| Subject: Alright next part's INSIDE> and to clarify, yes this is just a dream. I wanted to do something with the Watersingers vs. the Radgem, so I just stuck it in a dream. :) |
Author:
Sekin Brightfall
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Date Posted: 01:43:00 03/06/04 Sat
In reply to:
Sekin
's message, "*Grins* Thank ye both. More is coming soon. I promise." on 01:33:21 03/05/04 Fri
The moon hung round and full in the sky, a fat sphere of milky light that tinged the leaves of the trees silver and pale. Everything appeared soft and smooth, the broad leaves, the trunks of the trees, the tinkling water of the stream. The foam of the water as it flowed past protruding rocks looked like cream and every drop shone with pinpricks of light.
Grisen moved through the woods silently, his boots making no noise on the soft carpet of leaves. For some reason, he realized that he carried a great, curving, giant bow made of some strange dark wood, so dark that it was almost black and finely decorated with signs that he did not know, but felt he should. A quiver full with twenty shafts of the same wood hung on his back; he could feel it as he ran through the night. A helmet was on his head and he raised a hand to feel it in wonder. Two huge horns like a stag’s antlers burst through the metal on either side of his head. The cheek guards had been carved into the jaws of some snarling creature and the front of the helmet was shaped into the animal’s snout and face. A full suit of chain mail, the rings forged of black steel; hung over his tunic and fearsome gauntlets covered the length of his arms.
And somehow, in the strange way of dreams, it all seemed to fit. He didn’t feel strange in the helmet or the armor or even running with the others. For there were others, surging along behind, black cloaked figures with twelve other Lords at their head. In the strange feeling that dreamers sometimes have, it all seemed normal to him. An eagerness blossomed within him, to fight, to kill, and his fist tightened on the bow. Too long had those pitiful Watersingers stood against the might of them. The might of the Radgem. For two long, but tonight was the night that it was going to end.
Throwing back his head, he howled aloud a wordless laugh that shook the trees and quivered the skies. The other Radgem Lords joined him, lips peeling back from long, needle sharp teeth as they shrieked out their laughter and their battle cries. And as one, the others behind him built up the roar in their mighty chests and then let out a torrent of twisted howls that shook the world. Oh yes, tonight was the night.
The accursed city came into view on the opposite side of the rushing stream. Surrounded by a magnificent wall upon which statues played their instruments to the sky, stood the Watersingers, unarmed and unafraid.
Their dark skin seemed almost to shine in the moonlight as if wet, their black hair blew in a slight breeze, and their eyes held no anger but only steely determination. Their clothes appeared to be made out of the water itself; the strands of it flowed and swam gracefully while still maintaining a solid shape.
Halting directly opposite the city, Grisen planted himself in position. The other Radgem Lords swept up to stand either on his right or on his left. The sickly white of their faces clashed greatly with the dark of their helmets. Silently, the Radgem soldiers march up behind them in rows twelve wide and a hundred deep, black cloaks shifting simultaneously in the wind.
One Watersinger wasn’t on the wall. A darker skinned woman than any of the others and as thin and graceful as heron stood alone, right in front of him. Unprotected, unarmed, and staring death right in the face, she looked calm, cool, and poised. The first notes of her song pierced the air with trembling beauty, her voice as rich as a stream, as powerful as the ocean.
“Sing to me river,
Sing to me stream,
Of things far off,
Of things half-seen.”
Her voice was powerful, but not by the loudness of it, only by the depth, the pitch and the quivering notes that seemed to freeze time itself fro a second. Grisen shook his head, snarling as it began to rain gently and with a fluid motion blurred speed, he raised the bow to eye level. Wet hisses followed as the twelve other Radgem Lords slowly slid their strange, twisted weapons from hidden sheaths. The hiss became a roar as the twelve hundred Night Demon soldiers drew their blades.
The Singer’s dress roiled and frothed in foam, the rain intensified, her song continued.
“Whisper to me ocean,
Whisper to me rain,
Of danger approaching,
Victories to be gained.”
The stream’s murmur intensified to a dull howl, the wind whipped at the Radgem’s sinister cloak, and the rain lanced down from the sky. His arrow slid from his quiver and was nocked and loaded into the massive bow. His powerful shoulders bunched as he slowly drew the string back until it was touching the jaws of his cheek guards. One glittering yellow eye closed as he sighted, roaring out the words into the rain, long claw like nails scoring deep grooves in the bow’s wood. “HURAI SI DAGORAND! GER DAGORAND FLETRSH!”
Twelve hundred bellowing voices called back to him amidst the shrieking of the wind, the hurtling rain, and the pounding stream. “HURAI DAGORAND! HURAI!”
Undaunted by the roaring masses of Radgem, unfazed by the giant bow pointed right at her, the Watersinger sung out the last words of the melodic song in a voice that seemed to overpower the chanting of her foes.
“Cry to me blizzard!”
“Cry to me flood!”
“Come at my bidding,
A war is to be won!”
Just as she finished, the arrow left the curved arc of the bow with a vicious twang of released pressure. The sky suddenly split open with lightning, the waters of the stream rose into impossibly peaked waves, and the Radgem charged. The arrow, like a hunting falcon, shot over the foaming waters and plummeted down, down, down, down into the chest of the Watersinger in a bloom of sudden scarlet. Throwing back his head, Grisen roared with laughter.
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