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

"One second, Morte," I raised a hand to shush him. I swayed with the
rhythm of the vibration, and once I recognized the nature of the resonance I
began to hum, the same tune Ravel had used to call upon the Maze's power.
As I began to match the timbre of the vibration with my own voice, the twigs
suddenly began twisting within their dead circle, the fingers thrashing,
grabbing for something. I knew, instinctively, they were clutching for a
black-barbed seed.
Still humming, I tossed one of the seeds into their midst.
The seed flew right between the branches, and the three twigs twisted
around it with a crack, splintering it. The twigs stopped thrashing and slowly
grew, thickening to become branches. The branches twisted around each
other, then with a crack they snapped at the base, rolled across the floor,
and stopped, deathly still.
The three-twined branch still hummed in my hand, like a heartbeat. It was
obviously magical, and powerful. I could feel the branch responding to my
humming, and a tremendous amount of power lay in it: a trace of Ravel's
power, but perhaps mostly by my own force of will.
"Whoa, neat."
I grinned at Morte, "Very."
Exiting was like most bodily functions: the way out was harder than the way
in. Sharp and misty predators, with serpentine hair and whiplike limbs,
hounded our every step. There were greater shadows, with claws of
darkness honed and rareified into midnight blades that burned with frost.
And then there were the trigits: the ever blood-hungry trigits.
If every ounce of crippling nausea and fear-induced incontinence hadn't
been sliced, gouged, and beaten out of me long ago I would've soiled myself
until I bled over facing the shades. They shrieked when they came, their
hisses incomprehensible to my friends I'm sure, but to my ears there was
the underlying hiss of unbridled fury.
I could almost understand what they meant, like overhearing the whispers
of a deadly secret. They screeched of stolen futures, of fates unmade, of
fury and vengeance and thirst for agony. It terrified me, but I still took point:
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