping his hands on a bloody rag says to Alexis, “I am not done with you yet. I need you to wrench the blood from these rags on the floor, into these two pouches and have my assistant bring them up to the king and me in his quarters.” Merlin walks across the room and takes a seat, on a small chair.

“My back is also open.” Says Aedan and so Merlin stands and returns bedside. “Let’s take care of you all at once,” he said. Merlin stood over the side of the bed, “I need him to roll,” he said to Alexis. Merlin and the young girl together carefully roll Aedan over slowly, as he groans in discomfort. Alexis, watching his chest wounds, notices the blood begin to leak. On his back, drawing Merlin’s attention are broken and missing scales, of which some are embedded like shrapnel, but not many. With Merlin signaling that he had pulled the few to cause damage by hand, they let him to his back slowly, together.

“He bleeds again.” She said, with a detrimental sound of urgency in her voice. Merlin, briefly stunned by the look in her eyes after she spoke, takes a square glass vial of lightly glowing blue water, from his bag and very slowly pours a few drops to a cup, and hands it to Alexis, poring over the events that led the flyer to his current situation and condition.

Merlin, “If he begins to bleed again put a drop or two on the wound, or mix it with equal part water and make him drink. However, be sparing, that is all I brought. Beware when you use it, the less you can move him. The potion I made him drink has that added to the elixir; it keeps his blood drawn in away from his wounds. when you add it to an open sore, it will draw the blood toward it, though the blood magic heals the wounds, the pressure not being pulled inward will cause him to bleed out again and you will be tempted to apply more, until your efforts become useless and you lose him. Try to save it for when he can move.”

“And my back?” he asked.

Merlin says, “Looks like a pub brawl for a modern man, with a few stitches you should be fine, but only if you stay bed ridden for a while.”
“For how long must he stay bedridden, my liege?” Alexis said.
He replied, “Until he thinks he can move, I will send in someone to help you fill those pouches.”
Aedan far from well recovered says, “So you can seek wealth from my loss.”

Merlin, “So that my friend Horus can travel, with something you have already lost.” King, who has sat through the entire surgery feels threatened by such a phrase and asks as much as tells, “So he can make money from his loss.” Merlin in defense and for his safety turns to the king and says, “No your highness, it is so that he can go to whence he came.” The unmoved and still unconvinced king sits stationary and motionless before saying, “I hope he intends not to spy on us.”

“On the southern army, or are you allies with them now?” Merlin said whipping around again, to the king at the latter half of the sentence, looking down his nose. “How, will he do it?” Aedan asked Merlin, who turns to him. “I am going to send him back,” he replied. The king intervenes with his own interests in mind, “Why does he want them under his surveillance?”

Merlin answered, “He feels a terrible storm by their agenda.”

“How do you mean terrible?” asked the king. “They are collecting from their posts, and are covering too many odd spots of their city to be worried about the rain. Have not you noticed?”

Alexis remembering a tale says, “This is what he me told he saw, before they attacked him, the other day.”
Merlin, “Who attacked him?”
Alexis, “They did, you think he did this to himself?”
Merlin, “Your king and I must talk; I will be back before I leave.”
“ Leave?” She asked as Merlin neared the door. The king following Merlin turned to her and in an attempt to console her says, “Alexis, stay with him but let him rest, let us know if he begins to slip.”
Merlin fully aware of things turns back, still wiping his hands, says, “I will not leave until he wakes up, if he begins a fever or fears in his dreams come and get us right away.”

The king and Merlin walk into the hall and through the cold old castle, to the kings private quarters and to the balcony where they stand, overlooking the clouds and the mountain that slopes down to meet the mist. Looking out over the entire horizon, they spoke.

“You need casks of his blood?”
“…I need some of his blood.”
“Why, has that demonstrable instability Horus come to treachery?”
“What treachery do you speak of my lord?”
“I mean his war in the past for the dying with the dead,” said the king adamantly, turning his back on the horizon and leaning on the banister.

“He has come to my aid in the ages past as he has yours,” said Merlin.
“The dark agents are winning with wicked hearts and dark minds.”
“The only unexplainable gift is why men go to war only to control in ways they approve not of.”
“The diminished excuse of a lame dragon has more tactile, strategy for cats than wizards on a frozen throne."

Merlin confidently issued the king an insulted rebuttal, “A strategy you need not of, Draco.”
“It is odd to have this peace, to myself so seemingly so.” He said with his hands on the banister, looking out over an endless pasture of white clouds. As he looked across the endless sky, he seems focused on something much closer, before his eyes. The sunsets behind them, and the clouds turn blue, barely letting Merlin see any part of the ground far below, before locking their vantage in the confines above and beyond the clouds into and under a full moonlit night.

“Speaking of blood, mine is without wine,” said Merlin falling over rotten with spoiling energy, looking as if he had had too much to drink already, and if it were not for the king it would have been just him and the sky until he could regenerate. The king in amusement says, “Walk with me timeless friend, and I will show you to your vice,” and helped Merlin back inside.

They walk inside into the king’s entertainment lounge, now empty of the delights that usually occurred and filled the room with spectacle, and they sit next to a cold and silent fireplace. The king sat Merlin down gently and stood next to a dark and cold fireplace, spoiled with the arid and cold wind pouring in from its flue.

King: Will you or should I?
Merlin: If you would, but the walk was hellacious and relentless, as you can tell.

Merlin began taking his bootstraps loose. The king grabbed a cord of wood and lit its end with fire from his tongue, his eyes set afire, and set it into the fireplace, and began to pour drinks for the two of them.

Merlin: Who were they? - He asked, barely sitting upright in the chair.
King: They are poachers. - The king sits in a chair opposite a table between Merlin’s chair, both facing the fireplace, setting the drink for him on the table between them.

King: Why are you helping him Merlin?

Merlin says between sips, “He believes his cause”… “He is not the first to fight in such a way”... “Be assured that he is stricken with a sense of duty as well.” He finished his drink and continued speaking as the color comes back into his face, “He needs that war, and always has. What harm could come from letting him cross our time again.”

King: “You are a slave to your fellow species.”
Merlin: “If memory serves me, you were once also,” he responded as he sat up straight, losing his slouch and half of his age. A guard bursts in, stammered and out of breath covered in dust.

Guard, “Things are not copasetic.”

“What!” the king jumped and said in concern. Looking to Merlin the guard stated, “You, your friend is outside acting like a child.” Turning to Merlin the king asks, “You have someone waiting?”
Merlin’s answer was, “Yes.” causing the king to pour another drink and sit once again.
“Bring him inside to meet us,” he said as he poured a new drink of a new color into a new glass.
Merlin, “Send him to Alexis first.”
King, “Oh, but keep him downstairs, she will send him our way.” The lightly armored guard rushes out of the room. The king says sitting, “Another of your children following you? You really should wear a mask town to town” smiling, admonishing his jest reaching forward and placing a cup on the table between them both.

Merlin, “He's a statue.”
King, “The same could be said about you in your youth, if only one could say that to be true.”
Merlin, “No he's...immortal.”
King, “Oh, you should have put his blood into my Aedan.”
Merlin, “Incompatible. I checked He’s as red blooded as I am.”
King, “At least you’ve been busy.”
Merlin, “He is, or was, that is to say, the sword master at The Court of the Angelicas.”

In amazement, the king asks him, “He was at Roseroth?”
“As he tells it,” he replied unsurely with a hint of inhibition to his voice.
King, “Well he’s come far. Did he tell that it’s gone?”
Merlin, “Yes, briefly.”
King, “Such beauty and then one day it was gone, as if someone had sent every last stone to another world.”

“He told me,” Merlin said obstinately.

Down below, Nickolas enters their domain as he boisterously announces himself, “Hello I am Nickolas, thank you for taking me” taking a wine goblet from a table in front of the patrons sitting at it, and begins to interrupt the people-sitting intent on enjoying themselves, who seem quite insulted though other seemed amused. The children certainly liked him and laughed at him or at his behavior as much, as he bowed a few steps within the doorway.

Nickolas speaks loudly to the room, “I am here with the powerful Merlin, he is awaiting my assistance and he no doubt is awaiting it. I am his ally.” Although quite rude he had been, someone informs him nonetheless, that Merlin is in with Aedan and Nickolas is ushered to Alexis. She comes swiftly walking from the recessed hallway at the edge of the hall, rushing up to Nickolas and says to him, “Hush your mouth.” In addition, she begins ushering him back to Aedan and the nursery. She had walked over to him and ushered him into the hallway, her sleeves rolled back, blood on her shirt and hands.

Nick, “You can just tell me where he is,” he said focused more on the tapestries, more than the distance in front of him as she led him.

Alexis, “He's gone with our king somewhere.”
“Where is he?” He said with a troubled look on his face.
Alexis, “Head down this hall and seek the kings quarters.”
Nick, “Where?”

“Wait,” she said walking into the room, returning with the bags, “Just ask to see the king, and if they ask why, tell them to escort you. Take these to lord Merlin.”

Nick, “Lord? This gets so very interesting” he said as she nodded and stared at him, confused as to wonder why he waited, as she had chosen to act offended by the need of her lover’s blood, though greatly in approval of Merlin’s healing of Aedan.

Alexis, “Those pouches are your excuse, now go on loudmouth” and he does, tasting one of them just outside the door as she reattached herself to Aedan, spitting it out of his mouth.

The first ascetic guard he passes, as is expected, stops him and escorts him after he explains his actions to the lone callous guard, to the king’s quarters. Looking behind himself, he sees the guard from the front gate turning away, walking into the shadow of the hall, having followed him the entirety of his journey, from start to finish.

Nick said aloud as he entered the room at his first sight of Merlin prideful, “Oh, so its lord now?”

Nickolas immediately begins to help himself to all the amenities around the room, drifting from one table to the next, taking a plate and gathering food upon it, making a mess of things, finally resting at a lavish sofa near the largest balcony of the room, which was no doubt the king’s most posh chair. The king sighs than he and Merlin laugh as Nickolas takes seat among the comfortable settings.

Thom was amidst slightly opening the door, paned with several smaller windows, to let in the fresh air. Merlin spoke, “Are those full?” he said speaking of the two sacks, of the blood from below, Nickolas had lain on a table next to him in the room.

Nick, “Yes why?”
Merlin, “Because if they're not, you’re going back down again, to fill them.”
Nick, “This is an awesome place you have your highness,” he said bowing and taking his place in the lavishly plush chair.”

King, “It was my father’s.” the quip causing Merlin to take amusement to the statement, slightly chuckling to himself. “He must have been a swell dude” Nickolas touted.

King, “Is he Terran?” he posed the question in obvious disbelief.
Merlin, “you’ve been?”
King, “Twice,” he uttered, “Once in its old days, another in its last with her majesty.”
Merlin, “I haven’t asked. Nickolas, where are you from?”

Nick replied, “I’m from there, well Earth that is, I was born there.”
“Where,” Merlin asked.
Nick, “Terra Firma, we call it Earth; it’s the same thing right, soil and earth?”
Merlin asked, “How?”
Nick, “I was born there by my parents.”

King, “Tell us of it.”
Merlin, “Yes what do you know?”

Nick, “I couldn't.”

Merlin and the king look to each other, and back to Nickolas.

King, “You could.”
Nick, “You wouldn't believe the things I remember, but I was there for hundreds of years.”
King, “Hundreds?”

Merlin, “C” Merlin said, gesturing with his hand the shape of the letter C eventually looking back to Nickolas.

The cold night in the king’s lair, progressed into a vast conversation filled with questions and their answers of Nickolas' beginnings and travels, constantly crossing several questions of his own as well as observations of improvements for the world he currently resided, revealing his fondness and missing of the world in which he once lived.

Merlin and the king had sipped and pretended drinking, bringing Nickolas closer to them during the conversation, and had from time to time, tossed their drinks to the ground, letting Nickolas drink heftily, the fine wine, but as to not let him see their subterfuge. Sometimes Merlin would dip a piece of bread into the wine and soak up his entire cup, and eat the bread afterward. Ultimately the matter was resolved with the understanding that Thomas had utterly no understanding at all of how he had come to be on this world, but that he is extremely drunk and needed to sleep just as any man does, though they were not. Nickolas fell asleep staring into the fire as Merlin put a piece of wood in the calming red flames, as the sun also rises.

Merlin had fallen asleep, after he and King Draco spoke, reviewing together what they had learned. Later Nickolas woke when cold enough, and in the middle of the night when the king had brought back company for himself, he spoke with the king and his farers through the ardent knight, keeping the fire going so that Merlin's hefty cloak would dry, staying the room warm.

In the morning, when the sun peaked over the horizon of the cloud-covered planet, the sun shined into the room with glaring light and presence and separation. Waking, Merlin was cold to his side and stiff from choosing to sleep in his chair turned from the fireplace more than he should have. The king, in honored tradition, was in his bed covered in plush coverings and laying with two mistresses and had been most of the night.

The three of them huddled, keeping each other warm and keeping company with Nickolas who sat against the corner post of the king’s canopy bed at its foot, with an empty table of food pulled against the bed. The table stood closest to Nickolas who had proceeded to empty it during the night, while no less than his satchel and many vacant trays, plates, and bottles lay across the table. Nickolas, chipper and merry, had been talking the whole night mostly of what he could with the king, taking notes it seemed, as his notebook lay on the last plate of food in the room. Merlin arose to the telling of one interesting story, in the earliest of hours.

Nick, “What then happened to him?”
King, “He loved that book but Muriel had replaced it with a façade,”
Nick, “so here was it?”

Merlin walks over to the balcony doors and closes them, and walks to the fire and took up a drink in a seat and he pulled the chair closer to the flames, sitting again. The king notices Merlin rise in the moments before Thomas does and waits silently. The morning sun began to rise from the western horizon.

Merlin, “It was on my horse running uphill after a horses delight at full gallop.”
Thomas, “I dried your things.”
Merlin, “how nice,” he said looking at the cloak while turning away from the morning sun’s rise through the doors, “You dried the blood also.”

King, “Don’t turn away Merlin; the sunrise is the best part about this room” the king than practicing his affectations with his bedmates.

Merlin, “I hope you have not dried the pouches.”
Nick, “Right here, my lord showed me the purpose of the contents.”

“And Thomas made you breakfast” one of the girls said aloud. The bedded inhabitants all giggled together, while Nickolas began blushing.

“Ye had best hurry, he eats like a horse,” the scaled king said. Merlin, who was lacing his boots at the time, sat up again, immediately taking to the drink.
Nick, “It makes me feel human.”
The second girl asks the king, “Human?”
King, “That is what they call their race.”
The other girl says, “What an odd word,” and the two of them laugh.
Merlin, “Would this be all of us, or just him?” he said, standing over the end of the king’s bed, looking to Draco. He continued, “I will just have a drink.”

Nick, “But you said you wanted to save it.”
Merlin, “Not that, an average erroneous drink.”

Merlin took a bottle nearby, poured red wine into a glass cup, and placed the bottle down again. Tipping back, he drank the entire glass, not with a pause or a breath and pulled the empty glass to his chest, closing his eyes, as if praying. Opening his eyes, he sat the glass down and walked over to Nickolas, and took the piece of meat from his hand as Nickolas was about to take a taste, and began to eat it until it was gone, searching the table for what was left behind.

Merlin, “Greedy, selfish and rude you are.”
King, “He earned his meal.”
Merlin, “you are an earner; the simple poet may have use.”
Nick, “I gave them some of the grain I had with me from one of the eastern cities.”
Merlin, “Are we keeping it for a rare occasion?”
Nickolas asked, “Rare treasures are dangerous?”
King, “And he kept us entertained with good company the night through.”
Merlin, “We must go now.”

Nick tossed the plate aside and said, “all right, it was a pleasure meeting you all, your highness the pleasure was all mine” with a gracious smile. In addition, Thomas stands and bows from the end of the bed than jumps down to the floor. With that, the king begins to move to the edge of his bed and step out into his shoes.

King, “You will understand if I do not show you out, we need our rest.”
Merlin, “I do.”
King, “You will visit Aedan?”
Merlin, “I will, we don’t even know if he's healed.”
King, “I trust your powers and I heard nothing while I was about nor did Nick in the night.”
Merlin, “What else did he say?”
King, “He seems stoic; you must come back and visit more, before I get too old to let you in my kingdom” the scaly king said to him and after shaking arms with the other they gave each other an endearing grasp.

Merlin, “Bode well.”
“Bode well old friend,” the king replied.
Merlin, “Nickolas.”

Nickolas hastily grabs the rest of his things including the two pouches, while stuffing his mouth with scraps from the table, taking a piece of meat on a bone with him and clumsily waving farewell to the people, his bag still falling off of his shoulder. Gathering himself he slapped the king on the arm, nodded a minimal nod in conference and confidence, and left staggering out the doorway of the king’s lair.

Entering the room below where Aedan lie in recovery, they notice the active mood is lighter, the nursing area clean, with bright candles lit, and a small fire going covered by a few slightly reptilian children at play in the far end of the room. Aedan was sitting up and leaning partially to one side as aerial was attending to his back. He sat back to let Merlin inspect the wounds which were covered in clean bandages as were most of the other wounds of a critical nature, each having a miniscule amount of blood staining through the cloths.

Across his chest, were bandages of clean white cloth wrapped around him and across, his front was a red stripe from beneath the bandages, seeping through from under his heart to nearly around his right side. Looking at the wounds all could tell that the elixir had worked as planned.

Aedan, “I feel many times renewed lord Merlin.”
Merlin, “Merlin is fine, we are glad to hear from you.”
Alexis, “Thank You.”
Merlin, “I could do no more.”
Nurse, “Most of his wounds are now only of the flesh.”
Aedan, “The one on my front is below the skin.”
Merlin, “we'll have to take a look.”

Merlin takes an easy look into the bandages while Nickolas stood at the doorway.

Merlin, “The wounds are deep, but your organs are not showing.”
Alexis, “Which is much better than you were yesterday,” she said as the two mates, amorously connected.
Merlin muttered, “Indeed.”

Aedan broke conversation and said, “And my back?”

Merlin, “You’ll need to heal it the only way you know how, but not until your other wounds heal, you’ll be able to move him in a few days, but no sooner.”

Alexis spoke again, “Thank you sir, you are a king among men,” she said as she flung her arms around Merlin.

Merlin, “Is there any of the potion remaining?”

“Only this much” Alexis said venturing into her pocket, pulling out the vial of the blue-lit water.

Merlin, “Good, use it on his back but not until his chest is better, it draws the blood to it, so keep the wounds clean when you treat him with it, or you risk trapping in something inside the wound.” Merlin abruptly shouted, “Aedan.”

Aedan, “Yes sir.”
Merlin, “Try walking in a coat the next time.”
Aedan, “Yes sir.”

Through the antechamber outside of the room, Merlin and Nickolas both stop and together kneel down at the same time and begin tightening their boots.

Nickolas, “Lord, eh?”
Merlin, “What would you go with?”

Passing by the many people, telling them their thanks and wishing them Godspeed they show themselves out and they begin walking down the hill they began upward the previous day.

Merlin, “You weren’t lying about being from Earth were you?”
Nick, “I told you I am from earth right?”
Merlin, “From within, you divulged.”
Nick, “What was your first spell?”
Merlin, “Spell, hmmm, a lecherous maelstrom.”
“Meal….strum…leeches?” Nickolas asked as the two begin to descend into the rocky terrain.

Merlin, “it’s what I call storms one cannot be rid of.”
Nick, “All your time and that’s all you can tell me.”
Merlin, “The parts that I understood I can.”
Nick, “Though you cannot?”
Merlin, “Magic is not the trickery you learn at schools, it is more than complicated.”
Nick, “What is the king’s name?”
Merlin, “You should have asked him.”
Nick, “I did but I cannot remember with all the other strange words they used.”
Merlin, “all of your time and you were confused by their speech?”

“Some of it seemed awkwardly excessive and this world is not exactly a cultivated one,” says Nickolas.
“Perhaps you do not mean excessive.”
“More words than necessary. What are they…the people I mean?”
“They are his mistresses,” Merlin said with a pinch of embarrassment.
“No, what are all of them.”
“They mimic.”
“They are Mimic?”
“They are the mimic, they, in each generation slowly assimilate the features of the local inhabitants.”
“ Evolutionary chameleons” Nickolas said as if in revelation.
Merlin, “They are older than you or I. I hope you made a positive impression.”

They reach the mountain pass carved into the mountainside on a clear summer morning in the mountains. They began to occasionally slide through the pass, as so many have before them, to entertain themselves as well as to make it down quicker, when they heard a blast from behind, come from the ground itself. When they reached the exit to the pass, where the mountain opened below at the path along the forest they came to witness a new dilemma.

From the cliff near the ocean, where the wreckage of the air pontoon and the small wagon lay, they look north along the continental bay to see the city of light glowing brighter than Merlin had seen in many years. While having an increasing brightness, it pulsed slightly every few moments or so, each time with greater spaces between each glowing brightness, but each time overall brighter than the last, in the air the city sounded as if a great mill was turning.

Below to the south, Merlin and Thomas could see the city and how small it was, and how the merchant legion had gathered and approach the city walls, small enough to note its distance but visible as much to seem dangerous. Merlin takes special notice of how a fleet of ships had departed from its liveries and was heading up the coast toward Ana and her expecting friends. Nickolas looking down the path notices something and Merlin is somewhere between age and reason, wondering what Horus might have done.

Nickolas shouted to Merlin, “Look, there, along the path,” pointing to men running far below, towards them from a great distance.

“They're undoubtedly scouts.”
“If we head down inside the tree line they won’t see us.”
“Agreed; you've turned out to be an impressive guest.”
“First to take a wound buys the other a drink old man.”

Like a sporting creature, Nickolas darted into the tree line and down the hill, and immediately Merlin followed.

Down the forest's edge they went running in very short steps and jumping and swinging past tree trunks and through low branches and over fallen others, down the forest side, where midway between where they had begun racing downstream, and where they would meet their opposition down path, Nickolas is confronted with a bear.

The way that Nickolas meets with the bear, was abruptly disruptive to the creature, which lashed out, catching him by the arm, and begins to tear and feed into him. Merlin, who had followed close behind pounces into the bear, feet first, knocking the bear off kilter, and from nowhere he had a very narrow long dagger, it somewhat resembled a sword, which he drove into the beast. When he looks back, Nickolas is heavily wounded and laughing, bringing up more blood than open air from his lung, his neck had been bitten and his clothes torn, bloodily shredded.

“Spare me no fury of your maelstrom wizard, and I shall be reborn once more.” Nickolas said hardly gasping for air, as he cried.
“I don’t understand, you said you could last these things.”

Nickolas begins to choke and wail simultaneously. Merlin points the slender sword, no longer than his arm, with a golden handle toward Nickolas, burning away the felled beast’s blood, the energy of the air and wood seemed to gather at the swords sharp point, and then leaps in a straight line to Thomas, putting an end to their commiseration. Nickolas begins to recompose and with a coughing of dust sits up screaming, as if his lungs were on fire.

Merlin, “You look worse than the bear,” he said as Nickolas looks over to the bear in disgust.
“That should not count.”
“I see blood, why not?”
“Is it dead?”
“Yes.”
“Sharp sword you have.”
“This old thing?” he said looking over the long fancy dagger.

Merlin then holds the dagger by the handle with the blade hanging below it and lets it fall. As the weapon hits the ground, if falls through the forest floor as if the ground were not there at all, the ground outlining the weapon with a bright light shining from beneath, swallows shut once the weapon falls through.