My mouth opens to deliver the fatal, constricting poison sung to halt enemy advances, but I cannot sing.
They are ebbing through the deserted streets like waves quietly creeping towards the sand, hauling handfuls of sediment back into their watery tombs.
But I cannot sing.
It stops dead on my tongue.
My throat is throbbing from the power that has previously emanated from my lips. My ears are twitching from the sudden onslaught of the carnage sweeping through my Hai Lan.
Is this what death sounds like?
Is this what I have sung for?
Is this what I have been oblivious to, as my voice washed away their last words of life and existence?
I cannot sing.
The air is rife with a sudden shift of mentalities- the stillness is menacing and leering, and it is broken by renewed vigour and thirst for destruction.
Hai-Lan shudders in its entirety and I feel its presence sweep past me in horror as it retreats.
But I cannot sing.