Whilst Lugal ebbed compass the boggy fen, to gather integrants which the earth provides. Lilithu's plaintive steps towards the fettled hearth were heavy, laden with their forced divide. Her bronze-wrought mirror, sullenly, she gripped, its golden cast aureoling her reflection, 'twixt folial motifs tinctured verdigris and varmint steeds of Persian derivation. Eyes glinting as she gently dabbed her eyelids with pigments of the bright green malachite to heighten her expressions. She suspired, wild as a Nisean breed entrapped in leafage, its lustrous sheen evanescing in the dark.

Amidst her grooming, a savage braying startled her, she rushed outside, harried by the callings, "Hark! They venture near and soon they shall disturb our hamlet, beat the breasts preamble!" And thence she saw the rhymester screaming, from atop the bristly back of a louring ass, and a broad-fronted fellow intercepting the bard, unhinged in track.

"Why shaken? Spears of which offended crowd doth jab at thee? Is chase then put to will? I, by troth, am not froward of handing thee over." To which the bard replied breathing-while, "As I performed my tunes on Mari's blanched peak to evade the snooping ears of copycats. I heard such cankerous sounds that it beseemed a bloomy shaft awaits thy matron, wrightly acts to turn thy rump-fed whelps but supplicating orphans."

The barring man took great offense and roisted the sentencious muse from off his barded mule. But Lilith intervened headlong, "hoist not the carrier for the sentence prompted ere hearkening his supplies of information." And the man spoke whilst roughing the bang-beggar, "Would that a woman trusteth an eremite of sedition? This runagate serves not as inerme guardage, he's a lazar banished, long a-cast from our lot for reasons settled. It's an old adage to attainder the renegued poet if he slots himself against our peace, for brabbles are inflammatory."

"Pribble pagan! slavish sordid grunt." Retched up the bard as he resisted chokage. And lilit insisted, "Be not despiteous, let him breathe, backare! Apperil is presaged, and he's the witness of a wrathful setting what alarum is sound? Pray, let him steadily speak."

The grip was loosened and the bard did mumble "Ye hang-tough brute with drumbling faculties, heed prudent guidance from the delicate kind, the woman is half-right. Such as her right eye is mould-painted whilst the left eye remains au naturel, she speaks half-truth. Before thou judgest dumbly and mete out punishments. Let he who canst read swordy steles inform the crowd of an advenient bleak for I have peeped, not with one eye but twain, how Amorites were summoned from their peaks. I've heard the cadence of a cloven fain.

Nomadic smiths o'er open rolling plains, from ice-encrusted mounts, forge bridle paths t'wards our ancestral lands, with arrayed wains strapped to their hybrid asses, bristle-backed. With swooning grandeur, Mar Am'rru is fronting his scurrilous men as they pace lithocrags. His wilder ass punted the earth whilst grunting, assessing jagged cliffs with sideway steps. A clefted hoof upon an inset found firm anchorage; coats sandy-hued and coarse concealed them 'long the rocky stretch; earthbound, by nature suited for the perilous course.

And as I've hid, they raised the Nimrud blades; thin ceremonial daggers meant for slaughter. They've shed the swanky blood of their baudets with earned triumph being prepollent ov'r heirs for they intend to prove their mount-sprung mettle with an invasion of our half-walled lands and the swift seizure of our stock. Bet on my truth for I have brought an escaped ass to confess randily along my verses. My thighs enchafed are proof of urgency, for I've adaunted this most grotty beast. With sight and sound, with smell and frictious scuffing. We herald direful tidings: trouble is afoot!"

But th' non-embattled Attar but jeered at him, "It travels on foot for thou didst burglarize them from their riding mule. It seemeth the equine fed on ephedra gerardium and the bard got high, hallucinating virulently on his own stories. For one, Mari's clime is dry, and its inhabitants, the northern semites forged an alliance with the king of Babel and Ashur, it shall be indeed a cold-smitten eve in kur if these pacts were ever to be broken."

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Anon as words were spoke, a vast array of armies came into view. Kirishtu-helmeted, adyght in bolted chain mails, four legions marched in regimented precision with banyers hoisting trident flags, red, white, and blue. A stroke thus stupefied Attar. Aft congeries of foretokens blocked, he stumbled on his path as he retreated from the peripheries of the town to warn of happenstance unfathomable.

As soon as chieftains were duly informed. They have accersed to gather brave resistance, young men agadred to afrount a storm tempesting from the lodestar of the Assyrians. The legions harried on the town to kiln inhabitants and mold their clay, reforging allegiances. With exigence, the chieftains rallied kith and kin, but routed were the settlers, circumscribing perimeters of hastily set defenses. Farmboys to arms 'gan soldiers unrelenting were bridly felled; and dragged towards the incense of burning corpses.

Ghostly haze ascending surmounted the small town with blinding fear to break the brave and verge recusancy. The subdued were corralled, as cattle shepherded, bemoaning on this day of tragedy their loss of freedom.

Lugal, returning to his rustic wick, his cuirassed torso obduced in saurian hide, constrict, with prow serrated keeling from his hip and stemmy reed-bundle reamed under arm. 'Pon drawing near, he kenned the rising flames. Subitaneously, a man agrized with visage ember-marred subtended on him. The doddering lamed, alighted from his pride, fell down, wounds embrasé, into Lugalu's arms, amplecting scales. Attar revealed, "bronze armored warriors, invaded, Their order stretched out in scaly length, that to thine house and lovely wife they raught."

"Lilith..." Whispered Lugal, disconcerted. Attar continued, "men are to be slaughtered whilst women trussed on poles are being coerced to serve as concubines in foreign courts." 'pon hearing thus, Lugalu felt dark fingers searing through his forearm. Without halt, he hastened to the town, a morgen stern mace fixed firmly in his grip. The redoubtable fighting forces were aggregating 'round the captives fair and those with gifts endued, all which the sight and senses can astound. Aft towns were raised and treasures were accrued,

Lugalu snuck in their encampments, acting as an abatteur to guards distracted by harrowing ceremonies. Excruciant scenes of bounded limbs with extremities hacked and tongueless victims impuissant to scream perturbed his timorous heart. 'tis then he saw his lady paralytic of exhaustion, bound 'twixt beams of rocky altars holding out the night's skies. She pressed her legs together, forced to stand on narrow crags as crooked, jabbing spires encysted in her flesh, nailed in such stead, she scowled silently whilst they inquired.

Sheer raiments wimpled underneath the spread of her intrammelled arms, high-reaching skyward. Twain hands a-tremble gyved upon the shafts, redundantly tight grappling lithic flanges. To ensure she doesn't drag on screes, her steps in shift, sifting across debris, on th'fringe of the escarpment's precipice, half-bent thighs were tinged with red; rock crests impinged. And she stared down Death Valley from on high whilst soldiers taunted with phoenicious torches, disperpling sparks of ember with each blow towards her struggling chest. Her meandering clutch grew weary of the rocky curves. In throes of such calamity, she heaved, with tears enmeshing hair locks on her ruddy face.

And Lugal could not bear to see her fearful of such tyranny. With mace in hand, he sprang to cause, invading their assembly, circumscript to elevated ranks. He crushed the skull of an absorbed soldier. Circumspect, the ranked brethren reached for their sappara. Overwhelming the resistant man, they've breached his stance and struck his side assailable. Beneath the crying eyes of hanging Lilith, he fell down in the dirt, drained of consciousness.

The general grabbed onto his brune hair and raising his neck straight to an exposed blade, said to Lilith. "Such are the consequences of defiance. Thy stubornness can cause a man to lose his head." And as he threatened, Lilithu did plead, "I concede to offer myself as slave, a courtesan to fill man's carnal greed, if I am to be taken, then leave him to his fate."