Merlin 2:37 “As the Palaces Burn”
Halls of terror and resolution mark no masquerade of ill repute and indigent awakening, ere soliloquy and recompense in half of host and tother conscripted, in the swell of bloodshed is the aching act of war. The fires of fugue and fury cast shadows on shining and thawing walls, silhouettes display but there are none to see them, for every warrior hunts and every wounded kills. The boisterous escape the brig to join the fracas and in tumult ravage the palace with perfidy, wherein they attack Halle. She morally wounds them all in grasp of time without alteration. Grabbing chests to freeze their hearts, wielding the nightmare blade whose wounds spread blood like ice flow and frostbite that spreads across their skin, evincing power and deferent allegiances.
To task the facilities of man of fear and fret began, what makes to gauge what shall divulge how the universe parses fragile demands, an immortal forester evades the demon of the snakes and a serpent of the ice within a frozen bastion of fires a lantern on an oblique mountain.
Nickolas: “I met a friend of yours; we cut him down in the street.”
Ophiuchus: “You are so easily conjectured at each undertaking.”
Nickolas: “Then fed him to small children.”
Ophiuchus: “I would have done the same.”
Nickolas: “I suppose you eat your young oftener?”
Ophiuchus: “Novelty and circumstance receiving and assimilated impress.”
Nickolas: “Lest to lay in hesitation and the further score indemnity behind solemnity.”
The roaming viper is longer than Nickolas is tall, it springs toward him and latches it fangs into him, one-fang spews venom to the floor having completely pierced his leg, from it the venom smokes with an air of sulfur as the second fang injects poison into his arteries. Nickolas trapped in sound mind and solemn armor, pinned beneath the heart of the viperid, takes a dagger from his belt and stabs beneath the scale its stomach causing it to relent and retract position. Ophiuchus’ share of the barter mended, improvidence at last the vice betrayed in humbling behest he slowly paces towards Nickolas dying while sharpening his scimitar, but the immortal resumes and rulls from decapitation. Soonest scare thru shadows to duel, cashiered and divested equipage manifest, the serpent having only its armored scales climbs through the rafters in haunt of Nickolas as the fractures begin to seep with smoke.
A predator hiding in the garret above harassed heathen, fostering prosperity but feigning wisdom, violence rattles outside the quarters, bestowment of reprisal and conduct early where the lunatic procures liberation. Nickolas hurls a dagger at Ophiuchus, it strikes him in the eye and summons a groan of discomfiture showing a split-tongue, but he does not fall nor stagger, only ardor as he pulls the blade from his skull.
Nickolas: “I am eye…”
Ophiuchus: “There are degrees of consanguinity.”
Nickolas: “I’m not hiding; I’m just indecent - if you could come back in a few minutes?”
Ophiuchus: “Stay there, you’re scaring me.”
Tones of frail levity met with the serpentine’s spite, sedition, and hisses within words. It is here that is elsewhere and else that is whilst, Merlin despairingly struggles beneath the magic Halle has cast to him, wires of mosaic fire binding him to the floor weave netting empowered by stormy skies that seem the same in dawn as dusk. Darkly bleak clouds of melancholic consternation, the castle foundation cracks again duly penetrated by a sacrament flame with full authority.
Latent despair of acclimation deposed by deposit pitiful, costumed is death by the sound of silence grotesque in disguise, malevolent deeds without words in servant quarters afterward and straightly, servitude of effectual convenience hardly notices, however obvious christening of sabotage. Stone with bracing masonry with effacing carpentry with lacing ice is razing of white quartz, the bastion is in disrepair and war is in fatal fury.
Ana is anxious to continue foiling with fire, increasingly desperate to climb the stairs of stories to take her into the clearing of the mountaintop. Her steps no longer tap on the hardened surface of the palatial glacial abode, for as the fortress of ice begins to melt her steps dangerously slip, all so as Halle approaches with a collection of personal guards mainly of higher ranks.
Halle: “Good, you are finally here; swallow these fires, heaven forbid, not the guest I seek.”
Ana: “The child in the darkness shall be feared by those in the light.”
Halle: “Than you shall die trying, kill her!”
The soldiers do not draw armed swords, to their disadvantage, Ana takes the first by his neck and scorches his throat closed before throwing him to the ground and drawing his sword in the process, with it she stabs the second and swings it at a third. Halle walks passed her with melting waters returning to a state of ice beneath her feet with patience and providence abound the tarried and tethered. Ana wills her blade to glow and steam the air, an enemy blade clashes with it but collides and bonds with the molten steel, she then opportune kicks her opponent down the stairs causing collisions with his comrades as they all tumble and fall. With a flick of her wrist, their uniforms begin to burn causing them to roll thru what puddled water they can gather as the heat melts the steps anew causing them to slip and stumble in pursuit, for her fires do not last while in contest with the magic Halle has summoned to retain the ice.
Merlin wrests riving bond of spiritual magic power, each coin is melting individual pools and the electrified wires that hold him tear and twist his certain imposition, his chest is bound and breaths are shallow as the glowing ice of night and the darkened clouds of sky are taken from him.
As the light begins to fade in his eyes he looks above, along the floor atop his head is a window, in the grey overcast flies Troy atop phoenix Alerion distantly seemingly a flicker no bigger than a match-head. As the coins melt and sink into the ice so does Merlin. The water pools around him and conducts the electricity thru his skin and bones. In constant agonizing impudicity, coetaneous the coins melt thru the floor, and the water nearly drowning him begins to drain. His tested strength wanes for manna and sorts of lair, as the empirical cylindrical coins drop to the floor below him as anguish crushes his burning bones and nerves still bound by the nexus of electrical light, his magic wind of rejection causes the cracking floor to shatter beneath him.
Merlin falls through the second floor because it is thin from the fires of the basin, two levels down the coins become disheveled and the hex breached, landing on his shoulder he convulses and immediately spews water among the soldiers fighting while the fallen die. A storm brews to howl over bastion and within it thunder, the aggression of symbiotes destroying the keep. Blades and sheaths in different spires, with differing fires the walls begin to rarefy as floors dilute, lumbering foes with fatal throws the evil throes intend to trade blows or die locked in accord.
Upstairs Nickolas scours for a skewer or a sword, but finds them nary. He swifts to the door for escape, yet finds it naught and guarded by the giant viper, Ophiuchus most deranged begins to throw and overturn tables and furniture to find Nickolas, albeit ice blocks prey from Ophiuchus’ black forked tongue he prowls and stalks, yet to the phoenix Alerion the secrets of ice are null. Both Troy and Alerion see the palace as a crippled lantern with bodies and blood, but near the serpentine warrior priest is the massive demonic viper, which to a phoenix piques pangs of insatiable hunger.
The huge fiery bird lands on the balcony outside the quarters where Nick fights Ophiuchus, Nick swings a board smashing what had remained of a stabbed eye, but dark foe veritably manumit verily in absentia dementia grabs him and then a whip and begins hanging Nick by his throat from the rafter. The orange phoenix with cold blue feathers that look like steel scales of its own smashes thru the door with its head, although oversized inasmuch unable to enter is undeterred, deciding to use its beak to frenetically tear the doorway until it large enough to pass.
The wind roars passed the outer breeches, but it shall not hold long hence soon to fail from fires burning amenities and bodies, once thru the door Alerion ravages the room to savage the viper, availing Nick and causing his nemesis to escape the isentropic tussle. Escaped and in a room of relics Nick quickly takes a pose in the fashion faux of armored busts, hoping that the glowing walls dare not reveal him, but the rouse falls short and just is he, ere aptly fallen to the grasp of gauntlet and pierce of spear. Whence juxtapose he takes a dagger not only from his hand but off the belt, Ophiuchus lifts Nickolas to throw him on a rack of swords and hoped to have tossed, doth Nick tear into him as an earnest wolf until dropped and climbing down with teeth of knives. Labor foe plenty by way for many laboring as the clangor of vicious battling in the nearby wings enters the hallway, before Nick can finish Ophiuchus he runs to avoid the dozen men, to hunt them as they come to their leader’s aid.
Another tremor trembles the fortress, the shattered ice resembles precise diamonds clearly glittering beautiful, melting in places as fractures reflect thru the transparent walls, as eyes find reflection in watery surfaces, panes broken where picture windows have leapt, the cold torrent of encircling air is the only chance the city of ice has of avoiding erasure. The forest fire is to the foothills, the blazing empire churns the hallways into earns, and a phoenix born in flames rattles in a room with a balcony wall. Smooth knives of jagged broken glass, tinted windows destroyed and concise shards cover the floor, the snake in its path to destruction wrecking much of the obstacles in its course, having the opportunity to consume. Forthcoming attack improves upon the phoenix as its desire to consume what rages beneath the snake’s surface quickly evolves into the death of a serpent. Troy, avian cavalryman, also reveals his unintentional hiding place beneath the surface of miscellaneous debris. Nickolas in his escapade has chosen to reenter the room where Alerion and Troy consume the dead snake. He enters the door to see only the snake’s head and thinks it still alive, so he throws his sword point into its skull, causing the avian and rider to laugh at his expense.
As the minions attack mercenaries, Merlin stands and takes a sword, with it he walks exiting the room stabbing and slicing the wounded foes trying to grab his legs and dying at his feet. With his magic of the wind and the flames that won’t rescind, he is dry in little time and damaged clothes, he searches for Halle and finds her, she turns to suppose him following but with the wind he gusts a burning drapery afore himself. Again, after many footsteps, she turns to presume that he follows, but his windy conjuration hides him within flames, thrice of more she turns to surmise him closely in pursuit, yet this time his presence of fire is unsuitable as disguise and as she draws a blade to cut him he throws fire with wind at her in his defense. It does not scorn her nor postpone his predicament
Merlin: “You will never have Albion.”
Halle: “So much sooth lost and replaced with lies."
Above them the floors have filled with water caused from the heat of the winds of the burning countryside, under such great pressures the ceiling collapses bringing with it walls and diluvium torrent as low-burning fires slake from the draining flow. A wall of ice has fallen and filled with water trapping her like a fish in a glass. She pounds her fists contemporaneous on the clear ice causing a low sound to thunder the foundation and shake the walls.
Merlin: “I hunger for the hungered, slay for the slain, hunt for the hunted.”
He takes brief steps to her icy prison, his hand on the surface brushes a silted layer of rime, which grows increasingly deferent to her magic, and her face resembles anger and nonplus.
Merlin: “I …sleep for the sleeping, fall for the fallen; I wake, for thee, awakened.”
She stares knowing that trapped is she in ice or water, for if she does else but as to hold her breath, she will surely sink and drown. Tho if she freezes time the ice for her becomes air and she thusly will drift to the surface or sink to its depths, because one is without alter, she is to choose the latter. With temporal sands still hidden in Merlin’s moral fabric syncopated with time, but not outside it, as thru his eyes Halle seems to turn to black smoke within the dark blue primal caisson, elements to quintessence the water becomes her air as she rises from her climes. As Merlin blinks a second time, she is absent.
Naught for noting, the mountain warms, the dark ice within narrow foundations beneath the darkness begins to melt. Where ice remains Halle soon regains her grip on fluidic time, pulling herself to the surface and climbing unencumbered by frigidity, the high winds in the twilight of the thunder god put whiles near the doting mountain peak, thereby stands her sister witch Lynn, in fascination watching Halle climb from the smoke without aid.
Interred by dilemma Nickolas searches for Ana, she duly searching for him, passing the symbols melted from archways, barely able to notice whom amongst themselves suffers as they frantically scour, opaque regularity consumes sight as firelight blights every thawing surface. As for Merlin, with an incantation lightning becomes a volatile and painful restraint for malefactors and brigands as the water recedes from his footsteps.
From the dark magic brews a blizzard, under new lenticular snow the palace of ice likewise in frozen degrees begins to tear from the mountainside, stretching dark lightning with damage of fire and ice, Nickolas turns to see the edifice torn from him and with great melancholy and dour he falls on his knees and weeps.
The phoenix and Troy fly from the crashing castle as if it were a broken branch, while the pawns of white crystal ice endeavor to cull the remaining bright fires within the walls of the mind, body and souls of the great mages in good form. Eventful as they notice Nick and attack him, including the draugur created by the termagant Ophiuchus, as he torments he thinks he sees people at the distant edge of the scorched forest whom are no more than memory and lament cast into his watery eyes. Possessed by the fire the torrential snow-bounded sky, covering the ground with the scenery of winter, he turns and slaughters almost twenty men. In facing the new draugur he wastes no time cutting open his chest and wresting the darkly radiant heart before his foe can fall empty and dead again.
He stares at the heart covered in black oil as it piques thru him disgust and bleak repose, he takes the dark crystal ball from the floor, contemplative absolutism deigns to the furies of revenge and isolated disinterest, until he hears a woman scream, which to his hearing triggers hopes that it is Ana. Very alas, it is Lynn, one slippery flight of stairs above him, screaming of her detestation and disapprobation. As she notices his face ascend the stairs her feet turn to smoke that carries her into the shadows, he leaps the trickling water of the icy stairs to the floor and follows with his fervent might, through this he finds a single set of stairs hard and cold by the new winds whistling through the decimated walls. The summit of steps climbs to near the peak, an opening without door leads to the roof that merges with mountain. There stands Lynn speaking of plot and problems to Halle who listens while wringing her shawl of water before redressing, beneath storm the palace shatters again, smoke rising from-through the waters, she stands at the edge.
Nick charges for the witching sisters but Ophiuchus catches him and holds steadfast, the termagant is soaked, his serpentine face is blue from cold and his fingers are close to black with frostbite gained by climbing the sheer face of ice and destruction.
Lynn: “Likening prized knowledge, knowing what you know you lunge for me?”
Nickolas: “My life will end with your death.”
Lynn: “Drown will drinkers of the endless bottom waters.”
Ophiuchus: “It may be better to eat him.”
Lynn: “You come to me, stable boy, without bearing tithe or gift, I shall have to take your heart, stretch his chest.”
Nick struggles ineffectively as his shoulders stretch toward each other behind himself to the point of pain, but in this action, the dark orb reveals itself to be buried within his vestments, she pauses the racking by a wave of her hand and takes it from him, she then kisses him and insomuch distastes and disgusts him.
Nick: “Go show your serfs how insolvent you are.”
Lynn: “Throw him from the mountain.”
Nick: “Reckon me, o thee, beseech mine motive upon heathens, save me from this false and faithless vassal.”
Nicks words are effortless and feigned as he removes himself from captivity by breaking Ophiuchus’ knee, then arm, then back.
Nick: “My ardor yet you cast me? Why sorrow because of you, her sister? Sing and shine, grant me pardon, or lesser decrees, where I seek my own bounty, were it not bliss, wherefore is end of your grasp, I will be elated in ennobled earth.”
Halle: “Prithee let me end him nigh?”
Lynn: “I wit that but too well. If you are forever, then you will not end.”
Halle draws her dagger that glows with the light of the orb. Nick runs for the mountain edge and dives into the canyon ravine at the edge of the bluff. Halle sheathes her blade and the sisters walk to the edge and watch him fall deep darkness, far descending into a storm of madness. A hush over them comes swift as he enters the low weather and back hastens them as their garments flutter in the wind.
Ophiuchus: “I’d not like to do that again.”
Halle: “…but you have made great chaos despite them.”
Fraught with discommendation Halle and wounded Ophiuchus exeunt, as the witch of the fog, Lynn, leaves the mountaintop pursuant of Nickolas.