Merlin 3:45 “The Venom Inside”
Hidden in the mountains where Sino secretly calls home, the Valkyrie wanted dead by other Valkyries, attends a black cauldron full of a liquid the color of iron and wine, heated by burning coals taken from a fire pit, as to heat it slowly. His wings draping in glory, nearby an altar worn with pits of its own from bowls and pestle points over the ages, and nearby the body of a man, quite dead from something fatal, shirt open unwounded still with color. Several emptied horns of mead and drunken sacks of wine as mischievous Sino returns to the Valkyrie, carrying the prismatic opal.
Sino: It has damage.
Luc: Let me see it. Ah, it had returned itself into the shell, poignantly and intact.
The Valkyrie approaches an altar of bottles and potions. Some clear with oil, others of many dark colors to hide contents, he begins pouring one onto the crystalline stone, nothing more than shining it.
Luc: The womb of the termagant is, if not also violent, an immensely acidic place, the alcohol in the liquid will replicate that. (Sets it on table and gets a torch.) To challenge the death of a fresh body with the symbiont, there must also be a strong cold surround it, that it may seek symbiosis quickly within its new host. (He ignites the egg with the torch.)
Sino: Will it still be able to fight Merlin?
Luc: The fire will cool quickly and I will remove the shell. I have only just begun.
As the flame begins to fade, he lifts it with his hand, the searing sound of water boiling in his hand does not burn him, and over the body, he begins to crack gently the top surface, removing pieces revealing a swimming serpent embryo. With a knife, he harshly stabs the cadaver and drags open the incision.
With one hand, he tilts the egg, with the other he slowly takes the liquid from the egg and ladles it into the wound, a second pass and the snake almost bites his hand, they wait and it leaps from the fluid into the body. Luc quickly draws the wound closed and Sino does help him, his wings contract with anxiousness, they wait.
Oil drips from the body, the table, and the discarded shell. Flames flicker, forces gather and an eventual eye begins to open.
Luc: Quickly, we must sow him shut.
Stitch him do they haste confined to certainty surgeons of triage, with bloody hands they drink from bottles, not speaking, waiting for propensity and proclivity.
Luc: It will be simple to see, if the damage to the egg was too much.
Sino: It awakens.
Ophiuchus (v3): You have revived me. It is my need to serve as you please, only after I have the revenge I seek, twice has my enemy slain me, twice shall he owe a grave suffering.
Sino: Who is your target?
Luc: A cambion named Merlin.
Sino looks pleased overwhelmingly insomuch attends to him deliberately.
Sino: Rise and drink, fie the graces, or drink and rise, and if you can move we will cross the plains, for our biddings are the same, together, we will share revenge in his death.
Ophiuchus: When do we kill him?
Luc: (quiet, uncertain) on the morrow, but you must kill him.
Sino: Why is that?
Luc: It must be, but your revenge must also be exact.
Ophiuchus: ‘Exactly’, why?
Sino: We could not save the shell.
Ophiuchus: Of that much, I know. I will have more to drink, sire.
~ mjbanks