FEEL ITS INTENTION.
The grey steps quiet but quick, long since accustomed to moving across the uneven desert terrain. From behind a curtain of heat, his target looks like a smudge of coal in a field of shimmering gold-brown-grey. The stranger's mind, circling sleep, swims in fantastical thoughts of green. Endless fields of emerald, sage, pine, jade-- even the sky, in that dream world, is verdant.
Eik steps closer, closer, and when he is close enough he draws the guard's knife and slits his throat with it. There are only three sounds: a brief, wet gurgle of surprise, and two thuds as the man falls first to his knees, then his side. The golden sand drinks the blood, turns wet and crimson with thirst. It doesn't make a sound, the blood, somehow it doesn't make a sound as it rushes from its fleshly prison.
It's all over in a matter of seconds.
All the green fades to black.
Eik blinks his eyes, feeling strange to have killed a man with nothing to show for it-- no wounds, no bruises. Not even a drop of blood on him. Feeling wrong. It was not his style, to kill like this. But neither was being outcast from his home, or dying a long, slow death of dehydration. He drops the knife and moves on to the third guard, knowing there would be more than enough time to dwell on this later. Mathias' pied form takes shape from behind a group of young palm trees, each more more akin to a bush than a tree at this point-- oh, what stories they might someday tell! Not for his ears but another's, perhaps...
When they reach the third guard, the woman is tense. She heard the three sounds, and others. She likely smells the blood, the fresh death in the air-- gods know its all Eik can taste now. The bay mare spies Eik through the sparse ground cover, and although he expects her to cry for help (he prepares himself for a terrible abuse of his magic-- to smother her very intent to call out) she does not.
"P-please--" The guard stammers as she backs up towards the copse of young palm. "Please let me live. I won't tell anyone." Eik inclines his head, looks just past her to Mathias, and though he does not speak, not even with his magic, the question is clear: shall we be merciful fools?
OF A JOB WELL DONE.
@
Time makes fools of us all
