Fight: Judged Tempered Steel - Printable Version

The earth was barren, beaten, torn. It was a place that was marked, scribed with a story to share, an artefact that bore a history and lore. Perhaps it was a place seeped in the old magic, malevolent in its manipulation, its edges marked in the old runes, the songs of witches and mages. From the moment he had stepped upon the soil, the plateau pale in the silver lunar light, Arion had found the steel within his spine tensing, the acuity of his senses widening. There was something wrong here, there was something dark in the air that drove madness into even the most gentle of spirits. A witching circle. Anger, lust, yearning, it collided here in a thread of barbed wire, twisting around their naive limbs, seeping like a sickness of the mind, a manic state driven ever more fevered the longer one dared to remain. Easier to manipulate, easier to push into a state of violence. Even in the silence, he could taste the blood, the pheramones, the fading evidence of those who had come before and fell into the temptation of this unholy plain. The stomping grounds of war, the field tasted and addicted to the spilt equine blood, fermented like fine wine within their mortal vessels.

Perhaps it was the wrong choice, to continue deeper into the halls, gilded grass of polished gold twining amongst his legs with each stride, the heavy press of charcoal and ivory silk sliding across the fragile blades. Some would call it a mercy, to contain the vile depths of instinct to one place, this place that told the true history of the great courts; the rise and fall of kings, the rise and fall of nations. And yet, even the most innate of beings, without a drop of liquid power within their veins could feel the emotions that remained, the phantom imprints of their masters anguish. A place of horrors built ever more saturated with each passing year. One day, one day he would gather with the rest of his kin to witness yet another tribute to the old ways, this place where all four divine combined, this place where their whispers clashed and faded like waves upon the ears, tempting and seducing. Had his sense remained, had his intellect endured this siege upon his mind, perhaps he would never have stepped foot upon the soil, continued where the warnings sung against his sides.

He continued forward, each foot dragging through the parched earth, dust and grit of its skeletal bones painting his legs an ashen dye. Each breath came heavy, each a collision of colossal entities. Arion wondered what had stood here in the times before, what fossil laid buried amongst the dirt that continued to sing even today, drawing them like masses to the water. The one true cure to their cruelty. There was a lonesome beauty amongst the mists, a fine layer of gauze that never seemed to abandon the knolls, taking what little he could see. The sphere of vision was limited, the smells amplified by the moisture in the air, and yet he continued forward. There was no turning back now, moments passing to hours as he wandered aimlessly through this corridor. The earth-song of his blood, the intuition of a craftsman cooed in the flavor of the soil, the promise of metals just beneath the surface should he begin to dig. A mere pewter coin perhaps, or a delightful gleam of gold. He didn't stop to taste the cloven split of his hooves cutting crescent moons into the earth. Above, the moon shone brightly a disk of brilliance chained while her most beloved creation was left to his own devices.
SPEAK | THOUGHT

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