Morihaus had no need to look over his shoulder for the source of the empowered shouts that steadily advanced onto his flanks. He knew that the Paravant had gathered the women to join the fray. Nor did Perrif notice that he did not look back; so drunk was she on the high of her words to her kin sisters all she could notice was which of the che she thought she could overpower first. The fighting had regressed back into the entryway to the city, flooding the open-air courtyard with screams and roars and cries of hatred. It was a tangle of whips, farm tools, and flashes of magicka as che men clashed with her kin brothers. She slung her own whip at a nearby che who was distracted by the stinging flash for a moment longer than he could afford, and was felled by the tip of a pitchfork. She slipped around another combatant and was roughly knocked off balance by a stray leg of a man trying to put weight behind a swing of his scythe. Clumsily, she staggered forward a bit more into the path of a che driving away a hoe-wielding man with a flurry of steel blades. Her kin brother crashed into her and his weight sent her tumbling to the ground.
From the turf, the fray was even more disorienting. Ankles slammed to the dirt before her, and over her. She was trod upon immediately, a booted che heel driven square into her spine as it staggered away from an onslaught of whip lashes. She struggled to her feet, buffeted over onto her back by a stray knee. A kick to her ribs. Her hand was crushed beneath another foot. She sat up and felt her whip ripped free of her clutches. Before her a scythe appeared high in the air, and the world seemed to slow as the blade descended towards her. She kicked away from the trajectory of the tool, but was again buffeted by a fury of bodies. The scythe descended upon her, free of its farmhand's clutches, plummeting to its future residence in her skull. It ends like this? The anticlimax turned the world around her grey. The prophecy of her name, the battle around her. She would fall already. Without landing a single blow, without knowing the outcome of her charge.
A darkness fell over her as a massive figure blotted out the sun. Wings wide, the Breath of Kyne snatched the falling scythe from its path and redirected the cutting blade. He held it with one hand and spun, cleaving in two a che that had dared assign his attention to the man-bull. With authority, Morihaus buried the blade of the scythe in the dirt on which he stood and took to the sky, his mighty wings emitting a blustering gale upon the grounded Perrif. "Descend upon the inner city, brothers and sisters!" He leaned back and rolled through the air, his words booming over the cacophony like the thunder of a storm. "Recoil from the gates and I shalt clear them for ye! We must smoke them from their horrid den!"
Perrif sat in shock, the scythe embedded in the ground before her drooling with che blood. She could hear it sing for more flesh, its days of felling wheat already faded memories in the wake of its newfound labor of the reaping of souls. It had come for her soul not moments before, but now it called for her to come to it. It sang for her grip on its handle, for her fingers to wipe the blood from its blade so that its next taste could be untainted and fresh. It was no longer a tool of the fields, it was a weapon of war. Perrif could feel that change. The call of the scythe made the battle around her seem to stand still. She rose between sparring pairs and slipped through tangles of legs that had before caused her to stumble and approached the weapon embedded in the ground. With two hands she released it from its sodden prison, and with her frail handmaiden's arms she balanced the heavy metal hook before her. It hummed with want for killing, Perrif's hands shook from it. That was what she told herself, anyhow.
Above her Morihaus completed a complex aerial maneuver, avoiding volleys of magicka from the grounded che, and cut through the air like a hawk towards the city entrance. A wall of che men stood before the great stone gates, repelling wave after wave of Nede attackers. Heeding the Breath of Kyne from moments ago, the men retreated from their assault on the che and held back. The che took a collective breath as the onslaught lulled, though within seconds their air was taken from them. The Breath of Kyne slammed to the ground before the che guard and drew himself a deep chest full of air. The air crackled with power as from the man-bull's lips let loose a monstrous bellow. The man-bull called out loudly in a tongue no other being present could claim to have knowledge of, and from between his teeth was unleashed a mighty gale, stronger than even the wind thrown up by his wings or the hurricane that had delivered him to this realm. The che were like feathers in its blustering charge, thrown from their feet and slammed into the gates to the sound of a deep, cavernous boom.
As the battle around him slowed to a crawl in awe of his power Morihaus lunged past the che, who had fallen heavily to the ground and were writhing in pain, and seized the stone gate in his mighty hands. With back muscles rippling beneath his thick, dark skin and black woolen hair, the man-bull tore open the gates to Sancre Tor. "We enter the caverns of the Darkness, brothers and sisters!" The stone gate slid, grating, to its widest opening. "Let us drive the demons from within!"
The men bellowed in response and abandoned their duels in the courtyard, dashing for the open doorway in lieu of finishing off the che that still stood. Perrif was swept up in their wake, the scythe in her hands still weighing her down as she made to follow. Morihaus' words struck her with irony amongst all the chaos. As she thought of that, the scythe grew lighter. She picked up her pace and dove into the city.
Before all this, Perrif would lie awake at night to the sounds of dying children echoing through the halls of the che city. Now, the echo was overpowering, and it was more than just children. She heard her people's tongue and the che's ring out through the bone-white stone corridors as she was jostled through the escalating fray within the walls of Sancre Tor. Screams, battle cries, curses of all colors. Perrif turned quickly to avoid a falling blade and she pushed outward with the long handle of her scythe to drive away a retreating che. This was a battle. This was conflict. But she was not an agent in it, merely an observer. The tumult churned her slowly through the corridors of the city, every fiber of her being intensely focused on the melee that surrounded her. The thought of striking with her weapon was not even a whisper in the fray. Her mind was full of nothing else but the location of the next incoming whiplash, which sword may change trajectory towards her location, how many legs lie between her and the next spot of floor where she could set her footing. In here she could not afford to be tripped up, it was too dense. She had already witnessed the fate of those who had sunk below the bedlam, and she did not wish to join them in painting the hard ground red and grey. And even in her vigilance, she was struck. A lash here, a cut there. Her arms were screaming under the weight of the scythe, and they protested violently as they were dealt blow after blow in the confusion of war.
She swirled and eschewed to a fork in the corridor; the left a staircase leading into the depths of the city, her right a staircase ascending to the court chambers. She had only been to that place once, when she had arrived to the city and had been sold to her mistress, a che lady high in the arane counsel. The flow of the battle was dragging her down into the city's lower levels, though she spied between the mayhem that a trickle of her people were slipping up the stairs in the direction of the court. Perrif squirmed against the flow, using her scythe to part the melee for a moment just long enough for her to break free and scamper up the steps. Free of the bodies, she could breathe again. The air she gulped down as her bare feet pounded up the stone stairwell was thick with the stink of blood. But it slowed the burning in her legs and silenced the cries of pain from her arms as she propelled herself forward. She felt her heart pounding out from her breast, the spiraling staircase closing in around her and amplifying the echoing sounds of war. The skittering of swords on stone, blades on blades, and the wet squelch of iron on flesh clawed at her heels like a monster in the dark. She powered forward still; freedom from the bodies meant she now stood alone, and that planted the seed of fear in her heart. Free from the bodies, she was exposed. And as she was exposed, she was a target. She ran from the monster at her heels, up towards the court chambers.
Sound swelled before her as she ran, and she kew she would enter another hurricane of combat. Light broke into the stairwell, and she found herself at the top of the ascendancy. The court chambers were a bloodbath. The Breath of Kyne stood tall over all who struggled within, swinging his mighty fists and goring his foes clean through with his horns. Perrif looked over the scene and saw pockets of combat frothing amongst a sea of bodies. She saw many of her people lying there staring, though unseeing, into the abyss. Though more numerous than that were gaudy che robes hacked to ribbons by farm tools and stained with blood that littered the ground. There were fewer che guards than there were her kin brothers and sisters, and those that remained were often taking on two or more opponents at once. There were individual duels happening between men, who had retrieved swords from fallen che, and guardsmen, but it was clear to Perrif that the che were obviously superior in combat to the men who were hefting their first swords. She needed to help one of the duelists gain the upper hand, she needed to strike with a weapon for her first time as well. It was the only way they could win, by working together.
Perrif charged towards one of her kin who was dueling with a che, stepping between fallen bodies and straining against the weight of the scythe to try and bring it to a striking position. She had seen how Morihaus had cleaved a che in two, that was how she would attack. She arrived upon the duel and slammed to a stop. With all her strength she slung the scythe towards the che. Her kin brother seemed surprised by her arrival and tried to break off from his position. The movement of the weapon turned her body on the slick floor, and she felt her footing being ripped from beneath her by the momentum. The back side of the blade, unsharpened as to keep the the other workers safe from its cleaving arc, bashed into the forearm of Perrif's kin brother. He yelped in shock and dropped his acquired sword, the scythe wobbling from impact and diving sharply towards the floor. Perrif's feet shot into the air behind her as the momentum torqued her center of gravity around the fulcrum of the scythe handle. Her face tumbled down, down, down to the floor, and she landed on her cheekbone with a heavy thud. Her eyes flashed white hot, and frantically she rolled onto her back. The che had run her kin brother through.
Time paused as Perrif watched the white steel blade slide coldly from the man's gut. A cascade of blood crawled from the remaining wound, oozing down his flesh like a leech and slithering into the recess of his navel for a moment before continuing on its fatal journey to his loincloth. She saw his eyes as his knees gave out beneath him; they were wide. They mirrored her emotions as he descended slowly to the floor. Confused. Angry. Grieving. Afraid. He landed face first, and his eyes were gone. She saw on his arm a bruise where the scythe had struck him.
I did this.
The che grabbed her hair and dragged her to her feet. "(Filthy Nede!)" His grip was like iron on her scalp. "(To strike at me with mine own invention. To dare raise thine hand to me? The insolence!)" She struggled against her captor, her skin rebelling furiously with enormous waves of pain thundering down her spine with each movement. "(Thou shalt die like the dog you art. Taste the maggot flesh of thine breed, Nede. Tis the last taste thou shalt know.)"
Perrif was slammed to the ground atop the still-warm body of the man she had watched fall moments ago. When she touched him, she felt him move. Not from her weight, he moved against her. He was still alive. But she could hear his breathing. It was long and ragged. And pained. So much pain. She remembered his eyes. So much fear. I did this. She turned over to face her executioner. She could feel it too now, what she had seen in the man's eyes. Why had she thought she could help here? She could not even lift the scythe, let alone swing it. How stupid she had been; she cursed herself by all the gods she could name. The gods. It was her prophecy, that she would deliver her people from this place. And yet here she was, about to die. The gods were wrong. And now, as the che lifted his arm and brandished his ice cold steel, she was afraid. Afraid of the sword, afraid of the pain she heard in her kin brother. Afraid to die.
And the che's arm fell. Her eyes watered over and closed. Black.
Sound.
Impact.
Wind.
She opened her eyes. There had been no pain. She saw the che falling backwards, far far away from her. Falling to the ground inside the court chamber, visible through a hole. A large hole. From the outside looking in. Upside-down.
Arms around her. Strong ones, thick and coarse. Covered in hair. Her ears were buffeted with wind, and the world righted itself. The courtyard rushed up before her, free of the fighting that had been there before and filled this time with her kin sisters and the children rushing between fallen bodies, and her momentum braked sharply to the sound of more blustering. Gently, she was released from the grip onto her feet, alighting on the grass and crumpling to the ground in weakness. Above her, suspended in the air like a hummingbird, was Morihaus-Breath-of-Kyne. "Tis not thine lot to die this day, Paravant." He churned his wings and rose towards the sun. "I shalt see that victory comes swift. See to her wounds and prepare her for the celebration." Two nearby kothri elders scuttled to her side and held her exhausted limbs to inspect for damage. "There has been too much death for our cause today, I shalt end it before more befalls us." With a somersault, he rocketed back towards the hole he had made in the side of the court chambers and was enveloped again by Sancre Tor.
Perrif drew breath and exhaled. Then, her fingers became numb. Like spider webs, darkness crept from the corners of her vision. As it engulfed her sight, she heard panicked barks from her caretakers. "Paravant? Paravant!"
Please, I need my rest.