[P] Still, like dust, I rise

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 


They rise. They rise from the flower, their fury a hum that rattles the cave walls. Dust descends, landing upon their wings and bodies, fuelling their ire. They fly shedding dust as rain. They are bright and wild, their fury like Acton’s hot sparks. Does he send them now beyond the grave?
 
As that swarm of hornets fly, amassing as a cloud, flying for Isra, for him, for Abel, Raum feels a sharp spike of respect for Isra. The insects land upon silver and brown and press their poisoned needles deep.
 
Raum’s skin is a livewire. His eyes may be the blue of electricity, yet it is nothing to the white-hot burn that blazes through his nerves. The hornets crawl like black ants, their wings glinting silver, their needles press, press, pressing. Poison flows like blood and within him his magic swells, it fights wild and savage. It pushes against the bards of his resolve and shivers like sparks out out across his silver skin. Yet still Raum does not allow it to change.
 
Abel thrashes and Raum hears the stamp of feet, the gusts of air with each new sting, yet still the colt stands by, still his eyes blaze with loyalty and bravery. The boy shivers and dances, clouds plume at his feet, his eyes press tightly shut.
 
“You kill us.” Raum says to Isra. His eyes are bright and alive with pain as he watches the Night Queen. What insanity had he inspired within her? His words were statement, but maybe Raum is the only one prepared to die here, this day. Did he expect the same of Abel? The Crow would stand and succumb to every sting so long as Isra did too. Maybe he is a madman after all.
 
Isra rises, standing with her hornets, with her wild magic that surges and stings and runs its destructive cloud through the cave. Raum is watching her, through the hornets that tangle in his hair, through their black bodies crawling in fury over his face and eyes.
 
His skin is rough with bumps, angry mounds that weep with poison. Ah, that wicked substance slips like an elixir through his veins and oh how his magic stirs! Oh how it rises from him to meet hers like a leviathan reaching for the surface of this poison sea.
 
His name upon her lips is a baptism of fury. It bathes him in wild fire and he wonders if her tongue burns with the speaking of it. “Run,” Raum hisses to Abel an offering for a colt who should not die here. He does not lend the boy any more attention, for Isra’s horn, long and spiraling, arches down, crying for justice as it slices through the air. It is not the first time a dagger has aimed for his heart the last few days. Still Acton’s lunge haunts him and so Raum is ready, he knows of wild anger and seen the impulse to kill him.
 
She dives fast, as fast as her hornets that hum like voices beyond the pale. But Raum is fast too, and his magic, the monster that has been savaging his veins, rises too. He meets her horn with one of his own, long and sharp as a narwhal’s. The meeting of their antlers is a song of metal that cries above the buzz of riled hornets. Raum twists his skull to parry her horn before a lattice of antlers bloom from his forehead as winter branches atop a tree. Then he plunges back toward her, his twisted antlers aiming for her throat. “Then let us die together.”

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@Isra @Abel @Eik