My footwork was poor and imprecise. I was frequently deficient in applying my full kinesiology towards the weight of my blows. But I was young and hale, and practiced by my elders to control my lines: to diligently guard the necessary of my cardiovasculars. By comparison, Ashli kept pace via her advantage of reach on me (even if I was due and expected to overtake her height). She was also levering seven pounds of steel-headed ill-will, plus a decade of firewood-splitting behind it. Exacerbate all that with a vigor of a piquely choler (which I may have been something complicit in the cause of), and you can imagine how she inflicted a fine calamity on her share of the engagement.

As for me? Oh, I swung that calcified cudgel of mine like the swoop of the windmill. I beat, I battered, and I bludgeoned. It would be trite of me, and inaccurate to allegorize myself as Sampson in this task, seeing as how I was neither particularly lethal (so much as disassembling parts), nor could I measure my task in good faith, against the overturning of conquering thousands. But still, we made short work of it. Where there had been eleven, between my cousin and I we made there be none.

All the while, 4, 7, 3, 9, 9, 4, 7, 6, 2, 1, 9, would whimper the Argument with each beat I struck of them – for even while the gòshëm fell, they insisted I calculate their failures in digitry.

I do not intend to communicate to you that I possess any great martial talent, nor have I ever been accused of possessing any particular strength beyond my comparable peers. But simply, the tin locust is among the least manifestations of their line; the ‘vaders’ living automatons. Even absent of her Lady’s Grace, their Opine was set against ours and quailed. Their bodies were most defiantly aberration of Natural Law, and their Color was blanched in challenging us: thus we faced them at their most clumsy and stupid, and prevailed.

“You okay?” Ashli panted. Her hair stuck to her face, and her attention roved warily about the floor.

“With the negligible exception of some small bruises, I am unharmed,” I frowned. “Are you well?”

“I mean, I’m pissed, but…” she shrugged. Then she hesitated. Then she strode my way and wrapped me in an embrace of strangling intensity. “Fuck, this is stupid. You sure you’re okay?”

I extricated myself from the affection of my kin, and nodded. “Can’t be so soft not to tangle with low varmintry.”

Ashli mussed my hair, to my annoyance. Then she kicked a leg segment away from the core it was inching towards. “How do we know they stay dead?”

The hall and mudroom was scattered with rods of varying size and shape. Even though their material was soft, and their diameter generally narrow, they were still comprised of metal (of a sort), and so the individual pieces sported no damage worse than a bend or gash.

“Their Thesis should wither, I understand, so long as their components are parted,” I ran a hand over my weapon. It has suffered some chipping, and a hairline crack. It felt cold and sluggish, dirty with the Blue that had been wrung loose. “Amulet?” I shrugged.

“Sure,” Ashli pulled a doily from her pocket and unfolded it like a flower. “Might as well,” she said, letting the knit fall into the tangle of limbs below. The precision of form and lines suppressed what last ‘vader whispers had penetrated the house.

Out of doors, the sound of horses and men grew more urgent. I knew we had yet to engage with the true contest, and was itching to reinforce our men at their duty.

“Damn it, though. Todd, just, please. At least pretend like you’re gonna fuck’n listen to me. I don’t want to dig a hole for you, just because you’re trying to prove a point.”

I snuck a look out the door, then paused. She was correct in all things, except in appreciating the necessity of our intervention. So chastised, I begged her pardon. “You’re right, I know. But that don’t change the aim of what I intend to do. I’ll accept being supervised, so long as we’re on the task of it.”

“… Fine,” Ashli resigned.

We moved to either side of the door and looked out. There had been a handful of the enemy which had been making a circle of the Residence, and were now making their way to close on the open door and us. I proceeded into the night, and Ashli shut the door firmly behind us. My eyes adjusted to the light, which was only available from the moon and a single torch which was affixed into the ground some distance away.

“Come git me, you mechanizable arthropodal wannabes!” Cried out Hand Christopher with malicious glee. He was mounted astride of Cricket the horse-antelope, and she leapt across the field with supreme and elegant confidence. A stumbling, tangled horde of gòshëm flocked after him, clattering as they tangled up in one another. A thin mist condensed about them, as the intensity of their Color proposed itself against the world. “We done scraped the Pangaeal1 of megafauna, think we cain’t handle you?”

His strategy was made revealed of us, once Hand Läp Dāng appeared from the flank atop the white-haired horse-auroch we called Asura of the Ring, on account of his toroidal horn: curved from either side (as it was) up to fuse at its center. Ring and Dāng charged, like to an avalanche, and trampled through the center of the swarm. Metallurgy was being flung akimbo in some great profusion - though their pace was slowed enough that my breath was caught, until they were safely emerged.

Ring shook its head with a snort. The beast was plus of seven foot tall at its brow, and safely nine to the apex of his crown. His breadth was intimidating from below, and his eyes were watery with pity for these poor primates with whom, in charity, he suffered the company of.

Läp pointed into the west and made some gestures in rising frustration until he found the word he intended. “Barn,” he commanded us, and then gently petitioned the one who bore him to turn back to the fight with a respectful application of his knees. “Đi nào,” he whistled to Asura of the Ring. Then he was removed of us.