And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion."
Even the stones devour the song of death into their cold chests as if they might swallow a war-drum instead of a heart. Blood rushes slow and oil thick in her veins, fat with slumber instead of wrath. The darkness presses harsh and hard into the creases of her rib cage and the dip of her spine as if it might find organs to fill it to wakefulness. Thana sings, and hums, and coos her grave-stone chime, until the darkness is as aching and bloated as a corpse.
The whispering drum of his hooves echoes in her bones as they turn to watch the stallion approach. He echoes in the black chasm of her like a stone thrown into the belly of the earth with a wish tied neatly around it. And she wants to smile at him, with teeth, and wrap her tail around his neck like a noose and drag him home, home, home into the blackness of her song.
Eligos wants to sketch a map of blood on the dusted stones to lead him home. At his paws the dust trembles, and rises, and opens up gaped and jagged jaws of hunger upon twelve sets of paws.
The darkness still hums on.
And then there is the whisper of steel, and the sharp sigh of flesh as it gives, and folds, and weeps for the blade. Thana hums on even as she steps closer, and closer, and closer. Like a wolf, or a ray of moonlight etching lines through the thick forest silence.
She smiles as the blade clatters in the darkness like a comet crashing into a mountain peak. Nothing hums but the echo of the blade ringing on, and on, and on though the darkness like bells of war. The drip of blood is a star-flicker in the darkness, a flavor on the edge of her lips of fermented fruit, a ritual drawing her pathways to the home hiding buried in his bones. Thana breathes into the darkness, a huff of air passed between jackals and wolves and lions at the belly of a kill.
“Come away.” The wolves say to the jackals and the lions to the wolves.
The gap-toothed sand creatures paw at the drops of blood and the steel blade still chiming against the stone like a hungry thing only teased instead of satiated. They twine between them like wildcats, and voles and sand-pipers with teeth instead of tongues.
Come Away. Her voice is still echoing down the endless black hallways and between the sockets of skulls when Thana exhales against the wound in his chest.
Come. Away. From the light. From death. From the corpse at the watering hole. From the hollow grave with no more blades to steal.
From life.
@Zayir
