T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
There, in the woods, there is a noise like a chime. It sings through the trees like the chime of an ethereal clock. But its chimes are not in time with the second or hour hands. The chime seems to sound to its own time. Sometimes short, sometimes long, yet always that same crisp note.
All the wood resounds with the noise, the trees still their leaves just to hear that note again, again, again. The sun sinks down behind the trees, her light reaches in with rays and reach and reach and reach across the woodland floor. The birds know the coming of night and their evening melodies accompany the chiming of the woodland. But, oh, this chime is nothing like a woodland sound. It is crisp and metal and it tugs upon Tenebrae’s attention.
He steps through the ebbing daylight that dances across his shadows. His eyes gleam white, white as his magic drinks in the dying light. He follows the noise,just as a child to the song of the Pied Piper. The wild wood smiles and whispers in tongues of rustling leaves. This way. No that way. it sighs and it laughs. Curiously it reaches out with its gnarled bark arms and fingers of snow-dusted shoots to brush across the closing wounds that map across his spine. This is the folly of a monk who dared to be a man with all the same desires. But Tenebrae knows now. He knows what dangers lurk at the barest look and the touch of a kiss upon a girl’s lips.
He knows he tastes of Pomegranates and that is nothing to delight in. Death She had whispered in his ear, intimate and angry. Ah, death he thinks, is what comes of broken, life pledges. And so he sighs and remembers that girls and kisses are death - to him, at least.
Tenebrae is content with his darkness that curls languidly about his torso and to search for the strange sounds within the wood, forgetting the pain of his whip-scarred back and his kelpie-bitten throat. Sure and dark and dangerous, he moves silent as night through the quietning wood. His darkness is the black of ink, it paints him ebony and then darker yet. He is one of Caligo’s Stallions and the night comes crawling quicker to him. Ah he feels how the sun rushes to set. He tastes its embers upon his tongue and thinks too of the Solterran King and his sun lion. All of Tenebrae is charcoal and ash and moonlight and consummate darkness.
The Disciple does not stop until the noise sings louder, louder. Then, from a secret corner of the trees a great stone tower appears. With moss covered stone it reaches up toward the sky where snow sits upon the ledges of its windows. Its windows gaze out through and over the top of the wood in which it nestles. It is silent, still and derelict. All of the tower is a memory, a lingering shell of moss and stones and faded dreams.
But, the tower has a voice and it chimes again as a droplet of snow-water tumbles down, down, down from a ledge and onto a metal cup, tarnished by time. Ching… and all the hums with that sound. He wonders how many others it has drawn to its resting place. In the distance the brook meanders her way silently through the wood. It is a lover’s tower, it can only be where fairytales are inspired. But Tenebrae is no fairytale creature. Ah he is sinful and flawed, dark and bloody a canvass of lashings and beatings. He possesses eyes that look too much and a soul that leads his heart astray. Ah Tenebrae is a wretched monk. Yet he stands as a warrior at the foot of the tower and dares to step through its crumbling arch.
Yet the woodland speaks. Underbrush cracks and the Disciple stops and his darkness blooms and ascends. It rises like wings great and deep and dark. It begs to make knives or swords and yet Tenebrae does nothing but turn his star-white eyes toward the source of the sound. His half moon sigils are the brightest moons this coming night and the burn brighter, brighter and he drinks in the dying light.
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All and any are welcome but this is exp earning so i hope no one minds too much if i aim to get 4 posts completed for this and may therefore post out of order xDD <3
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