The rain was a warm embrace of watery kisses across heated skin. My skin. The fever burned beneath it, a furnace of vengeful disease, coiling around my nerves and squeezing until it began to hurt. Huddling up against the tree-stump and hugging my legs to my chest, I closed my eyes and let the water wash over my skin.
The sky above smelled like fresh, green apples, yet to be nurtured by the sun, or perhaps it was the grass around me that smelled so wonderful. The vibrancy of colors faded to the watercolor of spring as I opened my eyes, watching the greens, yellows, pinks, golds, whites, and so many others, blur together and begin to run, trickling into the oblivion of the moist ground that squelched under my toes.
The white dress was far past being repaired, and I gave up morosely picking at it, feeling holes in the lace of my legs and a shoulder that slipped free over my limb, drooping with torn seams down to my bicep. I shuddered at the feeling of rain running down my neck, the mockery of comforting fingers, and resisted the urge to writhe as robins and blue jays made accusations at one another, squawking and trilling, high in the trees above my head.
The moss nearby ran with cooler waters, a trickling brook that skipped and bolted across the smooth gray stones of the River Mourne, skidding to a halt and swiveling around a curve, making its supple bends and twirls as it spiraled into the ether of the mountains, far beyond my reach in the emerald hills.
I shivered absently as the rowan trees above my head shed their water with a lazy shake of their branches in the upsweep of a Spring breeze. Rubbing my arms and trying to work the dampness out of my limbs, I blinked up blearily at the heavens and silently begged for the day to come to an end already, the smell of rotten wood and apples mingling in the air.  
Honeybees, eager to begin their work, buzzed in the otherwise deadened air of pre-Summer life, bobbing along to the unheard music of nature that fell on temporarily deaf ears. I tucked my head against my knees and inhaled sharply, a shuddering breath, before beginning to draw in more even breaths to follow. I reminded myself to breathe, for without air, I could not thrive, could not function, could not think, and I needed to keep my wits about me if I didn’t wish to be swallowed by this watercolor palette of beauty and desolation--
My ruined world, my Hades, isolated by the smell of flowers and the faux promise of tomorrow.
Or perhaps just the brevity of bitterness that came from illness, as I cowered in my newly-acquired habitat, nestling into the tree stump and resting my head upon it--grateful for its hard, but welcoming comfort beneath my burning brow.

-

Never going to be clean enough. No matter how hard you scrub. You’ll never get the sensation of their essence off your skin. Essence and germs, decaying matter that peels away the skin and muscle, degrades the tissue, shoots to the bone and claws its way to your brain, kicking and screaming. The red or green laces of invisible light that torture you, intangible, untouchable, yet completely felt, until you get so anxious you bolt awake; just once more, to scrub just once more--just once more--once more. Again. And again. Over. And over. Until nothing else matters but getting the germs off, as fast as you possibly can, scraping and scrubbing furiously right down to the marrow of your bones.
It started when you realized you didn’t like hugging people anymore. The idea of touch past the fifth grade border was unacceptable anyway, so nobody questioned it. You were left with the fact that you also didn’t like people touching your things--pencils were thrown away the instant someone asked to borrow them, or lies would leap to your throat to avoid confronting the daemon of giving away your precious trinkets and feeling someone else upon their shining surfaces.
Time continued on, moving in cycles, as hormones started and your brain followed the circles, until you’d get into loops where things wouldn’t make sense anymore. That chair had to face a certain way. Couldn’t leave the room without rapping your knuckles on the wood for luck. Polishing the mirror after a shower only a certain number of times. A black sock and a white sock for balance. Little habits that all began to add up. Suddenly you could feel it all, emotions, essences--what is an essence? Every time they touch you it stirs something horrendous within, the feeling of losing yourself to them, not only becoming like them, but becoming then, until they consume you with the feeling of their prying hands and there is nothing left of or for you, and you are gone.
Eliminated from this world in all your petty entirety. You worthless piece of shit.
Your mom grieves and apologizes, rants, raves, and finally just descends to madness, clutching your knees one night and sobbing over reddened fingers and ruined skin, from where you find you’ve begun to claw to soothe yourself, to stem the urges to clean, clean, clean.
You’re killing yourself this way!
How? How can you kill yourself if you’re clean? Is cleanliness too much to ask for? You just want to be yourself, don’t you? Cleanliness will keep you safe, will remind you of who you are, what you are--
You are a monster. An aberration. Abhorred and hated by society that says you should be medicated continuously to keep you sane. They’ll take you away and they’ll send you to another shrink, and another, and another, until you’re left feeling worse than before, and they stamp an “OKAY” and “FRAGILE” stamp on your forehead, marking you forever as the weakest link, the floundering gene pool.
Do not breed. If you breed, your plague will be passed on down to mankind and you will be the ruiner, the downfall of the human race, its ravager and destruction.
So much guilt, weighed on the shadowy corners of a bedroom long forgotten from childhood. Rocking back and forth on the gray rug and holding your legs anew.
It will pass. It always does. It has to. Just breathe. Clean. Cleanse. Purge. Be. Exist. Be nothing. Be something. Be everything. Too many thoughts all colliding until there’s stars slamming into one another in the back of your head bursting in front of your eyes and leaving you senseless.
Help. Who’s going to help? No one’s going to help.
You have to handle this on your own.
Reach out and touch the hands that are offered, though--
Learn not to fear what lies in the skin, you won’t lose yourself. You won’t lose yourself.
_{You won’t lose yourself.}

-

The garlands in her hair were peony flowers mixed with laurel branches, set atop her golden brow, shadowing her deep blue eyes. Her skin was touched with frosty paleness, though a rosy blush bloomed across her sunken cheeks and caressed porcelain skin. She looked like a doll, dancing with the other women, her white-gold hair bouncing across her bare shoulders as her white dress slipped downwards.
I paced outside around the trees, watching her laugh in her soft little way, and the beast in me stirred, watching her light, barefooted movements across the grasses. The other women were faceless wretches, silly wenches I could not tarry with nor abide.
I tugged my black cloak around myself and lingered, wishing she did not taunt me so. The flowers of spring were blossoming, but withered away from my boots. I yearned for them to live, as she lived, vibrant and blossoming.
  I would wait for her to wrestle free of her friends, and I would take her with me to the gloom of my world, more than a trinket to brighten my halls, but as a wife, and devoted spouse.
I will make you love me.

- Hades Sidarthayne, esq.

-

Blue lines,
spider web across the skin
Breathing once and breathing in
Are you done yet (sink or swim)
Classic cliché` writhing eyes
Burning skin and clenching thighs
Did you wish to ride this row,
Did you come to steal the show?
Veronica the golden girl
Diamond eyes and nose of pearl
Mother-of-pearl elegant skin
Once more, once more--
Sinking in.
Were you once a favored child,
Spoiled rotten, loving mild?
Bleeding lips persimmon red
All that fame’s gone to your head
So where does that leave you now?

-

I stood with my hands behind my back, staring out the window of the manor as Avalon burned beneath me. The horror swelling in my chest could only be described as a plume of smoke that climbed up my esophagus to strangle my mouth into smothered, clenched shock, tongue growing numb before I realized the taste of blood came from biting into it to stay the cries that surged under the intangible smoke. My hands shook violently, though I kept them clenched to keep from making such things obvious. Suddenly the finery of my silver tunic and black slacks seemed foolish, rags that matched the wailing woman on the ground below, as she reached up to the heavens in silent begging or offering, I could not tell which. Her face was brutally scarred by the out-of-control flames of war, one eye, her right, blinded and seeping reddish pus and liquid, spilling over withered, caved-in cheeks that were the color of dead leaves. Her ashen lips were parted, and Gaelic spilled forth from her lips, shooting through the window like a soundless arrow, unimpaired by the panes of glass that separated me nearly a story above her.
  “Tearmann!” She sobbed, wringing her hands at me or at the heavens. “Tearmann, uilechumhachtach an tAthair Naofa!”
I jerked away from the window slightly, trying not to look at her--every stain on her clothes accentuated by the writhing flames, working my jaw to prevent it from locking up against a choked sob, as I saw her gray hair, stained claret by her own life’s blood, spill across her brow, freed from her feeble, stitched and peaked cap upon her head. An armored man rode by at a thundering pace, lance held outwards, and for a moment, I thought he was gong to run her through, as she rushed at him, waving her arms and still screaming, louder and hoarser than before. The armored man on horseback swerved around her, leapt over what remained of the withered tulips in the garden courtyard, and swung out his steel foot. I watched with a wince of horror as the boot collided with her jaw, and she spun, tumbling into the dead daisies at the very bowels of the garden.
I turned from the window, unable to watch any longer, and was about to run for my swords before I came face to face with a pair of jade-green eyes, alit from within with some foreign, feline fire. The pale face that accompanied it was alive with delight, a guiltless smile on her pretty face as wide as the River Mourne.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Lady Emerel whispered, nodding past my shoulder and out the window. I felt a cold chill creep down my back. “This chaos and destruction. The humans fight amongst themselves, and we are safe within my walls. You have nothing to fear, dear heart,” she added, tapping gilded nails of bronze to my chest with a faintly dry note to her voice. “You are safe here with me. Those wicked humans won’t get you. Look!” She cried, shoving me towards the window with a sudden, new surge of delight. “See how they kill their young?” She pointed to a young man being brutally beaten in the courtyard. “Their race shall not survive Avalon tonight.”
I shoved her hands away and rubbed my arms, straightening my tunic and suddenly feeling claustrophobic, and too close to the window.
“Emerel,” I breathed, trying in vain to steady my shaking voice--shaking now with a mixture of deepest repulsion and fury. “Can you not see the destruction all around you? Human or not, these are people just as we are, living beings who fall upon one another like daemons. They fight without cause and without reason--this is madness, Emerel! Sheer, undiluted madness wrought from the ill-formed alliances of our kind and theirs!” I reached out to ensnare her hand, tugging her towards the door. “We must go. Quickly as possible--we must leave the North tonight and head South, we can find safety in Patrograd or Paenguen by nightfall if we ride fast and do not--”
She pulled her hand slowly and deliberately from mine, stepping away to stare at me, her other hand resting on her midsection. Her sallow face had turned up into a disapproving frown, framed by the fleur-des-lis pattern of her red-and-gold walls. The parlor, smelling of hellfire and incense, seemed to strangle her, as she appeared paler and paler by firelight--the mockery of the enormous blaze outside the window that burned all too cheerfully in her stone fireplace. Her greyhounds, curled on the sofa, lifted their heads and their grey ears to inspect us, speculating our situation with sleepy faces and warm, knowing eyes.
Stiffly adjusting her ebony and gold corset and dusting off her hands, Emerel slipped a fan from her bodice and began to flutter it, peacock feathers framing her cheeks and brushing against her faintly-freckled nose, as her ears tilted haughtily up to their utmost height, pointed allegations that thrust themselves heavenwards.
“…Emerel?” I inquired, as she turned away to face the window once more. I reached out to touch her shoulder. “Please--we must hasten away…”
“Look at them, Avion,” she said, her typically light voice suddenly lower than usual, a cold and distinctly detached tone that sent shivers of unease streaking up my spine. “Look at the dogs on the street, fighting one another for a scrap of food, for lust, for passion. These creatures are no more fit to roam the earth than they are to feed it, and therefore must be obliterated. It was--” she caught herself, held her tongue, and touched the tiger’s eye stone at the base of her throat. “It is--the only way.”
I stared at the back of her sleek, brunet head, lined by pearls and peacock feathers, and canted my head to one side to survey the flames as they played across her elegant jaw. Her hardened features bore little pity for the destruction that blossomed like an enormous, burning rose on the ground beneath us, the beauty of the fire long since lost to the screams and roars of flame. The dragon from hell had renewed its hold, tightly coiling over the land as the village in the distance collapsed to a mere, enormous bonfire on the horizon, a spark to join the stars of a falling night.
It dawned on me in the dark of the dusk what had begun this discord--the goddess of such herself, and I cursed myself for being so, so imprudent to have not forseen this…this utmost treachery.
I wrenched my daggers as fast as I could from the air, twirling them in my fists and swinging them outwards by the hilts, silver curves, the miniature crescent moons that lay cold and clamped tersely in my fingers. I glowered at her, but still she did not turn, so, drawing back my head with a flick of silver hair, I drew in a breath and addressed her with calm that built and built until my voice was thick with cynical patience.
“So,” I said slowly, drawing out the word only briefly. “It was you who started all this--you killed their king and blamed his nephew--turning village against village, family against family.”
Emerel’s smile was reflected in the window.
“Who else?”
“How dare you,” I breathed. “How could you, Emerel? Just when peace began to settle again--just when the lineage of Pendragon was to do well for us, to respect the old ways! Think of the decrees you’ve shot to Hades--the laws that were to benefit us! Now the country lies in ruins and you sit in your palace like a dainty, gloating doll! Are you satisfied, my lady?”
Emerel whirled, too fast for me too follow, too fast and unexpectedly for a woman in a dress as elegant as hers was. Her hand glanced out to catch me across the face, and pain burst across my skin as bronze nails dug into my skin and clawed, tearing it open diagonally. Cursing and stumbling away, I batted her hands aside with the daggers and snarled. Her dogs echoed the noise from behind me as Emerel, eyes burning with jaded contempt, surveyed my stance with a scornful smile.
“Someone had to do something, Avion. These humans destroyed our people--they killed our race.” She stroked my face with her free hand, stepping in close, and something occurred to me then, as I stared into her eyes, so much lighter than…than…
“Where is my sister?” I asked, teeth clenched tautly closed. Emerel blinked innocently, started to speak, and I seized her wrists, digging the points of my daggers into the most vital of her forearm’s veins. “My sister, you foul snake, before I end your traitorous life here and now, in all your aristocracy, majesty, and loathsome waste.”
She froze, and I could feel her heart hammering in her arms, thudding against her veins.
“Nimue--Nimue is…” She hesitated, then slowly tilted her head to one side, as if considering something. Her head tilted the other way, then, and I followed it, too concerned at what tricks she might pull to avoid her gaze. Her eyes held mine, and a cool calm began to seep into my brain. I relaxed my hands, drawing them down her arms, as she, not taking her fathomless, green eyes from mine, lightly settled her lips on my own to whisper.
“Nimue is safe, dearest, shh…now…why don’t you put those knives away? You want to, don’t you? Would you like to dance…?” Her loving fingers traced my jaw, and, in spite of myself, I began to slide the daggers into their sheathes at my side. She rewarded me with a smile, eyes boring into my own. “Come…come dance with me under the stars by candle and firelight. Come, safe and soft within my arms…we will lay to rest this ruined nation and put it behind us.” I followed the curve of her neck as she swayed in my embrace, longingly, trying to recall what I was supposed to be doing. “Come…”
“I’m right here,” I murmured lazily, blinking lethargically. “Right…here…”
Her arms sinuously reached up like serpents, twining around my neck and circling close, rubbing my shoulders with comforting hands. Her fingers drew upwards to touch my face and drew it downwards--suddenly I tasted cloves and cinnamon, and, inhaling sharply, closed my mouth more firmly over hers, captivated and suddenly caught off-guard as she stroked my hair out of my face, comforting me in any and every way possible. Screams faded into oblivion. Nothing mattered, nothing…existed outside the small space where she held me close, and I buried myself in it, imprisoned by her knowing fingers.
No. No, no--this was wrong, all wrong, who was I betraying, where was my sister, remember, remember…!
Emerel drew back at long last to nose under my chin, kissing the underside of my jaw, murmuring softly,
“There now, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Now stop this nonsense about running away…come, let us forget this. Forget everything. Relax. Just relax…”
My limbs weakened, and the knife I reached for sluggishly for some reason or another clattered to the floor. Emerel smiled, and I watched as her dagger shifted upwards in the moonlight--
And the tip of a golden claymore pierced her breast, bursting through the forest green fabric of her gown and the gold-and-black lame` of her corset.
Emerel choked, glancing down at her chest in shock and horror, finally breaking her eyes from mine. I blinked, as if awakening from a million years of slumber as she toppled against me, clawing at my shirtfront.
“A…Avion.”
Rising from behind her was the scarlet-haired figure of my sister, illuminated by the flames through the window. She thrust her foot against Emerel’s back and shoved her forwards and downwards to the floor, yanking her mighty, golden blade free from the heartless chest of the witch who had betrayed us all. Nimue’s emerald eyes blazed hotter than any fire as she kicked the woman aside, sheathing her sword without bothering to clean of it. I gazed at her, and she at I, and she smiled thinly up at me.
“…nice of you to show up,” I said coolly, rubbing my neck where Emerel had grappled it, before wiping off my mouth with the back of my hand.
  “And not a moment too soon,” Nimue completed for me, tapping her fingers to her sword hilt to adjust it tightly. “Are you injured, Avion?”
I shook my head.
“Disgusted, perhaps, but physically unharmed, my thanks to you.”
“Save thanks for when I can use it,” Nimue said, snagging my wrist and tugging me towards the hallway of the darkened manor. “Let’s get out of here before the mansion burns.”
“You led the townspeople here, didn’t you?” The inquiry wasn’t sharp, just tiredly bemused as I started after her. “Good thing she was the traitor, Nimue--otherwise, you would make waste of a very fine house…”
Nimue smiled, but said nothing, as we darted off into the darkness of a town that still smoldered, leaving the serpent in her hole where she belonged, no time to mourn or fight confusion with logic as the world as we knew it, the momentary harmony, shattered like a looking glass.

-

Angel hair body  
Twining around the loose cannon;
Did you look before you
Leapt,
Outwards on a dare
With them cheering you on
Too late for sunshine in your hair--
Your final hours, gone.

-

  Castle Damascus was unnaturally quiet that evening in mid-July, basking under the partially-closed eye of the lazy first half-moon of the month. The warm air hummed with cicadas and caiolahs, but other than that, and the general bellows and clatter from the dining room, a column’s width of stone beneath our feet, Rothbane seemed to be poised in nocturnal peace, overlooking the pale ribbon that was the Saigarthan River, stretching towards the distant Gaerothian Sea, past such and such woods full of brigands, down the long winding trails of the mountains--all the eye could see for miles was land, land, land.
And it was all ours.
The satisfaction I felt was one I shared with all the men, as I folded my hands behind my back and stalked across the stones. I squared my shoulders as the privates who were chattering looked up, and leapt to their feet, saluting with their right fist over their breast-plated hearts.
“Sergeant Shaw, sir.”
“Sergeant, sir.”
“At ease,” I said, after a moment’s worth of savoring their stiff expressions. The men relaxed, and sat back down to their game of Lords and Ladies, similar to the chess game played by the Alfanians to the North. I shook my head dryly and walked on, not bothering to ask them for a report--it was so quiet that it hardly merited it.
Living in a nation at peace sounds wonderful, does it not? There was no war, little famine, and only minor disagreements to settle--mostly court business, full of yawns, stretches, and the occasional unhappy housemate who put up a fuss because his or her frilly knickers got all in a knot. I rubbed my jaw, feeling it bristle with premature gray, and walked on, clapping my hands behind my back.
The formal wear of the court was uncomfortable, but required. Princess Thraina, having made a pact with the Alfanian prince, had been named princess regent, and was to take the throne at her ailing father’s demise. It was a big occasion, to be sure--the twenty-year-old princess, nearly frail as her father, seemed to have taken the news well. I didn’t honestly care--so long as Thraina didn’t throw one of her world-renowned tantrums, I would be all the better for it, as would the other guardsmen, whom had half-expected Thraina to demand more land for her country. She was a greedy, haughty thing, but what could one do? She was a royal! A royal pain at that. A pity she took neither after her patient mother or wise father. The most she had was an astute hand with the needle and silk.
I paused at the turret that overlooked the nearby river, and squinted out into the distance to try and spy any calamity--honestly hoping for something to stem the incessant boredom of the unbroken night. I dipped a hand into the basin resting on the turret, used by sleepy guardsmen to wake themselves up, and glanced down, meeting eye for untroubled, sky-blue eye with my reflection. The hardness of my own face always surprised me--the more I looked, the more I realized I had somehow acquired my father’s jaw, square and thrust forwards, cut off with an even more rigid chin. I raked a hand through my shock of short, dark hair, already shot with silver, though I had yet to reach my thirtieth mark, and straightened.
“Nice night, isn’t it?”
I jumped and whirled, broadsword at the ready in a flash at the lighthearted baritone behind me. Red eyes slowly ticked down to the sword point, then back up to my face with a pursed-lipped amusement, before Claudius Ryshan, commander of the Black Hand, calmly batted aside the weapon with a flick of his black-gloved fingers, brows raised.
“Jumpy tonight, Shaw?”
I sheathed my sword as he paced past me, bowing my head and clapping a hand to my chest respectfully.
“Not at all, sir. I just do that to keep alert.”
“Noble, that,” Claudius remarked, running a hand through the water. His ramrod-straight back faced towards me as he looked over the dusky horizon, squinting into the trees. He was in all black, as usual, trimmed with vague red at the shoulders and forming a brocade at his unfashionably-closed throat. His goatee was trimmed close to his face, framing its square angles, making him look like one of the carved kruuga, or gargoyles, on Shiian’s temple steps.
Clasping his hands behind his firm back, Claudius, clearing his throat, glanced at me, nodding with his head to motion me closer still. I stalked nearer and stood at a respectful distance, about a foot and a half away from him, mimicking his stance in spite of myself, folding gray-gloved hands behind my back.
He was taller than me, and a year older--thirty but a few weeks ago, with a record as long as they come. How he came to be commander of the Black Hand, the king’s personal guard (and rumored assassins) was beyond me, but I think it had something to do with family connections. His father before him, it was said, had been the king’s best spy during the wars with the Jipao, with whom, need I remind myself, we were now on splendid terms with.
“It’s quiet,” Claudius remarked, and I glanced at him, reminded once more with a twinge of unease how unnatural his eyes were. Between blinks, they glowed faintly in the darkness like embers or heated rubies. Daemon’s eyes, for sure, and then some. I resisted the urge to touch my thumb to my forehead for protection against them, as I knew most of my comrades did.
“Very quiet indeed, sir.”
Those eyes ticked my way through a hard stare, and I held them unwillingly, peering back at him. I wondered if he ever considered murdering us, for no one was quite sure what went on in his head, from strategy to field work, until it was done, and more often than not, done well.
He belched loudly, lifting a fist to stifle it, and ruined the effect, grimacing and patting his stomach shortly afterwards.
“Veal,” he explained apologetically, and I had to resist the urge to shoot him a look or smile, remaining as stoic as I possibly could--until he reached out to clap an arm around my shoulders, pointing out to the horizon. “See that, Shaw?”
“I see trees, sir.”
“Yes, well, look beyond the trees.”
“I can’t, sir. I don’t see that well in the dark.”
“Neither do I, but let’s pretend.” Claudius patted my shoulder absently and gestured, slowly drawing an invisible line across the woods. “All that? All of that is Rothbane. Ours. War-free and peace-giddy and full of frolicking peasants and courtly wonders.”
I did shoot him a look then, catching the vaguest whiff of wine. I cleared my throat and clasped my hands more firmly behind my back.
“Pardon my rudeness, sir, but--commander, are you drunk?”
He rolled his eerie eyes and lifted his arm away, folding it with the other across his chest. The wind crept up the side of Castle Damascus, toying with his ebon hair.
“Sorry, I’ll get to the point without a lengthy metaphor. The thing is, Shaw--why is it, if Rothbane’s been at peace for over twenty years now, suddenly, there’s monsters parading about in the woods and terrorizing people--sometimes even eating them? Figure they’d at least learn that peasants are stringy. Nobles are much more plump.”
“…very funny, sir.”
“Hey, relax,” Claudius said lightly, scratching his chin. “I’m just trying to make a point, sergeant. I just want to know why there’s suddenly daemon dogs and ghosts and baen-shehs running about in the forests. And how to stop them.”
I hesitated. I had heard the rumors of Claudius’s involvement with the daemons, who had appeared but weeks ago, not long after the king announced whom he wished to have for an heir, and wondered if it was a test. Claudius was smiling amicably out at the horizon, the banner of Rothbane, a gold-and-white gryphon, creating a stark contrast behind his head.
“…I have heard, sir, some people that say the gates of the dead have been opened, and Shiian has abandoned us. I have also heard that war is on the horizon, and Rothbane will soon fight again.”
Claudius gave a start only at the last bit, whirling to eye me over his broad shoulder. I resisted a flinch and steadily stared. Claudius’s face twitched, then broke into a smile, a broader grin, and finally a burst of loud laughter, deep from his gut, as he turned away to slap the side of the castle, leaning against the outer wall.
“Where on Shiian’s good Calchas do these rumors get started, Shaw! Next thing you know they’ll be blaming the mystickers for this!”
They already were, but I didn’t say so aloud, and merely forced a smile to my face.
“Absurdity, sir.”
“Hey, you hear that?” Claudius said, snapping his head up and abruptly ceasing his laughter. I cocked my head, turning in the direction to follow where he pointed. “Came from there.”  
I listened hard, but heard only the continuous sound of aforementioned insects, rubbing one arm absently against an abrupt chill.
“…I hear nothing, sir.”
“That’s my cue,” Claudius said, and I turned to ask him what he meant, but found only empty space behind me, and the vague rumble of rocks below.
Hurrying to the edge of the castle wall, I peered down into the dusk--only darkness remained, asking endless questions, to which I had no answer, save a dry shake of my head, and a quiet murmur of,
“Shiian speed to him.”

</the end.>