Merlin 3:28 “Blood and Thunder”
~ @mjbanks
To the lowlands a full moon rises above linden trees, the blue-sky night menacing void lingers on the rampant doom, brazen is their power, emblazoned is the hour, flaming are the towers, a war of worth has come. Addressing chaos with retaliation ten wizards, eleven warlocks, twelve warlords, and thirteen warriors, brawling within the confines of the outer wall, balancing tomes of acrimony against the werewolves of Lilith and Fenrir, address their fates. Many more farmers and common ilk battle in the serfdom fields with even less luck, rising with farming tools abound aloud and screaming as they are tossed aside more like nuisance than nemeses. Outlandishly and in unnatural pestilence, the lupine beasts taking no pain from their injuries as their sinews and synapses both pull straining discord as hellion bone and blood that heal slowly and surely in the blatant moonlight.
Penances to claws and clashes in summary conflict, magicians being their hated and hunted prey any victory resides solely with concerted efforts the result of anger, magic to slow and any weapon to dismember and wroth to cease mutts from mutilating them, and yet still not a true death or solution. Unless to leap from while slashing or onto while crashing the berserkers, man wolf more dangerous than bear, are formidable in their least.
Within the militarized circle, Sino has not escaped the carnage, taunting between fighting measures, across the battle of bloodshed in abundance and brutal blasts, two wizards similar each wading the war with powers dark and light, come tête-à-tête, thrashing any foe dare nears.
Merlin: “The war source is your certainty and mirrored dream.”
Sino: “My goal is to spread lies about myself, just like all good men.”
Merlin: “Renowned purity will end the war.”
Sino: “Where evil hides, without conscriptions of the able?”
Merlin: “There is obeisance, and there is askance.”
Merlin’s fingers electrify, a wolf leaps to him, but Merlin steps aside growing electricity that consumes the werewolf, which collides with the collapse of an already crumbling wall, a man almost, flies from roof with spear impaling it.
Sino: “Without leadership, there will be endless war.”
Merlin: “Perceiving all conflict a reflection, meets many a hunter, and never to kill.”
Eyes set to kill, watching from the darkness staring atop shadowy wall, rising silhouette of muscular beast, Sino having been watching the darkness rise, a smile and narrowing eyes he digs his foot as if ready to point fire at Merlin, lurking menace deciding which magic blood to taste.
Sino: “Wrong again.”
The fangs of a veracious appetite, content to carve and tear and drain with misdemeanor and puerile volatility, temperately offensive, distinguishment worthy of a wolf and its midsummer-night dream. The spear-driving battler of oft bloodshed leaps thru one of the last intact windows without simple fracture, rolling to his feet with sword in hand and sinister clouded eyes, staring madly at Sino.
The dust disheveled beneath Sino’s feet rolls as he runs into the shadowed stricture between two abodes. Merlin turns looks and leans after him, the man from thru the window kneeling in exhaustion, as the werewolf leaps, certain to spearhead Merlin’s glowing hands as he leans the direction he flies, gliding over his feet brighter his palms glowing and smoky-blue, rushing to a lamppost with the hound on his heels. As he reaches the lantern built sturdy for storm Merlin snaps it by wherewithal norms, breaking it like a dry corn stalk, grimacing fangs of wolf fur-covered grimace are here batted with a turn and mighty smash, he tosses the heavy steel baton on the beast and torching creature ignited and ignored.
Half the fighters are dying loudly or silently bloodily dead, warriors and some wizards, three other wolves on the encircling roof, watching their pack mate burn and stand, with fiery wounds of flesh burning and healing simultaneously as they tower at their leaping points, intent to reconcile flesh as food to reproach their palates with tithe bound of deathly clutch.
Merlin abounds transfixing his focus of direction, but in an instant turns and slogs with a club at the beast and again until it rests. A cringing toil another beast leaps thrice, twice of two walls, crashing thru weapons cases and runs aloft smoldering once ignited by fire of Merlin’s hex of white sparks, a younger werewolfling chased with one of the spilled weapons from an otherwise locked armory box by the daring acrobat master bred and born of the warrior city. A nameless assassin, who will live to write his name in the blood of his next self-assigned targets, oft as many ravaging stampeding teams trace the bloody grounds, other warriors launching fatal unsporting cross-bolts from fortified places and makeshift defilade, trapped within castle made of only walls fabricated to keep the plentiful game of the dark forest at bay.