» every broken promise

The calm dissipated as quickly as it’d come; her assuaging, soothing refrains were no match for the tidal wave of phantoms and wraiths circling over the water’s edge. The embankments were silhouetted by wraith attacks and haunted hallelujahs, and she must’ve fallen silent in those infernal, infinite moments, another witness to the cataclysm. Her eyes caught the bits of dust that eventually clamored together in a discordant requiem; each one lining a sketch, an outline, and then a figure who’d been grand, who’d been powerful, who’d been potent, left behind for a world no longer their own. The Songbird would’ve yearned for the chance to mourn them again, for her gaze to settle upon the lightning warrior Ampere, the mountain sage Isopia, or the many others she didn’t know (but should’ve, perhaps – she half-expected legions of strangers to make up an army of the dead). There was no time, however, because they weren’t at peace, because repose was barely ever found in these shadows, in these decadent halls with unending rooms – sanctuary was a sacrifice they’d made the moment they launched themselves into the portal. So instead, she closed her eyes, breathed one more intertwining hum (a precious, light, dulcet glimmer of things that used to be, the assuaging glimpse of better days), parted her jaws, and sang treachery, defiance, and rebellion. The femme barely heeded the ripple of movement and motions of the ghosts close to her; she was an emboldened crescendo, a beam of torrents and fire, eclipsing the darkening void with the shudder, the burst of flames. The embers were summoned time and time again as she paused to echo over the bewitching symphony, a calm, slow march towards the river (because what else was she to do, what could any of them do against this ridiculous onslaught, peril after peril, fight after fight?). As she and Imogen maneuvered, two serene bodies of light, of flame, of power and ruin, the blaze sought out the figures meaning to condemn them. She refused to bend, to break, to flicker apart simply because this world demanded it (she hadn’t before; why start now?) – a persevering jewel in the eye of the storm. They rummaged and simmered past, smoldering sirens calling for a ceasefire, for the condemnation to sear, for the perished to follow the way they’d came, back into the dust, into the earth. When they reached the edge, a means to escape, the mender’s voice altered back to silken sonnets and brandished hymns, invoking the rest to follow suit. She’d put them all back together again – they need only ask. {Lena uses her song magic to summon flames, hoping to aim them at the ghosts surrounding Imogen and herself. Afterward, they ESCAPE via the river’s edge, and wait there, offering to aid/help anyone who needs it. And if someone does need healing, just tag me and I can do it quickly! ;D} Lena where there is love, there is life.

image by safetylast @ flickr.com