“My voice is the shiver of winter and the heated kiss, the broken bone and the cutting lisp. In every step and word, thought absurd, and righteous scream unrent, I break away from dawning day to sing alone and spend - wings aflutter, I am the death of you, oh forest hunter.”
~ X ~
The Brecilian groaned in protest of a mighty blaze. Sap crackled and burst to become magmatic rain, while rich browns and whites and reds collapsed in on themselves; trees fell in their hundreds, cleaving smoke-choked sky and horizon. They barrelled against the earth, splintering shards of death into the air. From on high, beyond the black of burning, bells tolled in a cannibalizing cacophony of pitched chaos, coinciding with every one of the forest’s furors.
Through the hypnotic dance of smoke and roaring fire warred beasts, previously hidden in their highs and lows of canopy and brush. Scaled and furred were they, and fanged and clawed and beaked besides. They fled from felled sentinels, overturned hills and charred copses with their emergence, and fountained blood and viscera without care for continued survival. Titanic in size, their collective presence stirred the firestorm yet further.
Alcaeus and his friends (and forgettable others) stood atop a flatly shorn boulder overlooking the bedlam. Grey and smelling of bothersome soot, it was backed by the nothingness of just instants before. Pillarous fires bordered them in shades of crimson and honeyed dusk, screaming secret nothings at the space they shared. The intensifying looked to continue without end. Heading west, small and thinning as time passed, was a dirt path fit for seven sidled pages. The span was populated by burnt husks and mounds of ashen refuse.
They refused to breathe, one and all, gazes narrowed. The mind seemed a weakness the Brecilian was most fond of preying upon, as proven by their earlier encounters. Confident as they were, none were those keen on testing themselves in this moment; there were times when valour was to be set aside, after all. Amidst an uncertain inferno was certainly such. Still, they both needed and wanted to move forward.
Discontent suffusing the already full grey of his eyes, Ryder took for himself the tree balanced across Arkas’ shoulders with one hand, his other extended at his front. Its ebon leaves and body were wet like the woolen shawl he wore, unaffected by the heat which so surrounded them. Back straight and shoulders wide, he strode off the platform. Westwards, the son of Loric walked tall - and with his rooted tree gripped tightly, he disallowed the encroachment of flame (splinter, and despair besides) by virtue of stolid will and manifested mist. To and fro did he wave his shield, tempo easy but firm; and in the wake of his parting walked friends and an increasing population of others, for his willful efforts, buoyed by the warmth of life, had freed a small space of the choking smoke and heat.
Arkas and Dea were first to notice the beasts nearest their fore, but seventeen steps from the shorn boulder. Catherine - eyes alighted by starfire, sword unnaturally sharpened - sensed second, and was alone in moving towards them; for the cousins remained on either one of Ryder’s sides in preparation of defending their occupied friend. Silent, the daughter of tragedy preempted a pride of leaf-maned lions in waiting. Ghosting across the ground, scorching through a host of lesser flames, she leapt an arm’s span above the crouched quintet and whipped her blade through spines of smoldering wood. Sap rained, stirred by her cutting force. The pride collapsed, strings cut, spirits riven - so cleared the path’s rightward way.
The leftward’s danger was met by Alcaeus: Crack! The air split as he released his spear, and then split again as a pained roar billowed cinder towards the forest’s burning peaks. Further ahead by many hundreds of paces, a truly gargantuan mound of deadwood erupted to reveal a bristling bear of uncommon size. Its fur was stone, solid and leathery, and its eyes were iron rage. Embedded in the creature’s breast was Alcaeus’ assault, sparking. Twice the grunting beast spasmed and stepped, covering half the distance between it and the pages. On the third, it fell wheezily. The ground shook! And a plume of dirt filled the air as it occupied the path, rattling inky blood past its snout.
When they reached the bear, it was well and truly dead, mouth slavering madly in spite of its necrotic state. The spilled saliva was thick like tar, and hardened as rock against the earth. Alcaeus bypassed Ryder and the waved tree to pull his spear free, countenance steady but grim. Spurting steaming blood over his arm and hand with the motion, he kicked the corpse aside, leaving it to tumble far and away from the path. Left behind in the time since his killing, the victims of Dea and Arkas’ guarding littered the ground, wetting the soles of two dozen pages.
They continued on in such a vein, guided by Ryder - Catherine ranged, Alcaeus preempted, the twins protected, their unintended hanger ons took advantage, and none dared breathe. When they happened upon another group of living pages, seventy were the felled beasts, perhaps a thousand the bypassed dead, and six the ended hours. Outside their protective bubble, the smoke and fire danced with greater fervor; the world seemed naught but the blaze. However, Alcaeus’ mind was far from focused on such things; his trust in Ryder was powerful, and salience possessed by those at their fore.
The occupants of the path numbered fifty. Some were without weapons, others without dress. Arrayed in a marching line, trudging at half the pace set by Ryder, each of their spirits was haggard and all but one of their breaths pained. Standing tallest and proudest, the rearguard was a familiar figure wafting cool moonlight towards their front, where it then met the spring chill of a river wide and lazing.
‘Ilsunna,’ Alcaeus observed, frowning as the strain of breathless hours vyed against the strength of his invigoured body - in his breast, Catherine’s calm flickered. Though he remained unsure how far they had to go until Kingmaker Field, the son of Nemea was certain careful speed was of the essence. Aggrandized and mystified as the multifarious versions of Artus’ meeting with Merlyn were, all agreed great haste was made through the Brecilian upon its burning, and that the final creature which sought to prevent his trespass surpassed the contention of mere pages.
They could not afford conflict, here and now. But would Ilsunna care? He was an ornery sort where elves were concerned, and his palpable dislike for Arkas and Dea was most probably present still. Such antipathy was not quelled by hardship. And it was not as if they were wholly undeserving of enduring abhorrence either. Alcaeus would admit the hands of himself and his friends had been needlessly heavy, no matter his own disdain for the fatalistic son of Lucent. That the makeup of Ilsunna’s fellows was entirely human spoke much as well.
As Ryder neared their agemates, Alcaeus pictured a peaceful passage and the potential consequences thereof: Ilsunna and his fifty some following close behind, gathering their strength; potential hours passing by, weakened bodies starved of breath making for an attractive target. The scene seemed to play out in the firelight reflected by his eyes.
Alcaeus’ lips twitched for want of a rueful grin. He could well be wrong and Ilsunna alone in his prejudices… but then, he may not be. The agemates at his fore could communicate the same thankfulness those pages at his back were. There were politics to account for, too: future considerations, families, kingdoms.
Powerful shoulders rolled alongside a blooded spear, fingers rubbing the wood grain smooth – Alcaeus withheld a scoff. The possibilities were numerous and of increasingly little matter, for Ilsunna had noted their coming, the wet rush of Ryder’s heat having swept across his collective.
Grey eyes, mirroring blue and red, dimmed. Resignation cloaked-
“Ooouuu~”
The clarion whistle, high and bright, gave pause to one and all - proud was its chorusing with the bells of above, heralding tempest winds of such mighty breadth, all the forested burning ceased as if forbade. Scouring skin, stripping smoke from the air, west they blew. The sunlight which then fell was stolen with great immediacy: a shadow wrought itself across the ashen Brecilian. The quiet husks, cragged and sinuous, failed to disguise the fleeing of smoldering beasts. Thud, thud, thud: their tusked and fanged forms spilled away in panicked tens and hundreds like embers in the dark of dusk, tumbling earth and wood.
Alcaeus looked to the shadow’s origin, mirroring his agemates. Descending slowly, wings spread for traveled leagues, talons the bronze of a thousand swords, was an obscenely sized… blue eyes narrowed yet further.
‘An eagle?’ Alcaeus exhaled subdued thunder, clearing acridity from his nostrils, quietly impressed.
Feathers the fullest of earthen works, eyes a burning fit to match the previous inferno, was an eagle. The avian crashed through scorched sentinels as it flew with kingly grace and ease, winding round and round to rest before the assembled pages. To the tune of crumbling, the beast loomed tens upon hundreds upon thousands of heads high. Alcaeus was ensnared by the golden glow of its gaze, his own blowing wide in the animalistic fear all prey held before a predator. Craning its head, the eagle whistled.
“Ooouuu~”
Death: and Alcaeus breathed deeply of the cleansed air, making no attempt to calm the goldenbright vim quickening his heart. Through his fear and awe, he drew upon truest will and strode past breathless others, for he had faced a far more frightening entity in his mother. Thinking as much, his lips quirked.
The son of Nemea’s steps were heavy and oh so loud in the bellsome silence blanketing the forest. Even and resolute despite their uncertainty: thump – thump – thump – thump. They were a signal to many as well - and so away went one, away went three, away went dozens in fear of the mighty beast and its songful whistle whispering unto them, ‘Death.’
The word echoed in Alcaeus’ mind as he and his friends approached the beast with weapons in hand, followed by three of their former collective. Drumming filled his ears and lightning coated his tongue, and in his hands did the wooden spear crackle with scarcely suppressed fury. He was furthest ahead by twelve paces, the unfurling of his spirit making easier every breath. Fear fled as a powerful trust returned.
Artus was said to have battled a foe for fruitless hours before he reached Kingmaker Field, whereupon Merlyn appeared. Clashing accounts claimed he either earned the respect of his powerful opponent or beguiled a successful awaying after falling short of triumph. Quite naturally, the accounts told by men and women since knighted varied between such storied bounds, the details forever shifting as if the associated memories were ill-formed.
As he neared the eagle and its unfurling, winged will, Alcaeus wondered which was to be their path: ‘Warring or survival?’
Through his body ran the predator’s instincts: “Ooouuu~”
Death: and eight were the replies, Alcaeus’ greatest of all.
With all the electric agility of lightning did he and his spear crash towards the eagle’s feathered breast, blue run through by goldenbright violence. Weave did he around invisible shields of whorling air, and through he went a lancing fury, all before the blink of an eye. His weight was that of a storm; a single note, uniquely united: lightning, thunder, rain, cloud, wind. History, if only in present parts.
Speartip met feather.
Thoom!
The collision was deafening; a detonation of denial preceding fires, chills, blossoming roots, and gusts like fallen swords. Alcaeus was driven back, his desires treated as refuse to be disposed of - and so he flew, rebounding down and away, his body digging a fearsome trench; hardy as he was, it did so most ably. Rocks crushed themselves between his teeth, while dirt sought to invade his eyelids as he plowed for uncontrolled paces, glassing all he touched. The air was livened from his passage, zipping and zapping erratically.
When Alcaeus righted himself, his clothes were a ruin, the shaft of his spear creviced, and his body unmarred by the reflected force of his charge. Before his eyes, the eagle was similarly unruffled by his assault, and static in its positioning.
Self-sustaining blades of cyclic wind driven by perspective, matching the avian’s size; twining light and water flowing towards the eyes; imagined fire stabbed with intensity to burn sound and colour from the world; thick roots seeking to entrap talon and feather. It was a chorus capable of laying low a quested knight; a symphonic carnage to Alcaeus’ ear… one met with indisputable failure.
Click went the eagle’s enormous beak, and every one of the swiftly performed songs was rebuffed, withered by the predator’s primacy - the winds, the twining, the fire and roots; one and all, they died.
Will and rote practice debated excited practicality as the eagle craned its head, wings prepared to flap. Alcaeus hummed, running a hand along the length of his spear to much crackling; he could see well why the ratio between squires and pages was tremendously uneven. Like softened thunder, laughter burbled in his belly as he considered branching paths; a sound echoed gaily by Arkas and Dea both.
Warring or survival. Respect or guile.
There was little contest in his mind, much the same as his friends, boldest all despite their earlier trepidation. Ilsunna and his fellows were of a differing opinion, shimmering out of view in the wake of their failure. Alcaeus paid the departure no mind, spear readied. As he approached, the eagle reared back in fiercest fashion, cry piercing the sky. Conquered fear a welcome companion, the son of Nemea breathed deeply for a second time.
In-
And lightning sang between marrow and skin, and once again he carried the weight of a leaden sky. He was rejuvenating destruction, the goldenbright heir to storms across the breadth of history in all their myriad forms and interpretations.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
-out, and alongside his motions did great wings flap. Magnitudes greater than the winds imagined by Arkas and Dea, the eagle’s tempestuous response was a hammer. Caring for neither land nor flesh, indiscriminate in its wrought devastation, the easterly way was made perfectly flat and widely at that, freed from all but barest stone. The battered remnants of hills and lesser beasts rained past the horizon, towards the near-nothingness.
Alcaeus was long disappeared, and his friends resolute in their responses. Together they believed, and so together they attacked, making greater their previous parts with harmonious alacrity.
From Arkas and Dea came whirling winds, threading surety through his fingers. From Ryder came a comforting thrum of heat, coiling through the Nemean’s legs, giving rise to new strength with every step. From Catherine came a blaze of determination, layering itself in the depths of his heart, brightening a golden roar. From Alcaeus himself came the promise victory was merely unclaimed, as he scored through a sliver of tempest death to protect his friends.
The eagle clawed the ground, gaze a sea of celestial fire. Therein lay restrained hunger, pulsating against the air, threatening release. Silence gripped the Brecilian’s ruin as it reared back, wings once again preparing to flap.
Speartip met feather for a second time. The collision cracked Alcaeus’ weapon clean in half along its haft, and drove his lips to twitch. The formidable breadth of his piercing will was forcibly directed with inexorable certitude. Down and down again, in defiance of his action’s orientation, potency unleashed itself.
Beneath his feet, leagues broke. Jagged and mounding, the entry wound spiderwebbed destruction towards unexplored horizons, hinting at the depths of his erasure. Alcaeus hardly noticed, for the eagle’s wings were joined and the world was raging, beckoned by want.
From on high, melted from the sky, rain fell thick as any ocean. It was a blue oblivion carried by shrieking winds, and the mighty son of Nemea could scarcely envision such power being denied by his present company… it was with such a thought fueling him every iota of Alcaeus’ being dedicated itself to defiance. Echoing handsome spirits and the laughter of his friends, lightning roared!
…and the iota of their trying were ripped in twain by the eagle’s whistle. Chaff before a scythe, their convictions were riven.
“Ooouuu~”
Sleep: consciousness departed Alcaeus, stolen from him as it was his breathless friends. His body slumped, face first into the cragged ground.
Rain fell.
~ X ~
Drip drip drip
Blue eyes burned as they blinked open - crack!
From Alcaeus’ left came an amused chuckle. Leaves shuffled and twigs clacked.
“Wakefulness suits you, Alcaeus,” rumbled the voice of Ryder, laced with mirthful understanding.
The so-named breathed an apologetic grunt in reply, tasting renewal on his tongue. A breeze fluttered his lashes, whispering of peace and restful hours - and against his face did raindrops drizzle in pattering threes and fours. They flicked from sodden leaves but heads higher than his downed form.
“How long?” he asked of the young giant, who was pulling himself off the unfortunate tree he’d been thrown through, shoulders sifting splinters.
Feet bare of sandals, Ryder strode forward with limbs stretched askew, yawning, “I cannot say. Our friends still slumber, whereas I woke some minutes prior to you.” He punctuated his statement with a pointed stare at Alcaeus’ right: nestled there, Catherine, Dea, and Arkas slept in a haphazard huddle of choked airways, the former’s unbound hair a mess of tickling. One and all, excluding the rags made of the cousins’ dress, they appeared untouched by the encountered eagle.
Hefting the tree he’d shorn through, Ryder fixed its breakage with a gentle patting and firm stomp of buried roots. Half again as thick and tall as he, the sentinel shuddered with vim beneath bellings and his proud touch.
Alcaeus climbed to his feet, his boots alone in their continued integrity; indeed, tattered robes hung threadbare from his waist - and of the halved spear, naught could be found (naught could be sensed). To and fro he cast his gaze, expecting lingering hints of the ashen wasteland as he spied for signs of danger. None showed themselves. But, alive with canopied rains was a forest; ebon leaves fluttered in a breeze, the ground made verdant by grasses green. Dim browns and reds and whites reached for the cloudless sky, trunks strong and invariably new. They lived, as he.
“We proved victorious,” Alcaeus observed, tone and mien blithe in the face of their accomplishment.
“Inasmuch our survival counts,” Ryder returned, a soft smile on his face. “And we earned the respect of Aetos Aurum in doing so.”
“Aetos Aurum?” Alcaeus questioned, having never before encountered the name, even as he was left unsurprised so fearsome a beast possessed one; for names were commonly bestowed to notable individuals of the wild seas and rivers and mountains and forests and valleys and skies and marshes and caves of Rhium; history was rife with their presence.
“Aye.” Ryder came to stand beside his friend, towering gently. “Son of Dium, godbeast of Loric’s long ago predecessor.”
Alcaeus snorted, bemused. “Was his name decided by the colour of his eyes?”
Ryder shrugged, “Who is to say? Of those who remember such times, none have deigned to detail the years to my home or its denizens. But that is an aside.” He rubbed his hands together. “How fare you, my friend?”
Eyeing the westerly path, Alcaeus’ brow creased - on the outset of their glade residence, it was thin enough for three people, and made opaque by palest light. Arched by sentinel trees in mirroring of the Brecilian’s entrance…
‘Transport,’ occurred without conscious care. Scratching his skin, the Nemean rather considered his state and that of his friends. Hale and whole, all. Then he laughed as his answer delivered itself - languid and full, the sound slipped past his lips, each puff ringing joyfully. And with goodly reason, or so he saw. For the Calling had been most satisfactory thus far.
His friends were not long in waking ‘neath such familiar sound – and in reaches afar did a familiar whistle keen through their subsequent speaking, as if in belated reply.
Aware of their success, readied and weaponless, the quintet of friends made for the westward way in unabashed fleeing from their better. Fleet of foot, they reached the arch between hurried questions.
“Was Aetos Aurum’s song coherent-”
“Is your skin truly as untouched as ever-”
“Can knights be denied, or are we stuck-”
Some were salient and well worded, others a sign of forgetfulness. All were answered as they passed beneath embracing limbs of wooden age. So died day. So shimmered night.
~ X ~
When the sun was set and the storms awayed, the skies of Rhium became a grand muse; iridescent coronas cradled expansive stars of brightest hue. They were as the breath and mane of constellations leonine and yet further strange. Great and deep were the golds and greens, purples and otherwise unseen colourations, scintillating in a language celestial. History’s merriest maddened had tried and failed to capture the whole of such beauty through artifice, their dozens dyeing history in the attempt.
Yes, the skies were noteworthy indeed: and therein swam beasts of unfathomed breadth, and rivers without end - and upon the penultimate peak, presupposing truthfulness, sat upon Their Tower Throne was She-Who-Reigns.
Alcaeus had always loved their multitudes, even as he grew to disdain their maker. In Nemea, where storms drew breath with immortal constancy, leaden legions affirmed his mother’s affection. Throughout his earliest youth, they’d been a source of lullabies. Home, however, was not Lucent. Neither was it Pax or the Woodsea.
…not so long ago, Alcaeus was introduced to their unclouded expanses. Piddling days before Fairbright, in truth. The splendour of seen stars - not merely studied, nor storied - had elicited tears. He’d thought them unparalleled motes of pearlescent perfection, unstained by mediocrity. Exiting the Brecilian, he took joy in his wrongful assumption (since disproven a hundred times over), for never before had the skies been so vividly enchanting. Wide was the blue of his gaze and loud the thrumming of his heart. Thud thud went his boots, unmarked skin alive with electric contentment.
Night’s luster was impossible to ignore, starry flesh twinkling in concert with the Calling’s tolled bells. Tempoed evenly, the joyous ringing was echoed by the Merlyns which decorated Kingmaker Field - named after the Oaken Knight, their cerulean petals caught all forms of luminescence well, like crystal, while their buds of silver shone brighter with every reverberation. There was a clarity to the air about their floral legions which lent itself to farsight. Alcaeus could espy emerald striations in the River Cephus, and a whorling of deepest crimson run through its twin, the malign Cetus, who was herself sidled by the Great Mane’s dewdrop gold. So too was the Sword of Kings bared, a blue sheen mirrored in size by the tripartite Chain of Heaven; the son of Nemea could have named a dozen more, but for Catherine drawing him back to the task at hand with a nudge.
“Ho~” he breathed, feeling a smile curl his lips. His friend mirrored the expression, and Alcaeus chuckled at the fine fettle of her raiment; not a chain or stretch of leather was out of place, making for an odd vision. Ragged and not, weaponless all - Catherine and her friends. Crimson eyes read his expression with consummate ease he was beginning to suspect had never not existed. Arching a huffy brow, the daughter of tragedy tied windblown hair into a low pony.
Together with their friends, they walked across Kingmaker Field, conversations muted by their circumstances.
Stretching for some thousand paces in every direction, the Calling’s end sat on even ground. East and north and south, the Brecilian stretched innocuously, a far cry from the foreboding it exuded elsewhere. Further west, past a sparkling brook, lay the city of Lucent, its outermost wall of mythril and durium a silversnow radiance some thousand heads high. In the center of the field, grey against cerulean, was the top of a shorn boulder. Around there stood Ilsunna and his pair of fellows, in addition to nineteen unnamed agemates.
They were but a piddling few of the thousands who had doubtlessly answered the Calling, and the son of Lucent bore for Alcaeus and his friends a glare.
Cocking his head, stare unerring over the hundreds of paces yet uncrossed, Arkas spat with an exaggerated whip of his head. Spouting past golden lips, his saliva arced with winsome speed to splatter against the ground at Ilsunna’s feet, where it then sizzled. The insult was clear as the elf laughed and grinned, gait accelerating.
To Ilsunna he shouted in greeting, “I see you survived, oh loathsome coward! Oh oathbreaking son of worthless wastes of blood and thought!” His arms were held open and his smile was unkind, and the silence which then manifested yawned towards violence. Such words could not be set aside for the sake of propriety or tradition, Alcaeus knew - and Arkas too was aware. But for why, the former wondered, would the elf provoke Ilsunna so?
The Calling was almost through. Never again would they need to knowingly near the young page. To be certain, the son of Lucent could seek them out or find himself against their interests, but who was to guarantee the future? Not Alcaeus. Not Arkas. For just as well, Ilsunna could change his views and ally himself in the centuries to come.
‘He must have heard something on the winds,’ Alcaeus decided; a planned evil or injustice upon their unity. Little else besides the worst of weaknesses could stoke such aggravation from his friend. Looking to Dea, his strides longer than just breaths before, he asked for confirmation. In reply, the smiling girl twirled one of Catherine’s unmoored hairs and shrugged.
“It seems probable, but I cannot say for certain.”
“Were you not listening in as well?” Dea chuckled at the genuine nature of Catherine’s inquiry.
Focus upon her cousin’s back, she whispered, “Were I less fond of my sanity, I might have… The winds carry whispers from across the breadth of Rhium, you must understand. They are warped things of emotion, and apt to inflict their truth; it requires an incredibly powerful mind to listen without objectionable risk.” Sniffing with faux derision, she said, “If naught else, Arkas’ mind is certainly that. Just as well, he is fond of inflicting himself upon unfortunate others.”
Dea sighed and shrugged for a second time. “So, as I said: I cannot say for certain.”
“And you, Alcaeus?”
“What of me?” The son of Nemea’s reply was met with a curious crinkle of Catherine’s brow, whose tone turned arch and searching.
“Do you not listen to the winds?”
Dea, Arkas, and Ryder chuckled ruefully as they sped, leaving the addressed to enlighten the daughter of tragedy.
“I do not hear as others where the winds are concerned,” he explained laconically. “My mother’s influence being what it is…”
“No one else?” Catherine asked, her features a rictus of deliberate neutrality. They morphed into abject mislike as Alcaeus confirmed her venturing with a nod. “How horrible,” she mused.
“It is, and I am,” Alcaeus shrugged. “Such is my present. But her attention is no great terror specially formed to spite my existence. Merely a mother looking towards the continued health of her son. That said, I do believe Arkas is about to argue most vigorously with the fatalistic son of Lucent.”
Indeed, the golden youth was opening his mouth, dagger-tongue sharpened by unconfirmed impetus. There was disapproval on his mind and a preempting in his stance; shoulders taut, he came to a stop before Ilsunna. Whatever his words, however, they would go unheard. From the east came another group of pages, numbering twelve; and with them, from all corners of the world, bright and full, the Calling’s bells crescendoed.
The Brecilian shook and the Merlyns fluttered, and the goldenbright thundering of Alcaeus’ breast was silenced. Cresting over Lucent on steeds of winterous pitch rode a hundred noble knights. They were garbed in armour rent towards disrepair, bearing mantles of flowing silver, personages conspicuous and oh so loud to Alcaeus’ keen senses. Wyverns of scale, vanargi of fur, leviathans of fin, and griffins of feather decorated their cloaks, snarling across the whole of their resplendence. Together they echoed Merlyn’s answer - and even they in their greatness were drowned by the racing cacophony. The clopping clatter of their descent, the strength of spirit which unfurled from their forms, the stench of death which harried their hundred; the Calling’s burgeoning chaos overwrought them all.
“Here comes squireship! Here comes questing! Here comes a final trial!”
Alcaeus imagined such were Dea’s shouted words, stolen as they were by the clinging and dinging and ringing. Belatedly, the Nemean remembered he ought to be running.
‘And Artus looked upon the western heights, and there saw a midnight steed. Carrying the stench of death, its pale rider descended unto him with sword in hand, and young Artus did flee. Hale and worn, he sought the darkness of a cave, for the Brecilian would never play the part of refuge. Verily, he flailed. Valiantly, he failed.’
‘Hooded and roaring with laughter, the Oaken Knight took hold of his fleeing charge, grasp firm and over large. “How well and good; a strong arm and stronger spirit, fit for kingly fighting!” Merlyn decided, and so Artus was squired - and away they then went towards bells only they could hear, questing for seven imperiled years.’
“And great were the dangers they prevailed over,” Alcaeus recited noiselessly, booted feet pulsing against the ground, legs flush with bloody vim.
Together with his friends, the son of Nemea made for Lucent - and together they mounted failure, steps forever fewer than the tolled bells. Already, Ryder and Catherine had been caught, clasped by knights of prodigious size; and unless Alcaeus’ stifled sight was feeding him lies, Dea and Arkas were but moments from meeting a similar fate.
The passage of an instant confirmed as much, phantom mirth ruffling the wilds of Alcaeus’ hair. Together they were plucked up and away, held in the crook of a bared arm whose peachy skin was decorated by much writing.
Alaceus breathed. In and out. And the goldenbright thunder of his heart defied restriction for the barest of moments, beckoned by curiosity. Sparks coated his skin - and he was nearly there, alone but for the accelerating knights. The city. His haven. It was-
Darkness. Not of the Brecilian’s western entrance, nor of a storm whose hold was without fury, or even of the coldest winter.
-a mountain which knew neither base nor summit.
Alone, Alcaeus stumbled.
~