Merlin 2 - 15: The Soldiers of Cromlech

Merlin 2 - 15: The Soldiers of Cromlech

Scudding forlorn clouds distantly drumming the coming storm deep in the distance, if from the canopy the firmament seems a marbled grave of endless enrapture, light of moons has chanced favor on the season the first of berries and small fruits aside the last blooms of black tulips and crimson roses.

In this dawning morning the sky is blue for the last day of spring anent the beleaguered travellers, the ground fertile met by streams of clear water coursing through the roots of the forest, before them is a gory gruesome violent malevolent detail quelled and calmed. They collect their treasures, and then bury their dead, or burn them at the very least spending the better part of dawn burning with waves of flames and smiting mangled wretches with axes, a few surprises for your malice one could say, fortuitous survivors working to subdue the dead and it is distance for them to continue in their trek. A simple morning of cold blue skies, the storm has passed, and Merlin counts his steps inaudibly of a straight line toward the moon from the castle into the heavy forest trees, towing a confused mare.

Merlin: “And one thousand one steps…dig.”
Ana: “You art aware the moon will stray from its path.”
Merlin: “Then I shall visit this time of year.”

Ana alights from her colt for a venerable tradition, Nickolas dismounts his steed with quickly stead, just as Merlin tosses a stone to the ground, and he paces forward only to have her grab him by his collar. The stone glows then blasts a hole briefly scaring their horses. Merlin puts a satchel from his saddlebag, as does Ana. Their ceremony prompts Nickolas to a personal grief, a brief sentimental attachment to all his new acquisitions he tosses the tawdry necklace he wears alongside the rest to their shared amusement. He and Merlin fill the divot and they stare at the sky, ready to begin again their wanderlust. The birds sing as they do, as if any other tumult had just passed, while the dancing winds pass through the weeping willows and breaking birches.

They seek an earnest repose, countermand ere, contrary celerity borne unwonted bethought, wrought by reprieves oft alack. Ever a blatant disguiser, avouch signet of mist covering the dusky floor of the forest. Ana a tenured and profuse mercer ponders what silks she could have for her small fortune and with looks upon her allies reckons the need to save some of it for a rainy day. Nickolas, a swift and dagger tarry whatnot, hard by an unmet billet, carries of a simple notion, insomuch certain trinkets uncovered and obvious in order to taunt countryside robbers and to eventually barter or battle. Lest so availing, by Merlin who carries in modest a sack of rings which he will spell upon a great many of enhancing powers and trade them truncate for tiskets and taskets, or leave them in nooks and crannies for a child to find. Ana the mostly posh wears a magnificent frontlet on her brow, it weighs on parted hair and keeps her face, and majesty of swift embrace she bestows insight where modesty belongs. Nickolas walks as the lord of the glade, a few fine chains about the wrist, about the collar, but proof certain of auspicious audacity are the two fanciful silver blades he cannot release. Not for let or leave he puts promise in skill as he manipulates the weapons in saddled tarry, with the fascinating artisanship, glomming an adolescent could slice the wind, but more so, in the stomping ground they treasure refection and a place to meat.

Merlin: “Doth ye like to keep still a fascicular book Nickolas?”

Merlin had spoken whilst looking ahead of distracted hindsight watching the clades of thrushes and blackcaps scour the riparian floor until the paisley ivy blooms. The guilty ravens waiting all for not to scavenge, in their senescence, wisely in the autumn unfolded and damndest until then, returning a stare at Merlin in great suspect. Nickolas checks for his little pocket book, finds it and relaxes certain that a recreation from memory would ignobly have heavy recensions.

Nickolas: “I keep to words bequeath the tale concern.”
Merlin: “What wouldst thou with my tale?”
Nickolas: “A new day yesterday, but it’s an old day now.”
Merlin: “Why are you pondering?”
Nickolas: “For the avouchment of here is the maiden through whom we have our veneration.”
Merlin: “We are but by our ways to go forth hence.”

They discuss their pekid and peckish demeanor, eventually deciding to make immediate camp in the coming mist at the first sign of dusk.

Concerning an oddment betwixt torques of gold and clothes of stone, festal gage against the wage troth by faith to war, tidings of the water witch Lynn, whom Troy has but once been the only of the wayfarers four who has seen in the utopian aviary, wanders in the light fog near the river. Erewhile the slumbering stone soldiers of Cromlech, with a paean spell and snap of her fingers, rise from the climes of inhumation, leaving hearse and earthen bier for the air above a forgotten cemetery soil. Some with their fingers first to emerge, a deathly-hallowed grasp of ashen stone, surface as vassals to the witch of the lake verily to obey her thoughts without a sound. Listen a mottled porous stone and the kings of marble and ivory weapons, pitch and jet, exception for kin what does not merit grace, hunting Merlin for his death. This mortal soil, deft outré life raises from below the surface, the long-silent ground thrums until a nonchalant violent breach, first a hand of stone, then a group of stone soldiers from beneath the forest dray path, born within the mountains of despair, with signs of wroth upon their faces. Diffident and dressed to kill with stone of any rune for the ruin of man, quite rakish and koiné soldiers camouflaged by stone entreating treachery and loth.

In the morning, a healthy sky covers a forest coveted by dawn where the air brings the clime of freshwater and comfortable breeze. The silhouettes of wolves hiding in the summer pines of dawn, the wayfarers’ woe, neither too harrowed or humble, ever-long ecclesiastic nether-realm stoicism, cold, silent in the sound of the wind, heavy and laden unto the godly statues, frightfully despondent, ethereal pieces of disorder of a solemn pack to roam the outland.

Merlin is a plutonic friend to the wind and if by chance he feels he is falling from the sky while in a lave dream, he will rise from the ground just so in a float of any number of odd positions. To-day he faces the sky with his fingers woven between hands, ataraxic and adrift not more than a foot over ground. Nickolas, the restless, wakes and arises easily as if having slept for ages in a motion that slowly begins the subtle waking of Ana in a dress of war driven red as their notions of breakfast gradually ensue.

Nickolas: “Ana…look…”
Ana: “The best way to wake him is to jump on his chest.”

Nickolas crawls slowly like a cat to Merlin in a momentary suspense with silence and asks him a question, after waiting and watching, in a normal voice no longer a secretive whisper.

Nickolas: “Are you sleeping?”

Despite mention, Merlin does not wake in the woods of Celadon unexplored. Nickolas looks around himself to find not Ana, for she has vanished without a sound into the wild orchard afar using a magic yet modest novitiate spell to usher burgeoning wild apples into rubicund cultivar morsels. As a stick breaks underfoot the same moment as in the distance a sweet and luxurious apple that Ana picks slips her grasp and falls to the ground, Merlin falls with a plump thumped noise and by reaction uses the force of the wind thwarting what he did not presage to his defense, forcing himself to the ground nearly faster. Having no master’s skillset much other than that of a soldier, Nickolas makes hunt with epicurean hunger into the forest to snare a fox from a den or pierce a rabbit in a switch-trap, but instead finds an obsequious statue in the distance gradually discovered to be a stone garrison of seven soldiers within the clearing of the woods.

The cultivated statues of the trees at first are difficult to see in the waking light, parts of the stone are blending with the scenery, a strange camouflage veneer that shifts even as Nickolas moves vantage point. They each face toward the clearest region of the forest floor, slightly facing deep in the woods where the lost souls hide and seeming to face him. Nickolas quickly and quietly makes his way to camp with a wary eye behind him to make a shrift to Merlin. Fore long, Ana returns to camp, without her partner, and tosses an apple into the lap of Merlin who has reset his eyes closed.

Merlin: “I’m more of a spirit awakener.”
Ana: “Myrddin quit falling and awaken thee, have an apple and sweet your tongue.”

She sits then tosses bounteous and beauteously another piquant apple at him to rouse his conscious.

Merlin: “But of course madam Wilt…much of a many night awakening in these crimson apple trees in the glade of trodden trails, upon the river dale.”
Nickolas: “You shan’t lay bard, I have happened upon a fortune I could not carry.”
Merlin: “What ðeode is so soon to bring this raucous after the last?”
Nickolas: “Methinks…men of stone.”

Upon this information, they break camp under a cloud and move to the small valley in which is a small brook and the chiseled masons, and amongst is a captain of exalted rank amidst holding a staff of gold. Formidable are the stone race with fine weapons and crowns of avocation made of dark-dull metal, as if in errand of the hunt they are adorned with tidings intriguing to the thief in Nickolas. Merlin vanguard in the woods now keeps a lacking watch, amazed at this masonic wonder he searches for a sigil or crest denoting which alliance covets these masonry arms and armor. Having mentioned a need slightly for caution he had not urged the most of importance to the order, a caustic irony unfolds.

Ana: “Don’t touch them love!”

Nickolas was too ambitious to halt and as he touched a single piece of jewelry, the soldier came to life in a heavy attack whilst all were in sudden combat. By first assault, caught is Nickolas and thrown, as if he were still a little blond page to the feet of the stone king. Merlin wisps and Ana barely slips from grasps many, as the marble men signal and move in adulatory silence, communicating without words as Nickolas is stuck with aging blades of antique wroth. In forceful numbers, they place the plotting Ana and Merlin in their sights, at full assault as Ana finds a bruising for her barely effective explosive blasts, some with enemies to her grasp giving them the charred skin of soot that stone cherishes, and Merlin finds a beating as he attempts to strike the dolmen dead whilst wielding the winds.

With futility evident and chastening him, adrift and hastily reckless Merlin takes an often-useless amulet from his garb, one he had previously used for campfires and summit mountain passes. Nothing more than a trinket in the past, in desperation he begins a gale-force to topple the stubbornly heavy foes, an attempt to windthrow a lightly armored pawn of the group in small coordination but only hits the newly regenerated Nickolas, which pins him temporarily. In doing so Merlin gets himself grasped, struck, and thrown. Nickolas finds mortality for the huge stone soldier, confused and assuming Nickolas would die upon first death, when he stabs him in the dusty stone neck and ruining his blade. It soon becomes easiest by spiritual way of enchanted artifact to rush and flush the creations with wind and allow Ana to blast them, with luck allowing the air to fuel the sordid fire. Vengeance and menace they must not falter, they must not error, insolent they will have the morrow to mourn.

Suasion and with only two remaining quite steadfast, Merlin ignites by his hand a sulfuric blast to reveal the heart of the quartz king. A small lava chamber flows from the chest, a tumult of arena the surviving warrior flees. These bleak statues hold a face of craze, through the marring combat the soldiers of oblivion with nary an instance of dialogue shall reproach inquisitor.

Merlin: “Feign and feeling faint transgressions shall meet the undertow.”
Sebastian: “Again we rise.”
Nickolas: “Bleed the clouds.”

Nickolas drives a wooden stave into the chest, as it lays it burns in the heat of the dying heart. Connected across the acre, as if a highland ghost in a system of forest, returns the flit survivor to the garden of monolith, his renowned blade rises for a deadly hewing behind Ana with her hair clasped by the other hand. Swiftly she cuts her hair and stands behind the man of stone with a knife between his legs cut through his tartan, causing him to wax qualm and mercy.

Ana: “All men are alike.”
Nickolas: “Don’t move soldier.”
Brach: “That is what I am made to do.”
Ana: “A bit careless are we love?”
Nickolas: “Quite the gift you have dear.”

Merlin approaches carrying the golden staff, Nickolas stares at his wounds while lifting his arms and keeping the taciturn prisoner in sight.

Merlin: “Are you well old boy?”
Nickolas: “I’m feeling a bit heavy and down.”
Nickolas shows his skin thick with sharp blades as is they were dull.
Merlin: “You are heavy handed, it will pass. Staffs of gold…signify bravery indolent one. Give me your sword.”

The blade’s size is deceiving, it is heavy and displays its weight as it falls.

Ana: “Would you be as brave without your precious stones?”
Winston: “I implore you relent my soul…”
Ana: “Greater men than you have asked for such without prevail.”
Merlin: “Who are you?” without answer, “…give over and bid my willing.”
Nickolas: “Cut him down, he isn’t worth his sand.”
Winston: “We are nemesis.”
Merlin: “why did you attack us?”
Brock does not reply.
Merlin: “Nickolas...would you care to lapidate this insufferable functionary and take his diamond eyes?”
Nickolas: “It’d be my pleasure.”
Ana: “Ah, Ah, take it like a man, or you’ll take it like a woman.”
Brock: “Nature always wins, the seasons will rule Midgard.”

Brock fidgets but Ana wrenches his arm behind backwards and cuts him, Merlin points his dagger pulled from thin air to the figure and ripostes. Under pressure, he reaches for the sword on the ground, but without avail for it is taken-up by Nickolas.

Nickolas approaches the confident living statue while slightly sinking into the soil as he walks, strong with a power of mountains, he takes the brutish blade and strikes the stone mercenary, without regard the first striking is the wanton deathblow, shattering the side of the stoic malaise and bringing darkness monolithic. They do divest their claimant foes of accoutrements, after their fatigues, to go forth hence, it is with a mixture of relief and remorse they gather their horses and move along the road by the river. They leave carrying prizes and singing an earthly song, until they cross a letter attached to an arrow amid the road with a message of a single word, “North,” and the signature of their departed ally Troy pinned aground by the unique arrow weighted with porcelain fletching and broad heads, heavy as a bolt half in the ground. They head due north and looking up they do not see him, in passing a young colt charger walks slowly along the river bridled by the corpse riding low in the saddle with an arrow that matches the first, in his back. Merlin, Nickolas, and Ana pass with a glance and a silent prayer, they continue into the distance and when beyond sight the erewhile dead man in the saddle sheds magically his false appearance of fair color and shape to become a dark and swarthy-scarred perception.

Etymology of "dude" - (revision 2 - 16 may 2014)

original entry, 24 June 2011

Old English 


ðeode: "people, nation" or "commoner"


[revision 1]

Example 1:
http://studybible.info/WestSaxon1175/Luke%2022:25-27

Luke 22:25-27 (West Saxon 1175 AD)

²⁵ )Ða saide he heom kyninges wealded heore ðeode. And þa þe anweald ofer hyo hæbbeð synde fremfulle ge-nemnede ²⁶ ac ne beo ge na swa. Ac ge-wurðe he swa swa gingre se ðe yldre ys be-tweox eow. And se forsteppend ys beo he swilce he þein syo. ²⁷ Hwæðer ys yldre se ðe ðenað þe se þe sytt. witodlice se þe sit. Ic eom on eowren midlene swa swa se þe þenað. 

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+22%3A25&version=KJV

Luke 22:25-27 (KJV)

²⁵ And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors.
²⁶ But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.
²⁷ For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.

 

Example 2:  (update 1; november 2013)

[note the grammatical order in the second phrase is not identical to the sentence above it, likely due to the translator's affluence in Latin and carte blanche have resulted in the stylized translation and conjecture that any modern English speaker circa early 21st century can easily identify. I try a translation before it, which I think is more accurate. -mjb]

[[MJB TRANSLATION]  Erst he asked, who there people name were they hath of common. Him was answered, that hath Angle generation wherein. Then haveth he, "Rightly have said Angle hadst, for than they have angel-white hair, and such complexion that hath on heaven angel gathering been"] 

http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/history.htm

Eft he axode, hu ðære ðeode nama wære þe hi of comon. Him wæs geandwyrd, þæt hi Angle genemnode wæron. Þa cwæð he, "Rihtlice hi sind Angle gehatene, for ðan ðe hi engla wlite habbað, and swilcum gedafenað þæt hi on heofonum engla geferan beon." 

Again he [St. Gregory] asked what might be the name of the people from which they came. It was answered to him that they were named Angles. Then he said, "Rightly are they called Angles because they have the beauty of angels, and it is fitting that such as they should be angels' companions in heaven." 

/update 2, Example 3?

Your search found:

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• Trends

Word Frequency

dawd (dɔːd) 

Definitions

noun

1. a reverberating blow or punch
2. a large, compact section of something that has been hit off that which it belongs to

dawd (dɔːd) 

Definitions

intransitive verb

1. to totter or walk unsteadily

transitive verb

1. to help (a person who is walking unsteadily) to walk

>> so the first one is Scots,
"a bawdy dawd makes a begging bairn time"

meaning imho, 'a boisterous hit makes a begging child patient', everything has a little truth I guess. As you can see by the first secondary definition, it means what was lopped-off, if i bawd your head off, it still belongs on your shoulders in any case.

The second definition I've not heard so much, but again imho, it looks somewhat corollary, if you're hit, you might walk oddly, as for the second secondary definition, i assume it's similar to when we say "to strike up a conversation", or "hit it off with someone". These are only guesses, but English is one of those languages. By the latter, if cognates to Dude, would garner some insult as are nouns-made-verbs wont to do.  

/

that's not a blog, this is a blog

[so i changed this]

Lastly, historical linguists have speculated that its origins may lie in Old French^{[citation needed]}. The split infinitive seems to have appeared after the Norman Conquest, when English came into contact with Old French. It is not found in other Germanic languages, except modern Swedish, in which it is an independent development^{[citation needed]}; German still does not permit an adverb to fall between an infinitive and its particle (preposition). However, a construction which is similar, at least superficially, can be found in French and other Romance languages. Compare modern German, French, and English:

Ich beschließe, etwas nicht zu tun.

I decide not to do something.

Je décide de ne pas faire quelque chose.

I decide to not do something.

Thus it might be argued that the English split infinitive ("I decide to not do something") may have arisen under the influence of French. However, grammarians of the Romance languages do not use the term "split infinitive" to describe the phenomenon in those languages, since there the preposition is not considered a part of the infinitive form, and despite the surface-level similarity there are significant syntactical differences between the English and French constructions.

[into this]

External Influence

Linguistic discrepancy can focus on the possibility of its origins presumably belonging to interaction with Romance Languages which use double negatives with necessity, requiring a split infinitive to separate modal verbs within a sentence. The split infinitive first likely appears after the Norman Conquest, as English came into contact with Old French producing an amalgamate Anglo Norman language. It is not found in other Germanic languages, Old Frankish is another example of romance language vernacular imbuing the split infinitive to a Germanic language; German/Deutsch still does not permit an adverb to fall between an infinitive and its particle (preposition). However, a construction which is similar, at least superficially, can be found in French and other Romance languages. Compare modern German, French, and English:

Ich beschließe, etwas nicht zu tun.

I decide not to do something.

Je décide de ne pas faire quelque chose.

I decide to not do something.

Thus it might be argued that the English split infinitive ("I decide to not do something") may have arisen under the influence of French. However, grammarians of the Romance languages do not use the term "split infinitive" to describe the phenomenon in those languages, since there the preposition is not considered a part of the infinitive form, and despite the surface-level similarity there are significant syntactical differences between the English and French constructions.


[on Wikipedia, and i got this, on my wiki message board]


Hi. I reverted most of your changes at split infinitive because I couldn't understand them. Maybe you could explain what you meant at the the talk page? Were you saying that it's known that Old Frankish had split infinitives? —JerryFriedman (Talk) 04:45, 20 June 2011 (UTC)


[so I, on my message board, intellectually aggravated and condescending in turn wrote this reply:]

that is truly regrettable, for it was in English. did i change your entry? you 'slashed' the entry, because the semantics eluded your comprehension, or the slap-dash erasure was for your inability to note that a citation was needed, the code is cn yes?

my comprehension requires your response. admittedly, i have no druthers on the issue, for i have aired my opinion on my blog, it is likely that I've implied a conjecture, i will not implement the changes again. the world is a xoo, perhaps it was Frankish and not old Frankish. ne'ertheless, the section really doesn't need to start with 'lastly', it's an encyclopedia, not a public school book report.

"Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable."

Matthewjbanks (talk) 03:07, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

[English, broken English, and the lot is now a world language influential on all else; the very notion of double negatives had surfaced after I wrote "in nearly silence," to some of my writings elsewhere, eventually inferring an error; net neutrality doesn't exist within Wikipedia, my wish is that "illiberal  distrust" doesn't cause deresolution.]

The Hunter

Dark Ages: Fire

The Hunter

In the thickest forest, of the blackest night, beneath the darkest stars, below the tallest trees, amongst the deepest dreams, between the ravenous beasts most deadly, a stalker quieter than silence hunts the deadly game of darkness, speaking to a ghost that only he can see and hear, professing the prayers of a mighty hunter.

Apparition:
“Travelers, orb of the iris, of deepest jet and darkest pitch, wherefore art thou fiend.”

Hunter:
“Misery of witless hap, isolated by ignorance, and wander many years a fool, running from great fortune, for shame, for vainglory.”

Apparition:
“For sensation, have you set your pious plate, hath thee vows of paternoster, should they need the swarthy, moments weak against the wind.”

Hunter:
“Decoy, vile thoughts from the poisoned mind, withal, dead to the world, thoughtless without order, mortal over the fires of hell, meat before respite, melancholy, should they slap your parents, should there be life beyond you, and for all the houses, if a further soul is lost.”

Apparition:
“Satanic scripture written in blood, a science to teach you, and made for us the Minotaur, for some who have seen the horns, the red stare fools. Lachrymose, chaste for those who cannot escape the maze, fortune, naught, and the crows will harvest in the bloody soil, beside the fiery sword, your mettle hammered by smashing thunder if you prefer.”

Hunter:
“The bible of hell is every book conceived.It is no wonder that you cannot see it burning.”

Apparition:
“Broken words perverse, like the followers of prophets who cannot speak the truth, so the cold will preserve the demons of deserved fear, and even there the beast will find you.”

Hunter:
“Monsters above the maze, and the demons began to curse the maps and hide the truth before your eyes, listless, nature always wins, admonish the waves of fire.”

Apparition:
“Tearing down your world manifest, for every answer within the books are never the feign words of demon borne, or find your rotten misery, in your death breath, Lazarus rising, and before they worshiped the tower they were the Vikings.”

Hunter:
“Moreover, become druid, and become wizard or witch, become sorcerer, and become immortal, destroyer and doubter, and the words spilled upon the page.”

Apparition:
“The false prophet sleeps and the slayer sleeps, raze will not befall the dryad or the sylvan, the salt will not drink your blood, whilst your rumors split themselves and fuel the fire, unto, the end of days.”

Hunter:
“Had you sought to be a god you shall not even in your darkest hour and the grave will open for you.”

Apparition:
“If you consume the sage and thyme, you may stay in the garden, to a weed scathe and scorn.”

Hunter:
“A soul no closer than an idea, and the devil put yellow paint into his mouth and spat sulfur on the canvas.”

Apparition:
“Liberal, haphazardly, and screaming like the tortured souls of the fire, usurper of the damage done, and gone into Hades through a stone portal in the ground where the granite becomes molten which through the devil sinks.”

Hunter:
“The survivors of brimstone are blinded thence they had seen, and the demon was gone, and if the Hierophant is needed make your altar and offer your soul just as you do to the gods in your time of need, and the demons shan't make without haste.”

Apparition:
“With games of choice to offer make quickly about dispute, without the false witness of god, lo the gods of man and each tale contains the next, grace of persuasion yet desperate of dire tithes, but more the heretics praise expounding zealotry as a growing ignorance.”

Hunter:
“The master lets down the drawbridge and the apprentice knows when to leave, and whence to make fort, and with this knowledge the dawn of ages and denizen with the help of the demigods, and the alchemist made theirs a city of glass.”

Apparition:
“Each calculus of knowledge now molten yet clear, and the cursed vengeful symbols bring the doubt of faith, and for every vindictive cross they crucify not one body for a crime, fate, brings a new rain on the spring of youth, and the seeds will make trappings that amaze.”

Hunter:
“Through the streets again with him the liar, for the gifted must make children, and if a simpleton wary and murder than a twist of fate shall be resolute, science of the scion, temptation, would have you forget jurisprudence, if doth the jury of hell.”

Apparition:
“Stand on circumstance with the diva satanic, and from your sacred writ to obey and learn, for there is no hell without the other racing charger, a lesson in despondency.”

Hunter:
“Our ancestors watch this union of blade to bone...making my aim straight and true.”

Apparition:
“The blessed may go with the good graces of god, so say we all, this twilight unlike another, in hallow, in heart, in haven, free and accepted, forever more, welcomed by all, and blessed be.”

Hunter:
“Ere consumption, past destroying the futures, for your malice, sad are the words of the sycophant, hopeless and manifest, search the world for fuel, seek the wolves of perdition, war beyond hope.”

Apparition:
“There is jeopardy from the hounds of hell that hunt the bounty-souls, a hunter, made before the worlds to which they heed, tired of hypocrisy and slaughter.”

Hunter:
“Hunting insurgents for good measure, through the setting sun, and the rising tides of day, until the felicity from hunting in the dark shadows of the night finds me. I will feed on the spies consigned for fuel to hunt, prayers at every cairn, bloodletting in every shadow, readily, and stealing breath from still waters I shall run deep, and a song at your slaughter. For if the beast hears flit and me I will hunt them all without fail, and when I perish, the beasts will multiply, in the den of thieves, I will feed my wolves, and you will know us by the trail of the dead.”

Apparition:
“Sink your teeth into a river, individually they are weak, tell us these stories, but what power is war, should not a vampire sleep restless in the night.”

Hunter:
“At what so forth verily shall requite, haunted at best while others tare and tithe the hunted?”

Apparition:
“The saints and sinners drinking the black blood of the shadow child, dark stairwells upward to doorways of light, for favored listless and despondent ways. There came a schism, where the holy no longer found their pray to be sacred and sought to find animals in their very spirits, and the earth was carved for farm until the thieves could make great feasts by the charity of ministry."

Hunter:
“Verily came many faiths of them each having many shades, as many holy halls as colors of light yet without exception all of them warring and scorning as a generation of hypocrisy and heresy and magical thinking.”

Apparition:
Reminiscent and pleasured, “Where the devil of old tale lived in infamy of superstition never mentioned and never trusted, and there the devil walked the earth terrible and strongest, where the whims of platitude combine with fear the raucous of the devil's playground prepares to consume the heart of humanity.”

Hunter:
“Predator prophet, may the blessed smoke tree save us from the holy, wrath above us all, leaves of red to show life and shadow our abide, and let the blossom appease and distract the angels, our steps are felt by the shadow, forever our freedom…”

At the very moment where silence dies, the hunter realizes he has become the prey, a panther leaps to him with much malice. The hunter turns with a dagger and diminished breath, his full thought unspoken. It is this dagger lodged by instinct piercing, the throat of the black cat unbroken, not properly stricken tears only ineffectively cutting into the neck. A wound visual but not tangibly victorious nor palpably sufficient, it is highly angered, its claws combat. Where a bear would claw with a thrashing pummel, the feline bats and raps padded clubs with claws attached that if not laid to low will break his armor or pull him apart at first catch to shred him thoroughly and lick his bones clean. He has but the length of a breath to prevail, with a hissing gasp the cat will soon tear his head or a limb with sturdy fangs that glisten in the dying starlight. The hunter’s first reach is timid but with death imminent, he reaches into the open wound of the neck and holds a cord of sinew with all his strength, with the dagger in his open hand he tears the wound long and straight opening the cat taking four slices parallel to his armor for once and all over older scars. In tradition, adapted over the years driving down the darkness, the hunter names the creature Old Scratch and wherewithal will fatefully keep the title for himself, until the next hunt.

Vampirical Aberration

Dark Ages: Fire
Vampirical Aberration

A vampire slept in the darkness of mountain, and the wolves found him and bowed and knelt, the blood drinker told the wolves to ‘howl when the moon shines’ because he hated the light, they agreed to the deal if he gave them the meat of his kills. The vampire created a giant coven over the years and the wolves began to starve, and the coven began to drink the wolves’ blood, and the treaty was broken. The vampires became dark in the torrid moonlight but survived, and from the mountain, they began their kingdom over humans, until the humans began to bury them and crucify them in the sunlight, a pregnant woman poisoned into one of them before she knows that she bears child, and the gods gave the child a life of both worlds. Hungered for blood and walker of the day, but a demon saw the body as a vessel of beauty and possessed the child at an early age, the strength of the demon combined well with the vampire. The bloodlust was controlled and used as the torment of an angry soul for entertainment, the soul of the beast trapped in darkness, and the demon tortured the soul. In the mind, the soul was a god and created light and creatures to kill and when the soul of the vampire grew strong and tore through the mental bonds it recaptured control of its body. Trapped for many more years than seven it awoke and stared in the mirror. It spoke to an army at its control, and condemned the gods for a life not its own, then filled the waters with blood and covered the soil with bones. Sorrow and melancholy and lachrymose, suicide from the blade made of cold stone, and the followers watched the body turn to ash, and they cried. The ashes burned through the soil to hell, when burning to hell the ashes became the bloody feathers of Valkyrie wings, and the soul of the condemned vampire lauded by the demons. The demon king turned the vampire into a winged demon and sent him to Midgard as the ninth demonic general and antichrist. He made war for the desert people and fires for the warm fields by lightning just before the rain fell on the ashes, and brought the plague to the land. Scintillated by science, murdering the idolaters and religious tribes, until his justice seemed no more than a corrupt idea, Loki, could take no more of this. He condemned the antichrist, and the great wolf Fenrir hunted the demon and caught him out of the air, and in its sharp jaws it dragged the demon through the desert, over the sands grinding away its skin. Through the salt of the dried sea raised Jormurgand at the ocean and swallowed the antichrist as the great Thor watched the house of vampire decay.

Memory voices, disowned, man by the dying gods surround, and the races art dead but the humanity, and the graves watch them. Generations, filling the nine colors, and watch they each the other, but rest they are the last to know and starve all compassion, and Time reversed its insipid wretched fires and sheltered the beast as one became two. How was this the weak were not, predator and prey drifting apart but in death-spiral, deathlike the predators keep their civility and the prey will grow strong or fall from the family of man. Violent aromatic crystalline compound, spinning diamonds where the eyes should be, born to survive the song of revolution, the world suffering a psychosocial depersonalization disorder doth adept at the river Styx, where the gods shall drink from the river of blood. The warlord caterwauls for she, the divine goddess, to take hand-to-hand, and the castes above became strong with power. Fearless to fates as they live hundreds of scores longer than live the ancestor, ken the kin downriver getting smaller and taken like kettle fish for the supper. The farms grow unabated, law of the land consume the poor and bastards few whence there is place for any all, feeding for survival. Sight for the hunt, and the day dread the sunset for the moon will kill it in the night, demoniac propagation like vampires spreading into the fog of time with radiant power and silent splendor, when darkness falls we are reborn. Let the silk hang from the ceiling, fete and frolicking in the waves of harvest where Eden blooms a day, with the dragons of fire and ice. Through the valley of the shadow of death, sow the seed in rows to the edge of the earth in good measure, for The Glutton will try to put you in the golden chalice or the silver chair, and the hourglass shall hold. The time to play behind the curtain of deceit, in the rivers of rain, as the rats chase the finest seed they spread disease, look to the treasures of the mind.

Hunted were vampires until the hunters grew thick skin and heavy bone, sacred heart and art of disciplined combat, dandelion wine at the edge of the garden. Their survival consisted of shackled pets of ceremony soon to feed the children, scoffing the mead used to bless the black fertile waters that flood the farms, and hoping the seed will pay the earth for their birth, flax and wheat. The earth gave them the four memories, vampires do not go hiding in the shade, or obey the fates and their minions, spinning wheat into gold telling tales in the texture, and take their heads with the swords of the trinity. Swift justice without stead of pomp, ally the demonic science, worshiping the living night and allay with the morning star, how the records travel through time and speak the future when truth. Affliction of honor are the vampire masters of blood puppets, and race to the spark of life for even evolution has its source, and with the plague, lies unto deceit, where the heartless have no home, hast they discovered the tree of life. Dost thy make it grow by the whims, and will become god. All life became sand adrift instantly, ruddy, a world of shadow, and the winged ones circled, and heed their aversive resolutions the last vampire immortals walked the great desert. The darkness peals echoed powers of the great cauldrons of Hel, the demon king read aloud from the aria of terror, and the fires of hell grew and scorched the torrid deserts into broken and shattered desiccated glass. The pages blazed as the sands became the city of glass, the fire destroyed the lifelessness, the heavens glowed, and the angels cried for their garden, the harps twisted in the blighting furnace, and the darkness consumed the fire.

The fires burned without light, and the sand became the city of the damned, there waited the prince of darkness, and quoth the demon waiting, “soon I will destroy the houses of the holy,” the demon of penance waited in the darkness for all of time. The Valkyrie watched the darkness for all of time, in their mercy they swooped to fell the demon, in their shift they tore at it and bit it with their clean and sharp teeth while hidden in the darkness. The blood is love, of first are fallen they, afore night by yester morrow the demon's blood consumed of them which made them the first archdemons, and made them waste not a single drop and soon ordered they raise the armies of beasts that live in the darkness. Manic vampires frothing where the gods cannot always see, by fate, the weakest dying in the light beyond the bloody fires of hell created new humans as they would if asked holy. For the demons to begin their tempering game, and for this the trickster Loki was summoned to the presence of Odin and was asked, “Where have the other worlds gone?” and spake he that the hell had eaten them all in ravenous craven gluttony, and so was Loki ordered to destroy Hell, but he could not lift it. So there it stayed, and when the worlds were anew and filled with demigod sorcery again the battles of decision and logic began in turn, the souls of each demon slayed traveled to the realm of the nightmare. Possessing dreams they wield war in full stage, and their demon bloods brewed and bread the three terrible speaking beasts, the snake son of wisdom, the vulture son of perdition, the black cat son of lies and broken paths. Readily the tide of war, with the grim reaper making the worlds a great graveyard, and the winged demons and angels served their master, and the gods never set foot on the worlds of mortals. They sit the highest courts of heaven with their halls of the slain deep within majesty, and the trickster, merciless of lucid law, readily drinking from the waters at the root ends of Yggdrasil, with the ghosts, writhing, anointed, on the darkest fire, watching the weakened hearts of mortals, waits patiently, for you to seek out the devil.

Creationism

Dark Ages: Fire
Creationism

Dreamer, sleeping on a wire, tied between two clouds, the tide of the breeze, playing games with worlds, on the fields of the gods' children, storied, blighted lands. With raptor, with snakes of the oasis, impenetrable seed, and deadly perfume, inexplicable, where humans are toys, and demons are insects, favorable to the underworld, as many, wicked, spurious, perhaps. As many, waves upon the mountains, the ocean sleeps on the peaks of volcanoes, omnipotent, to many, as many, to few afforded, so many, among many others, whirlpools and pterodactyls, plethora, plenitudes, immortals, charged to rule humanity by order of the gods, multitude, too many, desperation, fate, choice, perhaps.

Moreover, when your god does not answer, find the antichrist among you, remove the soul, so spirits of fire may march to the shore, to the end of the world where haven does not reign, jump from the edge of your world, the winds shall die. The infinite order, rebellion to otherworldly slavery, you will, buried in the darkness, where the air is thick with death, you will crave to breath the dusk that rules the light, dying name I am. Begging for salvation, angels spread their wings, painted red with blood, evilest, bereft, unrequited, a season for slaughter, escaping the shifter. Smoke in the room, ducats of the devil, thrown overboard, sinking, drifting, drowned in the locker, Shinto is your threshold as you escape with ease, strike and vanish, to contend when and where you please. Portals to new gateways opened by the mind, dealings, trappings, death by the vine, buried in leaves, swinging from trees, pollination, plant, animal, burlap, for those thirsting for the stars, above, beyond.

Therein lies continue, Déjà Vu the demons have your soul, why would, they let it go, flower petals and burning embers, falling, from the sky, degradation of reality, death by imagination. Babies of demons splashing in acid, drowning, breathing, whirlpools and wormholes, ashes, diamonds, fabric, knives and wolves and poison, in two, by two, the weapon, dark, the wind above the war, fallen, forbidden, fiery eyes, stone walls of fury, madness, dementia, the soil, prison of the dead, never, nothing, even the crucified, mettlesome, meddlesome, servant of words.

The holy moon, echoing demonic mantra, ambivalent, the light torn from my soul I am driven to it, the lunacy divine, the soil of formation, where wizards duel, and witches watch disaster. The broken heart of the sun, anchor of souls, the tide, creatures of the night, sacrifices of blood, to raise the kings and queens, murdered of inequity, returned to the earth, bonds of the earth consumed by preying beast, ever longing for the wicked.

Bathing in the shadow, echoes, riot, asleep in the acid rain, aversion, veiled destruction, when else is lost, fair bled, leap between worlds, rivers traversed by dire horse and whittled cross, Viking funeral. Venomous veins, buried at sea with a maiden, in the old way, the last of this way, onward at distant shore, dawn.

Of a new age, the birth of eternity, blasphemous roots, verily, unto thee, war not loss. Without divine prophet amongst, white forests, of sacred birch, songbirds, with a message from flax, just and merciful, a survivor by storm, yes, savior slave, respectful polestar, morrow to mourn, servile, for we are many, hastening to this chosen existence by the fate ancestry, surrendering for infiltration, disguise by disbandment, solacing massacre, the fragile link to evolution.

Periled they set themselves afire, in protest, kindling, while the voices cried, thatch houses would not hear them for the many years of the second age. The earliest monuments their first writs and a fabled story book in the voice of the slaves, to fall upon wary ears, and the cursed war began in the name of religion just as each the latter and sequential. In the by and by, and the one who walks on water rests with the tribe of attributes and the brigands, death by daylight, sad way, all are thankful. They, weak, without tribulation, thou a word for slave once, go you ever, sentenced to sunlight, they, by suspect, saw this contract in suspicion, ages unto the day, knew not they sold their soul, signed the deed by greed of blood, and walked on the grass remembering hell, drink the spoils of war. Where the creatures of the dark beckon with apprehension at command, to read these words a final time this life relived will end, powers of imagination, where the leaders have the madness, malaise and false claim, but when they scratched their skin the vessel breaks offering submission to the demons. Unwitting, unwarranted, treachery, trappings, shelter, storied evil of all lore, shall the wretched hasten reckless abandon, crawling among humanity to homage the prince of darkness, becoming, possessor, heretofore, this calling, to judgment, simply, emotional decay, fill of volition, the demons do torture, to do the devil's bidding.

A system, of eyes in paintings, spies of art, instantly as drawn, protected, and restored. Immortal, staring, frozen eyes, drawings within drawings, readily, where the statues are alive, for rivers of pious blood, leaders among feigning zealots, and they drank until they grew wings to become the first demons and the humans as always had little faith for then they became the first vampires. The tales of evil, artifice, as the angels killed them one and then the next and then another, sparing the fealty and the soldiers of fortune. Erroneous worshipers were slaughtered and eaten by the angels who savor fear, ‘we are one’ the warriors with wings inveigh, the war of the winds, a storm of ages, wicked, elated, bound the world, conforming, settling, every ready to lead the souls to heaven.

Then there became a flood, pouring around the roots of the wicked garden, to become the mist in the sun, or sink into rivers and aquifers, or become the solid ice, to freeze over hell. Damnation, notion, clays for the first bone-fire, walls and irrigation for the first crop, the first reservoir, at which first the Valkyrie laughed, and taunted, prizing the nations and the splendor of witchcraft. Languor and dismay in flight exhausted those without shore, they became the murky mire, the waters drain, freeze, and dissipate, and the surviving angels collected their dead and returned to heaven repairing their brethren with the souls of the bewitched. So many belonging to the pale mask and the gold glowing eyes of darkness touched they the newborns chosen to be the first immortals, listening to their plight. At ease to never watch, and from the spilled blood came the forest, and unto the trees, fire, to the mountain tops, to warm the hall of the mountain king, jester and trickster, kin to heaven and hell. Fast inside emotion, silent in the light, devious of blue blood, Loki, a secret of both the Vanir and Aesir, the bastard of the Jotun and, eventual traitor to Odin the Allfather, given to Freya and Tyr and the Norns, seer in all darkness with spiritual divining visions, taught were the parables of clouds by Heimdall. Loki ate much from Yggdrasil the tree of life, thence he sired a daughter with one of the Valkyrie, discovered he the waters and the fires pouring into a great cavern beneath the worlds of the new Aesir conqueror Odin. Loki named the chasm Hell in honor of his newborn daughter Hel, rebel does him in services to the king, for in each duty the destruction tantamount, and his eight generals of hell cause much egregiousness. Even in the war of the blind does he make game of slaughter and for this, the wicked angels followed him into Hell. In truth, soon spawned the demonic, to grant the omens, voiceless, bringing the circle of fire to the damned, to burn. As the nine races grow, curt, becoming, and on them in the days of beginning the witches discovered magic, the alchemy index, and the first spell, an orchestra of the muses, the pagan gods, aside the monarch god, watching the wrath of the wicked.

In the hourglass, a grain of sand, in a glass of hellfire, a dead seed, from it the first birch, growth and broken skin, from it the first spear, that the Ice Witch made in an offering of order, that she may use it when visiting her beloved winter sea. Mist was a serf whom brought the gods mead, when Odin would not let her leave Mist tried to poison him with rotten grapes, the god king noticed this and threw her to Midgard. The Ice Witch and the Fire Witch saw the fall to her death and raised her from the earth.

They became the darkness trinity and the first coven of the witch, hated in the empire, and loathed by the druids. In the witches’ blood, they drew the first rose, a thorny doom, and it grew underbrush toward the forest of the wolves. Winter sang to the wolves and held them in her grasp with gentile grace, Loki would later take the king of the wolves and twist its soul and sate it with his own blood to make the wretched Fenrir. Winter gave her wolves thorns in their mouths, and taught them to fear the fire and the fog, never would catechism supplant. When abandoned they howl at the moon as ever white as the Winter witch, and fight they do over the food she did not tender them, faithful to the failure of their prey, nothing, if not devout, carnage to thou bones until a new hunt, judgment to the order of the forest shadow. Behind all light with power of the cosmos, the shade that intrigued the Lucifer before transgression, excommunicated, banished, and saw the shadow speaking with the great Satan. Hel did not burn the air as the light bringer landed where ice would not go, and as he breathed, he stole the powers of Mist so she tore his wings from his shoulders, and baptized was he in the holy fire. As of then joining the ranks of hell, through the ages of the hourglass, and saving the dead to march them at Ragnarök.

Sought is the second death to the unanswered questions of creatures immortal. Torment, the day and then the shade, and the vampires watched from the shadows and sunsets. The wise old serpent's tongue, readily, and as the thunder plays the lightning wakes to protect it. The fires make merry hell as thunderbolts strike, the sight of the fire freely made the old willow was the first to weep as its branches fell lachrymose. The life of a tree longing for darkness belongs to the weeping willow, and each the next, and the witches began their toil, watching the tears of the crying gods the Ice witch froze the sky. The Fire witch burned until the ashes were a black river, and in this drought and torridness, the Mist witch raised the first Phoenix. Reared to fight the Jotun Dragons, the phoenix blood that boils took keen affection to the hellfire, where the Fire witch colored it with the blood of a demon and the disingenuous.

Then the Ice witch brought the phoenix her faery snow so that it would not exhaust, and the Mist filled the creature’s lungs with the winds of her precious mint leaf that it would not breathe fire. Longer than the list of memory had the fairies lived in the worlds of the dwarfs, and when the dwarf mines would unearth treasures the fairies would often steal the rubies for their resting ground and use the diamonds to line their pools, and on their wings edges of sharpened steel so sharp to swift and slice a dragon. Even these sprites feared the phoenix for it could eat the darkness to fuel fires that melt precious metals. It was there a war began led by the blind king Hodur, and the Phoenix and its mistresses tired of the chaotic commons. No worries burdened to the beasts of worlds, slaves to misfortune their war with the giants would tarry forth, into the world of the light and the dark elves, to stage a war their own against the dragon riders.

Thus began a dark war by the dark lords of hell while the gods slept, pure ruthlessness seen scattered in the wars of men, and bowed they at the king dragon. The weapons fell and the monsters scattered into the other worlds if they could, and when Odin woke he bade that Hel and all the monsters were to live in hell. Odin tore the sky and the stars fell until those born of fire were in retreat, but the sound lured the Phoenix and struck it was by a falling star, and the god king saw his wickedness. The star nested over it until the light faded, and it crawled from the ashes, and returned to eat the blue leaves of the sacred white birch, and the dark lords of hell spent the day cutting the tongues of the demons so that they could not speak of their loss. By the trickster’s stern order, the vampires therefrom sleep during the daylight and let loose upon the worlds of night. In the nights to come they feasted on blood, the dark elves were slow, the light elves were swift and soon slept with the humans, and an entire world was merged and lost. The blood drinkers worshiped their blood slaves, and the heartbeats echoed as the hunters of the other worlds made bloodsport, and gave Viking funerals, warlords and witches valiant and vanguard, but the Jotun slaughtered them for their slaughter. Scattered into the night winds, readily, making path for the wizards of the third age. Children of demons and the children of mixed blood of the nine worlds, elders and the boys and girls not infants, youth in haste from their mothers, would war upon the other through all the ages latter. Each in their own way wielding the powers of their worlds, unguided, fresh gods in the age of mortals, with wars of humans the demons who could not deprecate their evil began their hell sport. The maze to the challenge of the chasm, hiding from the Minotaur, a victory will give you possession of a human's body, in defeat no rest for the wicked, and the prisoners of hell cried for their ancestor. The demons helped them call, and the sinners were all lost.

The wizards of the many rival schools pondered on what to do with Midgard. As the first warlock departed hell, and the demon killed the first man it met, and took his face, then spake secretly, accomplice, “…to kill the master…”, and set itself on the path to the magician of the north wind. Fearful of aspersion, it took a new face each morning opportunity, and wolves eat each copied victim and every posse sent as the Ice Witch eyes the north storm. The fairies followed the demoniac warlock in the day as a butterfly, and in the night as a star. On the sixth day, a lunatic saw the shape shifter for its true form, and the demon tied him to a tree, and ate him alive with the sharpest knives in the world. Soon would it kill the king of the forgotten poets, when the king of the north wind was dead the demon set to commit suicide and transmigrate its soul to hell, the Ice Witch froze the demon solid.

The fires of hell obey the great Loki, the coven is in order. From this magic was the first ice age, the humans hid in caves, the giants hunted hastily the largest beasts, the elves slept, and the dead never burned and never found, as the dwarfs dug into the ground, and the ice began to surround hell. The house of Vanir told Odin, the Allfather could not let the fires perish so he broke the ice world in two. With great thunders of spring, and the fires danced, the magicians could see through the storm again and renewed their conflict. In the winter too cold for the sun the darkness slept within the warlocks, by their actions does occur the first summoning, war unto god and devil. They whispered to the tail of dark midnight winds, the second demon summoned to Midgard, and it drank the blood of the evil warlock from his skull. The murderer haunted the land without call or calm, it taunted kings and kinder, and wars ended as the fearful trembled. Melancholy sickened Mist without patrons in her garden and she sharpened the blades of the elves, all at once in a single moment, and at the dawn, they attacked the demon, when the elves are enchanted by the morning, and drank its blood from its skull.

Odin asked his crows Huginn and Munin what the sinners were and after reconnaissance, they told him ‘the’ ‘dead’, for the demons had come from the ground, as did a another to command them with a face of soot, whose wrinkles cracked coal skin to reveal a fire. Went this hellion demon to the temple of polygamy and copulated with the high queen on the back of the dead king, and when he saw it was also a temple of slavery, he murdered her and turned her empire to a desert. The Vanir said nothing and the Aesir cared not, and those who led them from the desert would be old before their passing, the surviving arbiters became infidels. The dew of dawn and the deluge of dusk cared not for the sands, and then the demon sat in the middle of its desert with legs crossed and began rocking back and forth for six hundred sixty six days. Eventually it began to moan and groan and a golden dragon crawled out of the sand, six legs four wings two forearms, and it rode upon the beast and tormented, and threw molten sulfur, in reveille. When the wizards and warlocks tried to stop it with their conjured fire, it cut off their hands and fed their palms to the dragon so that it might breathe fire, and the worlds began to suffer, and the worlds began to worry. For all told it had come from the desert so they smote the human temples there, and it yet remained, and all told the dragon came from beneath the desert sands, so worlds began to blame the dark elves, for they are the ones who live in the mines. A war approached and the dwarfs came to answer, and consoled their accusers, went they to the dragon and the demon by an army in tithe. Commoners alike staring at a demon, food for the dragon, but they began swift and tensile with their hammers and picks, where the blood runs gold, threw they their hammers at the wings to keep it grounded, and pummeled the beast into malformation, and burnished the precious metal with the blood of the demon, and drinking from the demon’s skull.

Hence and then the sorcerers of each world set to fence their cemeteries, the livestock watch at night and the farmers work of the day to watch for dead crawling from the earth. In the night, two demons made of black smoke seeped from the ground and swam in the air and avoiding the light drifted into the dark forest. The smokes possessed the bodies of two hunters, asleep at sleeping near the river their souls were eaten, the demons wore the new bodies with pride and esteem, and they took ink and put the mark of the beast on their palms. Shared was the minds of these demons, “Poorly have the hunters trained,” “their thoughts,” “we must take us to the fortress of the night-lights,” and they were of one mind of malice, readily their thoughts connected. Said one “I will keep hostages,” said the other “I will not give mercy,” said they not more and entered the city, and they began to kill the innocent. When their bodies held many arrows the smoke would leap from their mouths into another host, consuming their souls as daylight dies, and would leap simultaneously when chanced and they took host of warriors and hid them then exited to continue their terror. Their ideal had murdered the city and they continued their carnage unrelenting through the lands, when they finished they burned everything to scorn the clouds so that Mist could not follow. The Ice witch would not have her subservient humans bowing to the smoke and not to her for spring's renewal for she seeks their frail adoration and not felon agony. She turned on them but through the smoke of the fires could not see that they were two, and she did her dance of freezing time but the demons were strong with their powers of fire and they moved slow but freely. So she made time colder so distant from her fortress that her veins began to freeze and pain her ever so, and she threw her silver knife and felled one who crashed like an ice reliquary filled with volcanic soot and ash. Demons twin began to glow with anger and when it charged her she took it by the throat and froze it solid, and she fell with a faint and white ague. The priest and olden wizard came and said their prayers over the ashes and the humans came with axe for the frozen twin, and they asked what would make the Ice witch well again and she said, “Bring me pails of water and pour them on the ground.” and they did. She crawled to the water, which froze solid at her touch, and they gasped in terror and stood with caution staring, as she crawled onto the frost white pool she rested in pain on the ice and began to sink into it as if it were quicksand.

Now we must turn the page, and relive, in balance immortals stray, and a font of magic bestows the better graces of wizardry, the trial of all tribulations, to conceit what temptation has misbegotten, by curses of envied gift, becomes the dawn of damnation.

The Fire witch was reading from the living book, the words write across the pages, and answers to riddles, and Hel sent four pagan knights of the hellion order, and the four rose from the ground at the sands and set themselves on their ways. Boreal, austral, occidental, and oriental, walking on the spines of mountains to the ocean caves at the end of the realm, and the worlds trembled. The perfect riddle makes a rhyme, in the south the dragon breathed fire and boiled the blood of the innocent, it was the first cloud, and the blood burned and rained darkness onto the people of the land. Then the dragon ate the demon as blood covered victims were delightful, and the dragon went to the bottom of the world and slept with full stomach and slept until time forgot it as it slowly turned to ice, and in the west the dragon carried Atlantis into the sea. There with rider it killed all the beasts but the cat-bull and the tiger-wolf, and on distant shore, they told lies in the whispers of the wind, the people ate each other in madness and starvation, and they spoke of war while the warriors forgot the gods. The demon would deceitfully save the people from false threat of the dragon so they would worship him, and for every day, he made them sacrifice others at the altar of lies, until the dragon tired of the ruse and tried to eat the demon. Wit of what had happened in the south he left for the center earth but the dragon found him and ate him, and in the east, the demon tamed the dragon, and made the people worship the dragon in fear. They brought it metals, precious stones, and the dragon at it all, and they slaved in the soil for many years, until the day when they attacked the demon in the blighted temple. The minion of hell is unchallenged as he burns them and everything else, but the fires of their forest burned so bright that he reveals himself to the clouds. The Valkyries disdain the fires burning their drifting clouds and take from the demon his clothes, he cursed them as they left, and the demon with scales and black fire made armor from gold, and for this the dragon ate him. In the north, the land was harsh as the first winter fell and the many different cloud spirits migrated north for their chance to fall from heaven, and the demon met the dragon whose fire came from its blood, and in the years of terror, the people grew in tribes and then cities. As they consumed the forest for the trees and the game as they please, the dragon resolves to eat them, and the demon laughs. Perilous the humans made havoc in rebellion, the people lost to the beast and their war had eaten every animal big enough for the dragon to catch. Without food the dragon ate the demon, the dragon's fire began to die, and the clouds continued to drift north, so the dragon began to eat the clouds, and the fire became the icy winds of the winter gale, and the watching Valkyries laughed.