A Friend To The Watch

Been pretty active on the writing front lately. Nibbling at the edges of A Friend To The Watch, hoping to make a meal of it:

Erron turned the page and Malost had his breath stolen. Images flooded across the winesong connecting them in a rough grey tide, like jagged rocks made liquid, yet retaining their ability to tear:

The Crowned One praying before an altar, surrounded by shadow, darkness, and creatures it hurt the eye to see. Prayers answered by something in that darkness. 

A rooster, silent and still. 

Dogs, barking. 

A man with shadows leaping from his mouth searching among wooden crates. 

Men in the colors of the Duke’s Watch struggling with a twisted tide of flesh spewing from darkness. 

Darts or quills, quivering in flesh. 

Blood but no pain, followed by a long nothing and the song of distant bells. 

Malost felt Erron moving toward the sound of those bells, begin to embrace the warm tolling of Vradesh’s call. Death spiral! he realized. Even that tiny, barely independent recognition required an effort of will Malost doubted he could match again.

Still, he struggled.

He knew nothing else.

There was nothing else.

Until the bells began to toll for him.

Fear proved a well-remembered goad, then.

Too stupid to know you’re beaten! he recalled the first Pathless he’d killed screaming at him. That Pathless was long dead, a heap of ashes in a nameless temple to some Pathless power, denied Vradesh’s embrace for all time.

With a gasp like a drowning man escaping deep water, Malost surged free, falling flat on his face.