( Death sweeps in, from outside, from below, in the crush of rubble, in the ice caverns and the forests, slipping and crawling out of hell. Slipping and sliding down from above, halls slick with wet, rent from veins, ichor of the creatures that fight under Rathakku's command, the violence of the landscape caught in its own final death throes.
He stands, Chenqing lifted to his lips. Studies the cracked, tilted bizarre landscape before him. Plays, and the music unwinds, curls and coaxes, threatens the dead who recall nothing of themselves as Rathakku continues forward, inexorable, an avalanche of malevolence bowling through the wreckage, covering it with death, and calling that death back up again. A fight where no warriors are left untouched without being so rendered into parts as to be no longer of use, or burned beyond any semblance of self.
He plays, and the song pulls from Rathakku those recent deaths, those people who were, and their lingering sense of selves. Aimed, directly, back at Rathakku, disrupting his lines, tearing into each other and being torn into in turn. He plays, and death feasts, cackling laughter of metal meeting metal, the thunk of arrows smacking off stone, and the failing attempts for the last of the catapults to send its rain of fire and stone down overhead.
It's the final push, the final resistance. And he can't watch for Harpies, those that survive, at the same time, nor does he need to stand alone. )
that david played and it pleased the lord
( Death sweeps in, from outside, from below, in the crush of rubble, in the ice caverns and the forests, slipping and crawling out of hell. Slipping and sliding down from above, halls slick with wet, rent from veins, ichor of the creatures that fight under Rathakku's command, the violence of the landscape caught in its own final death throes.
He stands, Chenqing lifted to his lips. Studies the cracked, tilted bizarre landscape before him. Plays, and the music unwinds, curls and coaxes, threatens the dead who recall nothing of themselves as Rathakku continues forward, inexorable, an avalanche of malevolence bowling through the wreckage, covering it with death, and calling that death back up again. A fight where no warriors are left untouched without being so rendered into parts as to be no longer of use, or burned beyond any semblance of self.
He plays, and the song pulls from Rathakku those recent deaths, those people who were, and their lingering sense of selves. Aimed, directly, back at Rathakku, disrupting his lines, tearing into each other and being torn into in turn. He plays, and death feasts, cackling laughter of metal meeting metal, the thunk of arrows smacking off stone, and the failing attempts for the last of the catapults to send its rain of fire and stone down overhead.
It's the final push, the final resistance. And he can't watch for Harpies, those that survive, at the same time, nor does he need to stand alone. )