The Runaway Dogma

XX : The Runaway Dogma

They came in night, at the weather’s very worst, upon its most hideous zenith. From the southwestern plains, they came, through a stark little stretch of wood, then out into the open sward, arriving with wounds of fresh battle upon the step of Eritle, in temptation ascending. As they bounded up, ragged over the split-log bridges, the clefts all hail-flogged, a triad of shadows slipped below. In tattered garb, with brighter things beneath. More sinister, crimson things.

Their shelter was pillar-laced, blinded to what trailed through and away, beyond the rock and above their heads. They held their breaths, listening to the loudness of laughter, of ready and demanding visitation. A toll emerged from the wilderness to brand Eritle. Arawn felt much like a rat, with eyes at the slits of pack-sporting stone, concealed whilst the unseen force worked toward the town. Capriciously, her eyes jingled about. Her belly danced, tangled to an ailment, a nervousness to precede gut-wrenching guilt. This was familiar to her. It felt akin to Arrenfaeld, to the little folk betrayed by her expertise, denied the salvation of the prowess that could only be a red sorcery. They could not dispel such a pack, she thought. They were only three, and already was the garrison of Eritle stripped and dragged below ground. She mouthed the word “damnation” until it could echo on its own and her doubts were incomplete in the flurry.

The quiet of barren rock was their criticism and brutally inelegant. They shared a gaze amongst one another, but Veil stepped between the draining thoughts. He hearkened suddenly, to some patter above. Veil doffed his hood to tune his winged ears, then raised a hand and compelled Odr and Arawn into stillness. There was something else moving above them. Swiftly, lightly, though just over their roof it had slowed, as if to meander and stargaze or empty itself off the rocks. Veil did not dare utter a word, even while the storm supplied their discretion. He listened intently and, standing so near to his scalp, was Rhaebjorn. He rode the rhythm of the rocking bridge. In the tight slots of his white mask, something moved, to crawl over the stones and expose the puddles for their secreted truths. Something within that ashen frame was at hunt.

Then the eyes fattened and Rhaebjorn walked on. Slower, more heavily, as if satisfied or to give warning. They did not move for a long while. They were soundless and cautious and grappling the slick rockside, up until the very first scream was heard, rising up over the gate. Then, with good haste they fulfilled the descent. Turning sharply through a door of wild rock, they laid their gaze upon Argolan and set themselves after its blighted depths. After the murk that stomached the Northman and the grave threat of his persistence.

And in their leave, hell came to Eritle.

Alow the Amber Falcon, in the mystery of chrome mists, a cluster of bladesmen roamed about, inspected and presumed. There was a furrfiend with half his head lost in the belling of storms. They were not seasoned in Arakvan’s flagitious ways; each gawked and guessed fantastical causes. Death did find the cobblestones before, and the blue-gold band found it in turn, frozen at alley’s end or in the snares of rain-slick steeps, yet Eritle’s gruesome candor belonged to the cliff’s brim, where lurked the ill-bred element and Argolan, its mass progenitor. A skull turned to mush at the town’s heart was a separate dread entirely. The cap’s leather was pinched between bone. Blood spoiled the gambeson, drenched until it turned black. Bits of brain were caught in a tight brown beard. The eyes were lost to the inside of the head.

They took to the doors with their knocks and their questions. Folk hid behind hard wood, learning the scent of the grizzly ordeal and needing nothing more. Distrust met the bang in the night, though otherwise were there curt and oblivious murmurs. Only a handful of homes could be stirred before a cry came from the lower cliff and blue-gold helms reeled to it. Then a second, so brief it seemed snagged at the ankle in its course. Then was a shrieking, purled about a rising pillar of smoke.

From the woods of Meddlelfore, the every hateful plain of Arakvan, and then from the stub-gate of Eritle crawled a sort unseemly. Up flooded steps ran sprites, vulgar and outcast, bartering black deaths. Styled as gobbets, pickaxed out from a jungle cavity, the outfit was shuddersome, witnessed and forbidden. The guards saw what laid behind them: Still arms dangled out from alleys, frames deformed kissed the earth and water, and at the gate blood amassed, from the first defence and like a portal toward overarching evils, aglow in the lower worlds.

Eritle’s blades descended against that loud marauder’s glee, and so madly did the cacophony soar to entoil.

Beatific was the hive with the shine of snatched steel, loaded with drools of revelry. Blood-flecked and chortling, batting their metals against homesteads, snapping wolvishly at the glass of barred windows. They bashed the lanterns and littered cabalder through storm-mists. They broke down doors and in lobbies pinned and pressed. Desecrated, until blood and viler spillings could not all be swallowed by the weather.

There was a halved gate in their wake, with its fallen member torn to shreds by axe and knife. The yard thereafter was a swamp. Four sentries slept forever in its muds, dirt blotching the glow of their steel coats. Folk ran amok and their hearths knew no solace. Like giant moths, they bustled to the brightness of good homes and warm beds, then sank blades through cotton, dashed them across logs until beggars died in the dark.

The town locked itself away from the pillaging, only to see shadows flicker across the window. Shadows that laughed and threw their heads up, aflame and with pointed teeth. On that boisterous night, Eritle witnessed wolves walk on two feet.

A blue-gold rally met them in the street; Galehaven’s dwindling hand gripped still to its hillish plot. There was a chopping cavort, drumming iron. Daggers through plates of blue. The bold, left to drizzle and slump. Galehaven’s stock was in short time crawling on their bellies, to a hope across ruin’s lake. Where they fell, they were fallen upon, hacked alive for trophy and feast.

Three homes higher, a window broke out and from it fell a thrashing cloth of woman. She rebounded off the cobblestones and died. Marveling, a wolf of Garrott watched drift the sprinkles of glass, then saw a second window break and a second body fall after mercy.

“They jump!” he cried out in wonder. “All-Father’s eyes, they’re jumping!”

The cages came swaying with fright and astoundment, suspense and brilliant life. They sang and wept and shook the bars, certain their apocalypse was upon them at last. Eritle was the rattling of chains and the puddles left behind, inhabited.

Garrott’s wolves took to corpseplay, and a battalion of broomsticks and pitchforks assailed them. They earned their knicks before they were toppled, defiled, and set afire. A pair of bowmen took aim against the captives up in their cages. They kept the bowstring loose, stabbing to slow death. Garrott himself found a squat at the Amber Falcon, entrenched like some swine-lord in his fort of stolen flesh. There did he take counsel, the sovereign of petty apostasies, dictating which homes shall burn and which larders were to become pens. Which folk were young enough to brand and which ripe enough to fillet.

The brothel blasted with an inner fire, its doors rocked and swung. Fire burst through every window. Swords, then a terrible bawling, then naught but the hiss of working flame. Endless and inspired was the crusade of the imps. A barrel rolled from the porch of Ellimon’s Bale, sped then was struck by an arrow, wreathed in lantern’s flame. The liquor exploded and a reaver was scorched living. Gaerhild manned a bow at the door to the tavern, challenging any entry. She grinned through the black cloud, recalled to a sensation of early-life knavery, of daring expedition. There was a call and she answered it, and for that did she know a trembling pride in her weathered frame.

The sweetness faded away however, as the three-headed shadow of retaliation rushed against her. She let loose a cluster, piercing shoulder then chest then slaying, but upon the third blow she was caught. The bow snapped, hands pinned her to her porch, and it was the firing arm they stole first. Her cries were no louder than the hail by the time they wedged off the second. A fist of mud was buried in her throat.

The market-road, where blazed canopies, was a dissension of cloth’s rich colours. Some last defiance was turned then pulled across its bent stalls. A wolf roamed the smokes and a common man opposed. He came from the mists of his burnt shop, stumbling, hacking, but clutching a pair of scissors he then lent to the devil’s work. The wolf fell against that swooning pleasure, that ash-caked innocence, with jaw agape. Toaryk launched himself forward, striking the raider’s chest and sticking his scissors through the side of the charlatan’s neck. The bandit yelped, a harp with porcelain strings, then shoved a sword up through Toaryk’s belly. Impaled, he fell with the blade, then a boot broke in his head. With the scissors still lodged in his neck, the bandit cackled through the smog of the once-market.

Mere streets away, in a scamper of busy backroads, a woman ran and a beast gave chase. She could glimpse the way’s deadend before a crypt of boxes took her footing and she slapped down into dust, through storm-wet oak and its slices. Laughter was a scratch at her ear. She took up a stake of split wood and raised it two-handed against him, to ward off the bull. The creature ogled the fierce display, though red dressed its horns and excited the eye, so with a smooth cut the stake was torn apart and half her hand with it. He loomed suddenly, to grip then chop, though it was an older, harsher tone that apprehended him.

“Here, dog!” cried another from the alley’s mouth. “Will you swat away cutlery all night, or are you here to wet your jaws!”

The bandit turned. Over his shoulder was a haggard, beaten man. His hair was grey and full of new blood. One arm was limp, hung from a gooey desperation of tissue. The other held a caneblade and quivered.

“Come on!” Horral cried. “Do not die untested!”

The bandit slowed to inspect the man. To see the stumble and hear the heavy breaths, then he engaged. Horral slashed. Both swords failed but Horral’s could not handle the raider’s weight. They fell together out from the alley and into a narrow stair. Horral’s breath was knocked from his chest. Again, consciousness tried to sneak away, like a secondhand guest from an uncomfortable dinner. He did not notice the caneblade rattle away from him. The raider rose quickly and his sword jumped.

There was a chant in his heart that blurred all agonies. There was a guilt wielding Eidrik’s voice that surmounted any old dread of oblivion.

“I am sorry, brother,” he mumbled. “I am so sorry.”

He was in the storm no longer. Horral was elsewhere; colder, so distant he could not remember his body or its gaping penitence. Fear’s ice was walked across and did not waver. Horral Weirhym was gone.

The raider paused again, watching the life slip away from the old fellow in as much amusement as confusion. The sabre ignored the flattery of circumstance and cut through it, though was set ajar from a visceral impact. He rocked from a cracked rib. A boot found his side and tossed him to the stair’s bottom. When his head could heave up again, it discerned another woman. Troubled, standing over the bloodied elder, was a cloak, unarmed. She studied the one-armed fellow and learned unrest, then anger absorbed her watch.

With a snarl, the raider rushed to tear away her head. A great slice renewed the fray and made an arc of the falling rain. Ander weaved from it and caught the wrist responsible, then knuckled the bandit’s cheek. She felt his teeth against the bone of her hand, then pushed further, until his head met the wall. Ander uncoiled her fist and jabbed a thumb through his eye, gouging until the eyelid was caught, then ripping away. His head yanked towards her waist and the skin tore from the socket. His barren iris beheld a knee crash into his jaw. In his wobble, Ander stole the sword and wedged it through his gut, then shoved him down on the hilt. Three steps shared his groaning head, but with a stomp Ander flattened it across all three. He drained like a squashed melon, but Ander cared none for the juices of victory.

She called to the woman in the alley, urged her to begone, to take to the cliffside, then Ander wrapped herself around Horral’s paling frame. She heaved him and his axe up over both shoulders, nearly buckled from the weight, but with steady breaths brought him down the stairs and towards the lower climbs of Eritle’s underbelly. The storm tried to subvert her course and washed his wounds across her back, but she did not turn. Left in her wake was a quiet and flooded stair. A raider, battered and impaled, sprawled at its height and, at its bottom, a caneblade sat forgotten in a bank of blood.

At the fountain’s rim, Garrott was judge to wretches. His creativity besieged the cobblestones. Thieved ale filled him and plump cuts of meat dripped from his fist. Already, the old wolf grew bored of his fiery night.

Lightning saw the living and dead, in their cliff-destined caravans, flail into Argolan. Their festival was of a foul majesty; a sick jester’s ode to thunder, reeking and unapplauded. Eritle’s fogs seemed nothing other than the murk of the next world, beginning to seep through.

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“Grab her eye,” harped some tongue. “The green of it! Finer, taut across the throat!”

“Save us, from the storm,” sang one demented carver. “In warm salvation, bathe us. Take us then bind us but never betray us. Save us, save us, from the storm. Good Father, in the storm.”

“See your son,” chirped another. “See how he peels, like pork? A cut for me and another for you, but you’ll answer in debt. Debt, yes! Come, show me where you’ve stashed the littlest one. Come now! I’m ever gentler than what will sniff him out.”

Garrott attended the performance, hearing his ghoul-chorus for every shriek. In the Falcon’s dew were the drowned and righteous white-eyes, with bruised necks. He did not flinch while his feet were painted. All that could fit into his great fists became ordeals to carry. Garrott sat across spoils and slouched into a timid fatigue.

“Bring me Rhaebjorn,” he ordered. “Let us see if our demon from afar ever brought his smile with him.”

Rainwater was a blanket across the gore below, pulling the cloak down into its foul colours. Rhaebjorn’s mask tilted up. There was a shift in the white rifts of its wood. The road veered through a yard, fetid as an earthless crypt. A man in furs worked human meats with a steel pick. The insides of a person smeared his grin.

On a porch a story higher, a woman took to the railing, to leap away or for the last time. A gauntlet caught her ponytail, then another seized her arm. She hollered no longer by the time Rhaebjorn passed under her balcony. He walked gently between sombre lanes. Weepers were roadside then wrestled away into dank privacies. Limbs unlocked by wire, made pretty with rope.

What was this place? Embers clung to his boots. A rotten labyrinth teeming with wolves. When had he gotten here? Another battlefield, no nobler than any other, but eclipsed by some fault; some unknowable, immeasurable infelicity. Cabalder swarmed him, filled his lungs but left him cool breaths. Rancid and tolerable, encircled by virtues he could not name. An alley’s shade engulfed a fleeing boy. What Garrott called conquest. A father laid shanked on his doorstep. What the underlings named paradise. Ash-ridden skies where flags yet waved. Flags of triumph, proud above massacre and its ganked derivatives of the discrepant night.

“How familiar…” whispered Rhaebjorn.

Caitiffs whose mists of eye alleviated only before gold, who wore it, whose neck gleamed brighter. Blind to the ferocity of the blood toll and swift to name the corpse’s looting valuable beyond the war that rendered it prone and supple. A nightmare, thought Rhaebjorn. Dead arms wrapped his ankles to signal the watch of charred eyes. Spectres all, to the coward’s evening triumph, born of the impulse of stormclouds.

From a sidestreet tap danced a bottle-bearer, giddy until he splashed onto his back, muttering half-deaf madness, blaming the weather for his sore benumbed flesh. Slaves, to the blade’s every inclination. Take to the coffers until they overflow then reave for your supper, reave for tomorrow’s, reave when the garrisons turn away and when the Scourge sleeps. Proprietors of the vulnerable spoil who loathed sward and fang. What was this place? They prayed for their easy peace, in hackneyed squalors behind simple locks. When had he gotten here? It was the want for pain alone in his pursuit, Rhaebjorn realized, that he was a spar above the barbarians.

“Meak,” he muttered, at all and himself. “Always is it so…”

He passed the market’s desecration, where loomed flaming silhouettes of his countrymen. Eager blades discharged from the bastion, gallant until the daylight undaunted recalled them. Then, profane. Then, accursed, and he was their prized scoundrel, saved that same indulgence for his confused fealty to the storied scar, through the honour of caressing a wound and mouthing again each sensitive verse of its tale. For struggle and salvation, he had to persist, lest he be fathered by the shawl of a recreant deep. A son to the most feeble of abyss, smaller each reunion. He could not bear it. Not the kneeling nor the rhythm of runaways that was diffident and without relent. Their thrill spoiled his liver so did his eyes bleat, burst from their mask. Rhaebjorn’s ears bled to the glee and the satisfaction. Through each hum was he a dimmer force.

Then he was upon the town square, before the ridiculous bird that hosted hell’s bachelor. His hounds stamped about and the old wolf smiled. Garrott extended to Rhaebjorn a colluding hand.

“We’ve been here only for night’s first trembles,” said Garrott. “And already they make me chief. The vote, as fast as fire.”

Rhaebjorn said nothing. He watched the flames tickle stubborn stone, reflect across wet tiles, and let Garrott go insulted.

“I am surprised, Rhaebjorn,” said the old wolf. “Here I expected you would find your delight, in the little streets without escape. All the cutting you might envision… yet your scythe is away still. Away, and dry.”

Rhaebjorn answered. “I would not snore with you, in this fiefdom of sheep. Soft bellies and warm fur, upturned for your taking. Wolves upon gluttony, who disavow the moon.”

The square went silent. Seldom did their spectre speak, so none deprived him of their attention. Garrott stammered, then leaned in with a harder eye.

“Has your belly turned, Eastman?” he asked. “You have strolled, caped like a lady in theatre, or the duchess through the rosemaries, so very long. It is a soft little land. Has it taken from you your nerve for warfare, Rhaebjorn? Are you so simply declawed?”

“Warfare?” Rhaebjorn hissed. “You sit on mud. An audience of farmhands. Miners, to attend to you. Where will you raise your flag, where Arakvan will not give way below it? But surely, Garrott, your theft against the clothier is to be tomorrow’s victory.” He faced the square furiously. “Ready your songs!”

“Careful, Rhaebjorn,” warned the old wolf. “If your mind decays, in doubt or some strange eastern fear, stay your clean, gloved hands. Stay them, ghost! But do take care who you mock. Indeed, on such a bloody night.”

“Take care…” Rhaebjorn echoed. “Of course. Take care, step slow. Walk, think, carry on. Settle. How long has it been?”

“What is this drabble you spew? Are you mad, old boy?”

“My mind or nerve, perhaps you are right in my losses. But which, I dare not wager. Dormant, for so very long. Rotting away and asleep, in my lapse of…”

His thoughts trailed off, sucked up into the arson’s fumes. Rhaebjorn watched the smoke coil and drift and burst into new frenzy. A thousand ripples of black; a shifting kingdom of darkness; it moved and wavered and flapped. Much like a cloak, he thought, and in an uptake of flame he beheld what seemed akin to a blade, gnarled as if torn from the very bones of a beast. Though he had of course seen it before, and so did the mists enthrall him. The flames took form and Rhaebjorn witnessed the outlander from Meddlelfore emerge again. With hate, with impossible will, the Northman gazed down at Rhaebjorn. And Rhaebjorn heard his challenge.

“Vengeance…” he muttered. “For the blades wasted, on things bowed and asunder. For the wrath, sought enslaved.” The white wood shifted downwards to lock against the old wolf. For the first time in all his travels, Garrott witnessed a light behind the mask. He saw two green eyes, full of fire. “Vengeance for all blood spilt, when I might have sipped from yours!”

Garrott lunged but passed the scythe headless.

“Vengeance!” cursed Rhaebjorn. “For the cowardice of the pack, too long endured!”

The clifftop was appalled, then so quickly aggrieved. Panic answered the old lord’s collapse and the rush against Rhaebjorn carried shouts of treason. The square scuttled with a timid dash of the red and undressed, unwittingly set loose. Eritle’s ravaging braked in its final hour and Garrott’s retaliation wore shell necklaces and wedding bands and bronze decor. Prettied and muttish, the flock assailed the square.

That ghast under amber accelerated toward them, with hands full of moonlight. A grey weave caught bodies like candles in a torch’s sprint, passing and disabling forever. Rhaebjorn ripped his scythe through the living without thought, beyond composure, leaping then in sinister lurk, repelling and returning sentence. His cape could not keep up with his massacre. His blades knew constant motion, dedicating each second towards the next second’s slice, and all staggered before the whirlwind. The green flares in his head hounded without remorse. There was only punishment. Rhaebjorn imprinted their screams upon posts, staked them between the cobblestones, torrented the mud with their remains. Swords flew from the daring grips against him and moonshone steel took the guilty limb. All across the wet, murdered hill of Eritle, Rhaebjorn amassed his army of the dead, hunting until dawn came near and every inch of the mound had its own transgression to carry into eternity. Until every swordhand was stilled and every last raider was butchered in the streets. Until Eritle faced the rising sun without protectors, without blue-golds, without wolves.

In a sea of the slaughtered, he lingered, until the Amber Falcon was his to slump against and would-be usurpers were clumps of rot. He waited under the soft, lingering rain, as if certain more would emerge to be slain, but only the dying crackle of fire touched his ears. The gush of the fountain alone spoke to him.

Rhaebjorn slowed at last, and his scythe, steeped in seaweeds of dangling gut and limb, lowered a short inch. The wood of his watch tilted, adrift from its beastial work. It took to the wet stones and the crying heavens and the lifeless, unyielding vigil of the Falcon and all the homes that lay blemished alow its wing. He found the dimples of its eye-dents, so much like tears dropped into the mold. The wings that reached for always a wider embrace, their talons, braced for endless duty. Rhaebjorn saw the tenderness of its sculpting, the careful incisions that rendered the vow unwavering. It was strong and stoic at its perch, but deeper still he gazed. Deeper, to see how the heat of flame rubbed black into its amber. Its power was in the light undone, tarnished in its vigilance over the pleasures of lesser life, of softer beasts, shedding feather and force to ensure their same, safe tomorrow. And here would its vow rot. Here, would it end.

The amber came cheap in his eye. Mundane in the cloud’s departure. Rhaebjorn turned, and with a flap of his ashen cape was rid of it. Rid of Garrott, his butchered crew, their hideous festivities. Rid of Eritle and rid of its cliff. In one deep breath, in a sink of the shoulders and a stride forth, Rhaebjorn moved on from all of it. He left the dark of its climbs and roofs and walked into a lessening night.

Under the dissipation of moonlight, Rhaebjorn was rid of the world of man.

Across the long grasses, to the stem of the smoking goliath. She mounted the rocks, determined from ledge to bridge to the very gate, staving off the insinuations of the scent with brisk little curses. The rain was soft and could not deter her, could not threaten her with filths more substantive than what already emblemed her coming. Starved and after justice, she roamed past the mouth of the cliff-town and took her first step inside, to the newest lair of the long madness to which she gave chase. Upon the second step however, her heart reeled and her mind did not answer.

Eritle was gone. Her toes swam a mire of the grizzly remnants. From sideroads to doorsteps were people unbreathing, split apart. Some in bright steels, others in furs, others in pants and cotton shirts, but all equally unadorned in death. Like the tossed discards of a lumber yard, thought Jaynell, that the axe met, fractured, and cast aside. Tattered about as erratically as the leaves fallen from trees, in the reddest dyes the eyes could hold. Fumes crawled off cabins like thin, tipped caps. Wood like charcoal. Stone, scorched. Black and red, hot and reeking. She nearly vomited, but in hearing Eritle’s whispers could not allow herself to collapse. There were still souls to be damned.

She walked up the hill. Through the fossils of homes, bathed in the torch. Past gathering mourners, come to collect the jewelry of bones. A woman scraped together the pieces of a vase and tried, in the mud, to repattern its engraved tale. She failed and weeped. A man bowed to his fist and the fist bore dice. With a crooked nail, he wiped the blood from its numbers, though the numbers peeled too. A dog, that had committed all the night to search, nestled itself in a cradle of ashen bones. It sat with a groan and then was silent. The cages above dripped and did not move, riddled in arrows and choked in smoke. Crushed stalls and flipped wagons felt a different hail. The clouds could empty a sea upon the cliff and fail still to wash away its horrors.

Then Jaynell noticed, among the bodies she strove so desperately to dodge, the corpses of raiders. Of many. Of faces she had stained into the hateful corners of her mind. Gushing through halved armours. Abundant death administered without principle. Jaynell saw the merciless truth: that her vengeance was robbed from her and her errant quest a journey to nowhere. Dirt beds, insect suppers, rabbits for a feast and an axe for a walking stick, only to arrive at a shore whose waters had dried away, leaving only barren coast and its callous drop, only echoes of that evening below the Haddlebush. Jaynell had donned the winged helm and readied herself to at last see her accosters through the indifference of metal, through its blunt judgement. Alas, in the realm of puddle and smog, her hatred was only a mood, and her helm only a mask. Eritle was blackened. She had lived on for no reason at all.

A weathered cry fell against her. She turned to find a crone emerging from the mists, shambling after her own veiny fist. Cheeks soaked in tears and a jaw rattling with sorrow. Jaynell froze. She brought up hands to calm the woman, but did not realize until the wails were deafening that she still wore the steel helm and carried the bandit’s axe. The townswoman beheld a raider, come to complete the unfathomable and final sin. She struck out and grappled for the axe, cursing Jaynell and her scum-kin all the while, naming them “dogs” and “bastards” and begging for hell to open wide below their tangling feet. Jaynell worked to free her limbs, to turn the axe askew, but ate a bludgeon and pushed back in a panic. The old woman fell away, onto her back, and it was only then that Jaynell glimpsed the slash in the belly.

The sobbing abruptly ceased. She clutched her gut and stared back, astounded, then curled over the cobblestones. Jaynell’s heart stopped. She had sliced the old woman, who croaked and squirted blood. Jaynell felt her spine judder and the old peasant stopped breathing.

Shock made her knees pop and give way. She wobbled to the earth and squeezed an ache into her own skull, then a scream tossed the crows into flight. She screamed until her throat stung and she could not howl more than hack. Until phlegm clung to her chin and drizzled down her chest. Until grievers came and went, passed her and took the corpse of the old lady, to drag to some unseen pile. Until her mind dreamt in the clouds of a razor, to dart out and slit her throat. Until the wet of innocent blood was a sensation her hands would recall forever, until their every embrace thereafter was accursed. A final kindness, to stab away the guilt. Her tears went miscarried by the careless gale. The rain ended around her. The puddles were slimy but still. Nothing came. Nothing punished. Nothing saved. Arakvan blinked and turned its head.

The heat and greed of flame was doused soon away. A morning, cold and grey, basked in her quiet. Years were given to that hunch and she did not believe the cliff would let go of its obelisk, but Jaynell rose light, as hungry and marred as before. The axe came up in her grip and the helmet caught a pale sun in its wing. She could feel disease like a mesh across her lungs but words were worthless, netted or not. Ash, havoc, and her. There was nothing to tend to, nor abandon. Nothing to seek out or resist. Jaynell made her way down the road, through the gate, to the swards again and there she was welcomed. On she carried, until that lunacy trapped in her eye poised and faded. On, until Eritle was only a memory, and the axe was weightless, and her only power was in her frown. To die or go wild, but to do it alone.

In the guess of the sniveling gales, there was no destination. Only the cold, its vanishings and its dreams.

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