Vultures & Scorpions

4/52 Vultures & Scorpions 

1/ Absent Thorns 2/ The Blue Fire 3/ Year of Year 4/ The Silk’s Emerald 5/ The Secrets of the Snow 6/ Past in the Worlds

/1/ Absent Thorns 

A training camp, an evening and supper in lightest rain, meditating in the storm. By the next day at noon, walking thru thick forest, branches pushed aside and clearing walking quietly in open shade, by evening boots on common road. A distant city with a wall, a tavern with farmers at dusk, producing jokes and half drinking, singing and half wincing at the locals’ stories of ghosts. Onto the city, absent of guards in the pathway streets, absent of garrison, requesting an audience with the high court, but absent of king. The banners still hang, the flags still fly, and the people still whisper rumors about unknown visitors. They’re surrounded by fighters, but no warriors. The jester peeks from behind the throne, “give up now, you’re surrounded,” only to laff at them. “What happened here? Where is the king?” “Why, so you can kill?” They answer, “There’ll be no killing, we seek a trophy that only your king has, we come for the Rite of Pol’u.” and a child shouts, “but they have weapons,” and the fighters stand defensively. “We would not explore without defenses. Stand down and let us sit with your leaders, without king, we will go to join his campaign.” The answer, “the king is gone, the council is gone, the alders are gone and they’re not coming back.” “What do you mean?” “The Shirsho come, they take the leaders, take their place and they’ll come for YOU.” the jester presents himself, “Strange for sure, but wait for night, and hear them circle the city. /

/2/ The Blue Fire 

Capable soldiers, curious people, and wonderful food, warming and waiting to learn more of the town language, words the hunters know and revere they speak, the wares and wiles of local lives are learned, the children repeat three syllable pronunciations where they give instinctually two. More importantly their warrior language planning to fight monsters at sundown, somber fear and safe caution - counting weapons and exits and boundaries. They see a necklace and ask for it by name, "where did you get this Claw Hammer" and the child corrects, "It's Clo-Amar" - 'take is to who makes it and you might be King on that empty throne the morning' the maker in a shop with wooden door, a small office with quarters in the back with slanted wall. The grey seller in short had made it himself, and knows what haunts the city, when asked, avoids answer. The maker and of their origin, behind a story of youth and memory there, and with pressure tells a story. These people are good, and to save themselves took pride in magic and science, and without the old magic, the old demons came. There is no sound as the warriors pause. They believe in magic, but not demons, and say as much. Talking it out, they ask where the maker learned to make the necklace, the culture it represents, the spellbinding used to protect the children that wear them at the order of their superstitious mothers, and he tells them about a trader on a road. The trader was a travel companion for a time, but he'd watched him die "during another pointless war, in another pointless country" that gathered the hunters quiet again, they knew the name, "he only mentioned them as the 'Monks of the Blue Fire' - the amulets were made with items traded into the town, themselves made of parts unknown. They take one of these amulets from the neck of the shopkeep. The warriors explain their voyage, with some objections, with some silence, they worry, the knights errand make solace a truer place by giving light-imbued medallions to the children. 

/3/ Year of Eclipse?

Knights of light make across meadow, riding for an hour nightfall brings about caution and pace, slowed to horses walking and caution in the wind, marching against the moonlight, a constant light breeze of clouded glow the wind blows clearing the mist, quiet enough to be asleep in the saddle, a group of ghouls attack the lead and last horses, leggings unraveling and torn with sleeves battered and worn, awfully lacking armor vs broadswords, but their wanton hunger makes them strong in close clasps of desiccated grasping and rasping, arrows let no blood and hatchets only slow their momentum, fists are tearing limb from limb and bites turn into glowing green venom, those bitten groan as others cleave to bones, splitting skulls twain drop them to crawling attack over ground. A grin with narrow eyes in hood and skin of moondust, with raising a hand the ghouls become the undead, even missing limbs they crawl and bite unless their eyes are smashed, by the first undead snuffed the warlock has turned one of the knights to ghoulish puppet, sunken eyes and thin gaunted skin, with armor and broadsword and boot and skill. Two men twist in poisoned anguish as three stand against their zombie brother. The warlock is ghoulish and bites one of three, the poisoned brothers rise with survival rage and fill him with four knives. The warlock laffs, the ill fall back again, the three end their brother pinning his sight and then shortening him, swinging spinning and slashing at the cannibal warlock. The evil creature laffs without sound and smiles as long as a blink, with his knives stabs with blades like fangs the green glowing toxin his feet pause from dance as he readies to bow, their little cuts are scrapes with toxic roots, but the third knight stands behind him. A heavy swing behind the knee makes him kneel. He laffs with echoes and the madness cuts thru the clouds, he laffs with thunder and the sound rises from the earth. A blade would only cut air faster than he loses his head, but it was too late. The eclipse begins.

/4/ The Silk’s Emerald 

They use magic to closingly burn their wounds and alcohol to dilute their blood. Once sure safe to move they retreat in fear of breezes and broken blades of grass, limping and having lost a horse, one another making it back not without pain and suffering. They reenter the town of only youths and elderly, as they stitch their wounds the oldest stand around a sundial seeing the faded glow of the sky’s hanging eclipse. The knight leader, Arawn, orders anyone able to lift a weapon to keep it with them at all times. At the coals of the metalworker he orders a white fire and magic colored fuels, in the fashioning of amulets and finding of artifacts, both heavy and old. One of his men has pains from wounds not healing, he inspects as it infects with web and weaving of silk spider breathing beneath the wound itself from the claws of a man. Arawn pours his own blood into sand, a cup carved with runes, he breathes life into words and light escapes his lungs. Bloodworms seem to spawn from larvae in the cup, but he quickly pours it all over the fierce red and hot coals, from it an iron post gathers it, and with rolling and boiling and burnishing and patience it becomes a unique mosaic blend of red and silver. With a mallet the marble is broken and falls into coals, when the sharp edges sink he takes it in metal tool, carrying it with deep focus, it steams without touching water. The wounded man, different in appearance than the other knights.

Arawn: What’s the weirdest woman to wrestle you at night?

Collin: What?
Medic: What strange tale of beds and breakfast do you know?
Collin: Dolosantra, a Kinian mercenary, during, she would laugh and cry, back and forth.
Arawn: What did it sound like?

Collin: Well it----.

Arawn drops the heat forged marble into the wound, without notice, as Collin screams miniscule spiders break from the white woven nest, electricity arcs and kills each spider as Arawn and medic hold him down. As Collin yells at the pain he screams seeing his wound. 

Medic: I imagine it sounded something like this. 

The medic pulls the stone from cauterized traumatic wound, it glows green. 

Medic: Now we have a warning beacon at least. 

Arawn: Sleep it off. Get him a drink. Hell. Get me a drink.

The eclipse waits. 

/5/ The Secrets of the Snow 

The color of the sun dances in wicked darkness around the moon, the edge of shadow hiding in the echoes of light, around it the sky a mist and fiery smoke, holding high in the sky while the horizons leagues endlessly distant are filled with stars as tide of nightfall kept afar from burning eclipse. Harsh and confusing against the eyes, but the air gets colder. Day after day a new clear winter grows against the tarnished night, each wave of air blades of grass grow weaker in the tarnished light, grinding the patience of the knights errand. The air thick and lazy, like fog between walls and no roof, in this cold the fog becomes snow, not melting against the fires in the dimly lit city, not falling straight like lines of rain, and grey to the touch, the snow is ash. 

/6/ Past in the Worlds

A stranger comes into town. Collin trains with sword in his off hand, and dagger with his wounded arm, He trains himself to make purpose-filled attacks or dodge an assault from Arawn. Thru the gates several soldiers enter, some with weapons already drawn, others ready to fight nonetheless.

Arawn: Looks like vultures, make a distraction. 

Arawn fixes his collar and walks away. The knights continue their planning at a map the nearest forts circled. The soldiers poke thru the baskets and plates of the people they cross, until confronting the knights. Pretends to be wildly drunk, a soldier prods his wound hurting him, the knights stand and protect him, the lead soldier makes his threats and taunts the crowd and mocks them all. As he claims the whole town as his property he points a sword at Collins heart, Arawn secretly captures one of their men with blade against his throat, like a scorpion with control. The soldiers pause and Arawn orders them to leave, the soldiers are silent and Arawn puts the blade against his eye. The hostage orders a truce. 

Nevil: How did you know?
Arawn: You only have ten men and just enuf favor to scout for wares yourself...and - I’m - not sure the ash in the air -- didn’t come from you.

Jester: The ash has to be them

Collin: It has to be something.

Nevil: You need us here...we came for support…

Arawn: Support? 

Nevil: The ash is on your map, Villa Tsoro, Emmis, fire and death, and our Ft Huro scorched earth and undead in sacred armor.
Arawn: If I don’t believe you?

Jester: They can’t be trusted, they started the fires.

Soldier: Let him loose, or fight us all.

Jester: He’s going to kill him, kill them all! 

Arawn stands looking over Nevil’s shoulder at the soldier. Behind himself the jester, akimbo and cocked head in stare. Arawn gracefully releases him and turns to the jester...who grins.

Jester: Oh...can you tell...I got ahead of myself didn’t I…

Arawn: On the ground, slowly.

Jester: ...at least tell me how I look in a cape and hat…

The jester’s eyes turn smoke and green like the warlock the week before.

Arawn: We have questions, I have questions.

Jester: I’m like an open spellbook really.

Arawn: You’re going to answer. Hands in the air.

Jester: Fire away.

The jester raises his hands quickly, the clouds glow red, the town begins to burn as particles of sunlight drip from the weak boundary of the moon, the air polluted with ash of moonstone and fires of a volcanic starlight raining down. They cover their mouths and twenty men begin fighting the warlock. 

The evil jester stands prepared to dance a waltz and offers his hand to any of them, refused his fangs drip and he lashes his arm out, throwing the dense air and half of them into or toward the wall as others attack. 

Jester: You are kindling! 

One man is backhanded to the ground, another brash charges and his helmet dented and bludgeoned toppling backwards heels over feet. 

Jester: You are leaves!

Shield against fist whose bones of knuckles break skin and heal with white fire blood. Sword against arm in the face of destiny, foe against fighter, three swords of three men swing high to low against his back, the warlock turns around swinging, knocking their weapons from hand. 

Jester: Branches and trees!

A spearhead pierces his leg, but only the surface as a knight leaps at it clutching with both hands, skewering the jester’s leg. The jester takes the spear with both hands and slams it and the knight into a wall, then pulls the spear and launches it with a grunt into that knight and wall both. 

Jester: YOU ARE ASHES OF THE MORNING STAR! 

Arawn stands a forearm taller than the jester, battling until his shield breaks, a bigger sword from his belt, now two hands and double-edged sword. Lash against instinct and crash against spirit, stabbing at darkness in the hope of dawn. Arawn hacks once into the warlock jester’s face, infuriating him, his vocal chords tear thru the red air with black smoke, a howl as he strikes Arawn who spins, landing on his knee the jester claws down his back. Arawn stands and turns, now shirtless from it. In the smoke, in the red eclipse, among the fires with scarf as a mask. He holds his arms out, a pillar of virtue and statue of mockery against the jester. 

The jester attacks, Arawn takes stance and defence, using rage as a weapon he only blocks the jester with his sword and each time steps inward, making opportune strikes, elbow to face, shoulder to back, and in the fires Arawn now spins like black smoke. Each block with blade cuts the warlock’s skin, until in rage losing a hand and clutching his wrist. 

Jester: One fire dies, one bolt of lightning and even the air you hide in will burn.

The soldiers and knights spear him many times simultaneously, and the youths and elders launch arrows. As Arawn approaches the gravel crushes beneath his boots, with lunge into kneeling he swings and takes the warlock’s head. 

Arawn: Cremation.

He drops his sword there and walks. 

The sun and moon release each other and go separately, across the sky the colors of clouds and rain glow again from the horizons, and daybreak reveals how heavy the smoke is as fresh air returns. A mere child picks up the glowing red and silver marble and it begins glowing. 

/6ch

With Coals of Everburning

With Coals of Everburning 3/52 

Strode. Stride. Strays? 

1/ Forgotten Voyages 2/ The Delicious Girl 3/ Secret of Past 4/ The Shore’s Truth 5/ The Secret of the Way 6/ Stones in the Servant

/1/ Forgotten Voyages

“What wars once fought here,” he says, the students more interested in a tree’s nest being raided by squirrels as the evening grows darker with fading sunset and warmer with rising dusk. The horn of recall summons them indoors for supper and the great poem. The evening farmers misting the evening growth, the night patrols drinking their coffee and eating their breakfasts, the bats stretch their blind eyes and open their backward wings. The birds began together rising and scouring for sunset insects before the clouds give rain. Darkness like dark smoke brings ravens to surround the walled colony, then in the thin and gleaming twilight on heavy branches birds of prey. With the wave of shadow sunset steps a man with a walking staff, scars rising on arms from beneath his gloves, the other eye white with sinister expressionless malaise, a walking stick shoulder height knocking the dry road. A haggard posture and faded limp he grins as sentries meet and stop him, his hand raises and darkness explodes the air, the guards fall, the smoke vanishes. The gardeners bolt, his magic leaps from his touch to their heels, felling only one who regains footing and warns screaming. The lone invader removes gloves, his arm is branded with a scar of the symbol on the wall and uniforms and gate. 

/2/ The Delicious Girl

He approaches, hands raised in surrender, paces slow and face raised silent, but attacks with both hands conducting fiery wave of magic, the arrows launch in numbers and mechanized force, but only once. Spies and traitors erase defenses and wave him thru, the clothes stiff as if from a previous time, the boots soft and worn since a previous age, the smile of malice as some chase the escapees into the night forest. The conquistador, silent and dour, malignant in power, stares at the conquered. “Who leads this place, stand and command respect, and I will salute you.” Scared and reluctant leaders begin to stand, “lock them up,” he orders, offering the remaining a chance to fight their leaders or meet fate in this moment. A young woman prestigious in clothing insults, challenges, and when summoned, slaps the demonic shaman. He has her hands tied in front of her and put in the queen's throne as he sits, with verbose words he praises himself with pride in plans, great details of the battle between leaders and servants, as many cried out, ‘we are farmers,’ and ‘this is a council community,’ without logic or luck to service their desperate problem. 

/3/ Secret of Past

Weapons are tossed into the main yard, the first fighter is brought before the mad usurper, the girl screams for peace, sanity has left this place, “why?” he asks, “because he’s my father…” she replies, the usurper laffs and demands they fight each other, the father pleads against it, “in the desert we must hunt to survive, in war we must hunt for pleasure, but you... have found yourself in between, my revenge so well planned it is only sport, where there is rule or one will die,” he says, trailing off, as the father offers to yield to daughter, she runs at him, only to take his weapon and throw it at the dark shaman, striking him in the eye, screams of tremor and pain followed with black blood and rising rage, the air shakes as powerful and painful magic glows to heal his eye before losing it. She cuts the bonds of two and the three begin their escape. The shaman stands with bloody hands and rages at the sight of his robes unclean, “after them!” he orders, with a face that holds a solid white eye with vertical scar, like a mending of an eye made of bone. 

/4/ The Shore’s Truth

“Why are you doing this?” one asks, he answers, “revelatory exposition,” and laffs, “I think not, serve me, and I’ll let you help your friends.” “Never, you pekh-razh, sa-fu t’ghache, ghorlu’--” “ALLRIGHT, she’s clearly not going to help. Anyone else? Tell me where they’re going and everyone lives, do I not lie, they will bring them back, you are my hostages for what is to come, including them, the girl, the other two or three. Tell me or I will have them brought back only to carve them like a tree until they root not this world!” A boy shouts, “We’ve done nothing, this isn’t fair!” and the mad shaman says, “bringing you this lesson and you can’t see it, boy? There’s a need for you to know, and you will learn it oppressed, but fed knowledge, and when I don’t let you leave, you’ll lash out, bringing punishment,” the shaman’s eyes glow purple, the scared eye glows weaker, but darker, “if you die you are forgotten, if you live you will rise against the colonies of the holy sign,” his hands grow red and scars white running with sparks of electricity, tearing the boy from the ground and suffocating his throat, throwing him with a rage of sound, and stammers toward another, a man stands and faces, the shaman throws his bloody robe aside, only a vest covers many scars and the tattoos of their society burned into scars old and new. 

/5/ The Secret of the Way

The refugees ride horses distant and far, feeling lost in the dark as dawn approaches, several hours end as their path meets a larger city, burning, broken, a small army lies wasted among the dead and the homeless, waving their hands for the three to stay away, “what happened here?” she asks, “quiet or the shadows rise!” shaking and running away. “Something terrible was here,” says the one. “Something terrible comes,” says the other, pointing to the road to ruins, where twelve hunters chase into the city of ashes and broken stone burnt so much some into obsidian-like mirrors. Red sun rising cut strange angles and sad shadows everywhere. The eleven murderers are no match to the city the woman’s former home, so much advantaged they are dropped only one by one. A wire, a board, a spear, a wall of spears, unmounted into a pit of coals, buried by building, beaten, bludgeoned, broken, strangled, and the last of which backed into netting and interrogated. Stabbed and cut, their captive taunts, “You’ll never defeat the Prime of Verilor, he has power beyond--” she interrupts, “end him.” and the men do just that. Beneath a school in hidden chamber, hiding many in cellars, “how many escaped?” “not enuf.” “Show me the holy books.” and they find a book dedicated to research of Verilor. 

/6/ Stones in the Servant

She reads the words in a language unknown to me, next to pictures of ablution and magical combat, cavalry horses and riders warring in the rain. She closes the book. They ride back toward the colony. One sits on the wall at sunset, a pile of bodies, the other half in cages. The theatrical robe, the archaic eye, the dark shaman paces, a turn and he sees one man on the wall. Arrows fly and the shaman, “stop! They’ve returned! Excellent! Why have you come!?” “to battle you.” They enter the area, and three face the evil overlord. “I would like you to meet the twins.” behind the three, two men of similar features, large and unforgiving, not enuf to be identical twins, attack the three. Fighting quickly intensifies, one twin brought to knees swings broadsword, they dive and successfully dodge, the twins look to the shaman, he tosses them two stones, and they begin using the same dark magic as had destroyed their defenses yesterday. With sacks of wine the three, two men and a woman, pour water on themselves, but her pouch is cut and empty, so she is the primary target, the two men are undermatched against one twin, amidst the crowd of villains and victims in cages with animals. She is deft and keen, quick and mean, fearless and clear she defends herself between opportune attacks. The two men distract the twin demons, the sound of horses in the distance, the woman vanishes. The horsemen begin freeing the colony, chaos in concert and warfare in wrath, the symbol of these people on the armored riders shares the sign of the colony with added symbol. “Your place is impermanent,” she shouts. The shaman spins around, “my heels dig into history, my bloody hands have crawled thru the dead of stronger keeps!” “If I live, I will kill you,” she declares. He replies, “If I die, you are forgiven.” and they battle, again a knife thrown at his better eye, again his lost and raging scowl and fiery magic, an emotional scream and heavy flame from his fist, she holds up a sheet soaked, but with wine is instantly burns and she throws it at him. He dodges the wave of fire incompletely, tossing it aside he’s forced to use his magic to heal before scalding wine melts his hand. He pats the flames from his skin while being surrounded by the guards of liberation. One asks the shaman, “What was your plan?” he replies, “hold them hostage, get arrested, be taken to your king, but I’ll kill you all just as well!!!!” (thunderbolts and lightning, very frightening), but he’s walking backwards, slowly just one step in reverse march, then another, backed against a drinking well, the woman climbs from the well soaked, and cuts his throat, he fights to be free and she stabs to attach, a second knife to cling, he becomes a pillar of black fire, as all jump back, the pure holy water protects her, but steam weakens the barrier of protection, as she hammers and carves and cuts out stones from under the skin and scars of the corrupted shaman, as he heals with the last of his negative soul flame, she can’t hold safely and jumps free, she spears him and so do the liberation guards, pinning him so that he can heal with magic or fight and die. This allows her to cut out his heart. 

The traitors are gathered into cages as she tosses the heart aside, one of the traitors rushes to take it with him into the cage, and begins eating it, making his eyes glow with the shaman’s curse. 

.ch

Sangrophageous

2 Sangrophageous / 52 Kincadohoyom

1/ Kissing Time 2/ The Bound Window 3/ Storms of Gift 4/ The Snow’s River 5/ The Someone of the Name 6/ Kiss in the Pirates





/1/ Kissing Time


As the warrior became an adult and son of man, took his family magic and handful of learned spells to drink with others. Soon the company of others and wine becomes taste of war, sieges in ceremony the bond deep in mind breaks silence and sometimes sleep in time of peace. Alone among the liberated and local magistrates, the drink remains the same, the warrior breathes with each sip of mead waiting blindly until each new deed hides in the echoes of action. Exercise becomes opportunity, plans become attacks and emotion. The warrior turned rapscallion is caught, punished for days, moved in a bodybag every night, intimidated, then finally arrested and interrogated. Asked for accomplices he gives none, asked for serve the citystate he declines, now in a cell disconnected from those people and connections.





/2/ The Bound Window


A door of steel slides shut between concrete with a locking arm put into place, a grate between cells and one above each, the day burns with rays and night rains are all that wash away the waste, and this is something the warrior despises these conditions and uses his magic to escape, blasting a wall to rubble, only to sit in the rain. Guards throw open the door and the warrior and new neighbor take their uniforms, enough subterfuge to escape. The mage’s new ally makes a fatal transgression for the breakaway of their escape, the mage pauses, considers ending his alliance with the justice from the echoes of his honorable past, but chooses to value a running-mate in lieu of twisted fate. Without knowing they run, without slowing they stun their fears into favor with time to taylor swift getaway and guise to appear anyone in disguise and hide their faces in the city’s lights. With cloaks and roads to shadows and alleys, to food as a prize the warrior saves a life where his comrade taught to harm conceals with death instead of disarm a lowly kitchen boy, whom nameless runs at first chance. The villain keeps the worker’s coin left at an empty crate, but the warrior demands it as payment for escape.





/3/ Storm of Gift


The cellmate’s homeland spreads below their feet first, a quiet place of disrepair and ages of warfare bound by curious young eyes and experienced sharpened knives. By question of clothes and brothers in homes they are stormed by warriors who capture them and know him by name, “Elias,” their leader shouts, “now you will pay your dues where they are owed!” and the two are dragged to a home where Elias is given to his wife and children, the night storms bring them close and evening they sleep together like pets do. As daybreak peels away the stars a tribe of warlords and their child soldiers storm into the weak town. Elias saves the warrior’s life, the warrior saves his in return, but Elias monstrously kills a young attacker in sport, the warrior can stop the cruelty, but decides to spare Elias’ life without name or mention, only to desert the battle completely. As he leaves he sees the invaders about to cross a bridge, and casts out his hand with rings and tattoos glowing, only to ignore them as they cross into the valley.





/4/ The Snow’s River


The wandering warrior finds green grasses and meadows, another village, another settlement, another town, another city, taking another career of crime, but at first engagement turns against a cruel member of his unit, using invaluable magic and melts his mind until blood runs black and body falls, and abandons the rest outright. He retreats from vice and disvirtue, beyond the city, to a town, to a settlement, to a village, thru meadows on horse. He stares at a mountain like a painting in a museum, and decides to build at the edge of the trees not far from the road. For twenty weeks he builds and breathes in mountain air, trading fish and game for herbs and grain at the nearest trading post with the ugliest of beards. He returns in time for the first snow, and his habits remain much the same in training and meditation, in the first blizzard avalanche tumbles down the mountain, channeled over the river and buries him during a hunt.





/5/ The Villain of the Story


Elias and other men ride horses in the foothills of the same mountain in the spring, they find the warrior mage’s cabin and claim it their own. They eat his jerky and boil his hominy, while sharpening weapons and counting stolen gold, and in a day’s time, while on patrol one finds the warrior mage in early spring frozen at the point of death. He hurries and excites the others with the story of the frosty man posed and poised to tunnel thru the snow of since and whence avalanche, a sleeping standing and look of defeat. Elias ready to relieve on the body waits to remember, surprised to recognize him, now snaps and brags at him, “you, Devereux, are a traitor, and this is what you gets, I am alive!” -- “Who was this Devereux?” asks one, Elias answers, “I was in Tagos and served sentence so he could eat, but he was too thick-headed for the city, and ended up in the same prison, so I broke him out, because I could not bare the sight. Only to have him take me hostage! He demanded take him I to my family, where he taunted my children with terrible laff….it shook my heart and changed my path to this life...but he wasn’t done,” Elias circles Devereux, “he was a spy for mercenaries he lead to murder my entire people.” Elias kicks frozen-Devereux in the shin, the fabric chips and skin breaks revealing blood ice. One of the bandits offers Elias an axe, “this is for my family...” and he smashes Devereux to vermillion crystals, shards of bloody ice get in their faces, his most. In their clothes, on their fingerprints wiped and spread. Elias is out of breath and terrible at heart, the others laff and watch the red snow melt in the midday sun. Elias readies to relieve himself here and now. They grow pale at the sight of a skull rising from the puddle of blood.





/6/ Kissing the Pirates


Now skull’s face rises showing teeth, now a hand of bones pulls skeleton to bloodpool surface, crawling from the precipice of a red mirror, now skin begins forming, painted red and covered in rolling drops regathering beneath it. They turn to run and the outstretched fingers wrapped in tendons and tissue make fist. The blood on their clothes burns, hence the blood cells on their skin soaked to the bone and blood curls their nerves and turns their senses against them. Naked blood-covered emotioned unstable Devereux fights them, one by one they are weak and take unhealable wounds, disarmed of their own weapons, taunted he repeats their own prayers and please, one by one their arrows cause wounds that heal and swords cleave cuts that seal with smoke and sulphur. Devereux stands over Elias, the blood on him is thick and turns black in contact with skin, it seeps into his body like oil to wood, thin veins like black root threads into his eyes, the crippling pain of shock second only to convulsions of acrid metallic fumes, a faint and pitiful attempt to cough some admixture of this. Devereux says, “You say my name - Nicodemus d'Évreux.”

















/ch