Merlin 3: 50 Snakes for the Divine
Sino watches Merlin win the battle thru the eyes of the dragon, as it dies he is blinded, watered coal pours from his eyes as he grasps to stand. With the loss he topples the massive glass orb to broken ground-lying shards, loudly ordering everyone to leave the room, all exit except the valkyrie of whom enters.
Luc: He is a skilled opponent.
Sino: He is a nail in my coffin! He is a wayfarer, a nomad with a taste for dying by my hands!
Luc: He protected them from a beast, and I will protect you from him…
The light of the room begins to dim, the candles burning bright cease to shine as strong, neither to flicker in draft nor expire without fuel.
Luc: You are dying and can only sense the loss of the light…
Sino: He will be doing the dying!
With wings that shutter madly, Luc is choking Sino by both hands, his body suffocating and struggling to only scream thru the grasp, the air kept from breath, and from mind, his eyes turning bloodshot and lifeless and greyed. Luc lifts the spell from Sino’s mind that he may realize the crushing agent.
Luc: Instead, your death comes with the illusion I have provided!
The grasp tightens, his face whitens, angry power of archangelic wings with sharpened silver feather tips reach at his shoulders and darker by his sides with smoke and shadow, Sino sees flashes and tides of dying sight and fights ethereal light illuminating and loses. Luc’s wings open and shelter to heal wounds with dark light. Luc takes and tosses Sino aside to stand in silence to rule the floor, heretofore calm and slow, deep breath moving black-silver wings above the deep lungs filling with air. Sino coughs and almost laughs.
Luc: It is how you learn.
Sino: That I should learn – …WHAT?
Luc: What must be done.
Sino: He must be removed from the living, there is no bloodied forfeit! A sacrifice that he shall trade his life for theirs, but how big? A damsel? A family?
Luc: No. He must believe he is in the light of day, for that he must play the part of justice, not law.
Sino: Explain it to me… with words.
Luc: You must be a nameless pain, in the waves of anarchy he will swim, and you must be the one to drown him, with chaos, if you can.
Sino: Chaos, so shall it be.
His black boot heels knock the stone of a blacker tunnel, a door opens and the wind flushes torches, and heated black oils ripple subsonic as he speaks in exposition to weakened prisoner.
Sino: I know I said that you could leave and soon you shall.
He walks to jars of clay and opens one. His prisoner tests confinements.
Sino: It has seemed like torture I’m sure, and not to make us closer, you and I, but to give your blood to my snake.
He carries the snake toward Ophiuchus, and pulls a knife. The body controlled by a snake in the stomach watches.
Sino: I know, snakes as pets must feel uncouth, or maybe you empathize with me.
He pulls a large knife and decapitates it. Ophiuchus’ eyes narrow.
Sino: You are in control of that body, but I needed a way to control it in case you decide not to hunt Merlin as promised.
He takes the snake head in his fist and plunges his hand into the black oil, lifting it the liquid pours from his skin and drips, arm outstretched as he walks a blood-stained floor and open door. Passing by flame he sets his arm to fire a living torch.
Sino: Do you understand?
They stare at each other as the oil burns, as the dripping flames harm the underhand as his arm reveals a grey skin of ash.
Sino: This is the painful part.
He crushes the clenched lizard skull, roots of lightning strike thru out his skin, his eyes glow as all fires die of suffocation, radiant in the darkness he approaches Ophiuchus. Dark around eyes, sore neck from falling asleep upright.
Sino: If you should escape your host I will use that body to stamp you out…
His skin pale the line from darkness to demon faded as one, the torches light themselves and obscurity fades as Sino’s body-covering veins begin to fade beneath his skin.
Ophiuchus: LET, ME, AT, MERLIN!!!