Slurred Wires

Then the Paladin sought him out;

A lone minstrel dangling on high

Above Venim’s steel void, hiding

Behind a frieze of hollow notes,

The obsidian dust trailing

Across an ebony morning

Star. There the Chanter howls hell’s dirge,

His metallic music slurring

Over each other like the wires

Which connect reality to

The mind and heaven to hope and

Dreams, but this lurks not in the bard’s

Conscience, his goal to reforge this

Land in this cold chrome crescendo

Is all that can be heard, nothing

Else peals against the solemn cry

Of his silver bell. He looks up

At her with his tempered iron

Eyes, the slash of his sonorous

Sword not denting once no matter

How piercing the Paladin’s stares

Become. At once she breaks down the

Stone wall that had built over the

Silence and sealed off time from this

Shielded realm. Tirania leaps

Over it, swinging Ardentyre

And shattering the thin sheet which

Held Venim in the Chanter’s sly

And sordid embrace. Away he

Bounds into the land of lifeless

Lore, his tune changing as the tide

Of tin ebbs back into chaos,

Wires tangling around each other

And binding almost nothing.

Only the Paladin stands there,

Her ruby locks shimmer in the

Bronze sunset. She raises her blade

And calls upon the earth beneath

Her to rise and reclaim itself;

At once it harkens to her plea,

Roots slicing apart the copper

Chains that bound it to rust under

Timeless skies. Slowly the grass comes

Forth as sun grown leaf, not th’em’rald

Blades sprouted by the solid song,

The clefts within history gave

Way and filled the cracks and crushed the

Weak links that bound it to the cold

And crumbled cliff of Chanter’s tune.

The sad, metallic faces broke

Up and resumed their ancient ways;

Slightly bewildered, of course, but

They thought none of it because the

Historian of life came back

To rewrite all that came to pass –

The Gods even glanced to admire

The ambient grove that fought back

Whole mountains, people flocked to see

The land that had turned from iron

Into irony. But only

The Poet saw Tirania

Smile, and nod with earth’s charity,

Patient and strong.