The Party of the Gods

Surrounded by three now, and severely wounded, Lince made a desperate decision. He dropped his sword and made a sudden lunge for Niles. His two‑handed quick chops at Niles’ elbow joints caused Niles to drop his sword. Vilaz moved to stop him from picking it up, but Lince dashed away instead, making a bee line for the nearest horse. As the startled animal skittered away, Lince suddenly banged into a wall. An invisible one, of course. When he moved, the wall moved with him, and three figures came up behind him. With escape so close yet so far, he turned around.

Lince never felt the sword that stabbed through his heart. A fractionally quicker blade separated his ruined body from the brain which could know pain. All that he had known, all that he had planned flew through the air, the life fluids draining away. Vacant eyes stared at the approaching wall, not knowing and not caring about its unrelentingly hard beauty. When the empty casement thudded against the cliff, it cracked open, painting bright red lines in unnatural directions against the delicate pinks. The robbers of life buried the separated pieces together, but the sum of the parts did not equal the whole of the man. The new veins of colour they left on the wall dried stubbornly in place, a sign for all who could read them that the inherent pattern of nature had been upset. Time would wash the walls clean, but never would it recover the Humanly god’s father.