Merlin 2:20 “Martyr Art”
While ideologies syllogistic serve chaos espousing pillagers focused on the basic needs of their clan their hatred in resolve to experience denies the individualism they had once intended to protect, an empire built in blood to defy in hypocrisy another. Small fires burn throughout the castle as the stovepipe royal chamber smolders as its ceiling collapses, a slow burn spreads within stone walls to be seen on display from the high dawn skies.
To new unprecedented exploration benevolent colors of retribution, a thrill of pursuit and eagerness of battle, a war concluding and a battle ensuing by cultivar justice, lowered upon the canopy of a morbid forest, the leaves dead and passing beneath the wings in the winds of flash and thrashing, faster by the flicker flames growing at the edges of feathers midflight, in a countryside made unto harvest the spoils of war and the spoiled warriors exploit the benevolent tender.
The endless autumn wind begins bringing a storm in the darkness, the rain in the distance sounds like running horses between the distant clouds and mountains as seen from flight, arrows shot from the wagons miss Nickolas as her guards are ordered to attack him, distant lightning strikes blinding white, the gods must be angry or intrusive, a long pause before the roaring thunder that drives them masked by the dozens of trampling hooves, in their hallow steps the soil already damp glistens, the storm swells leaving the dead leaves and the dirty ground.
From his horse Nickolas sees Etain smiling to him beyond the two riders, Jacobi and Wynn, sent feverishly to kill him, but as he approaches they are dead in their saddle, both with white arrows launched from Troy in the sky, the horses are nearly stopped in their tracks as he passes them. When Etain looks and sees Nickolas pass the defenses she scans the land for a reason, eventually in the air she notices Troy upon the vigorous phoenix, and delirium overwhelms her as she urges her driver to deliberately hasten
Etain: “Move faster or you won’t be coming with us!”
From his horse Nickolas throws a knife at one of the witch’s guards striking him in the throat, the guard tries to leap to him, but his own blood keeps him from a solid footing and falls before the horse being slightly trampled before left to die in the dirt. Etain is keen to watch Nickolas as he throws another knife at her, it misses her as she stares smitten by his heroics, he makes close to the wagon, from the back she toils with him eventually dislodging him from his mount with a spiraling firestorm that grows until it topples he and the horse, she waves as she departs and nods her head in mockery of him, against a secondary battle.
Nickolas looks down the forest road discontent to see Etain look back only once, alive and breathing this is his only response as well. He lays back into the road again, the horse he rode sleeps after being whirled unconscious and thrown to the ground. One of the riders from the two horses dead falls hapless and lifeless to the ground three seconds before the phoenix slams its talons into the road nearby him.
Troy: “Having fun yet?”
Nick: “Scores and dozens, why did you bring the body?”
Troy: “I was going to drop it on the carriage but Merlin has druthers.”
Nick: “This place is evil.”
Troy: “We must protect it.”
Troy dismounts and takes Nickolas’s hand only to painfully join him on the ground, his wounds in the white skin are dry but pierced by blade and bruised by hilt, the blood does not bleed the understanding of which is beyond both of their comprehension, they wait in wonder of what happens at the castle.
The system of political theory organized to prevail in destructive force was underestimated, having as its basis the relation of lord to vassal with all land held in fee and in proclivity the characteristics of homage, yet the service of tenants under arms and in court, peerage, and forfeiture. This palace of mindless self-indulgence after attack of reprehensible violence is worse for wear than a communist cesspool in a nationalist warzone, there is nobody near that is not hiding from something egregious and deviant, thusly revolution fills the hallows of the great hall, the many busy bodies to take space with all else they have ravaged and plundered, there serve the Saracen soldiers remaining by playing the lyre, imparting melody for the witch of the Mist of the echoing vale song, a different homage melody than the gradual homilies of the royalists, with pentatonic scales in lacerating bends of minor tonalities in response to the triumphalism of drovers and shepherds who now are looting the armory.
Indomitable determinism surreptitious of callous irony to confute interlocutors trammeling the apocryphal expostulate, the obtainment of décolletage is in paucity and seems prandial hierarchy, having their fill of confrontation Merlin and Ana leave the castle on the road to find and aid the others. Peregrinations of adventitious complicity whist the drollery, procrustean ice magic behests time itself. The quisling insurrection hath ended and does not follow them.
A horse runs in the distance from a dead body in the road nearly underfoot of the other horse bucking its dead rider so that it may catch the other horse and does so successfully. 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. Merlin’s eyes see the tattoo and he knows immediately who has brought the destruction.
Merlin: “Was she strong, hot, and tried to kill you?”
Nick: “Yes but Troy is hurt!”
Troy is napping, with every breath his blood seeps in and out with each draw and let of air. When he moves he agonizes and decides against further wrest of tumultuous wroth.
Merlin: “You should have stayed mounted, stitch him up!”
Ana: “With what, Nicolai’s ligature wire?”
Merlin: “Yes, his skin’s leather.”
Nick: “Do you want to tell the rest of us who she is?”
Merlin: “Etain, daughter of Saturn and niece to Loki the trickster.”
Ana: “But you’re a trickster?”
Merlin: “Not as much as he is.”
Troy: “Will we be tracking any of them?”
Merlin: “No, we will make hospice and mend the wounded.”
Nick: “Is that all?”
Merlin: “She is a zealot on vengeful mission, waging war, on the human condition, engages in the destruction of law, volatile and offensive.”
Ana: “Sounds passionate Merlin.”
Merlin: “That’s not the half of it.”
In the distance Halle stands after having hurriedly followed under duress of slowed time, a spell and trek exhausting, but disappears the moment Merlin notices her spying, hoping he dismisses it as notion.
Troy: “This from an inquisitor of unchecked power?”
Ana: “She is a high priestess of fire in a reign of witches having or showing a stoical and unreasoning desire for vengeance.”
Nickolas rises to his feet and dust himself, the daylight sun is bright and shines against the coming storm and a rising moon, what scares children and all philistines of prehistory is no more than an eclipse, but the world without light and a moon discontent with the power over the tides trying to steal the light brings great pain to both Troy who begins to bleed profusely and the phoenix whose radiant colors burst into great aguish flames. Merlin puts all hope in eclipse and looking to the sky counts how long it takes for the moon to pass, as the sun pushes aside the obstruction the pain subsides, mentally and physically. The time of total eclipse was thrice as many digits on one hand but once cleared the phoenix is grown and Troy is stronger though woefully unhealed, the fiery avian hungers for meat and so gnaws on the dead soldier’s boots, Troy staggers to the last green autumn leaves in the sunlight of the sundry path, stripping them stuffing them into his mouth.
Troy: “I may ne’er eat meat again!”
Merlin looks to Troy with confusion, but meanwhile the castle broods with the storm, foregone voices in the mist, foreshadowing it is thither Lynn daughter of Vivienne awaits in the castle at the head of table of the abandoned festivities for a dead king, bodies on the floors and on the table itself, as she eats swine meat with the blackest of wines, staring at a painting of her mother in the hall. By her concise magical ways the background sways but the distal subject without discourse remains lifeless. Halle returns from reconnoiter foreshortened by Etain’s successful escape with grace on display.
Lynn: “I will return to our sister’s chair to her side or in her stead. Follow our brother...indeed, Merlin outstrips, acquiescence, follow him with diligence and temper, we had well be nigh behind his first step.”
Halle: “If he falters in trouble dare I help him?”
Lynn: “…it is your choice; I shan’t miss him if he hangs from cordon the same as she upon him.”
Halle: “You should raid this antique dungeon, course upon the main, and then sink it.”
Lynn: “Your man Ophiuchus stands behind you.”
Indeed, he had slithered in behind her as if he had powers of his own, desperately silent, mystically violent, arcane be not forsooth upon the same.
Ophiuchus: “Your man Merlin arrives shortly.”
Lynn: (Sigh) “Then I am loath of this place.”
Lynn floats to her sister and they place palms together, an eternal vigil they share one last thought and separate, she floats to the door as smoke swirls hiding her extant exit .
Lynn: “I bid farewell in peace.”
Lynn turns into dissipating vapors within the smoke that hides her, Halle turns to Ophiuchus and puts her arms around his neck.
Halle: “Do not let the wizard know of our presence here…or I’ll turn more than your heart blue.”
She kisses him and he smiles before parting, Ophiuchus leaves for the shadows as she vanishes.