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Through the exhaustion and deafening cacophony of sound, the armies continue to bash themselves to death against each other.  Andar, plain and unassuming, in robes that are grey and smeared with blood not his own, robes that used to be so white they appeared to glow, walks through the thick of the battle.  His gaze is down, his brow furrowed seeming oblivious of the maelstrom around him.  There are attacks on him, slashes toward him; all miss, as if by accident or luck, depending on your perspective.  He chooses his footing carefully and if he registers what he steps over and around, it doesn't reflect on his face.

One noise begins to rise above even the impossible level of the sound of carnage.  A droning hum, it becomes louder as the man in his bloodied robe trudges through the bodies; the press of those around him starting to thin.

He looks up...  an impenetrable line of Raith, their heads shaved bald, their armor black and cleverly segmented.  Only their leader, Llyl, wears a helm of raven feathers woven together as if on the wing.  She is hard, angular, a warrior through her blood and bones.  Their weapons are at hand, but clean, polished, unused, not the weapon of their choice, or gift.  Sound is their primary weapon, and this is what thins the crush of battle around them.

Anyone entering that circle of pure hearing falls to the ground in agony, clawing at their treacherous eardrums, searching for relief before it is too much and the rupture comes, and then they are still, their bodies leaking into the earth.

Andar is not affected.  Not by the sound.  But the sight of her does him in, stills him where he cannot afford to be still.  She looks toward him, past and then back, and her heart stops.  Her hum stops.  Her voice unraised, she arrows words to him.  He sees her lips move and then the words break against his ear.  It is magic.  Her magic.

"Go back," are her words.  There is stillness between them and then his lips move.  Before the words reach her ear his eyes have left her face.  When they reach her, they fall hard.

"He’s come to the battle," are his words.  Andar walks through the killing zone back into the churning battle.

"No!"  She screams at him, all the magic gone.  An arrow slides through the sound that is not designed to reach, not designed to kill, merely a vessel of pain, and pierces the woman next to Llyl.  The hum breaks and scatters.  Llyl grabs the injured woman, holds her up.  The hum responds and returns, and again, the area around them is death.

Andar hits another pocket of emptiness, looks up.

Luk is big, dark, man-shaped. His features, not completely human, swirl in and out of a darkness that wraps around him like fog.

"You’ve made a mistake." Gravel on screaming is the sound Luk's voice makes.

"I’ve made lots of mistakes," Andar says, weariness there.

"This isn’t the least of them." Blood soaked destruction rumbles out of him in mere words as he raises his great curved blade, taller than a man.  Taller than Andar.

Andar opens his mouth and silence envelopes the rage of battle, a created silence, the cords and muscles of Andar's throat work as a haze of color, rainbow hues, gathers around Andar and leaches into the swirling blackness around Luk.

Luk swings the scythe, NOT at Andar, releasing it from its arc.  The blade wings through the battle at impossible turning angles, across the empty space of killing sound and finds Llyl at the waist, embeds in her.

Andar screams, the color haze bursts into brightness and then the scream is absorbed into the silence.  Llyl gasps, a lone sound, grabs the handle and pulls.

A spray of blood patterns the ground around her as she sinks to her knees, the blade falling from her hand.

Battlefield sounds pick-up where they left off.  Across the death, a corridor opens and regardless of distance, as if distance were a parent's fright story told to naughty children, Andar and Llyl make eye contact.

The colors around Andar bleach white and Luk takes a step forward.

"Flame."  Andar says.

"You can’t, it won’t."  The swirl of his darkness slows, nearly stops at the sinuous liquid tumble of his words.

"Flame!"  Andar's voice spiking and dying, his eyes never leaving Llyl.  The light around Andar, incandescent...

his lips move as he speaks without sound to Llyl.

... blasts in every direction, incinerating Andar, Luk, and those nearest to them.

The heavy liquid light sinks to the ground, ripples across the plain, covering the living, the dead, the blood, the gore, friend and foe alike.  The light pours up through the feet of the Raith and out their mouths, their killing a song, a sponge that soaks up the blast, stretching and torturing their bodies into ash colored, dead, tree-like remnants of themselves.

As Llyl falls from her knees to the ground, the light oozes through her body, out her horrible wound, enveloping her, then leaving her whole. 

Her skin grayish, her wound mended, she finishes her fall from knees to what is now left, a flat sheet of rock in a grove of twisted, gnarled trees below a phosphorous green sky.

It is not silent, the wind whispers to itself as it explores the newly vacant plain, its new home.

I like it. Its different to the usual stories.

I'm having a tense issue with it.

wow what?
and did she die say no i dont want her to die that'd suck :(

The red glints of sunrise on the raven feathers of her helm hold him in thrall.  When he sees her like this, he believes the tales of the Dark One, almost forgets that he knows her.  He sees her mouth tighten and takes it for the smile that only he could.  Yes, he knows her, knows more of her than one soul can know of another, has ever known of another.  Luk caused that.  Luk caused it all.  He turns toward the battlefield, adjusts his white robes nervously.  There is a grayness, a buzzing, all that marks the army of Luk, the army that brings them to this rocky, broken place. The scrape of hoof on stone brings his attention back to his own army.  He turns then, to face them.

He knows the image they present, orchestrated it himself. Lenore, in red, as a Queen should be, but to match the impossible shade of her hair, she has to be in a brilliant crimson.  On the field of battle, she looks like a flame, a beckoning flame.  There is no denying that every word she speaks, every move she makes is that of a Queen.  To her horror, that of a Queen her subjects are willing to die for.

Varlyn, the Queen's consort, in his forest greens and browns, his dress and customs as foreign to Lenore's people now, as they were two years ago.  His demeanor is not however, and the people's approval of him is genuine and heartfelt.

Llyl, his own love, his mate, the Dark One; mysterious, feared, revered, they knew she would kill today, as they all would, but with her, death was a glorious dance with undertones of heaven and hell, an agony of conflicting emotion to see.  She alone watched the valley below, her back to the multitudes that had thronged here to be by their queen and her entourage in this final battle.

Shade, whose black is different from the black of Llyl's leather armor, and raven feathers.  Her black absorbed light and she still garnered oohs and aahs, even though she had been constantly in sight for months now.  She didn't like the attention, and it had taken him days to talk her into it, but the people needed her, needed the hope, and the wonder of seeing her, a unicorn.

She shakes her head, and looks from Llyl, to him, to see him staring at her.  She shakes her head again, impatiently, and he hears a rumble from deep within her massive chest.  That calls Llyl's attention to her, and she brings up a fist to punch her in the neck, lightly, and turns to face the throng. Managing a wink for him, even through her nervousness, or maybe because of it.  He sees her flex the shoulder, the old wound, and thinks of other wounds, and how they never really heal, only seem better for a time, until they hurt again.

Lenore steps forward and the rustling stops, yet the buzzing from across the valley is louder.

"It is time for an ending to this."  Lenore speaks, no louder than a conversation, yet they all hear.  "We will sacrifice no longer to live in the light."  The throng roars.  The approaching army is close now, the beginning of the end, whatever that might be, is upon them all.  What he hears Llyl say to him then, possibly their last words, one spoken to the other nearly breaks his heart. 

"No more sacrifices for love."  Then she and the select guard, hand picked for this job, start the killing song.  And after that, death begins.