Ni'Srilan: The Desert: I CAN HEAR IT COMING, LIKE A SERENADE OF SOUND; a conclusion

I used to roll the dice
feel the fear in my enemies eyes
listen as the crowd would sing
Now the old king is dead - long live the king!
One minute I held the key
next the walls were closed on me
and I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

He makes it to the ruins of Solira, in time, but barely.

A great tremor shudders through the earth.

A falcon perched on a tree spreads its wings, disturbed by the quake and takes flight. Somewhere there is a thunderclap, a rumbling base-drum note that carries across the ruins of the beautiful Solira. And Alshain stands amongst the rubble of rocks and sand, where fissures have torn through coastline and the sea leaps, disconsolate and abandoned and grey.

He bows his head and looks down at that once-beautiful ocean, far below. And then he lifts his gaze to the distant forest, the cursed Desreal.

And he smiles.

“Checkmate,” he murmurs, before the shockwave that passes through all of Legend. Plants begin to wither. The air is filled with the sound of snarling dogs.

The falcon turns to Saphira. There is a subdued triumph in his eyes, a sudden flash of falcon-fire as the Wind flares around him. Some corner of his mind prepares to sacrifice this Element that has become an integral part of him. “He’s gone,” Alshain says softly, burying his muzzle in Saphira’s mane. “We won.” It’s an ironic statement as the world prepares to collapse, but Alshain and Saphira are not Legend, just as Alshain wasn’t Ilius and he wasn’t Eclypse. The vagrant Falcon and his Siren will fly again. “It’s over.”

The earth gives a great lurch beneath them.

Alshain shifts his weight to his haunches and leaps. For a moment he is suspended, unbound to the ground, and then suddenly he is taken with mercury falcon-feathers and the trembling of the catatonic Legend can no longer phase him.

Gravity release me,

This is the end, and this is what he’s been waiting for since he first met the Nightmare, a young colt on a volcanic edge.

And don’t ever hold me down-

Away, away from the ruined Solira, away from the shattering Legend for what will certainly be the last time, like a seed carried on a breeze to take anchor with Saphira and Alanna and Dusan somewhere else, somewhere far away, without the lingering horror of Kurai tormenting him –

Now my feet won’t touch the ground.

Fly, Falconblade. Fly.

SLV. A L S H A I N;
BURY ME IN ARMOR WHEN I'M DEAD AND HIT THE GROUND;
SILVER WARRIOR || AIR III || TWISTERBLADE

THAT WAS WHEN I RULED THE WORLD