(Scars do not appear to be cause of death –shock ... - Bad Request

odies of sinners and count the saints.
One-eyed, white-haired, long scar from temple to cheek. Knife to the throat.
Moldy-mouthed and black-toothed, lips flecked with foam. Decapitation.
Twelve thugs in the armor of city guards. Impaled with blades of ice.
The stragglers scuttled away, terror fueling their flight. Metal boots slipped
on icy ground and hands grasped at whatever support stood close by: a
frost-coated wall, a crystalline spike stained with blood, impaled corpses still
twitching like grim fruit sprouting from those branches of cold glass.
My breath misted out in front of me as I wove laces of unbeing. In battle the
world slipped away, purpose the only thing guiding my limbs. When the
clangor of fighting died down, the shrill cry of the prison alarm began to
sound like a chorus heralding our coming.
The last of them fell, twitching under a blade of karach. He was spitting,
growling curses too filthy to name, and Dak'kon silenced him with a quick,
merciful twist of the blade.
Entering a prison was always the easy part, I figured.
Prison bars blocked the portal, each heavily thorned and gray-white like
bone. I gripped the smooth middle of one, gave it a tug. It rattled in my grip,
but not by much.
"Any idea how to open this, Annah?"
"T'chah. Stand aside."
Five minutes of probing, twisting, and clicking later, we were in.
~~~~~
For the first time in my life, I knew serenity.
A tender light filled the grimy chamber with the softness of quiet afternoons
and warm sunrises. Motes of dust danced along those rays. There, on the
bier, was the deva: a being with skin of the purest ivory and hair of blinding
1007