Merlin 2:23 “A New Day Yesterday”
A wit of the ages gives import to the obvious clues, the way footsteps trace the hallway through the door, how clean the wall is there at closer examination, and it surely isn’t the first secret chamber ever found. Glancing the ceiling and the craftwork with the groove in the ground where it slid over the years the façade is quite flawless, the old timber portrays as built against old millwork and stone foundation so much that it does not sound hollow when knocked nor budge with hearty stock, a depth of deceit yet to know. Merlin checks the wall with patient concern and finds to turn an old rusted mounting point for torches that a latch releases the lock and with his feet against the wall the door’s base swings inward enough to be slid aside itself. There is a small set of stairs the height of a child into a root cellar, an impressive collection of liturgy on chess and art, manuals of war and tactics, candles on old barrels between spears and pouches and bottles of powders and herbs, and a decent bed kept clean but the blankets not tucked, half the room with a woman’s touch the other half her bridegroom.
Where the headboard is supposed to be a fixture of crossbows and blades hangs, the bedposts are loose and hide cleverly secret daggers and the loose boards of the stairs reveal clothes with sprigs of rosemary in cedar drawers to mask the wool from moths. Aside the bed a small table holds a journal written in a cypher of numbers and letters such that only days are not encrypted, atop a wonderful sketch of a wife perhaps the artist’s. As usual does Merlin begin reading through the pages of the journal as Ana smells the herbs and smells the cork lids of perfume vials, he looks to her and waits for she to notice him, when doing so he uses his hand to allude to the book he reads, she looks around the chamber then snaps her fingers and the candles in the room ignite.
From abound they hear a sound that garners their attention, alarmed Ana makes a fist and forces the fire die as fast she can. To come in from the cold and barring the defenselessness of night Nickolas asks them within the castle for their protections to which they humbly oblige whilst Troy and phoenix Alerion survey the forest at dusk. Timid and wary the suspicious strangers from outside enter behind Nickolas who is looking for his book to enter prosody of calumny and shock.
Merlin: (asking Nick): “What are you doing?”
Dyved: “It was…we were…”
Geneva: “…just leaving o great ones.”
Merlin: “There was a war, a phoenix, and an ogre awoken from at least two score years smashing invalids and you’re still here?”
Nickolas lowers his small book before perusing or writing and looks to them also glancing upward to notice the superb majesty of a phoenix flying over them.
Merlin: “This is obviously your hideaway.”
Ana: “We mean peace upon you.”
Nickolas: “I reserve a candid suspicion.”
Merlin: “We’ve seen your bunker and mean you well, we’re merely going to make camp for a night and be gone by morn.”
Dyved: “I am Dyved of Samsara and this is Geneva, we thank you for your battle against the evil.”
Merlin: “That’s the spirit, come, help us build a fire out of this old lumber and we’ll talk about how you’re likely the king by now.”
The ceiling of the keep is open from time of disrepair and fires that dry the lumber burned on the fuel of the old milling machinery, it had been broken and used as fuel recently and is covered in pieces of the roof, the boards of the grinding wheel are still connected and the groove from the second wheel is still mostly filled with old flour that has long since molded and rotted into a fine black silt that covers various areas of the lumber and floor. After collecting firewood a gracious entrance of Troy as the majestic phoenix lands with a gust, he slides from the familiar spryly off the back of it and dusts his coat as Alerion sits on the large wheel on ashlar with a peevish squawk and they begin a fire where they share epistemological autonomic discussion and intellectual education. Troy has a slab of venison nearly as long as his arm, he takes it to a plank then carries it to Nick.
Troy: “Venison.”
Nick: “Is the rest outside?”
Troy: “No, I was going to leave it for the wolves not far off, but stubborn to leave it the bird decided to eat it, most actually.”
Dyved and Geneva are speechless by the sight of the phoenix, the meat, and the bird moreover again, dressed nicely they are starving and thin.
Merlin: “How long have you been here?”
Dyved: “More than 300 moons, it belonged to the duke Enoch who died in the raids in service of the kingdom. The raids ended living quietly and when the evil abroad came to assault we hid here.”
Merlin: “And the hidden room? It is so furnished.”
Geneva: “Enoch owned it in fealty.”
Dyved: “It has long been a secret meeting place destroyed only recently. Tell me wizard, what grants ye thine powers?”
Merlin: “You may call me Merlin young majesty, I reckon at most if not all we are cambions, half this or that. He is probably half Valkyrie for his bleeding but not dying.”
Nick: “How do you do.”
Dyved: “How do you do sir?”
Nick: “Hungry likely enough.”
Nickolas has finished cutting the meat into slices and is putting it on the ready fire, resting the pieces on the logs above and directly on coals, a sizzle sounds the air.
Merlin: “I am a bit of elven and Midgard and she is a mix of Muspel fire and Vanir.”
Dyved: “and him?”
Troy: “I am a man blessed with resurrection by the fires of darkness.”
Alerion touts a squawking and the travelers laugh as the refugees sit confuted, the phoenix in misapprehension is peckishly perturbed, in a fugue the bird quiets and the fire brightly rises whilst Nickolas jumps to his feet pulling a long dagger and stabs the steaks one by one from the flames. The bird returns to a dull sheen and sardonic dolor with eyes bluing. Still on his feet all the while Troy turns to look and approaches to comfort the phoenix as the band begin to eat.
Nick: “Tell that fowl I said go chase a sunset.”
Dyved: “Wherewithal by survivors are scourges of this land’s former strength, like wolves, to destroy through death, what is the name of our devil?”
Merlin: “Your faith in the almighty blessed be, the disorderly also trust to do what gods do and tremble, there is good in all of us and an evil in all of them, and for such we are their devils.”
Geneva: “We shan’t go to the temples to beseech the gods for fear of the heathens irreverent.”
Merlin: “Have you any wine tucked away?”
Dyved: “You’re in luck.”
Troy: “What was this place?”
Geneva: “A flour mill once upon a time.”
Dyved: “Four score and seven years.”
Dyved goes and fetches a bottle sliding the secret door closed behind him and throwing a handful of dirt over the path.
Ana: “Is it any good?”
He pulls out the cork with his teeth blowing the cork on the ground, takes a drink, and spits it at the fire that responds flashily. On this day turned night when these children of the gods come and reward themselves the blackguard shape-shifter demon has come near to speak with the witch of the mist, cautious of the darkness.
Mist: “Abandon your fears which would suffer unto thee, witness it thusly passing, and the wizard must put some of you to the underworld for trial, a transgression, of your liberal birth stay you the course and I won’t kill you.”
Dak-Clis: “I cannot fathom how thou art not yet spurned and disowned, you and your bright lord severed, as you have poison in the forest of the minds to the men of this realm.”
Mist: “If dissent were a wedge, we would corrupt ourselves, how now doth your kingdom stand?”
Dak-Clis: “The wizard Merlin has impugned my work; he has an earthly measure and has for the time bested me milady.”
Mist: “Thou art repulsive unto me, wherewith thy understanding my power divines thine memory seems an unbecoming impunity of these humans.”
Dak-Clis: “The devil that bested my soldiers, august of an insipid familiar, a phoenix, with his face of white leather kith to the wizard, I could not stand to taunt even wiles and whilst.”
Mist: “Bite your tongue, barring his faith delivers him, I am a much worse warden and I will not release you to the deep.”
Dak-Clis: “What will ye have me do milady?”
Mist: “I would have ye take these black diamonds to Pethuel, there is a school for war there where the Sherriff magistrate answers questions of wisdom and domestic qualms each morning. Wait in line with a question using these stones to lure him into privacy then supplant him. As before divide and conquer, and if you see the wizard, assume regency and kill him.”
One of the heathens of the melancholic horde seeks to be an opportunistic thief but his stomach is turned into a cursed knot followed by fatality as Mist vanishes in the cold of night by the fog on the ground in the bleak moonlight abandoning absolute darkness.
Merlin and the others rest around the fire still fading and the phoenix largely content sleeping with a mental serenade by their hale language. Merlin desires a better bastion to offer refuge but is not ashamed to be considered distinguished among men, knowing the things that most humans do not.
Dyved: “You had mentioned I should be king, from one of men to one of nothing, who will end this war?”
Merlin: “I am not lost in these dark times of all times, but the darkness hides from me.”
Troy: “For what way heretofore the darkness spills, they scatter and mire, we will bring order or justice.”
Ana: “The shadowy hearts, their black destructive souls, will kill you both without call.”
Merlin: “A forsaking we will make, in their heartless oblivion fearing our revelation, because their deeds were evil.”
Ana: “The fates would have us light the dark, is any whom has put a song inside our heart of hearts, and burn the fires of our souls without mercy in the face of the martyrs who would put you slaves of fear.”
The witch of the mist has listened and at once leaves into the night because the phoenix senses her. In unbelief of danger it drops its head back into sleep.
Merlin: “There is a snake in the grass, which is the foe and feral demon winnowing the sands of time.”
25 December 2011
Merlin 2:22 “Patterns in the Ivy”
Merlin 2:22 “Patterns in the Ivy”
Swift soldiers without uniforms pass through the trees mostly young with bedraggled chagrin, amongst them youth of fighting age and a few eldest strong and battle-ready dragging the rear, they are all showing signs of everyday combat. They travel toward two wagons adorning short boarded sides covered by burlap fabric behind a bench with driver beset a spotter both, and a transport of import guarded by perhaps a handful of sentinels walking on foot. Without cavalry or archers the forest children silently attack the small caravan of rakish thugs on a road against the trees aside a small hill, bloodshed ensues as two men from each wagon ambush and irrupt with crossbows and maces, with many wounds and no losses the children of the woods kill their enemies. For their result of the trap the wagons holds rusty pikes, crooked staves, some rope, and enough flat bread to feed half their ranks a single meal. They sit and eat quietly discussing their options as a deer happens upon them, in hunger they fell it and endure the setting sun. Elsewhere another small tribe of children teeming the hunt attack their enemies sitting at a campfire at night, first by arrows, lastly by daggers, brutish kids with facefills of muddy war paint, the same hunger that haunts them is nourished less civilized.
Merlin, Nickolas, and Ana are still on the trail toward the river or clearing they had destined.
Merlin: “Give me one of your blades.”
Nick: “I normally have more; there is at least one in the wagon of that fire wench.”
Ana: “What did you say?”
Nick: “…very funny.”
Merlin: “Did it look like this?”
Nick: “You shouldn’t take from me when I’m sleeping.”
Merlin: “I didn’t, it used magic and took it from you when you were awake, chin up. I’m going to find Troy now.”
Ana: “Good, I’m tired of mucking about in this mire.”
Merlin: “I’ll just balance it on its tip, and it will lean and fall toward him.”
Nick: “How do you know it works?”
Merlin balances the dagger and lets it fall, and then he looks the opposite direction.
Merlin: “Take it and throw it at that tree yonder there.”
Nickolas humors him and takes the blade as Merlin walks to a specific tree and points to it with an open hand, Nick throws the dagger at the tree but the blade falls short, the magic binding the knife will not let it thrust.
Merlin: “Now hang on to it but don’t throw it the other way, it might go twice as far and we’d have to hunt for it.”
Condemned and abandoned the children do not speak much keeping their movements in the night until dawn and sleeping in the quaint warmth of daylight, both ragged hunting parties through county Samsara and beyond, and move they into contact of the other on this next night where they plan a coup of another campsite larger than the priors. At dawn they siege the fresh encampment taking loses and are forced to fall back, two from their victimized enemies follow the marauding children into the forest.
They are swift and lean trackers silent in the night and long in the eye during the day, following them to their first camp stead, one returns to report the whereabouts while the other reconnoiters. Through the woods leaving a system of unrelenting return and markings on trees the scout returns to his masters.
A smallish ring tent waits in a glen as soldiers near it attend seething pots at two distinct fires while the tent curtain opens to reveal a small firelight within, from it exeunt a woman in a fur coat flush around her neck as long as her feet and a blackguard man with pricey armor, that of a hunter and not battler, she points to the ground beside her and he kneels looking to her obsequiously. She lifts her foot from the dirty ground and steps on his knee revealing a plethora of tattoos and not much else beneath her posh robe, she slaps him without saying a word and he does not reply as he ties her boot secure then the other.
Scout: “We’ve been hit again, but we’ve found them, perhaps the last, half a days’ ride by my mark and another tracker marking them anon.”
Dak: (Blackguard) “We will ride on them and end this, we ride!”
Warlord Tatiana: “Cower and hold your tongue, enough nonsense, take every scout and kill them while they sleep.”
Dak: “How doth your bidding effect?”
Tatiana: “We have lost too oft, and must keep our numbers in horses. We will return to the castle, these are more than games and I need more than my toys.”
She grabs him by the throat and kisses him, wrapping her bare leg around his side from her coat.
Tatiana: “Make this camp without us and head our homestead, we prepare a trap of war.”
The scouting children having sighted their next target run through the woods toward the sign of distant fire in a field, their slaughter in the dawn will be swiftest, new light and exhaustion of night an attack of disparaging atrocity occurs and blood spills, the arrows of the enemy scouts wound many and kill none, without enough arrows they move to strike fatality. The swords clash and weapons gash as heroes and harbingers are murdered in the new day, there are more in the encampment than insurgents, the blood spatters into the fires and battlers are burned, children launch arrows or dash from hiding in the tall grass at the villains each time they claim emolument. As a rite of passage when the scouts are all dead the oldest boys hack an arm of their foes and drink the blood like a sack of wine whilst it has life, afterwards they cut strips of meat for putting on the hot coals of the fire for the starving young to eat.
Far along the forest line in these same fields Merlin emerges with his friends, looking skyward and outbound, searching for Troy and the phoenix Alerion, the skies are blue, the leaves are gold, and in the distance the field is bloody red.
Ana: “Where do you suppose he is?”
Nick: “He’s abandoned us…”
Merlin: “Nonsense, he’s gone to fetch us breakfast, or at the river, or at some entirely inconvenient danger.”
Nick: “No reason to seem chipper chap.”
Merlin: “I suppose I’ll endeavor to fetch what scurries.”
Ana: “People, there, a high fire in the distance.”
Nick: “Should I take the lead?”
Ana: “We thought you’d never ask…how kind.”
Nickolas smiles with cynical amusement as he moves into the grass, he is swift and keeps low and lowest as they look over the grassland, but he is not stealthy among the children of the field, he is found by many little ones with knives and sees the camp leader approaching with a spear from the savage carnage.
Nick: “…Merlin!?”
Merlin approaches from the field with one hand in the air, Ana walks beside him with both her arms behind her, and they are emissaries of utter mystery.
Merlin: “Hello? Hello! It seems you’ve found my friend, we are in search of another, and he is much ado piloting a large animal bird and we were wondering…”
Nick: “There are bodies here.”
Merlin: “You’ll have to forgive my clumsy companion…he’s frightful and detests violence…”
Merlin puts his hand into the air again, without stopping he blinks and a blast of wind, light, and sound, echoes from his raised arm, he does not slow as the force momentarily stops Ana in her tracks as she bows her head, the momentum is so strong it shocks the campfire and knocks everyone else to the ground, the grass is windblown sideways and no longer hides children. Nickolas stands and kicks a child in the bottom to push it toward the others as he grabs his knife.
Nick: “Now, instead of showing me, you can tell us what happened.”
Merlin: “I’ve killed more people than natural causes, forsaking time until fate cowers, and hell as my witness, antiheroes, until all are free!”
The children dive at his feet and hold his ankles, many all small, terrified by fear of a black terror.
Child: “You are a wizard o great, save us from a terror elder one.”
Ana: “We have found a terror with you.”
Child: “They are the first of a dirge for our survival, you must help us.”
The child is desperate and crying, too scared to tell lies as more children come to hold him to the earth. The young warriors hardened by plight mimic their leader and kneel upon knee, throwing their weapons into the bent grass then putting their hands on the earth before them, sacrosanct and sacrificial, except for the leader who does not put down his hands.
Keith: “We are survivors but our elders are not, from village to town a tribe from the sunset distance seeks to kill the children of the corn, save us and we will be forever grateful.”
Ana walks to one of the wounded, she takes her blade and stabs one of the dead, and she smears the blood of the deceased into the wound to wash the dirt of the dirty soldier’s hands. She holds her hand into the air holds a flame and heats the blade then cauterizes the wound. Merlin looks to Nickolas for advice.
Merlin: “What do you think?”
Other children jump for Nickolas’s feet and begin hugging his legs, which he pushes aside and walks to Merlin.
Nickolas: “Do we fight armies?”
Keith: “It is not an army; our parents and we constituted the army. They are the people gone mad. For a season clans have formed, they killed our elders, then all the nobles and any rune of faith. The clergy that did not submit were crucified, and eventually those who swore allegiance were made to join them.”
Ken: “We are forbidden even silent prayers to our silent gods. Do they have a word for this from whence you came?”
Ana: “Genocide, but I’m sure it’s a typical evil…”
Merlin: “Will you join us old boy?”
Nick: “What makes you think she’s even going?”
Ana: “I’m going. Their game doesn’t hold a candle.”
Nick: “Sure why not, if caught it’ll take years to escape.”
Merlin: “Before counting heads, we’re going to need good maps.”
The encampment of the regulars is sheik and ready to move of a moment’s notice, and are ready for malice aforethought. Those too wounded to ride or run rest on stretchers attached to horses with a bow by their side. There are fires burning as most rest, a few train or sharpen weapons, and there are many gathered, around them the ivy grows strong with bright green leaves at the end of vines and the floor sparsely littered with the black stems of flowers they had eaten, in all there are as many fighters as discarded black leaves on the floor.
Keith: “Come, I will conceal nothing from you. These are our old lines, and this is the line we hold now, against their stronghold somewhere here. You found us strike the last garrison. We are gathered to strike as soon as morning, except for those who have fled.”
Yeadon: “Keith and Ken, we’ve been found out, we’ve killed scouts to find there are many more.”
Nick: “How many more?”
Yeadon: “…”
Keith: “They’re with me.”
Yeadon: “By seem at twice as we.”
Yeadon still catches the last of his breath as the forest troops begin to rally forth, Merlin weaves his fingers and stretches his palms above his head, his knuckles crack as he stretches his chest, and awhile Nickolas stretches his neck by tilting his head one side unto the other and his knuckles in clenched fists.
Keith: “How soon are they here?”
Yeadon: “Thirty verses at most.”
Keith: “We ride on them now or never again!”
Merlin: “Malarkey! We need a plan, I’ll talk to them and you fight them from the trees as you have.”
Ken: “Well that’s just a plain idea.”
Merlin: “An ethereal plane.”
A rainy day misery begins to shroud the small fires, Merlin holds in his hand a glass ball that begins to shine, from above a loud squawk from the phoenix lets into the air. Merlin tosses the orb to Ana with the glass visibly red hot she catches it and wields the fire cooling the orb.
Merlin: “That’s our friend we were tracking. Not to be alarmed, please don’t attack when he lands!”
With gasps of the soldiers Troy lands next to a fire allowing the phoenix to eat the embers, as soldiers not clasping weapons hide behind trees.
Troy: “I’ve been wondering if you were down here for a day. Did you know there’s a rugged army heading this way?”
Merlin: “…we’re going to battle now…”
Troy: “Battle?”
Nick: “What happened to meeting us in the pasture?”
Troy: “I thought you said river, oddly if I wanted in it I would’ve had to jump, the bird wouldn’t land, so I turned back.”
Merlin: “It is time to march.”
The troops are reinvigorated yet aversive, suspicious of the magic that they follow to their last battle or first of many, the sky struggles to be blue through the clouds and the day-moon. With the wounded behind them at camp they arrive at the edge of the forest, as foretold an army stands to greet them at the edge of a muddy field.
The tattooed woman completely covered with thin lines and her reddish king stand behind a formidable showing, a dark dress the colors of blood and gauche jewelry drinking black wine from an ornate golden palm goblet. Every soldier of the black army wears armor and jewelry touting the weapons of the innocent they have raided over the past seasons, gold chains and crowns, rings and gauntlets of silver, salvers melted into gaudy shields, evil agendas brood and interlay.
Ana: “How many are there Troy?”
Troy: “Twice as many.”
Merlin: “I’m going to have a word.”
A parliament in the woods and darkness at noon, the evil tribe to greet them is a mixture of the worst from seven realms and five wars, led foremost by the blackguard in armor piqued by red scales and the tattooed priestess.
Tatiana: “…friends with an army?”
Dak: “I once was…and now am not…but with this I will amass a great tributary of life.”
Tatiana: “The ink still shining on the page.”
Dak: “Carrion angel.”
Long sought for liberty or death the army of youth stands at the forest watching the decadent power mad and thirsty for a coup.
Merlin: “Troy, make an entrance mid field.”
Troy and the phoenix bolt into flight, spiraling into the air, fantastical they swoop over the encroaching frontline and the forest line, then slams into the muddy midfield, it plummets to the ground landing with the sound of vaulted pillars and thrown stones, letting a terrible squall of howling fervency, the phoenix steps once or twice timid of the tides of war.
Troy: “You will stay and wait or run from the wizard.”
/
Nick: “He’s quite good at that.”
Ana hits Nickolas in the arm then crosses her arms as she looks to the fearful boys standing in wait. Merlin flipping through tarot cards puts them in his sleeve and walks into the clearing, all are quiet and fearful from the forest as their enemies begin grunting while grinding teeth and blade, eager to battle the phoenix and fueled by ignorance.
Merlin walks passed the phoenix, slapping it on the shoulder a couple of times, letting the powder touch his hands. He walks to a stone’s throw from the enemy line. The tattooed priestess stands on her carriage and shouts to the other side, and Merlin.
Tatiana: “Cambion, demigod of mortality, the word is the truth and only truth; no blade can turn from I.”
Merlin: “The blood you sought was the blood of your divination, but the truth will be that you were fooled by your fears.”
The ground dries beneath the phoenix and the rain lessens soigné they gather toward Merlin.
Dak: “Loyalists taking ear, hear me now, this threat, we will not tolerate less than your devotion to the revolution.”
The tattooed woman stands and puts her hand on the blackguard’s shoulder, causing him to step aside.
Tatiana: “I need to know, that if necessary you will die for me.”
Merlin: “I will, and I have brought a tithing.”
Merlin holding his arm close to him places his other hand over the first to unveil the glass sphere in his palm, its effulgence is low but steadily growing in strength, he holds the crystal ball forward and moves toward the army, they begin anxiety and when his brinksmanship tenders impatient limit the glass explodes with power and light, two dozen wounded or dead a battle properly begins. Tatiana points to the woods with a sign of disgust on her face, as the mercenaries charge toward the trees. The ink on her fingers seems to swirl in coquetry while the flesh of the dreamer becomes a course bark bitterly dismal of distaste Dak moves into battle abandoning his futurist.
Dak: “My dark flower, remain here not pruned.”
Watching the phoenix take to flight when the battle ensues, Dak moves toward Merlin destined to strike him dead, eternal regret beyond loveless forbidden reservation and austerity he draws the hateful legion aback the trees. Acquiring as much purity as regret the forest legion charges to support the wizard, the decaying sedge floor mid the rushes amid wind quickly turns to mud beneath the trodden common curious file, but the wind still blows over their vulgarity horde covered with tattoos, carrying the phoenix who quickly turns and grabs an enemy in its talons, too heavy to carry far the body is dropped on the cavalry of evil men, when it grabs another it does not bode well for the assailants, those who slash the phoenix without permanent effect serve to insult it, it drops the soldier with talons having been put through to grab the others instead, a dangerous fire pet hitting enemies with molt armor.
The villains reach for Troy and pull him down from saddle, but he grabs the harness of Alerion and they retreat into the air, his weight on the wing it turns midair, with him giving them an obscene gesture. The sinister mercenaries watch him begin the fatal catch and release in another edge of the field, again slowed by weight he begins to run the aerial cavalry combat, begrudging they make their way for revenge.
The wicked minds of godless heathens are tomes stocked with ranks of nomenclature, vulgar insults which they shout at the heroes. It only serves to remind them who they are killing with precision in silent wroth. A trodden muddy pasture abuts the sky, ruthlessly trampled bare by many a down-trodden soldier, brazen without the sense the infantry turn to the phoenix, indurate talons lift anew from the murky muck and flies to Merlin across the front, he volleys scores of winds that burn around the phoenix and rider as a fiery wind, an exhaustion of fire magic for them both that quickly ends, the bird flies from Merlin as if it were assaulted bursar, the wings open and push a final gust of hot sand at their enemies.
Nickolas flanks as a doppelganger and repudiates their defenses with terror, once slain and raised by the same inability to remain dead that Tatiana had prophesied, to deathly wound their evil blood of their veins until he is stuck by a spear like a wild boar, body and limbs, and then the body several times again. Ana immolates the boughs and hedgerows despite the dampening mire of the humid fog and drizzle from the Samsara Forest. She pauses with grief for her lover before remembering his penchant mortality and continues her desecration of enemies swift but often discourteously, from within the trees having made her way to the forest edge, Troy nearby assists her with a slaying by crushing a foe.
Troy: “You’re welcome.”
Ana: “Save them in the forest.”
Troy looks back at a war field half dead and takes to flight. She proceeds to the field of battle, from her pocket she pulls a flask and takes a drink then spits fire at her foes, their attention taken she unveils a whip and unfurls it, running it through her had it becomes fire and her weapon for the living and the dying low, where her enemies come close to her she does not hesitate to stab them in the throat or where men most hate being wounded, the heart.
Merlin watches the woman of tattoos play with her already wounded prey. With a luminary telepathy she knows their next move but wastes time with more ceremony than slaughter. He stares withal of contention for the soldiers clumsily throwing each conflict, she walks around them cutting them down, a belt is cut and one bows into a blade, for the next a ballet of blades alternating twixt legs and arms at the sinew tendons until the sad young soldier cannot stand nor hold arms as his throat is slit, not an eye pores Merlin or the soldier attacking from behind her who takes a blade to his tongue in cheek and another to throat, the spray of blood blinds another soldier who is double handedly thrust through the heart only after the first blade is thrown into the brow of the man behind him. With lust of contempt their weapons are gifts given to her and used against them. A morose heartache startles Merlin from nonplus and he takes a bow and arrow from a dead man and shoots at her, she steps clear of the shot without seeing it launch and looks to Merlin. The wizard fears death at that sultrily bellicose moment, with two more arrows from a fallen comrade he looks to Nickolas cringing and screaming beneath lance and pike,
Merlin shoots and kills one about to behead his ally and another anent, awhile Tatiana approaches new victims with an aberrant smile and abetting stare. Three remaining soldiers skewering Nick begin screaming as they run to Merlin that he sends flying with a blast of air.
Merlin: “When you wake I need you to dance with the devil.”
Merlin looks to Tatiana and back to Nickolas who closes his eyes, though the gruesomeness the battle for whichever primal chase is clashing in the forest, the field of the dying is abandoned as he moves into the trees where unbalanced battles ensconce a violent insurrection.
Dak through pure brutality has a face covered in blood, twice this day the blood of his allies in furor, but he paces beyond the clearing in the underbrush weary of Merlin. Ana battles diligently as a maven of forcible peach, reproach or exception, with each cry that she hears she runs toward it to help the children escape; she battles with the discarded heat of the sunlight, using ash and embers often of explosion.
Kneeling on the ground in scandalous attire Tatiana washes her face with the blood of heroes as Nick arises, his armor has holes of bore and pierce, she picks two knives ready to hammer the blades into his eyes, a leaderless confrontation she does not walk a straight line, her path winds to the side in silence and sedition, confident her wiles are the whims of battle he hurls a knife at her, cutting her arm wistfully barely. She screams and charges him over body swiftly barefoot running across bodies until heavy to his tumultuous threat, stealth of all skill she is faster than he and the quick battle ends as her many others, again the silence embraces him as he lay quietly dying and singing blood. The patronage of manna or the ability to kill only his mortality his immortality acquiesce he counts her measure, with a blade in her chest and bathed in blood she falls in the mud.
Dak watched and now feigns indignant pain and remorse walking to Nickolas standing over the body. Nick runs into the trees but avoiding stragglers throws another dagger, this time at Dak. The blade lands in his neck, but pain is not on display has he pulls the throwing knife and snaps it in two with his bare hands while giving a growl from a loud whisper, Nickolas dismisses the priority of conflict for justice in the forest defilade, but Dak does not follow. He stoops to comfort Tatiana on the ground, she has propped herself against the dead and slut her wrists, she dies in earths final embrace with Dak intentionally beyond her dying grasp.
She rests eternal in the autumn sun, outdoors before a fire, as the wild dogs contently feast, the forest full of disaggregate victors playing waylaid deceit as Dak kneels over Tatiana. He looks over her rakish form and puts his hand to her face, smearing the drying blood with his touch. Looking over her he sees a bracelet on her wrist that he strips from her forearm, he holds it in his fingers if to adore it, and then suddenly with anger on his face he breaks the armlet within the power of his fist, the crippled shattering pieces fall from his hand beside her soulless kinship. He thus closes her eyes and opens his to the dagger, tho dead her body is warm and slightly fogs, having seen her killer he seeks to study the weapon, he pulls it from her chest and studies the quality tool.
Dak: “What seeks to hollow repletion leaves a dagger such as this that is not mad or evil?”
To this locus arrive two soldiers from the distance, in their minds fine warriors of a terror that is to them a revolt of reason, their tyranny had been led by Tatiana without true knowledge of Dak, to which they demanded ignorance of anything but needless conflict, and in their eyes commander Dak has committed treason, anxious that their Volva is dead and taken a successful campaign with her to the grave.
Amicus: “He’s killed the volva.”
Clis: “Than we shall kill him for justice and take his rank.”
Clis fires an arrow at Dak, it misses and strikes the ground next to him, he looks over his shoulder and darts toward the trees escaping a second shot from Amicus, they launch two more arrows each at him but they miss again as he moves fast as if chasing a deathblow and not escaping one. Into the forest they pursue as the sky begins enshrouding the light. Dak hides in the shadows, waiting and stalking, he doth not stop to hector the soldiers hunting him, and in silence he crushes the throat of Clis and impatiently breaks his neck.
This sacrifice signifies imitation conception, what would an alchemist playact a new form for Dak is a Draugur, using a type of black magic called trollskap he changes shape in body and face as he becomes the imposter of his victim. He takes the undamaged pieces of armor from Clis and begins to hunt the other as silent as before.
Amicus: “What happened to you, and what happened to your face?”
Veracity of the scar without sophistry Dak the Draugur mangles Amicus, just as he had the other as quiet as prior. Dak, the knight errant, has become an arrant knave without nature’s approval, abandoning the bloody pit of horror he has helped create.
Alerion attacks and tears an enemy by landing, Troy jousts each swift foe that are torn down by children and distraction. Elsewhere Merlin blasts fools with marks in the volatile soil, the magic is simple and costs him more time than health, a price that shades the stubble on his face grey as others are annihilated by his alchemical mastery, a nut turned into a bomb for shrapnel if close enough is trapped by his enemies’ armor if placed properly to shred them contained. Erstwhile puerile evil complicity wilding an innocent woman Ana watches a moment as the victim sees her, she drops her weapons and her eyes turn redder than that which can be most red, her hands begin to wash of fire, the deviants attack her all but one, just as Merlin approaches. He watches them run to Ana before grabbing the miscreant by his collar and taking his manhood from him, with a howl of pain the ravens laugh, she walks to him slowly, the villains are dead, they have fallen dead aside her path of aguish heatstroke bodies, thru them she is not concerned.
Ana: “Stand him up!”
There are not words for pure massacre, she opens the wound then draws the blade only to slit his throat. Clutching a green dress the naïve girl kicks and breaks the dead man’s face giving a scream of regressive anger, then spitting on it.
Ana: “…we do not let them live…”
Merlin: “I thought you wanted a piece of him?”
Ana: “Shut up Merlin, get up strumpet, go and find a man of god.”
Merlin: “This is why you don’t talk to strangers.”
Ana: “Only to let you think it’s your idea.”
Ana squats next to the broken boy and begins poking him in the eyes and other painful vulnerabilities while the mind is still with the body, torture duly until death. The fragile ginger-haired girl runs toward the sound of swords.
Then there is Nickolas, looking for support while encircled by enemies, swords and spears, torches with fiery ashes flying where knives do not maim, an interwoven defilement, to those with earned title to prescient death, forsooth the burning horizon the scope may newly be drained of blood and milled anew a swifter victory with Nickolas as their captive, and the gatherers’ greed for wealth a gift to their augur Tatiana, whom they know not has died. The dilettantes enjoy true delusions in grandeur built for redolence and high esteems. Waving their weapons and fire at Nick they turn argumentative about the right to claim credit for his capture, at the drop of a hat he fights nine soldiers, young and strongly old, taking some cuts and only one spear to his back. Formative of exposed vitality levied through his skin by some spear by his combatants, he has had enough and puts his anger to the test, in a quest for battle’s absolution with death as an illusion he cries havoc in anger such as war could only excite.
Merlin and Ana approach from the distance to assist, hastily approaching they watch him defeat the final four as if it is a simple ceremony of bone and blood, he looks to them approaching with a smile on his face. Standing near him he falls to his knees and then on his chest and looks across the forest floor as if it is a wall.
Nick: “Being your friend is murder.”
Merlin: “The fortune is no doubt a suitable reward.”
Nick: “What is that love?”
Ana: “Is what strapper?”
Nick: “…anon a foolish castle…”
Merlin: “…deliver us…”
Nick: “No, look where I look. I’m some drunken guide?”
Sure enough a castle of disrepair peeks over the horizon far into the fare of trees, upon approach it is an old chaplain hall turned grist mill, abandoned for many years there are new tracks near the entrance. Wary of raucous they stalk in shadows to seek the roots of evils and atrocities, sunken haunting and silhouettes with gauche tapestries caked in dust and collecting further debris from the broken windows and many holes in the roof beneath the darkness only broken by the few random beams of light owed to the undulation of whispers. Small desiccate trees grow through the cracks next to massive roots from the trees outside, among stone and cobweb interior is a palatial quarters filled with blood velvet rugs and rancor adorned with golden cordon and lace much unlike the forgotten outer chambers, strewn lighted candles of black and white flames and scattered crystals taken from abound the surface of the earth, all behind a secret door.
An ulterior murdering efficiency of swift candor as opposed to brawn is vaulting spears into the phoenix, bruising when uncaught, and ecumenist mendacity for an interdiction that had not occurred, several tyrants in rampancy taunt hostages as Troy lands to do battle. In the trees enemies lynch him from his phoenix, jumping to hoist him, Alerion clamps it’s beak on the ankle of the roper and flings him into the distance, with the acumen of a bird with a simple leap another foe in the tree does not bode well, a hefty peck and release dropping a bloody dead body to the ground.
The earth trembles beneath the soldiers who want the phoenix and rider for their own, they scream and wave their hands as if insult to the quaking below their feet that neither they, nor the phoenix, nor Troy had set to cause.
Through the stratified layers of leaves from seasons of winters and walking feet a fierce ogre rises from the soil, large and stoic fast by size but laggard in ways the creature from the earth beats the evil nomads with a piece of an old tree petrified white with age, and when they are dead or running away it slightly bows its head to the phoenix and falls to the ground oafish. As Nickolas approaches in the haze of shallow sunlight remaining, at every notice staring thus, the ogre decides to close its eyes and return to sleep, it snuggles the forest floor briefly until comfortable shaking even more leaves a deciduous blanket of red foliage from the trees as it does.
Merlin: “See how well things are when we’re left alone?”
Ana: “Of all my days I’d never expect to see that, what could it be?”
Merlin: “That, is an ogre. Probably builder of this place ages ago. Troy, come inside through the roof. Nickolas, check the perimeter and then come inside to investigate, we’re staying the night.”
The ogre peaks from one at to look at Merlin, with a sigh it closes again when Merlin smiles as he gestures his hand to hail before walking into the castle. Nickolas walks around the old stone millhouse until finding the couple who were captive obliviously arguing the dangers of their plotted way into the old mill.
...
Swift soldiers without uniforms pass through the trees mostly young with bedraggled chagrin, amongst them youth of fighting age and a few eldest strong and battle-ready dragging the rear, they are all showing signs of everyday combat. They travel toward two wagons adorning short boarded sides covered by burlap fabric behind a bench with driver beset a spotter both, and a transport of import guarded by perhaps a handful of sentinels walking on foot. Without cavalry or archers the forest children silently attack the small caravan of rakish thugs on a road against the trees aside a small hill, bloodshed ensues as two men from each wagon ambush and irrupt with crossbows and maces, with many wounds and no losses the children of the woods kill their enemies. For their result of the trap the wagons holds rusty pikes, crooked staves, some rope, and enough flat bread to feed half their ranks a single meal. They sit and eat quietly discussing their options as a deer happens upon them, in hunger they fell it and endure the setting sun. Elsewhere another small tribe of children teeming the hunt attack their enemies sitting at a campfire at night, first by arrows, lastly by daggers, brutish kids with facefills of muddy war paint, the same hunger that haunts them is nourished less civilized.
Merlin, Nickolas, and Ana are still on the trail toward the river or clearing they had destined.
Merlin: “Give me one of your blades.”
Nick: “I normally have more; there is at least one in the wagon of that fire wench.”
Ana: “What did you say?”
Nick: “…very funny.”
Merlin: “Did it look like this?”
Nick: “You shouldn’t take from me when I’m sleeping.”
Merlin: “I didn’t, it used magic and took it from you when you were awake, chin up. I’m going to find Troy now.”
Ana: “Good, I’m tired of mucking about in this mire.”
Merlin: “I’ll just balance it on its tip, and it will lean and fall toward him.”
Nick: “How do you know it works?”
Merlin balances the dagger and lets it fall, and then he looks the opposite direction.
Merlin: “Take it and throw it at that tree yonder there.”
Nickolas humors him and takes the blade as Merlin walks to a specific tree and points to it with an open hand, Nick throws the dagger at the tree but the blade falls short, the magic binding the knife will not let it thrust.
Merlin: “Now hang on to it but don’t throw it the other way, it might go twice as far and we’d have to hunt for it.”
Condemned and abandoned the children do not speak much keeping their movements in the night until dawn and sleeping in the quaint warmth of daylight, both ragged hunting parties through county Samsara and beyond, and move they into contact of the other on this next night where they plan a coup of another campsite larger than the priors. At dawn they siege the fresh encampment taking loses and are forced to fall back, two from their victimized enemies follow the marauding children into the forest.
They are swift and lean trackers silent in the night and long in the eye during the day, following them to their first camp stead, one returns to report the whereabouts while the other reconnoiters. Through the woods leaving a system of unrelenting return and markings on trees the scout returns to his masters.
A smallish ring tent waits in a glen as soldiers near it attend seething pots at two distinct fires while the tent curtain opens to reveal a small firelight within, from it exeunt a woman in a fur coat flush around her neck as long as her feet and a blackguard man with pricey armor, that of a hunter and not battler, she points to the ground beside her and he kneels looking to her obsequiously. She lifts her foot from the dirty ground and steps on his knee revealing a plethora of tattoos and not much else beneath her posh robe, she slaps him without saying a word and he does not reply as he ties her boot secure then the other.
Scout: “We’ve been hit again, but we’ve found them, perhaps the last, half a days’ ride by my mark and another tracker marking them anon.”
Dak: (Blackguard) “We will ride on them and end this, we ride!”
Warlord Tatiana: “Cower and hold your tongue, enough nonsense, take every scout and kill them while they sleep.”
Dak: “How doth your bidding effect?”
Tatiana: “We have lost too oft, and must keep our numbers in horses. We will return to the castle, these are more than games and I need more than my toys.”
She grabs him by the throat and kisses him, wrapping her bare leg around his side from her coat.
Tatiana: “Make this camp without us and head our homestead, we prepare a trap of war.”
The scouting children having sighted their next target run through the woods toward the sign of distant fire in a field, their slaughter in the dawn will be swiftest, new light and exhaustion of night an attack of disparaging atrocity occurs and blood spills, the arrows of the enemy scouts wound many and kill none, without enough arrows they move to strike fatality. The swords clash and weapons gash as heroes and harbingers are murdered in the new day, there are more in the encampment than insurgents, the blood spatters into the fires and battlers are burned, children launch arrows or dash from hiding in the tall grass at the villains each time they claim emolument. As a rite of passage when the scouts are all dead the oldest boys hack an arm of their foes and drink the blood like a sack of wine whilst it has life, afterwards they cut strips of meat for putting on the hot coals of the fire for the starving young to eat.
Far along the forest line in these same fields Merlin emerges with his friends, looking skyward and outbound, searching for Troy and the phoenix Alerion, the skies are blue, the leaves are gold, and in the distance the field is bloody red.
Ana: “Where do you suppose he is?”
Nick: “He’s abandoned us…”
Merlin: “Nonsense, he’s gone to fetch us breakfast, or at the river, or at some entirely inconvenient danger.”
Nick: “No reason to seem chipper chap.”
Merlin: “I suppose I’ll endeavor to fetch what scurries.”
Ana: “People, there, a high fire in the distance.”
Nick: “Should I take the lead?”
Ana: “We thought you’d never ask…how kind.”
Nickolas smiles with cynical amusement as he moves into the grass, he is swift and keeps low and lowest as they look over the grassland, but he is not stealthy among the children of the field, he is found by many little ones with knives and sees the camp leader approaching with a spear from the savage carnage.
Nick: “…Merlin!?”
Merlin approaches from the field with one hand in the air, Ana walks beside him with both her arms behind her, and they are emissaries of utter mystery.
Merlin: “Hello? Hello! It seems you’ve found my friend, we are in search of another, and he is much ado piloting a large animal bird and we were wondering…”
Nick: “There are bodies here.”
Merlin: “You’ll have to forgive my clumsy companion…he’s frightful and detests violence…”
Merlin puts his hand into the air again, without stopping he blinks and a blast of wind, light, and sound, echoes from his raised arm, he does not slow as the force momentarily stops Ana in her tracks as she bows her head, the momentum is so strong it shocks the campfire and knocks everyone else to the ground, the grass is windblown sideways and no longer hides children. Nickolas stands and kicks a child in the bottom to push it toward the others as he grabs his knife.
Nick: “Now, instead of showing me, you can tell us what happened.”
Merlin: “I’ve killed more people than natural causes, forsaking time until fate cowers, and hell as my witness, antiheroes, until all are free!”
The children dive at his feet and hold his ankles, many all small, terrified by fear of a black terror.
Child: “You are a wizard o great, save us from a terror elder one.”
Ana: “We have found a terror with you.”
Child: “They are the first of a dirge for our survival, you must help us.”
The child is desperate and crying, too scared to tell lies as more children come to hold him to the earth. The young warriors hardened by plight mimic their leader and kneel upon knee, throwing their weapons into the bent grass then putting their hands on the earth before them, sacrosanct and sacrificial, except for the leader who does not put down his hands.
Keith: “We are survivors but our elders are not, from village to town a tribe from the sunset distance seeks to kill the children of the corn, save us and we will be forever grateful.”
Ana walks to one of the wounded, she takes her blade and stabs one of the dead, and she smears the blood of the deceased into the wound to wash the dirt of the dirty soldier’s hands. She holds her hand into the air holds a flame and heats the blade then cauterizes the wound. Merlin looks to Nickolas for advice.
Merlin: “What do you think?”
Other children jump for Nickolas’s feet and begin hugging his legs, which he pushes aside and walks to Merlin.
Nickolas: “Do we fight armies?”
Keith: “It is not an army; our parents and we constituted the army. They are the people gone mad. For a season clans have formed, they killed our elders, then all the nobles and any rune of faith. The clergy that did not submit were crucified, and eventually those who swore allegiance were made to join them.”
Ken: “We are forbidden even silent prayers to our silent gods. Do they have a word for this from whence you came?”
Ana: “Genocide, but I’m sure it’s a typical evil…”
Merlin: “Will you join us old boy?”
Nick: “What makes you think she’s even going?”
Ana: “I’m going. Their game doesn’t hold a candle.”
Nick: “Sure why not, if caught it’ll take years to escape.”
Merlin: “Before counting heads, we’re going to need good maps.”
The encampment of the regulars is sheik and ready to move of a moment’s notice, and are ready for malice aforethought. Those too wounded to ride or run rest on stretchers attached to horses with a bow by their side. There are fires burning as most rest, a few train or sharpen weapons, and there are many gathered, around them the ivy grows strong with bright green leaves at the end of vines and the floor sparsely littered with the black stems of flowers they had eaten, in all there are as many fighters as discarded black leaves on the floor.
Keith: “Come, I will conceal nothing from you. These are our old lines, and this is the line we hold now, against their stronghold somewhere here. You found us strike the last garrison. We are gathered to strike as soon as morning, except for those who have fled.”
Yeadon: “Keith and Ken, we’ve been found out, we’ve killed scouts to find there are many more.”
Nick: “How many more?”
Yeadon: “…”
Keith: “They’re with me.”
Yeadon: “By seem at twice as we.”
Yeadon still catches the last of his breath as the forest troops begin to rally forth, Merlin weaves his fingers and stretches his palms above his head, his knuckles crack as he stretches his chest, and awhile Nickolas stretches his neck by tilting his head one side unto the other and his knuckles in clenched fists.
Keith: “How soon are they here?”
Yeadon: “Thirty verses at most.”
Keith: “We ride on them now or never again!”
Merlin: “Malarkey! We need a plan, I’ll talk to them and you fight them from the trees as you have.”
Ken: “Well that’s just a plain idea.”
Merlin: “An ethereal plane.”
A rainy day misery begins to shroud the small fires, Merlin holds in his hand a glass ball that begins to shine, from above a loud squawk from the phoenix lets into the air. Merlin tosses the orb to Ana with the glass visibly red hot she catches it and wields the fire cooling the orb.
Merlin: “That’s our friend we were tracking. Not to be alarmed, please don’t attack when he lands!”
With gasps of the soldiers Troy lands next to a fire allowing the phoenix to eat the embers, as soldiers not clasping weapons hide behind trees.
Troy: “I’ve been wondering if you were down here for a day. Did you know there’s a rugged army heading this way?”
Merlin: “…we’re going to battle now…”
Troy: “Battle?”
Nick: “What happened to meeting us in the pasture?”
Troy: “I thought you said river, oddly if I wanted in it I would’ve had to jump, the bird wouldn’t land, so I turned back.”
Merlin: “It is time to march.”
The troops are reinvigorated yet aversive, suspicious of the magic that they follow to their last battle or first of many, the sky struggles to be blue through the clouds and the day-moon. With the wounded behind them at camp they arrive at the edge of the forest, as foretold an army stands to greet them at the edge of a muddy field.
The tattooed woman completely covered with thin lines and her reddish king stand behind a formidable showing, a dark dress the colors of blood and gauche jewelry drinking black wine from an ornate golden palm goblet. Every soldier of the black army wears armor and jewelry touting the weapons of the innocent they have raided over the past seasons, gold chains and crowns, rings and gauntlets of silver, salvers melted into gaudy shields, evil agendas brood and interlay.
Ana: “How many are there Troy?”
Troy: “Twice as many.”
Merlin: “I’m going to have a word.”
A parliament in the woods and darkness at noon, the evil tribe to greet them is a mixture of the worst from seven realms and five wars, led foremost by the blackguard in armor piqued by red scales and the tattooed priestess.
Tatiana: “…friends with an army?”
Dak: “I once was…and now am not…but with this I will amass a great tributary of life.”
Tatiana: “The ink still shining on the page.”
Dak: “Carrion angel.”
Long sought for liberty or death the army of youth stands at the forest watching the decadent power mad and thirsty for a coup.
Merlin: “Troy, make an entrance mid field.”
Troy and the phoenix bolt into flight, spiraling into the air, fantastical they swoop over the encroaching frontline and the forest line, then slams into the muddy midfield, it plummets to the ground landing with the sound of vaulted pillars and thrown stones, letting a terrible squall of howling fervency, the phoenix steps once or twice timid of the tides of war.
Troy: “You will stay and wait or run from the wizard.”
/
Nick: “He’s quite good at that.”
Ana hits Nickolas in the arm then crosses her arms as she looks to the fearful boys standing in wait. Merlin flipping through tarot cards puts them in his sleeve and walks into the clearing, all are quiet and fearful from the forest as their enemies begin grunting while grinding teeth and blade, eager to battle the phoenix and fueled by ignorance.
Merlin walks passed the phoenix, slapping it on the shoulder a couple of times, letting the powder touch his hands. He walks to a stone’s throw from the enemy line. The tattooed priestess stands on her carriage and shouts to the other side, and Merlin.
Tatiana: “Cambion, demigod of mortality, the word is the truth and only truth; no blade can turn from I.”
Merlin: “The blood you sought was the blood of your divination, but the truth will be that you were fooled by your fears.”
The ground dries beneath the phoenix and the rain lessens soigné they gather toward Merlin.
Dak: “Loyalists taking ear, hear me now, this threat, we will not tolerate less than your devotion to the revolution.”
The tattooed woman stands and puts her hand on the blackguard’s shoulder, causing him to step aside.
Tatiana: “I need to know, that if necessary you will die for me.”
Merlin: “I will, and I have brought a tithing.”
Merlin holding his arm close to him places his other hand over the first to unveil the glass sphere in his palm, its effulgence is low but steadily growing in strength, he holds the crystal ball forward and moves toward the army, they begin anxiety and when his brinksmanship tenders impatient limit the glass explodes with power and light, two dozen wounded or dead a battle properly begins. Tatiana points to the woods with a sign of disgust on her face, as the mercenaries charge toward the trees. The ink on her fingers seems to swirl in coquetry while the flesh of the dreamer becomes a course bark bitterly dismal of distaste Dak moves into battle abandoning his futurist.
Dak: “My dark flower, remain here not pruned.”
Watching the phoenix take to flight when the battle ensues, Dak moves toward Merlin destined to strike him dead, eternal regret beyond loveless forbidden reservation and austerity he draws the hateful legion aback the trees. Acquiring as much purity as regret the forest legion charges to support the wizard, the decaying sedge floor mid the rushes amid wind quickly turns to mud beneath the trodden common curious file, but the wind still blows over their vulgarity horde covered with tattoos, carrying the phoenix who quickly turns and grabs an enemy in its talons, too heavy to carry far the body is dropped on the cavalry of evil men, when it grabs another it does not bode well for the assailants, those who slash the phoenix without permanent effect serve to insult it, it drops the soldier with talons having been put through to grab the others instead, a dangerous fire pet hitting enemies with molt armor.
The villains reach for Troy and pull him down from saddle, but he grabs the harness of Alerion and they retreat into the air, his weight on the wing it turns midair, with him giving them an obscene gesture. The sinister mercenaries watch him begin the fatal catch and release in another edge of the field, again slowed by weight he begins to run the aerial cavalry combat, begrudging they make their way for revenge.
The wicked minds of godless heathens are tomes stocked with ranks of nomenclature, vulgar insults which they shout at the heroes. It only serves to remind them who they are killing with precision in silent wroth. A trodden muddy pasture abuts the sky, ruthlessly trampled bare by many a down-trodden soldier, brazen without the sense the infantry turn to the phoenix, indurate talons lift anew from the murky muck and flies to Merlin across the front, he volleys scores of winds that burn around the phoenix and rider as a fiery wind, an exhaustion of fire magic for them both that quickly ends, the bird flies from Merlin as if it were assaulted bursar, the wings open and push a final gust of hot sand at their enemies.
Nickolas flanks as a doppelganger and repudiates their defenses with terror, once slain and raised by the same inability to remain dead that Tatiana had prophesied, to deathly wound their evil blood of their veins until he is stuck by a spear like a wild boar, body and limbs, and then the body several times again. Ana immolates the boughs and hedgerows despite the dampening mire of the humid fog and drizzle from the Samsara Forest. She pauses with grief for her lover before remembering his penchant mortality and continues her desecration of enemies swift but often discourteously, from within the trees having made her way to the forest edge, Troy nearby assists her with a slaying by crushing a foe.
Troy: “You’re welcome.”
Ana: “Save them in the forest.”
Troy looks back at a war field half dead and takes to flight. She proceeds to the field of battle, from her pocket she pulls a flask and takes a drink then spits fire at her foes, their attention taken she unveils a whip and unfurls it, running it through her had it becomes fire and her weapon for the living and the dying low, where her enemies come close to her she does not hesitate to stab them in the throat or where men most hate being wounded, the heart.
Merlin watches the woman of tattoos play with her already wounded prey. With a luminary telepathy she knows their next move but wastes time with more ceremony than slaughter. He stares withal of contention for the soldiers clumsily throwing each conflict, she walks around them cutting them down, a belt is cut and one bows into a blade, for the next a ballet of blades alternating twixt legs and arms at the sinew tendons until the sad young soldier cannot stand nor hold arms as his throat is slit, not an eye pores Merlin or the soldier attacking from behind her who takes a blade to his tongue in cheek and another to throat, the spray of blood blinds another soldier who is double handedly thrust through the heart only after the first blade is thrown into the brow of the man behind him. With lust of contempt their weapons are gifts given to her and used against them. A morose heartache startles Merlin from nonplus and he takes a bow and arrow from a dead man and shoots at her, she steps clear of the shot without seeing it launch and looks to Merlin. The wizard fears death at that sultrily bellicose moment, with two more arrows from a fallen comrade he looks to Nickolas cringing and screaming beneath lance and pike,
Merlin shoots and kills one about to behead his ally and another anent, awhile Tatiana approaches new victims with an aberrant smile and abetting stare. Three remaining soldiers skewering Nick begin screaming as they run to Merlin that he sends flying with a blast of air.
Merlin: “When you wake I need you to dance with the devil.”
Merlin looks to Tatiana and back to Nickolas who closes his eyes, though the gruesomeness the battle for whichever primal chase is clashing in the forest, the field of the dying is abandoned as he moves into the trees where unbalanced battles ensconce a violent insurrection.
Dak through pure brutality has a face covered in blood, twice this day the blood of his allies in furor, but he paces beyond the clearing in the underbrush weary of Merlin. Ana battles diligently as a maven of forcible peach, reproach or exception, with each cry that she hears she runs toward it to help the children escape; she battles with the discarded heat of the sunlight, using ash and embers often of explosion.
Kneeling on the ground in scandalous attire Tatiana washes her face with the blood of heroes as Nick arises, his armor has holes of bore and pierce, she picks two knives ready to hammer the blades into his eyes, a leaderless confrontation she does not walk a straight line, her path winds to the side in silence and sedition, confident her wiles are the whims of battle he hurls a knife at her, cutting her arm wistfully barely. She screams and charges him over body swiftly barefoot running across bodies until heavy to his tumultuous threat, stealth of all skill she is faster than he and the quick battle ends as her many others, again the silence embraces him as he lay quietly dying and singing blood. The patronage of manna or the ability to kill only his mortality his immortality acquiesce he counts her measure, with a blade in her chest and bathed in blood she falls in the mud.
Dak watched and now feigns indignant pain and remorse walking to Nickolas standing over the body. Nick runs into the trees but avoiding stragglers throws another dagger, this time at Dak. The blade lands in his neck, but pain is not on display has he pulls the throwing knife and snaps it in two with his bare hands while giving a growl from a loud whisper, Nickolas dismisses the priority of conflict for justice in the forest defilade, but Dak does not follow. He stoops to comfort Tatiana on the ground, she has propped herself against the dead and slut her wrists, she dies in earths final embrace with Dak intentionally beyond her dying grasp.
She rests eternal in the autumn sun, outdoors before a fire, as the wild dogs contently feast, the forest full of disaggregate victors playing waylaid deceit as Dak kneels over Tatiana. He looks over her rakish form and puts his hand to her face, smearing the drying blood with his touch. Looking over her he sees a bracelet on her wrist that he strips from her forearm, he holds it in his fingers if to adore it, and then suddenly with anger on his face he breaks the armlet within the power of his fist, the crippled shattering pieces fall from his hand beside her soulless kinship. He thus closes her eyes and opens his to the dagger, tho dead her body is warm and slightly fogs, having seen her killer he seeks to study the weapon, he pulls it from her chest and studies the quality tool.
Dak: “What seeks to hollow repletion leaves a dagger such as this that is not mad or evil?”
To this locus arrive two soldiers from the distance, in their minds fine warriors of a terror that is to them a revolt of reason, their tyranny had been led by Tatiana without true knowledge of Dak, to which they demanded ignorance of anything but needless conflict, and in their eyes commander Dak has committed treason, anxious that their Volva is dead and taken a successful campaign with her to the grave.
Amicus: “He’s killed the volva.”
Clis: “Than we shall kill him for justice and take his rank.”
Clis fires an arrow at Dak, it misses and strikes the ground next to him, he looks over his shoulder and darts toward the trees escaping a second shot from Amicus, they launch two more arrows each at him but they miss again as he moves fast as if chasing a deathblow and not escaping one. Into the forest they pursue as the sky begins enshrouding the light. Dak hides in the shadows, waiting and stalking, he doth not stop to hector the soldiers hunting him, and in silence he crushes the throat of Clis and impatiently breaks his neck.
This sacrifice signifies imitation conception, what would an alchemist playact a new form for Dak is a Draugur, using a type of black magic called trollskap he changes shape in body and face as he becomes the imposter of his victim. He takes the undamaged pieces of armor from Clis and begins to hunt the other as silent as before.
Amicus: “What happened to you, and what happened to your face?”
Veracity of the scar without sophistry Dak the Draugur mangles Amicus, just as he had the other as quiet as prior. Dak, the knight errant, has become an arrant knave without nature’s approval, abandoning the bloody pit of horror he has helped create.
Alerion attacks and tears an enemy by landing, Troy jousts each swift foe that are torn down by children and distraction. Elsewhere Merlin blasts fools with marks in the volatile soil, the magic is simple and costs him more time than health, a price that shades the stubble on his face grey as others are annihilated by his alchemical mastery, a nut turned into a bomb for shrapnel if close enough is trapped by his enemies’ armor if placed properly to shred them contained. Erstwhile puerile evil complicity wilding an innocent woman Ana watches a moment as the victim sees her, she drops her weapons and her eyes turn redder than that which can be most red, her hands begin to wash of fire, the deviants attack her all but one, just as Merlin approaches. He watches them run to Ana before grabbing the miscreant by his collar and taking his manhood from him, with a howl of pain the ravens laugh, she walks to him slowly, the villains are dead, they have fallen dead aside her path of aguish heatstroke bodies, thru them she is not concerned.
Ana: “Stand him up!”
There are not words for pure massacre, she opens the wound then draws the blade only to slit his throat. Clutching a green dress the naïve girl kicks and breaks the dead man’s face giving a scream of regressive anger, then spitting on it.
Ana: “…we do not let them live…”
Merlin: “I thought you wanted a piece of him?”
Ana: “Shut up Merlin, get up strumpet, go and find a man of god.”
Merlin: “This is why you don’t talk to strangers.”
Ana: “Only to let you think it’s your idea.”
Ana squats next to the broken boy and begins poking him in the eyes and other painful vulnerabilities while the mind is still with the body, torture duly until death. The fragile ginger-haired girl runs toward the sound of swords.
Then there is Nickolas, looking for support while encircled by enemies, swords and spears, torches with fiery ashes flying where knives do not maim, an interwoven defilement, to those with earned title to prescient death, forsooth the burning horizon the scope may newly be drained of blood and milled anew a swifter victory with Nickolas as their captive, and the gatherers’ greed for wealth a gift to their augur Tatiana, whom they know not has died. The dilettantes enjoy true delusions in grandeur built for redolence and high esteems. Waving their weapons and fire at Nick they turn argumentative about the right to claim credit for his capture, at the drop of a hat he fights nine soldiers, young and strongly old, taking some cuts and only one spear to his back. Formative of exposed vitality levied through his skin by some spear by his combatants, he has had enough and puts his anger to the test, in a quest for battle’s absolution with death as an illusion he cries havoc in anger such as war could only excite.
Merlin and Ana approach from the distance to assist, hastily approaching they watch him defeat the final four as if it is a simple ceremony of bone and blood, he looks to them approaching with a smile on his face. Standing near him he falls to his knees and then on his chest and looks across the forest floor as if it is a wall.
Nick: “Being your friend is murder.”
Merlin: “The fortune is no doubt a suitable reward.”
Nick: “What is that love?”
Ana: “Is what strapper?”
Nick: “…anon a foolish castle…”
Merlin: “…deliver us…”
Nick: “No, look where I look. I’m some drunken guide?”
Sure enough a castle of disrepair peeks over the horizon far into the fare of trees, upon approach it is an old chaplain hall turned grist mill, abandoned for many years there are new tracks near the entrance. Wary of raucous they stalk in shadows to seek the roots of evils and atrocities, sunken haunting and silhouettes with gauche tapestries caked in dust and collecting further debris from the broken windows and many holes in the roof beneath the darkness only broken by the few random beams of light owed to the undulation of whispers. Small desiccate trees grow through the cracks next to massive roots from the trees outside, among stone and cobweb interior is a palatial quarters filled with blood velvet rugs and rancor adorned with golden cordon and lace much unlike the forgotten outer chambers, strewn lighted candles of black and white flames and scattered crystals taken from abound the surface of the earth, all behind a secret door.
An ulterior murdering efficiency of swift candor as opposed to brawn is vaulting spears into the phoenix, bruising when uncaught, and ecumenist mendacity for an interdiction that had not occurred, several tyrants in rampancy taunt hostages as Troy lands to do battle. In the trees enemies lynch him from his phoenix, jumping to hoist him, Alerion clamps it’s beak on the ankle of the roper and flings him into the distance, with the acumen of a bird with a simple leap another foe in the tree does not bode well, a hefty peck and release dropping a bloody dead body to the ground.
The earth trembles beneath the soldiers who want the phoenix and rider for their own, they scream and wave their hands as if insult to the quaking below their feet that neither they, nor the phoenix, nor Troy had set to cause.
Through the stratified layers of leaves from seasons of winters and walking feet a fierce ogre rises from the soil, large and stoic fast by size but laggard in ways the creature from the earth beats the evil nomads with a piece of an old tree petrified white with age, and when they are dead or running away it slightly bows its head to the phoenix and falls to the ground oafish. As Nickolas approaches in the haze of shallow sunlight remaining, at every notice staring thus, the ogre decides to close its eyes and return to sleep, it snuggles the forest floor briefly until comfortable shaking even more leaves a deciduous blanket of red foliage from the trees as it does.
Merlin: “See how well things are when we’re left alone?”
Ana: “Of all my days I’d never expect to see that, what could it be?”
Merlin: “That, is an ogre. Probably builder of this place ages ago. Troy, come inside through the roof. Nickolas, check the perimeter and then come inside to investigate, we’re staying the night.”
The ogre peaks from one at to look at Merlin, with a sigh it closes again when Merlin smiles as he gestures his hand to hail before walking into the castle. Nickolas walks around the old stone millhouse until finding the couple who were captive obliviously arguing the dangers of their plotted way into the old mill.
...
24 December 2011
what the fuck just happened?
wtf...
So I got this letter, in my email, regarding a repost at colonialserf, i think the entire thing is ridiculous, yet it states that i have caused defamation of character, there's always the possibility that terrorists want it down because it ties them to Jews....and we couldn't be having that could we....(sarcasm), the odd part is, the article isn't there, there's literally only a link to the article, which my halfassed notification below states has been deleted from Hareetz through legal proceedings, and any mention of their client is non existent by my previous actions. Though I have protected their client's anonymity, they have not, this also means that the lawyers involved are completely incompetent, and the format of official communique is deleterious.
I wont be taking it down, in the interest of America's freedom of the press laws, in respects and regard to the article being written as either an Opinion article or an Op/Ed (opposite the editorial) and needs not facts at all, with the addition to their client so clumsily afforded by them in a litigious haphazard attempt. I have immunity through expressed sovereignty and i'm going to use it. By the bye, I would like to wish the Jews and Muslims, a MERRY CHRISTMAS, you pinkos are the only ones still fighting for what the rest of the world already has, you are a tragedy of dignity and self-respect.
GO FUCK YOURSELVES
MJ Banks
Colonial serf, Fourth Estate
p.s.
where they put,
"was removed, in their
entirety"
should read,
'was removed, in its entirety'
---------------------------------------------------------
|
Dec 20 (5 days ago)
 | | ||
| ||||
MOSHE KAHN ADVOCATES Moshe Kahn, Advocate, Attorney at Law (NY) Beeri Raz, Advocate, Attorney at Law (NY) Uri Milshtein, Advocate Yair Green,Advocate Moran Mor, Advocate America House 35 Shaul Hamelech Blvd. Tel - Aviv 61333 Israel Tel. +97236914775 Fax +97236914706 Email: office@kahn.co.il Website: www.kahn.co.il December 20, 2011 Mr. Matthew J. Banks Colonial Serf Log VIA E-MAIL Re: Libelous Publication Regarding Global CST and Mr. Israel Ziv on Colonial Serf Log Dear Mr. Banks, This letter has been re-formatted into Plain Text so that we may reach you. On behalf of our clients, Global CST and Mr. Israel Ziv, we would like to refer you to the following: 1. You have cited an article containing libelous content which was previously published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, titled "Why does Israel have links to a breakaway state supported by Hamas?" on your blog (http://colonialserf.blogspot.
11 December 2011
Intransitive Deployment
"For our second paper (1000 words) you
will do research on the use of open source software such as Linux in
a culture that is unfamiliar to you. This could be a unfamiliar
country or a social group your are unfamiliar with in your own country. Examples might the adoption of Open Office by the
government of Singapore or the use of Linux in Russian non-profits.
Make sure to talk about the following issues
- Why did this organization/group adopt open source software?
- Have they continued to use it, if so what did or did not go well?
- What changes needed to be made to either the software or the organization and how did they manage these?
The purpose of this paper is to look at
how new software is adopted in a organization or a group, and what
open source software offers as opportunities and costs. Make sure to
look at the reasons they picked the software and what problems they
encountered adopting the program. Usually the adoption of new software
comes with a few issues that may or may not be planned for like training
costs and time."
What follows is the rough draft which i submitted as complete, Word-2010 was my real-time editor, here is what i wrote in two hours the night before it was due, a historical-nerd-fiction:
Linux: A Deployment in Foreign Markets
M. J. Banks
CINT 108 Linux Fundamentals
Fall, 2011
Instructor: ##
December 10, 2011
Using the experience of Fedora and its open source availability, feeling ushered toward the communal development of the software, the skillset to administer the operating system successfully was achieved, and later the skills to be administrator for network topologies. My ambitions grew commercial and an accounting program was developed for my system to track and calculate proceeds from a ski resort, after having success I decided to market my version of the software and make it proprietary, I called it SKIBUM. Further my ambitions have grown, initially the software did not sell but the opportunity has arisen to implement and expand in a community in the southern Patagonia region of Argentina. The skiing industry is booming during august and I decided to take advantage of the situation and implement my design for their resort system, but the major drawback was that the local language is Cymric (Welsh).
As I do not speak the language of Chubut, Argentina, I was forced to hire a technician from the area to help me with their transition from analog to digital, which did not go well when I was there and ill-fated when I was not. Their original intent was met quite fortunate after discovering my system through word of mouth, met with the fact that it did was not free they soon lost interest, having seen it work successfully in my corner of the world they asked if there would be development of the software into Welsh, of which they and I hoped, it successively did not garner attention for two years. SKIBUM received periodic updates and redesigns over the next year or so, no longer under my development but by a team of developers funded by the profits it helped and continues to procure for me and my resort operations where English is the desired language, further demand proved in successfully opening it to other markets with larger populations utilizing foreign languages.
The Patagonian towns were still not willing to pay for permanent language and specified technical support nor had they found investors willing to redesign the intricate desktop interface that they increasingly desired, not willing to take the financial loss to my return on investment, I decided to do the next best thing, what I might have done firstly to expedite their woes, I decided to release SKIBUM under an open source license while still retaining the patents for myself. Instead of selling the rights and moving to other interests, I had found it free and it could be for others, the community had embraced new users thus it was my turn, most importantly beneficial was that open source allowed the comprehensive knowledge, and, allowed the development of the increasingly desired operating system, had it been copyright to someone else it would have been not mine to give and I felt it was my time to pay-back the interest I have enjoyed.
It mostly seemed good karma to help other ski bums, the highly neglected system was adopted by the Patagonians interested and development began, the community was slow to support the transition, but the participants involved were pleased and took a special affinity, soon over the language barrier they would begin to alter it for payments requiring a currency exchange. As the US dollar is widespread here at home, in Patagonia is a Chilean or Argentinian peso, its conversion includes a 2 dollar interval we don’t use and a cup of cappuccino might cost you 800 pesos so the regularly changing exchange rate needed to be an easy input. With the right amount of financial interest and operational intrigue the adaptation became more fluent and no longer on a permanent hiatus in that region, I still owned the license as I said so if they were to sell it I would turn a dime all in all. The other development came whereas I had been selling commodities in packages or generalized day passes and figuring the overhead costs at my discretion, they were devoted to making the program adept at tracking mass inventory lists by the same utility that it had been used for accounting all the while. These items included, personalized tourist keepsakes, skis and snowboards, accessories, food, lodging, transportation, private property rental, and anything else you can imagine a “ground up” operation would need, which includes a payroll. They became so adept at improving and promoting the software that they became my Argentinian developer team, they’ve called themselves the “Cymraeg Riders” development team, so called by the allusion to the word writers, the development has expanded the target investor demographic and given the opportunity to implement a Russian-English speaking sales team.
Different distributions are being developed for proprietary license commercial interests, each with the SKI- precursor followed by bum in each language designated, and each version has a name for its complexity. The original SKIBUM became, SKIBUM-Snowbunny, a simple accounting program, the operating system itself is an intricate desktop experience, similar to Apple, having an application centric interface, depending on how many modules and which are used affects the name of the distribution. In recent weeks the development of a touchscreen controlled interface for the newest kernel version (?).0 is being compiled for the recent advancement of computer tablets in the market, considerations are to reflect the negotiated devices that will endorse our software running on their devices, it will not be open source as the wireless transmission control protocols being developed independently from open source technologies as a new proprietary encryption, and will be distributed under the name SKIBUM-Blackdiamond.
I made decisions that in ways improves the efficiency through the use of technology and earned a reward in the process, it all may be temporary or infamous, turning a niche accounting program into an open source application that abetted the interest of like minds to the convenience of many others, as bookkeeping began losing the race to smart phones a capital idea was ready to exploit new advantages without resistance or missing the opportunity. The market has chosen to acclimate and if they don’t have to make tourists it likely will advance, developers can enjoy and students can students and explore, just as the original developers have endured thanks to the nature of open source. The OS can live forever in the world of hacker, code junkies, and possibly even specifically designed proprietarily for actual hardware devices in mass distribution. Once the tenure expires hopefully it will have changed lives for the better and helped others to do the same.
05 December 2011
M2-20 Black Rose Immortal
Merlin 2:20 “Martyr Art”
"When they finally meet the others and the phoenix Ana uses her knife to
cut the sleeve of one at the shoulder, which reveals a tattoo of a
flower just as the one in the castle."
04 December 2011
Playing Favorites
United States 2012 United America
These are my #GOP favorites, for the party nomination as of December. They are not the "head in the sand" politicians that ail this country. The DNC is downright shameful as of late with populist sycophancy, anti-capitalist behavior, divisive rhetoric, partisanship, incompetence, and corruption. On this day 2011, "occupy" protesters are sleeping in the bitter snow, leaderless and self enlisted, bad ideas without solutions have people sleeping in the cold without a message or salvation, and the DNC isn't out in force in soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Instead they devote their lives to class warfare and justice through hypocrisy, as if bloodletting won't kill Washington twice.
2012 Mitt Romney
Jobs | Mitt Romney for President
2012 Newt Gingrich
21st Century Contract With America | Newt Gingrich 2012
2012 Rick Perry
Rick Perry for President 2012 | Issues
2012 Jon Huntsman
Jon Huntsman on the Issues: Jobs, Foreign Policy, & More | Huntsman 2012
The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.
The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress.
The superior man...does not set his mind either for anything, or against anything;
what is right he will follow.
Confucius, The Confucian Analects
I, M.J. Banks, a blue dog, support these GOP candidates but am not officially nor unofficially reciprocally supported. Any inconveniences caused by this endorsement or myself are not affiliated in any way with the theory of responsibility nor the USA, actions or inferences inspired by information found herein are done at your own risk. Nazis blow, Commies suck, I give them fuck-all.
28 November 2011
Merlin 2:21 Secrets of Darkness
Merlin 2: 21 “Secrets of Darkness…”
While the wounded rest there is the night that circles the earth, darkness to the gods it is the masker of the mighty powers, which even giants call unlight, that the elves call the joy of sleep, and the dwarves call the dream horizon.
In the distant woods runs the river of reason into a macabre meadow, with a red storm that rains of the warring gods an early autumn storm slowly turning the leaves, fathoms beyond holds a solemn apple tree surrounded by saplings of the lawn, only two dozen acres from a dense wood that slowly reclaims the plains but at present is halted. To satisfy the needs of destined doe foraying from the forest to the regards and reckon of mead drinkers wandering quite nomadically as the skies rumble in the distance.
In the fields of Wolf’s Prairie as a barbarous storm gathers a collection of fresh fallen and fermented spoils by the dearth of necessity, startled by travelers’ presence, the same as urgency struck into memory, within the rustling of leaves and dead memories by a field in solitude, the loud reproofs of the leaves that cover a tangent path and their payload to the forest floor, one so thick and overgrown that even at its edge will not easily give to a field of fire, a dark old wood prepares to contend with a storm.
A cold overshadow slowly walks the terroir with introspection to blitz two drunken parsons newly at camp and nourishing themselves to the plentiful fruit with lassitude rhetoric as if come to visit the distant woods. Where the forests grow shadows they are the cause of premature death unsuspecting and delivered unto punishment amongst the rubric fruit, for well-nigh dusk and her embrace exterminates them both as trespassers, keeping them from duly damaging the future of waving grain in the devil’s orchard awaiting the rain of the shadow god beneath the cerulean sky.
The darkness in survey of a natural environment is a villainess unable to subside to an entire evolutionary myriad of foes that would succeed the two now vanquished. The lightning strikes to warn the darkness, the wildlife will revive their population too dark for fire and dew covered every morn, no matter how close the suns above the forest of the mist. Beneath the promontory apple tree the dead lay in eternal rest for three days, being consumed by the ravenous ground and the ravens, dwelling creatures of the shade beneath shadows of an ancient importance, a dignitary of deeply graves bestows a scathing caprice where the living will numb and vice and linger until the Valkyrie came to take the corpses to Asgard. As where light seeks to cover and connect darkness ere it fortuitously grows as monolith and seeks to fill the echoes of the mind, the wind of the cold world lets a gust to signal credence but sends neither fire nor ice to instill judgment.
Recondite the travelers ensconce their camp anent the lonely orchard tree, to sleep and converse, to wash and eat near the river. The tree ties and feeds the horses well for at their height they are not half tall as the fruit. While Troy throws apples in the air the phoenix catches them, the land of local shadows bids a lenient departure into the woods to investigate whilst the virtues of evening are a font of magic for its ability. They all rest untouched as Merlin holds hidden in his hands strands of tattoos that run beneath his skin across his body, effulgent by spell in the darkness, as all sleep they are signs and symbols in the eyes of the demigod shadow. Reflecting or absorbing the stars Merlin’s insignia glows bright into the sky through clothes that wrap the skin, and of the others their powers display discourses benevolent. The great darkness is of this forest seeking only to harm the stray vagabonds of Midgard, in curiosity as it nears to view them sleeping the sound of wind parts around the silence and void startles Merlin, but only shadow in darkness beneath a black diamond sky to be seen it moves passed the fire as the flame light washes through it to the grass dissipated.
All are buried in their dreams as Troy sleeps while his wounds heal, a cavernous abyss stands next to the phoenix in disbelief, in the eyes of Troy the traces of a shadow are nothing more and dismissed as such, but while restive the phoenix peers and watches him look at night and look away with a scoff, the phoenix turns its head aside to learn of come what will thou may and sees the demon in full darkness splendor. Affrighted exigency, bathing in hatred, the great phoenix opens its wings and roars with fiery display, the shadow figure falls into the grass like poured water and vanishes as such, each of the high fortune their legends purvey with them now awake. The added heat of turmoil causes the meadow to be dry and the fire to be soon without fuel in the biting cold of eventide, but with a spell cast in duality the last of the embers become diamond coal stones that are kept warm in the evening by the breathing phoenix.
Eventually again they sleep of wantonly dream for softer slumbering but as Troy sleeps on a lavish billow of falcon crest and shoulder warm and comfortable, the companions wont for the course, Anathema a fire mage warm but disfavoring the conditions and Nickolas though of mortal emotion has come to terms with his senses, able to sleep through death in the cold and reawaken a warm artesian, her mostly contemptuous flame adjoins to union and coppice. Merlin turns in the cool air alone, smitten by the stars he loses himself in stare of heaven, kept warm by the larger lines among the intricate inlaid pattern that covers his body, with arms crossed until a fade blurs consciousness. In the morn, unwitting he rolls his feet too close to the phoenix and his feet catch fire not soon after dawn as the others watch. Merlin gives high interest and full effort into a lifting spell the same as through his slumber, ruffling without a coherent word from laying on his back the wind is born of his very hand and lifts him through his robes upright as a sail, thrusting him aback and abetted and sultrily without fettered leathers to his feet.
They speak the morning of jest and Merlin calls for a large hunt, concordant Nickolas and Ana on separate horses slowly gait until they spot a doe and scare it into a flit, with a marker flare Troy shoots the animal from above and Nick finishes in mercy, it is nice meat while new leather boots are worked by fire and blade and talk of philosophy.
Troy: “Liberty is the value of responsibility.”
Ana: “Respect is the value of logic.”
Nick: “Humor is the value of intelligence.”
Troy: “Love is the value of freedom.”
Merlin: “Nothing like battling your own mind.”
The phoenix is distraught, with a rudimentary balking cadence it seems to mock them all with a simple alphabet collected to a belligerent rendition of two puppets arguing, disconcerted the phoenix begins to clumsily move surly from them into the fog, serving as the humor for a dreary day. They make for the forgotten forest to the river intent to travel the shore upstream, through the bleak woods the leaves are reds and yellows in fade and falling, and the path never and nonexistent through thick overgrowth dank and inconvenient. Dismality looms as the storm fills the world between the horizon and night is the new day, shadow becomes wind and the torches are lit to soon be delible, night stands before Merlin and lets he and they from her grip of blinding darkness. Their torches erstwhile without use now blind them and they struggle to adjust their eyes as the demon of the fall speaks.
Nott: “…when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you…”
Merlin: “We knew not your signs or our trespass.”
Nott: “If you do not kneel Ana, I cannot share my message.”
Ana: “Lady Shadow.”
Merlin: “Methinks I shall stand on ceremony.”
Ana secondly knelt after Nickolas, as thence Troy, his trusted phoenix taking to a cautiously slow retreat, all looking to the ground then to Nott, she stands before them fair in the leather garb of a trained rider, cloth and eyes of pure white.
Nott: “I dare a message in hopes the gods cannot see me through the storm over the darkness.”
Merlin: “What sight must you tell to us?”
Nott: “I see all at the edge of darkness, Etain has convinced Dagr to grant her with the great flame.”
Merlin: “But why share this news?”
Nott: “I did not mean to scare the phoenix, I merely wanted to see its beauty closely, but if it wishes to go as it does, it and rider may depart.”
Merlin: “Troy, take this knife and find the first river or clearing ahead of us.”
Troy: “Aye sir.”
Troy quickly mounts the phoenix and takes swiftly to flight, rushing through the branches and wet leaves, breaking and shaking them to the ground post haste.
Ana: “You waste your time with pleasure in danger?”
Nott: “Thor would not strike me, for I owe him too many favors…or him I.”
Nick: “You came to us when you could have left a note.”
Merlin: “Or the mead of poetry, Night.”
Nott: “She has made a coven with two sisters of your station, they seek to apportion Midgard, all the land is dangerous for you and yours, and you will need stronger and new powers Merlin. I cannot stay.”
Merlin: “Where are you going?”
Nott: “I move shadows for life to sleep, not die, it’s nay moving with I the same.”
Behind Nott the shadow tangible is a thick border to the scene, the sky thunders as she mounts a horse from the shadows so dark it cannot be seen named Hrimfaxi. Lightning flashes from the field far behind them but the thunder does not wait to shake the ground.
Nott: “If it’s all the same to you I’m expected elsewhere.”
Merlin: “A thousand thanks.”
Nott: “Apologies if you're vexed Merlin, your grace is well and seemly your foes in anger. The tables turn, farther need you be, and need you see.”
In the hallow footsteps a faint glittering of stars and Nott disappears before the sound of hooves, faster than can any in the light, unobstructed by obstacle, for the darkness is her first home. From the heavens comes a torrential rain of bitter wind and water from the mountains.
While the wounded rest there is the night that circles the earth, darkness to the gods it is the masker of the mighty powers, which even giants call unlight, that the elves call the joy of sleep, and the dwarves call the dream horizon.
In the distant woods runs the river of reason into a macabre meadow, with a red storm that rains of the warring gods an early autumn storm slowly turning the leaves, fathoms beyond holds a solemn apple tree surrounded by saplings of the lawn, only two dozen acres from a dense wood that slowly reclaims the plains but at present is halted. To satisfy the needs of destined doe foraying from the forest to the regards and reckon of mead drinkers wandering quite nomadically as the skies rumble in the distance.
In the fields of Wolf’s Prairie as a barbarous storm gathers a collection of fresh fallen and fermented spoils by the dearth of necessity, startled by travelers’ presence, the same as urgency struck into memory, within the rustling of leaves and dead memories by a field in solitude, the loud reproofs of the leaves that cover a tangent path and their payload to the forest floor, one so thick and overgrown that even at its edge will not easily give to a field of fire, a dark old wood prepares to contend with a storm.
A cold overshadow slowly walks the terroir with introspection to blitz two drunken parsons newly at camp and nourishing themselves to the plentiful fruit with lassitude rhetoric as if come to visit the distant woods. Where the forests grow shadows they are the cause of premature death unsuspecting and delivered unto punishment amongst the rubric fruit, for well-nigh dusk and her embrace exterminates them both as trespassers, keeping them from duly damaging the future of waving grain in the devil’s orchard awaiting the rain of the shadow god beneath the cerulean sky.
The darkness in survey of a natural environment is a villainess unable to subside to an entire evolutionary myriad of foes that would succeed the two now vanquished. The lightning strikes to warn the darkness, the wildlife will revive their population too dark for fire and dew covered every morn, no matter how close the suns above the forest of the mist. Beneath the promontory apple tree the dead lay in eternal rest for three days, being consumed by the ravenous ground and the ravens, dwelling creatures of the shade beneath shadows of an ancient importance, a dignitary of deeply graves bestows a scathing caprice where the living will numb and vice and linger until the Valkyrie came to take the corpses to Asgard. As where light seeks to cover and connect darkness ere it fortuitously grows as monolith and seeks to fill the echoes of the mind, the wind of the cold world lets a gust to signal credence but sends neither fire nor ice to instill judgment.
Recondite the travelers ensconce their camp anent the lonely orchard tree, to sleep and converse, to wash and eat near the river. The tree ties and feeds the horses well for at their height they are not half tall as the fruit. While Troy throws apples in the air the phoenix catches them, the land of local shadows bids a lenient departure into the woods to investigate whilst the virtues of evening are a font of magic for its ability. They all rest untouched as Merlin holds hidden in his hands strands of tattoos that run beneath his skin across his body, effulgent by spell in the darkness, as all sleep they are signs and symbols in the eyes of the demigod shadow. Reflecting or absorbing the stars Merlin’s insignia glows bright into the sky through clothes that wrap the skin, and of the others their powers display discourses benevolent. The great darkness is of this forest seeking only to harm the stray vagabonds of Midgard, in curiosity as it nears to view them sleeping the sound of wind parts around the silence and void startles Merlin, but only shadow in darkness beneath a black diamond sky to be seen it moves passed the fire as the flame light washes through it to the grass dissipated.
All are buried in their dreams as Troy sleeps while his wounds heal, a cavernous abyss stands next to the phoenix in disbelief, in the eyes of Troy the traces of a shadow are nothing more and dismissed as such, but while restive the phoenix peers and watches him look at night and look away with a scoff, the phoenix turns its head aside to learn of come what will thou may and sees the demon in full darkness splendor. Affrighted exigency, bathing in hatred, the great phoenix opens its wings and roars with fiery display, the shadow figure falls into the grass like poured water and vanishes as such, each of the high fortune their legends purvey with them now awake. The added heat of turmoil causes the meadow to be dry and the fire to be soon without fuel in the biting cold of eventide, but with a spell cast in duality the last of the embers become diamond coal stones that are kept warm in the evening by the breathing phoenix.
Eventually again they sleep of wantonly dream for softer slumbering but as Troy sleeps on a lavish billow of falcon crest and shoulder warm and comfortable, the companions wont for the course, Anathema a fire mage warm but disfavoring the conditions and Nickolas though of mortal emotion has come to terms with his senses, able to sleep through death in the cold and reawaken a warm artesian, her mostly contemptuous flame adjoins to union and coppice. Merlin turns in the cool air alone, smitten by the stars he loses himself in stare of heaven, kept warm by the larger lines among the intricate inlaid pattern that covers his body, with arms crossed until a fade blurs consciousness. In the morn, unwitting he rolls his feet too close to the phoenix and his feet catch fire not soon after dawn as the others watch. Merlin gives high interest and full effort into a lifting spell the same as through his slumber, ruffling without a coherent word from laying on his back the wind is born of his very hand and lifts him through his robes upright as a sail, thrusting him aback and abetted and sultrily without fettered leathers to his feet.
They speak the morning of jest and Merlin calls for a large hunt, concordant Nickolas and Ana on separate horses slowly gait until they spot a doe and scare it into a flit, with a marker flare Troy shoots the animal from above and Nick finishes in mercy, it is nice meat while new leather boots are worked by fire and blade and talk of philosophy.
Troy: “Liberty is the value of responsibility.”
Ana: “Respect is the value of logic.”
Nick: “Humor is the value of intelligence.”
Troy: “Love is the value of freedom.”
Merlin: “Nothing like battling your own mind.”
The phoenix is distraught, with a rudimentary balking cadence it seems to mock them all with a simple alphabet collected to a belligerent rendition of two puppets arguing, disconcerted the phoenix begins to clumsily move surly from them into the fog, serving as the humor for a dreary day. They make for the forgotten forest to the river intent to travel the shore upstream, through the bleak woods the leaves are reds and yellows in fade and falling, and the path never and nonexistent through thick overgrowth dank and inconvenient. Dismality looms as the storm fills the world between the horizon and night is the new day, shadow becomes wind and the torches are lit to soon be delible, night stands before Merlin and lets he and they from her grip of blinding darkness. Their torches erstwhile without use now blind them and they struggle to adjust their eyes as the demon of the fall speaks.
Nott: “…when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you…”
Merlin: “We knew not your signs or our trespass.”
Nott: “If you do not kneel Ana, I cannot share my message.”
Ana: “Lady Shadow.”
Merlin: “Methinks I shall stand on ceremony.”
Ana secondly knelt after Nickolas, as thence Troy, his trusted phoenix taking to a cautiously slow retreat, all looking to the ground then to Nott, she stands before them fair in the leather garb of a trained rider, cloth and eyes of pure white.
Nott: “I dare a message in hopes the gods cannot see me through the storm over the darkness.”
Merlin: “What sight must you tell to us?”
Nott: “I see all at the edge of darkness, Etain has convinced Dagr to grant her with the great flame.”
Merlin: “But why share this news?”
Nott: “I did not mean to scare the phoenix, I merely wanted to see its beauty closely, but if it wishes to go as it does, it and rider may depart.”
Merlin: “Troy, take this knife and find the first river or clearing ahead of us.”
Troy: “Aye sir.”
Troy quickly mounts the phoenix and takes swiftly to flight, rushing through the branches and wet leaves, breaking and shaking them to the ground post haste.
Ana: “You waste your time with pleasure in danger?”
Nott: “Thor would not strike me, for I owe him too many favors…or him I.”
Nick: “You came to us when you could have left a note.”
Merlin: “Or the mead of poetry, Night.”
Nott: “She has made a coven with two sisters of your station, they seek to apportion Midgard, all the land is dangerous for you and yours, and you will need stronger and new powers Merlin. I cannot stay.”
Merlin: “Where are you going?”
Nott: “I move shadows for life to sleep, not die, it’s nay moving with I the same.”
Behind Nott the shadow tangible is a thick border to the scene, the sky thunders as she mounts a horse from the shadows so dark it cannot be seen named Hrimfaxi. Lightning flashes from the field far behind them but the thunder does not wait to shake the ground.
Nott: “If it’s all the same to you I’m expected elsewhere.”
Merlin: “A thousand thanks.”
Nott: “Apologies if you're vexed Merlin, your grace is well and seemly your foes in anger. The tables turn, farther need you be, and need you see.”
In the hallow footsteps a faint glittering of stars and Nott disappears before the sound of hooves, faster than can any in the light, unobstructed by obstacle, for the darkness is her first home. From the heavens comes a torrential rain of bitter wind and water from the mountains.
Neocon, I
Neocon, I
I was going to start a newspaper called the Communist-Nationalist, they both hate capitalism so I could put whatever I wanted in it, slandering them, and they would never know. Then I realized that they would just steal it, but then again my hopes were that they wouldn't be able to read it, because they don't believe in capitalism it stands to reason, literally, that they wouldn't pay a teacher to instruct or discipline their minds, and thus never would learn to read. One thing certain about those who hate capitalism, they appreciate it and then despise it, championing it in three steps, first the unprecedented exploration and technological advancements, secondly they prize it's ability to keep the mind occupied, as if it were a tree in their destructive forest of the mind, for this most liberals enjoy all things creative, and thirdly industrialization presents ideas to copy. We know the artist creates to feed himself, and the zealot clings immediately to the cult of personality and idolizes other idolators. Once those three ideas are surveyed their creativity dies and a destructive nature plays a key role in destruction of both progress and education by means of power and control respectively. Seeking power entitles the hunting spirit within our shallow souls, taking power does not show any sign of receptiveness, for listening is the first task of a student which some may never choose to do. Those opposing capitalism feel that economic production centralized leads to favorable conditions for communism to emerge, every piece of literature supporting communism thru the relinquishing of democracy or by nationalism through the relinquishing of peace is the political equivalent to mobbing science with torches on grounds of witchery, even in cases of manifestos filled with delusions of grandeur and loathsome vilification.
Their consumerism radiates as the liberal profligates fear fiscal responsibility because it entails not buying the electorate, and the fascist despots fear reform because it may limit power and increase responsibility. Those crying for social justice want entire societies eradicated, those wanting civil liberties want their personal right and greedily their wishes granted prior to others, both in display of rampant inequality while childishly calling for fairness. Whatever ultimately is the impetus for their chaos it is motivated by cultural beliefs and random ideas that capitalism destroys human values and is antagonizing natural elements of society by means of exploitation, as if squirrels do not collect nuts or that humans do not use tools. This misconception stems into two maniacal constructs that harm the innocent. As they believe that it undermines and individual's sense of personal value in daily interests, they proceed to be the exception to the rule, or they believe that wealth undermines human relationships, in a contextual precipitation to currency it protects commerce without guaranteeing the benefits of commerce, such as products, profit, profession/occupation, and the control of economies, to an ineffectual imbecile.
Life is a blank page for eccentric nihilism confusion, fascism of the nationalists can fail to become theocratic fiends, and liberals can break trust to contradict themselves, what history does not remember time will only tell. It's best to avoid revolution, it only exists in history books and around you, in certainty the word itself means circularity, redundancy, untenable, and you cannot make anyone believe it or do it. The inevitability of it comes from the perpetuity of rumor and incontinent faith, and it's dangerous to believe that a question can be an answer; an overwhelming longing for security creates amateur politicians, and an overwhelming fear of anarchy creates an amateur economist. Compulsory unionists think pay for organization is the same as pay for the labor that earns it, infatuated sectarians will never find the innocent when they exterminate. Both despotic systems believe that classless existence can be achieved by class warfare, that oppression ends with treachery, and that contradiction ends with confrontation. The flawed integrity obviously fails, yet they hope for semblance without seeking potential.
Their lies are mostly stored and propagated on a form of media. When connected to a society and used for revolution, the faceless propaganda moves from the media into the host, like a common virus. The social programs have grown from focused operations to socialism, criticize the ambitions and outcomes of welfare programs, favor capitalism and provide a functional economy that can sustain a fight against poverty and public interests of tradition without undue influence. I've noticed that liberals can't count and conservatives have little patience, but intriguingly that libertarians are always on the fence about society, so for them this is how I might describe proper socialism if I were asked while having a spirited drink.
Socialism is like going to a bar or pub, first you need capitalism because strangers don't get bar-tabs, then you come and buy a drink for commerce. You might tip the barkeep for your aspect of charity or you might buy someone else a drink, but you pay the sales tax whether it's over or incorporated, which is pure socialism. The tax is what keeps socialism alive, otherwise it would be donation. If the locals decided they don't like you or your money and they make you buy yourself, or them a drink, or even take your money, that's blatant nationalism, whatever the reason they were to give. If they made you buy a drink because that were the law, that would be communism, anyone who couldn't or doesn't drink avoids the tax with the consumerist burden elsewhere, no matter of financial recipient or social cause. The patron is at their heart a person, whether a generous or cheap one is their choice, they are not republican or democrat, libertarian or anarchist, they are capitalist. Political parties only serve to either diminish productivity through corrupt redistribution or to oppose those who punish success. When you choose which side to play, there are more than two, remember that neither their names nor their opinions are not what make them, only facts support logic. Capitalism is natural, it is conscience, a rabbit eats herbs but not the roots, a deer eats apples but not the tree, humanity should not shit where it sleeps, no matter who calls it art.
21 November 2011
Urdarbrunn
The Book of Earth
9. Urdarbrunn
The world was great and the mountains were so high that no human could reach their peaks. The land was so vast that it had yet to be charted, the cities were the finest monuments to humanity and honor, and the oceans were rich with life, but the population grew. The coasts were mapped, the waters were drank, the lands were harvested, the food was eaten, and the population began to mine the earth to find the world below them. They planted their crops on the walls of the wells, but the end of the world could not be found, they soon flew, and swam, and dived into the sea, and could not find the end of life, or a sign of the earth's center. Where the land was cold they burrowed beneath it and harnessed the elements for the light they needed below the earth, and finally one day when mining they found a stone the size of a city. They could not carve it, nor could they blast it, nor could they move it, so they mined around it, and for many years examined it, but one day of disgrace upon them when the inevitable civilized life forms chose to be anything but that, there was a murder at the stone below the surface somewhat close to the center of the earth. For all the blood sweat and tears shed upon the stone, the blood of murder awakened a danger, the stone consumed itself with a collapsing rupture and quake, where the stone was became a fire from the ancient worlds where the gods had once warred, and the fire was hotter than that which could be most hot. Everything close to the rapture died and from the old fire there were terrible lizards on claws and talons and razor tails, by winged beast and terrors keen to feast with fangs of predation, of last came of them beasts combined of the dangers and angers of all other beasts called dragons.
Their life ran from destruction, and the fields would no longer be their home, not one region was safe from tyranny because every terrain was the domain of the tragic beasts, no mountain too high, no valley too low, no river too deep, no ocean too strong. The beasts chased them into the mines, natural caves, and from their tunnels to which they could not hide and fortify defenses fast enough. The pretenses of survival were surely rough and all to eat was beast, for they were predators without civilization, and the people ate only meat for many generations. If not stronger taller, if not faster smarter, if not clever more apt, survival was imperative and for the fittest, and was so claimed by the best as the survivors tunneled downward straight to the center of the earth.
One day a tunnel emerged and found better dragons than were born of fire, hunting and killing, and the traps that fed humanity were further exploited, four tribes eventually found their tunnel exits at the ends of the earth. Fate prepared them to battle and one day a warrior survived a small beast giving pride to those who saw, and soon blinded new in generations to the powerful sunlight they cautiously roamed the earth, this was each the way the other tribes survived, but the beasts were too many for survival. With the courageous lost the evolution of humanity suffered losses in progress, but patience redeemed, among them were born the first of the gods, who could die but after much more damage. After an age the gifted would fight but have children with combined power, after an epoch they would seem invincible to humanity, after an era they would have trouble killing themselves, after an eon they would be truly immortal with powers unlike mortals, but there were still beasts that grew alongside them. Monsters of the deep to hunt for sport and others to train for hunting, yet there were still those who took shelter in the caves and perhaps some who did not escape the mines at all in the ancient past, the tale is that they grew small, divided by species and in form, to hide from the dangers of existence and to seek creatures for a hunt of their own, how small are they that a world just as small could reside beneath them.
Thus so the stones would grow, the mountains gave magma, the sky cried, far and wide the world continued to grow. The only mystery of the universe awaited only the question of its ability to contain life, and the world grew large to venture at endless bounds where the children of the old gods played, as time unfolded so did the earth itself, until the dark wistful shallow spirits grew voids in their souls. Then upon them within the world a dark stone came to existence from deep within the recesses of immortality, and the black diamond grew. It contemplated and spread like poisonous crystal, and it consumed other stones of great power by seeping to the surface and taking them until it became a bright darkness. Pure with thought of evil the dark stone worshipped itself and contaminated its inner shadows until it opened a passage and Jotunn the manifestation of apparition darkness set foot on earth. Divided it spent its time torturing life and growing the dark crystal against the otherworld Vanaheim. The Jotunn did not name the second world and only considered it a priority to expand a dark empire. Long as all of time had been nine times nine times more a red blood stone opened from the innermost implicit infinitesimal essence, and it grew and survived the destructive power of itself until the power tore a portal into the nether existence to release another master of worlds, this time the Asgard. In this trinity, where the lighting was fire and the water was sand, the three worlds battled and the life evolved to manifest destiny, of immortality were insects beneath the gods. A terror between worlds and among dragons and armored beasts, while the wars continued in madness time escaped and it soon began to grow, and by the autumn of the first life of time the three worlds had each become three unto the like and had made war an art as is done. To each they kept styles of battle but so much the same they wielded until their will be done, of types unique to each world they summoned metals as which would surface when called to be thrown at each other, as some would die, others would be born better to stand the test of time, three worlds by three, connected and embattled.
On the day when Midgard was wounded by they who are half demons and they who are half angels, in a great battle bringing revelation a great warrior from Asgard stood, annoyed by feast and blood and mostly battle, disgusted by some of the gods, those from the house of Vanir who could see the future but refused to prevent wars for mortals. In the moments of time longer than mortal existence the warriors from house Aesir took violence until victorious, unto thus a truce beholds the worlds of life as existence murdering all who murder in the name of another.
/
9. Urdarbrunn
The world was great and the mountains were so high that no human could reach their peaks. The land was so vast that it had yet to be charted, the cities were the finest monuments to humanity and honor, and the oceans were rich with life, but the population grew. The coasts were mapped, the waters were drank, the lands were harvested, the food was eaten, and the population began to mine the earth to find the world below them. They planted their crops on the walls of the wells, but the end of the world could not be found, they soon flew, and swam, and dived into the sea, and could not find the end of life, or a sign of the earth's center. Where the land was cold they burrowed beneath it and harnessed the elements for the light they needed below the earth, and finally one day when mining they found a stone the size of a city. They could not carve it, nor could they blast it, nor could they move it, so they mined around it, and for many years examined it, but one day of disgrace upon them when the inevitable civilized life forms chose to be anything but that, there was a murder at the stone below the surface somewhat close to the center of the earth. For all the blood sweat and tears shed upon the stone, the blood of murder awakened a danger, the stone consumed itself with a collapsing rupture and quake, where the stone was became a fire from the ancient worlds where the gods had once warred, and the fire was hotter than that which could be most hot. Everything close to the rapture died and from the old fire there were terrible lizards on claws and talons and razor tails, by winged beast and terrors keen to feast with fangs of predation, of last came of them beasts combined of the dangers and angers of all other beasts called dragons.
Their life ran from destruction, and the fields would no longer be their home, not one region was safe from tyranny because every terrain was the domain of the tragic beasts, no mountain too high, no valley too low, no river too deep, no ocean too strong. The beasts chased them into the mines, natural caves, and from their tunnels to which they could not hide and fortify defenses fast enough. The pretenses of survival were surely rough and all to eat was beast, for they were predators without civilization, and the people ate only meat for many generations. If not stronger taller, if not faster smarter, if not clever more apt, survival was imperative and for the fittest, and was so claimed by the best as the survivors tunneled downward straight to the center of the earth.
One day a tunnel emerged and found better dragons than were born of fire, hunting and killing, and the traps that fed humanity were further exploited, four tribes eventually found their tunnel exits at the ends of the earth. Fate prepared them to battle and one day a warrior survived a small beast giving pride to those who saw, and soon blinded new in generations to the powerful sunlight they cautiously roamed the earth, this was each the way the other tribes survived, but the beasts were too many for survival. With the courageous lost the evolution of humanity suffered losses in progress, but patience redeemed, among them were born the first of the gods, who could die but after much more damage. After an age the gifted would fight but have children with combined power, after an epoch they would seem invincible to humanity, after an era they would have trouble killing themselves, after an eon they would be truly immortal with powers unlike mortals, but there were still beasts that grew alongside them. Monsters of the deep to hunt for sport and others to train for hunting, yet there were still those who took shelter in the caves and perhaps some who did not escape the mines at all in the ancient past, the tale is that they grew small, divided by species and in form, to hide from the dangers of existence and to seek creatures for a hunt of their own, how small are they that a world just as small could reside beneath them.
Thus so the stones would grow, the mountains gave magma, the sky cried, far and wide the world continued to grow. The only mystery of the universe awaited only the question of its ability to contain life, and the world grew large to venture at endless bounds where the children of the old gods played, as time unfolded so did the earth itself, until the dark wistful shallow spirits grew voids in their souls. Then upon them within the world a dark stone came to existence from deep within the recesses of immortality, and the black diamond grew. It contemplated and spread like poisonous crystal, and it consumed other stones of great power by seeping to the surface and taking them until it became a bright darkness. Pure with thought of evil the dark stone worshipped itself and contaminated its inner shadows until it opened a passage and Jotunn the manifestation of apparition darkness set foot on earth. Divided it spent its time torturing life and growing the dark crystal against the otherworld Vanaheim. The Jotunn did not name the second world and only considered it a priority to expand a dark empire. Long as all of time had been nine times nine times more a red blood stone opened from the innermost implicit infinitesimal essence, and it grew and survived the destructive power of itself until the power tore a portal into the nether existence to release another master of worlds, this time the Asgard. In this trinity, where the lighting was fire and the water was sand, the three worlds battled and the life evolved to manifest destiny, of immortality were insects beneath the gods. A terror between worlds and among dragons and armored beasts, while the wars continued in madness time escaped and it soon began to grow, and by the autumn of the first life of time the three worlds had each become three unto the like and had made war an art as is done. To each they kept styles of battle but so much the same they wielded until their will be done, of types unique to each world they summoned metals as which would surface when called to be thrown at each other, as some would die, others would be born better to stand the test of time, three worlds by three, connected and embattled.
On the day when Midgard was wounded by they who are half demons and they who are half angels, in a great battle bringing revelation a great warrior from Asgard stood, annoyed by feast and blood and mostly battle, disgusted by some of the gods, those from the house of Vanir who could see the future but refused to prevent wars for mortals. In the moments of time longer than mortal existence the warriors from house Aesir took violence until victorious, unto thus a truce beholds the worlds of life as existence murdering all who murder in the name of another.
/
Ghost of the Sun
The Book of Earth
8. Ghost of the Sun
Life and death before dawn in the dark night, was of task the shadow king, the world was what it seems to be in light, unknown to him what seeing is, for seeing is a gift under the sun, and from the coal four kinds of stone, hatred for the world for the smell of smoke, so coy and tryst within the mist, amenities of life often were had, to pace the days with shade of lies, other ones who follow are just as lost, libraries of futures extend, where the world will fall with kingdoms complete, and tragedy will speak to trees, the numbers of the soils of worlds are nine, combined to one a war exhumes, always is the lust for light imperfect, to wage a dream above the sky, but where it seems the dangers owe their life, a dark abode abides by none, a terror in the night is soon concealed, of king and wraith and even war, without the light the darkness always roams, an ill desire to see the fire, when matters of the darkness to combine, another sets the trail of death, however there is hail upon the frost, the gods are blind behind their eyes, just as angry mirrors of the soul, crawling over broken shadows, the carrion of time is all but black, existence lives and grows complete, nothing exists without eternity, the evidence in outer space, the shadow lord is blind for all of time, without the light you could not know.
8. Ghost of the Sun
Life and death before dawn in the dark night, was of task the shadow king, the world was what it seems to be in light, unknown to him what seeing is, for seeing is a gift under the sun, and from the coal four kinds of stone, hatred for the world for the smell of smoke, so coy and tryst within the mist, amenities of life often were had, to pace the days with shade of lies, other ones who follow are just as lost, libraries of futures extend, where the world will fall with kingdoms complete, and tragedy will speak to trees, the numbers of the soils of worlds are nine, combined to one a war exhumes, always is the lust for light imperfect, to wage a dream above the sky, but where it seems the dangers owe their life, a dark abode abides by none, a terror in the night is soon concealed, of king and wraith and even war, without the light the darkness always roams, an ill desire to see the fire, when matters of the darkness to combine, another sets the trail of death, however there is hail upon the frost, the gods are blind behind their eyes, just as angry mirrors of the soul, crawling over broken shadows, the carrion of time is all but black, existence lives and grows complete, nothing exists without eternity, the evidence in outer space, the shadow lord is blind for all of time, without the light you could not know.
The Plague of Man
The Book of Earth
7. The Plague of Man
When the civilized world was complete the queen of alchemy died, much to the disappointment of the alchemy king, alas he had tried to postpone her dying and avert her death, but he could not and his heart became a vicious torrent of anger against humanity. He began to tempt the Norns which at the point of tranquility had become the only crime even considered by scientific minds. A swath of genocide intrigued the king, for unsuitable he found replacements, their diseases could be cured and again alas they were not his lost love. A terrible envy plagued him of the gods, to quell his anger he created a disease to rid the world of its human life except himself, but the civil scientists only cured and eradicated his plague after plague after plague. His infatuation with death disallowed his uninterested reprieve, so he created a blight to harm the vegetation in waves of horrid affectation one after the next, first botany, then agriculture, then weeds, but once again tho with some trouble they disinfected the staggering blight. His thoughts were still dead set, he thought until his thoughts revealed a damning virus, his mind rolled in succinct jubilant revelation, and he created a poison that would kill the animals of the world and thus infect that which consumed the beasts and remain infectious and untraceable, but the world was cautious and fasted and designed a machine to churn the clouds and draw air away from the continents, and the animals were euthanized, and eradicated. His madness was replaced with deeper madness which was so replaced by chaos, with his anger he attacked the machines and fought the lighting within the storms of the clouds, and there fought to the death the storms and the wind and the reverent skies, losing his life.
The king stood in the afterlife, his body resting before him in the storm swept land of faded glory, where Loki the trickster approached to give condolence and offer a trickster's deal. A life of the undead, to heal slowly and eat the living and even to control others of the afterlife spells of necromancy. The king of course accepted to further his hate that had not died with him. Loki raised his red hand and devils of hell raised from the earth, with a prim sole promise to sew the king to the mortal world Loki took a knife and threw it into the king's head, the king awoke in the world of the living, still with his wounds where lighting had pierced him many times implicitly, but the wounds were healing. The demons looked to the king with the mending scar on his face and he could read their thoughts and by his wishes alone they obeyed the orders of his mind. The after gangers were as puppets his messengers of death, but a different poison ran in the king's blood than of the vitriolic demons, for when they slayed their foes death held the slain, yet when the king of death battled his blood became a disastrous contagion, those infected were not under his control. The zombie contagion infestation obeyed only the demons, he slayed in jest an after ganger and the mist of blood carried in the air infected other life just as he the first. As he found that they were not his puppets he slayed them and ordered the demons to forfeit their ready growing legion of the hungered dead, but the demons denied him and had strayed from him. The king of the dead having lost superiority felt envy again and killed one of the demons, from the battle his wounds healed but as he hunted and killed nine demons hiding on the earth each, his wounds began to heal slower than they had with each he killed, leaving him believe that the demons were the source of his immortality, so he trapped and imprisoned the final demon in a cage made of poison. When the king deserted the prison the final demon was actually the trickster, puppeteer of the demons, deceiver of providence, and walked through the prison walls.
Tho the king’s wit had left humanity it had not abandoned him, when he saw that the dead were only attacking the young, the machines to purify only dragging the virus over the land quicker, he set to destroy every undead creature to liberate all life, but with each slay the disease only spread faster, into the water, into the air, into the darkness, and in the fires into the light, until the world was consumed by death and all life was lost.
The alchemist king wandered an empty world until the gods had enough sport of his insanity and Loki washed the world with holy fire. It was a trick by the trickster to entertain the gods, the sun washed the world with warmth and the waters purged themselves against the mountains of the sea, the plants began to grow powered by the life of the universe. When the world was mended by the Vanir as best they could, paying Loki with some of the deviant souls, the Aesir returned all of the wrongfully fallen to their lives just as they had existed before catalyst mischief.
/
7. The Plague of Man
When the civilized world was complete the queen of alchemy died, much to the disappointment of the alchemy king, alas he had tried to postpone her dying and avert her death, but he could not and his heart became a vicious torrent of anger against humanity. He began to tempt the Norns which at the point of tranquility had become the only crime even considered by scientific minds. A swath of genocide intrigued the king, for unsuitable he found replacements, their diseases could be cured and again alas they were not his lost love. A terrible envy plagued him of the gods, to quell his anger he created a disease to rid the world of its human life except himself, but the civil scientists only cured and eradicated his plague after plague after plague. His infatuation with death disallowed his uninterested reprieve, so he created a blight to harm the vegetation in waves of horrid affectation one after the next, first botany, then agriculture, then weeds, but once again tho with some trouble they disinfected the staggering blight. His thoughts were still dead set, he thought until his thoughts revealed a damning virus, his mind rolled in succinct jubilant revelation, and he created a poison that would kill the animals of the world and thus infect that which consumed the beasts and remain infectious and untraceable, but the world was cautious and fasted and designed a machine to churn the clouds and draw air away from the continents, and the animals were euthanized, and eradicated. His madness was replaced with deeper madness which was so replaced by chaos, with his anger he attacked the machines and fought the lighting within the storms of the clouds, and there fought to the death the storms and the wind and the reverent skies, losing his life.
The king stood in the afterlife, his body resting before him in the storm swept land of faded glory, where Loki the trickster approached to give condolence and offer a trickster's deal. A life of the undead, to heal slowly and eat the living and even to control others of the afterlife spells of necromancy. The king of course accepted to further his hate that had not died with him. Loki raised his red hand and devils of hell raised from the earth, with a prim sole promise to sew the king to the mortal world Loki took a knife and threw it into the king's head, the king awoke in the world of the living, still with his wounds where lighting had pierced him many times implicitly, but the wounds were healing. The demons looked to the king with the mending scar on his face and he could read their thoughts and by his wishes alone they obeyed the orders of his mind. The after gangers were as puppets his messengers of death, but a different poison ran in the king's blood than of the vitriolic demons, for when they slayed their foes death held the slain, yet when the king of death battled his blood became a disastrous contagion, those infected were not under his control. The zombie contagion infestation obeyed only the demons, he slayed in jest an after ganger and the mist of blood carried in the air infected other life just as he the first. As he found that they were not his puppets he slayed them and ordered the demons to forfeit their ready growing legion of the hungered dead, but the demons denied him and had strayed from him. The king of the dead having lost superiority felt envy again and killed one of the demons, from the battle his wounds healed but as he hunted and killed nine demons hiding on the earth each, his wounds began to heal slower than they had with each he killed, leaving him believe that the demons were the source of his immortality, so he trapped and imprisoned the final demon in a cage made of poison. When the king deserted the prison the final demon was actually the trickster, puppeteer of the demons, deceiver of providence, and walked through the prison walls.
Tho the king’s wit had left humanity it had not abandoned him, when he saw that the dead were only attacking the young, the machines to purify only dragging the virus over the land quicker, he set to destroy every undead creature to liberate all life, but with each slay the disease only spread faster, into the water, into the air, into the darkness, and in the fires into the light, until the world was consumed by death and all life was lost.
The alchemist king wandered an empty world until the gods had enough sport of his insanity and Loki washed the world with holy fire. It was a trick by the trickster to entertain the gods, the sun washed the world with warmth and the waters purged themselves against the mountains of the sea, the plants began to grow powered by the life of the universe. When the world was mended by the Vanir as best they could, paying Loki with some of the deviant souls, the Aesir returned all of the wrongfully fallen to their lives just as they had existed before catalyst mischief.
/
The Philosopher's Stone
The Book of Earth
6. The Philosopher's Stone
In the darkened morbid forest stood a demon of red iron scales, strong and in good form, a cape of red buck leather is the only soft element of the chimera, from the violent covens of witchcraft and innocent sacrifice it moved south following a seven headed constellation named Leviathan, through the forest setting fires and other vile mischief, unto a valley where he summoned innocent victims by wishing for shooting stars in sparse amounts and preying, each would suffer and he would carve their bones, every time he would wash in their blood and drink from their skulls if an entertaining battle had occurred, until the boredom of malaise offered only immense grief to the hunter demon. He thought of the end of the world and of the dark horizon, another stargazer came and was lynched against a tree and drained by the demon for the chance to drink his blood and torture simultaneously, like a sack of horrid wine the wrist was slit and blood let, and then more contemplation. In the foothills of a mossy crumbling mountain he had never seen a cat, and so with that thought he slit the other wrist, with the blood the chimera raised a panther in the night with fire and black magic, the red warrior summoned the thing from the ground and raised it through the soil with a grasp of the nape, pulling it from the fertile earth.
Chimera: "Unholiest hunter I call darkness, speak and be heard."
Panther: "You have made another way to die."
The cat lowered, scowled, and leapt at the chimera demon, a horrible roar and swift soar with claws and jaws of fearsome fangs, a skirmish to battle death, and the demon was bit in the waist and hurled the cat with both hands into a tree. He grabbed his scurrilous blade from a sheath filled with poison oil as the panther leapt again. His cape was torn as it lied against his wounds as the cat attempted to batter with its claws the open sores from the bite. With his hand he took the panther's throat, pressed against the same tree he held the poisonous dagger to the throat, his arm beheld the blade blocked the other paw.
Chimera: "Hunt for me and I will not kill you!"
The claws in the black paw retracted, the chimera demon reasserted his choke hold and taunted with the sickening blade once to display dominance as much as to flinch his own insanity. He released the cat that slunk down the tree and cowered, timid and skittish not knowing if it could escape the demon.
Chimera: "It is not my flesh you smell, it is this creature’s; eat of the kill as I, without fear of your food."
The demon cut into his prisoner who screamed if dire agony, a piece of flesh was tossed to the predator who did not hesitate to feast.
Panther: "What is it you will of me?"
Chimera: "Fear me and not these things make you a spy but not their enemy."
Panther: "To what end?"
Chimera: "I task you to feast on the village over the rise, unless you cannot hunt or are scared?"
Panther: "Why not do you go?"
Chimera: "I cannot freely pass among them, besides, you can speak, speak as their god and they will follow you to any cave."
Panther: "And from a horde of rats I will run them to you."
Chimera: "Endure."
The panther thought as it licked its paws and cleaned itself, incessantly spreading the smell of blood over itself before lazily heading over the hillside. The hostage had died, below the body the chimera digs a hole in the fertile earth, and the remaining blood was drained and began collecting in the bloody pit of horror. The demon looked at his hand of stone and submerged it in the red blood, removing it the stone was gone but the scathing from the cat remained.
Often heathens would practice pagan rite, a fire in the night inside a sitting circle of those who took turns tossing a different colored flammable powder into flames and repeating some words from a book written by a drunkard or a mad person, hoping that a devil would approach them for they to ask upon it their wiles. The panther happened upon them by circumstance and tended to exploring for to curiosity is a solemn thing that a cat cannot leave to chance. The fire was frightening to the panther with its seamless saunter, but there were few enough men to maim them, and take one for supper, but first it would have to watch them in their baggy clothes and see if they carried knives as they tarried.
The fire was alluringly mysterious, how it brought twilight to the trees but not into the darkness where the hunt resides. The patience wore thin and the cat's hunger became a lungful pang. Insidiousness lasted until the cat heard them speak the word for enemy in any word and effortlessly the cat leapt to the dirt floor from the shadows.
Panther: "You have called for me, I am Osiris of legion."
Bash: "We seek a magic for which to kill nations."
Panther: (pacing) "Which nation do you wish to kill?"
Petric: "Those beyond our borders that keep us in asylum."
Panther: "You know them not?"
Montu: "There is a vast army that brings horror; we cannot enslave enough to fight them"
Bash: "We offer our worship and fealty o great panther spirit."
Panther: (sitting) "A dark, in the cold moon, my power."
Bash: "By your ken, do you grant or share your power?"
Montu: "Will we be magical or immortal?"
Halroy: "By so close you should not be, if ever to spells and lessons."
Panther: "You will be remembered."
With a fierce angered roar the cat clubbed Bash and delivered a strike a deathblow and a bite to Petric. Bash pulled daggers and pricked the panther in the back as Montu wielded a torch club and strikes the cat with fiery spear. A sinister growl half-quieted by anger as the panther leapt to Bash's chest forcing him to the ground on his back as the panther tore his throat with fangs, on four legs the panther paced encircle thirteen gait and lunged with a roar to wake the ravens from their nightmares to kill Montu, but what feared three to strike made Halroy flee into the darkness. Even in darkness the earth was solid, the moon was reborn a shadow of itself and barely a sliver of light reflected from the moon to show the black cat a hunting paradise, but such levels of vision are not afforded to man and Halroy ran in the darkness. Tripping on mounds and broken boughs, the panther trod through clearings and leapt obstacles, a leisurely indirect course of sport weaving playfully through the trees, the victim did not stand to chance, claws to the back so painful was the agony that intensity did not allow him to faint before he died, he was consumed as the moon draws near.
When the panther ate his full he moved sluggishly back to the fire and began to feast, the chimera silently approached and clubbed the cat with a branch across the head from behind it. The panther was put unconscious, but eventually woke to the demon eating an eye from the end of a knife.
Chimera: "I asked you to lead them to me."
Panther: (yawning) "...you would have me share my kill?"
Chimera: "I will have you lead me to your hunts, if you are chased, you can lead them to me."
Panther: "Or I could tempt fate with you again."
The chimera opened his mouth and hissed, just as a cat, showing his fangs, sharper than that of the beast. The demon continued to eat and cautiously the panther joined him. As was wished the cat stalked the forest with the demon following behind not far, after each kill they would choose a new direction circling the fortified city, which held a contemptuous interest of the demon. In this way the talking cat terrorized the forest for three years, three months, three weeks, while insulting the gods before each prey lured by intrigue and the allure of promised power followed by slaughter, but took an overwhelming hatred towards holy men and made certain to play with his food at these confrontations.
The travelers came into the city sparingly, but citizens rarely ventured, and hunting parties searched for the cat, each party larger than the last, when they began to be too big to kill or lead to the demon, the demon would fell them earnest by all at once slowed with spells to mire them and have target practice with a knife on a whip. In the newest day a war began from the tensions of southern raiders and the woes the demon and panther had begun in the woods. The fallen warriors in the infinity war cycle had not perished but had gone to war leaving the huge city less the most of its regiment. On that night the panther sleeked into the city and after clubbing him unconscious took a hostage of a holy bishop into the woods.
From thence this action the cat made ally with the tenant farmers wherever it could, and spoke to them of sedition and treason, first upon the first that he found twelve men farming through the sunset and complaining as they worked.
Panther: "If you hide he will find you and lie to you there."
Blither: "Don't trust the black cat."
Panther: "If you quarrel by axe, does not your lord take an axe to you? Show me the way to your landlord and lead him out of home to me."
Egregiously the farmers gladly accepted the advice of the cat and lead the landlord to a place in the wood predetermined, where they met the bishop in a chair deep in the forest drugged by the demon.
Landlord: "What is this bishop?"
Panther: "The bishop said I should bring you here for your death, that I may have my peace."
The Bishop: "I said no such thing, across your path this black cat brings hex upon us all...no!"
The chimera demon silently approached one of the farmers and with sword began to hack into him, the others fled in exhaustive fear. The panther slipped behind the bishop's chair and with a voice mockingly similar to the bishop said, "kill them all my demons," and then leapt after the fleeing farmers. After killing one the chimera shouted to the panther urging a postponement of further hunt. The farmers returned to the city and took holy hostage at the first temple they found, demanding to know the meaning of their dilemma, through chaotic anger the hostages were killed and a bloody civil war broke within the city.
With the city in turmoil the demon sneaked into the city, maiming and claiming lives while heading toward the main temple. At the holy cemetery three guards battled and lost to the demon, the chimera knelt before one of the bodies and stabbed the dead man countless several times, as more guards followed the path of destruction they found the demon had lifted the pierced body over his head to revel in a shower of blood.
The demon vaulted the body and profusion of blood to bash six from a score of guards to the ground. The other men fought bravely but were slain one by one, as if they were toys. Behind the demon stood a door with a board across it to keep whatever contained, with a strike of the sword the beam was cut and the door was then kicked from close. The room was painted black, in the center a rough diamond with a chain suspended in the air over a limestone block with moss the white color of soft lightning effulgence, growing from the walls to the relic except beneath the philosopher's stone. The chimera's skin that faced the rough diamond began to cover with a dust that gradually turned his scales and skin to granite stone, he swiped the diamond from the air, his hand pained him so as it turned to freezing stone, he opened his fanged jowls and swallowed the precious stone being sure to loop the golden necklace under his silver tongue as to not swallow it completely. Soon nepenthe coursed his veins, the stone sickness was purged, his scales turned black and his leather skin became white or smeared with ash, the chimera hunted the panther and hung it from the city gates while fires within burned. It was there he was hunted by every able hunter to the white cliffs where the demon was forced to stage a spurious death.
/
6. The Philosopher's Stone
In the darkened morbid forest stood a demon of red iron scales, strong and in good form, a cape of red buck leather is the only soft element of the chimera, from the violent covens of witchcraft and innocent sacrifice it moved south following a seven headed constellation named Leviathan, through the forest setting fires and other vile mischief, unto a valley where he summoned innocent victims by wishing for shooting stars in sparse amounts and preying, each would suffer and he would carve their bones, every time he would wash in their blood and drink from their skulls if an entertaining battle had occurred, until the boredom of malaise offered only immense grief to the hunter demon. He thought of the end of the world and of the dark horizon, another stargazer came and was lynched against a tree and drained by the demon for the chance to drink his blood and torture simultaneously, like a sack of horrid wine the wrist was slit and blood let, and then more contemplation. In the foothills of a mossy crumbling mountain he had never seen a cat, and so with that thought he slit the other wrist, with the blood the chimera raised a panther in the night with fire and black magic, the red warrior summoned the thing from the ground and raised it through the soil with a grasp of the nape, pulling it from the fertile earth.
Chimera: "Unholiest hunter I call darkness, speak and be heard."
Panther: "You have made another way to die."
The cat lowered, scowled, and leapt at the chimera demon, a horrible roar and swift soar with claws and jaws of fearsome fangs, a skirmish to battle death, and the demon was bit in the waist and hurled the cat with both hands into a tree. He grabbed his scurrilous blade from a sheath filled with poison oil as the panther leapt again. His cape was torn as it lied against his wounds as the cat attempted to batter with its claws the open sores from the bite. With his hand he took the panther's throat, pressed against the same tree he held the poisonous dagger to the throat, his arm beheld the blade blocked the other paw.
Chimera: "Hunt for me and I will not kill you!"
The claws in the black paw retracted, the chimera demon reasserted his choke hold and taunted with the sickening blade once to display dominance as much as to flinch his own insanity. He released the cat that slunk down the tree and cowered, timid and skittish not knowing if it could escape the demon.
Chimera: "It is not my flesh you smell, it is this creature’s; eat of the kill as I, without fear of your food."
The demon cut into his prisoner who screamed if dire agony, a piece of flesh was tossed to the predator who did not hesitate to feast.
Panther: "What is it you will of me?"
Chimera: "Fear me and not these things make you a spy but not their enemy."
Panther: "To what end?"
Chimera: "I task you to feast on the village over the rise, unless you cannot hunt or are scared?"
Panther: "Why not do you go?"
Chimera: "I cannot freely pass among them, besides, you can speak, speak as their god and they will follow you to any cave."
Panther: "And from a horde of rats I will run them to you."
Chimera: "Endure."
The panther thought as it licked its paws and cleaned itself, incessantly spreading the smell of blood over itself before lazily heading over the hillside. The hostage had died, below the body the chimera digs a hole in the fertile earth, and the remaining blood was drained and began collecting in the bloody pit of horror. The demon looked at his hand of stone and submerged it in the red blood, removing it the stone was gone but the scathing from the cat remained.
Often heathens would practice pagan rite, a fire in the night inside a sitting circle of those who took turns tossing a different colored flammable powder into flames and repeating some words from a book written by a drunkard or a mad person, hoping that a devil would approach them for they to ask upon it their wiles. The panther happened upon them by circumstance and tended to exploring for to curiosity is a solemn thing that a cat cannot leave to chance. The fire was frightening to the panther with its seamless saunter, but there were few enough men to maim them, and take one for supper, but first it would have to watch them in their baggy clothes and see if they carried knives as they tarried.
The fire was alluringly mysterious, how it brought twilight to the trees but not into the darkness where the hunt resides. The patience wore thin and the cat's hunger became a lungful pang. Insidiousness lasted until the cat heard them speak the word for enemy in any word and effortlessly the cat leapt to the dirt floor from the shadows.
Panther: "You have called for me, I am Osiris of legion."
Bash: "We seek a magic for which to kill nations."
Panther: (pacing) "Which nation do you wish to kill?"
Petric: "Those beyond our borders that keep us in asylum."
Panther: "You know them not?"
Montu: "There is a vast army that brings horror; we cannot enslave enough to fight them"
Bash: "We offer our worship and fealty o great panther spirit."
Panther: (sitting) "A dark, in the cold moon, my power."
Bash: "By your ken, do you grant or share your power?"
Montu: "Will we be magical or immortal?"
Halroy: "By so close you should not be, if ever to spells and lessons."
Panther: "You will be remembered."
With a fierce angered roar the cat clubbed Bash and delivered a strike a deathblow and a bite to Petric. Bash pulled daggers and pricked the panther in the back as Montu wielded a torch club and strikes the cat with fiery spear. A sinister growl half-quieted by anger as the panther leapt to Bash's chest forcing him to the ground on his back as the panther tore his throat with fangs, on four legs the panther paced encircle thirteen gait and lunged with a roar to wake the ravens from their nightmares to kill Montu, but what feared three to strike made Halroy flee into the darkness. Even in darkness the earth was solid, the moon was reborn a shadow of itself and barely a sliver of light reflected from the moon to show the black cat a hunting paradise, but such levels of vision are not afforded to man and Halroy ran in the darkness. Tripping on mounds and broken boughs, the panther trod through clearings and leapt obstacles, a leisurely indirect course of sport weaving playfully through the trees, the victim did not stand to chance, claws to the back so painful was the agony that intensity did not allow him to faint before he died, he was consumed as the moon draws near.
When the panther ate his full he moved sluggishly back to the fire and began to feast, the chimera silently approached and clubbed the cat with a branch across the head from behind it. The panther was put unconscious, but eventually woke to the demon eating an eye from the end of a knife.
Chimera: "I asked you to lead them to me."
Panther: (yawning) "...you would have me share my kill?"
Chimera: "I will have you lead me to your hunts, if you are chased, you can lead them to me."
Panther: "Or I could tempt fate with you again."
The chimera opened his mouth and hissed, just as a cat, showing his fangs, sharper than that of the beast. The demon continued to eat and cautiously the panther joined him. As was wished the cat stalked the forest with the demon following behind not far, after each kill they would choose a new direction circling the fortified city, which held a contemptuous interest of the demon. In this way the talking cat terrorized the forest for three years, three months, three weeks, while insulting the gods before each prey lured by intrigue and the allure of promised power followed by slaughter, but took an overwhelming hatred towards holy men and made certain to play with his food at these confrontations.
The travelers came into the city sparingly, but citizens rarely ventured, and hunting parties searched for the cat, each party larger than the last, when they began to be too big to kill or lead to the demon, the demon would fell them earnest by all at once slowed with spells to mire them and have target practice with a knife on a whip. In the newest day a war began from the tensions of southern raiders and the woes the demon and panther had begun in the woods. The fallen warriors in the infinity war cycle had not perished but had gone to war leaving the huge city less the most of its regiment. On that night the panther sleeked into the city and after clubbing him unconscious took a hostage of a holy bishop into the woods.
From thence this action the cat made ally with the tenant farmers wherever it could, and spoke to them of sedition and treason, first upon the first that he found twelve men farming through the sunset and complaining as they worked.
Panther: "If you hide he will find you and lie to you there."
Blither: "Don't trust the black cat."
Panther: "If you quarrel by axe, does not your lord take an axe to you? Show me the way to your landlord and lead him out of home to me."
Egregiously the farmers gladly accepted the advice of the cat and lead the landlord to a place in the wood predetermined, where they met the bishop in a chair deep in the forest drugged by the demon.
Landlord: "What is this bishop?"
Panther: "The bishop said I should bring you here for your death, that I may have my peace."
The Bishop: "I said no such thing, across your path this black cat brings hex upon us all...no!"
The chimera demon silently approached one of the farmers and with sword began to hack into him, the others fled in exhaustive fear. The panther slipped behind the bishop's chair and with a voice mockingly similar to the bishop said, "kill them all my demons," and then leapt after the fleeing farmers. After killing one the chimera shouted to the panther urging a postponement of further hunt. The farmers returned to the city and took holy hostage at the first temple they found, demanding to know the meaning of their dilemma, through chaotic anger the hostages were killed and a bloody civil war broke within the city.
With the city in turmoil the demon sneaked into the city, maiming and claiming lives while heading toward the main temple. At the holy cemetery three guards battled and lost to the demon, the chimera knelt before one of the bodies and stabbed the dead man countless several times, as more guards followed the path of destruction they found the demon had lifted the pierced body over his head to revel in a shower of blood.
The demon vaulted the body and profusion of blood to bash six from a score of guards to the ground. The other men fought bravely but were slain one by one, as if they were toys. Behind the demon stood a door with a board across it to keep whatever contained, with a strike of the sword the beam was cut and the door was then kicked from close. The room was painted black, in the center a rough diamond with a chain suspended in the air over a limestone block with moss the white color of soft lightning effulgence, growing from the walls to the relic except beneath the philosopher's stone. The chimera's skin that faced the rough diamond began to cover with a dust that gradually turned his scales and skin to granite stone, he swiped the diamond from the air, his hand pained him so as it turned to freezing stone, he opened his fanged jowls and swallowed the precious stone being sure to loop the golden necklace under his silver tongue as to not swallow it completely. Soon nepenthe coursed his veins, the stone sickness was purged, his scales turned black and his leather skin became white or smeared with ash, the chimera hunted the panther and hung it from the city gates while fires within burned. It was there he was hunted by every able hunter to the white cliffs where the demon was forced to stage a spurious death.
/
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