The air is like lead in his chest, heavy and grounding. He seems to sink with the weight of it. Or perhaps it is the softness of the earth, the loamy give of the dirt as his hooves slide beneath it. This land is so different than the one he calls home – wild and clustered and thick. Or perhaps it is the reason he’s come, the threat of war settling like a burden upon his back. They’ve all felt the tingle of it on their necks; they’ve all tasted the bitter fear of the unknown sliding down their throats. Or perhaps it is something else entirely. Because War isn’t the only entity astride him today. Death is there, too, a constant presence digging its heels into Ramiel’s sides. He is its keeper and conduit all at once (much like Death is his; this is a mutual arrangement, after all), and it is not a responsibility he takes lightly.
Whatever the reasoning, he is heavy in body and soul when he arrives at the jungle.
His golden eyes dart through the trees, searching, even while he remains otherwise stationary. If any lessons linger in his memory from childhood (which most of them do), it is the lesson of respect. Respect for authority. Respect for tradition. Respect for boundaries. This last one has gone the way of herds in recent years, of course, but not to him, never to him. He had been glad to see that his own sister hadn’t forgotten either, the last time she had visited the Dale several months prior. And though she would always be the exception to the rule (the one he trusted more than anyone), he was happy to see she carried their own traditions with her, even as ensnared in the Sisterhood as she was.
When he remembers that meeting, the grey king is brought back to the present quite jarringly. He had given Joscelin his answer then, but she hadn’t been able to give him much in return. And since, the Amazonians have been uncharacteristically silent. Standing at their gates now, it’s hard to believe they are capable of it. Birds flit through the canopies, loud in wing and song as they go about their avian struggle for survival. Branches sway in the hot, summer breeze, rubbing and clicking as they dance with each other. It is chaos in a way he’s never experienced before, never imagined in his strangest dreams (and he’s known strange dreams). He thinks it is the exact parallel of war and ultimate place to prepare for it - which works out well for the allies.
Ramiel waits with a new grim and gritty determination. All of the pieces are falling into place (pieces which are fitting together better than he’d believed they would). All of the first wounds have healed, leaving scars to remind the survivors what they are fighting for. He thinks of the Gates, then, wonders if their entity has recovered from the scorching. He thinks of his brother and the promise he made him on the milky-lit shores of the afterlife. To fight for his nephew lost to the Chamber. To push back the darkness, to buck against the hands that would try to smother the light. The Dale is in. It is time to let the rest of the world know it.
COTY
Assailant -- Year 226
QOTY
"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
this is the light that shines; Lagertha, any
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