OOC- This is gonna be funky, and I'm going to be posting as three different people, but only becuase I need my sister's character for continuity with others and cuz Vilset's writer told me to kill his character. Since I'm posting in tandem with Lywen, this is gonna be really fun.
IC- The battle surged back and forth as axe-handle and staff sparked off each other in great ringing clangs. Smoke filled the audience hall of the House of Altair: Thornfire blazed such that blood red smoke billowed out of its ends. Even thornfire did not like this enemy, with it's oily manners. But Drask would not let the axe blade come into contact with his most precious possession, even moreso than his link to his father: Thornfire was the talisman that helped him focus his magikal power into the force that it was. Were it to break...
Drask ducked the axe strike aimed for his forehead instinctively--he was not thinking. The dragon, overwhelmed by pain and loss, had gone berserk. Berserk does not mean relishing wanton destruction and chaos and death and inflicting as much of it on as many people, friend or foe, as possible. Berserk means that one is so overwhelmed by powerful and dangerous emotions that mere physical pain has no effective meaning--only the ending of one's pain's source has any meaning. Drask was not thinking. His pain had no source but himself and his past and his memory. Memory is thinking. Drask, therefore, was not. But still the faces of the imps and Altairi changed to be the faces of his fallen friends and family.
Drask could not hear, could not think, could not remember to do anything but fight and dodge and weave and strike and recover and strike again. He could not remember to pray, and could only barely remember that there was someone, somewhere, to whom one might pray. Cold on his neck that he could not feel. A voice in him mind that he could not place. Words in his head that he could not consciously understand.
'
Drask, dearest. His is the power of the void, of the underworld, of Darkness, of Neit and Dimindium. He has been blessed with unholy strength of the highest order: Dimindium's hand has touched this fell beast. Your flames, powerful as they are, did not protect your father's tailsword. You need something to quench the void behind his blade-strokes. You need creation to match his destruction. Remember her whom you serve, my love. Remember her saving grace.'
He could not hear the words, and could he have, he would not have understood their meaning. But the sound, unheard, soothed him. Neither did it break the berserker rage nor did it bring about conscious thought, but it stirred memories he had long since repressed, which flowed unconsciously out of his mouth in resounding tones of anguish and rage.
'Banthusir, Skeinir, Goddesss, whomever. If indeed you are there, and if indeed you can hear me, I beseech your aid. Dark and unfit as I have been and perchance will be once more, have I not ever sought to aid your cause? Have I not lost all in your service over countless years? Innocent I am not, so my blood would not destroy your most holy sanctum, but there are innocents in this place, and if their blood is spilt and taken by the void, would it not be your undoing in this place? I care not for my own continuance... I wish only... aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!'
The Dragon whipped his staff around as the doors to the sanctuary slammed open. Enter a dozen war trolls, regenerating behemoths twelve feet in height and stout of body, if lean in mind. Lywen, standing by the doorway, was bowled over. The axe sliced down the skin of a wing, rendering him temporarily flightless until it was healed.
Drask treated the vision of Amiadus, First Fallen, descending from nowhere as he did all the other visions he saw but didn't see: he ignored it with the entire force of his being. He didn't care. He didn't want to care. It was dangerous to care, as had been proven him time and time again. The angel didn't care that he didn't care: she had been called to this one, battered and bloody. She knew what he had asked for, though he had not asked for it explicitly. He had pleaded, for perhaps the first time in several centuries, to be helped. She floated, invisible to all but the one who treated her as a delusion, above the dragon and moved her hands through the angry fire surrounding him and touched the scales of his head. They glowed with new light and energy not his own. Invisible hands lingered behind his eyes, making him stronger and more a match for the blade born of nothing. Fingers of divine flesh met fingers of flame as they passed over thorns and ebonwood. Drask's scales and staff now bore the marks of Creation.
Creation negates destruction.
Drask did not pay attention to the spears that poked at his back. He did not pay attention to the vanishing form of the delusion-made Amiadus. He only knew suddenly--without consciously knowing it--that he was a match for the Dark One's champion. If only these annoying trolls behind him would quit distracting him, he could actually fight the Champion of the Dark. He kicked out at one, sending it sprawling. It got up a second later with a charring dent in its chest. One of the anonymous and personal faces squared off with it. Several other trolls found themselves facing his past and towering above it in stature.
He himself was fighting his present and his future.
******************
'What I have lost does not make me greater, but it makes me deeper, like a hole.
Take more away and I will come through to the other side,like a gaping wound.
But then I will be the wound and the body will have sloughed away.
Is it possible to lose more of what is not there?' --Greg Bear
