Ni'Srilan: The Desert: CRAWL FROM THE WRECKAGE ONE MORE TIME; I

the light that is not light is here
to flush you out with your own fear
you hide, you hide, but will be found
release your crypt without a sound
what? is happening?

The fogginess that has clouded his mind like a thundercloud since the destruction of Oceantree’s Relic has lifted.

Now the brooding stratus above parallels his mind.

Kurai will go to the Desert again, one final time.

His hooves fall in a steady rhythm that drums in his mind, thrumming to the beat of his heart, and the other two softer pulsations embedded so deathly close to that organ – perhaps the one claim to mortality he still has, so serpentine and cruel with his jagged angles and dragon-wings folded against metal-plated sides.

Now he toes the line between madness and impossibility.

He feels her, finds her with the strange repulsion-magnetism of the Relic with his Shard. He could not divert his path if he wanted to.

He stops. He catches her gaze with those electric-charged pale eyes, with the shadow of the smile that twists his reptilian mouth. Lightning crackles off of his wings, suspends itself in the eerie quietude that spirals out between them in seconds that feel like an eternity. There is that strange feeling of dissolution – nothing else exists but Naphtha and Nightmare. He can feel the gem – the testament to her reign over this Desert empire. “You can’t save it,” he says softly, “Any of it.”

Diadem. Or Legend.

This is the final piece.

He snaps forward, lips recoiling over fangs that flash for an instant in the dying light of the pale day. But his teeth are not what contact her.

Something sharp, quick, glistening, leaps out of him.

It finds the Diadem and pulls a tremendous bolt of Lightning from him. It is a cursed diamond-flash to shatter the Gem of Ni’Srilan.

He is alive with leaping, horrific Lightning-power; the ground trembles with thunder that makes sand dunes tumble, stands hair on end and impregnates the air with rent molecules.

This is the final opposition, obliterated like chaff in the wind.

GLD. K U R A I;
THE NIGHTMARE;
SHARD-KEEPER || LIGHTNING III & AIR III || STUPEFY || NACHTMERE

YOUR SCREAM’S A WHISPER