"When the River Runs Dry (Volume II)
Pain. Searing pain shot through him, feeling as though every cell in his body and every thought in his mind was being assailed with a bitter, piercing agony. In truth, the physical pain that pulsed from his leg was a shadow of the mental anguish besieging his guilty mind. This was all because of him. The thunderous booms that exploded from seemingly everywhere, emanating coal black smoke and eliciting screams. The vitriolic curses that shot forth to accompany the bolts and bullets. The scarlet streaks that burst forth and painted trees, grass and flesh the same deathly hue. The vibrant, autumn shades of licking flames. The bodies that rained down from above, cut down by the products of almighty Industry, whose pitchy clouds hung above and choked him as he soared ever upward clinging to the wages of his sin in trembling arms.
His sunkissed skin, his honey hair, the fabric of what clothes hadn’t been torn, slashed or burned from him, all were doused in so much red that he looked like he’d been flayed as he darted ever upward with the frantic flutter of translucent wings. His trousers were tatters- their frayed edges black with ash where they’d once burned, ere the beating of his wings squelched their cinging advance. He spun and wove into the noxious fumes that hung above the glade, choking as the quick, shallow breaths of panic took their toxins in.
His voice, typically a tender tenor, was transformed to the raw, primal scream of a wounded animal. Had he the presence of mind to formulate more coherent thoughts, he might have felt like one. The aggressors who brought him to this state certainly treated him more like a pest to be put down than a conscious, intelligent creature. And they brought him to the point where he wasn’t one. He was just a terrified, bestial creature acting reflexively, and his instincts told him to cling to what was familiar and to fly- Just as his mother had cried for him to, before the blasting began.
Though he broke through the low-hanging cloud of smoke into the blue skies above, Destyn had never been brought lower than this. Through the blur of his streaming tears, he made out a hulking image before him- A vessel of the air, though not one of the egg-shaped warships of industry about which his mother had warned him. It was more familiar than that- Like the sort he occasioned to see in the North. He didn’t know whose airship it was, nor what their intensions were, but his body was in so much pain and he was losing blood to the point where his wings were starting to feel heavy. Whether the occupants of this ship offered salvation or death, Destyn knew he had to take this gamble or inevitably succumb to the latter. At breakneck speed he glided down toward the deck of the ship and alighted, only then realising that one of his legs was savagely wounded. He shrieked out in agony as he put weight upon the broken shin, and yet more blood squelched forth from the gunshot wound he’d taken to the calf. He fell forward onto his knees, and then rolling onto his side, holding onto something tightly.
“Bring her back! Bring her back, bring her BACK!” He cried out in his native Valasren, as he held the blood-drenched head that had been sundered from his mother’s body by the fiery blast of a Zaichaeri grenade. He lifted mortified, desperate eyes to plead to the crewpeople and passengers gathering around the strange Fae that had just collapsed onto their ship out of nowhere, screaming bloody murder.
"HELP US!!!"
80 Glade, 121
His sunkissed skin, his honey hair, the fabric of what clothes hadn’t been torn, slashed or burned from him, all were doused in so much red that he looked like he’d been flayed as he darted ever upward with the frantic flutter of translucent wings. His trousers were tatters- their frayed edges black with ash where they’d once burned, ere the beating of his wings squelched their cinging advance. He spun and wove into the noxious fumes that hung above the glade, choking as the quick, shallow breaths of panic took their toxins in.
His voice, typically a tender tenor, was transformed to the raw, primal scream of a wounded animal. Had he the presence of mind to formulate more coherent thoughts, he might have felt like one. The aggressors who brought him to this state certainly treated him more like a pest to be put down than a conscious, intelligent creature. And they brought him to the point where he wasn’t one. He was just a terrified, bestial creature acting reflexively, and his instincts told him to cling to what was familiar and to fly- Just as his mother had cried for him to, before the blasting began.
Though he broke through the low-hanging cloud of smoke into the blue skies above, Destyn had never been brought lower than this. Through the blur of his streaming tears, he made out a hulking image before him- A vessel of the air, though not one of the egg-shaped warships of industry about which his mother had warned him. It was more familiar than that- Like the sort he occasioned to see in the North. He didn’t know whose airship it was, nor what their intensions were, but his body was in so much pain and he was losing blood to the point where his wings were starting to feel heavy. Whether the occupants of this ship offered salvation or death, Destyn knew he had to take this gamble or inevitably succumb to the latter. At breakneck speed he glided down toward the deck of the ship and alighted, only then realising that one of his legs was savagely wounded. He shrieked out in agony as he put weight upon the broken shin, and yet more blood squelched forth from the gunshot wound he’d taken to the calf. He fell forward onto his knees, and then rolling onto his side, holding onto something tightly.
“Bring her back! Bring her back, bring her BACK!” He cried out in his native Valasren, as he held the blood-drenched head that had been sundered from his mother’s body by the fiery blast of a Zaichaeri grenade. He lifted mortified, desperate eyes to plead to the crewpeople and passengers gathering around the strange Fae that had just collapsed onto their ship out of nowhere, screaming bloody murder.
"HELP US!!!"
