[He does not ask Iskierka to give more than she already has, and yet she gives. What else is left to the dead but their service to the living, whether as aegis or food, whether as warning or lesson?
Omen... L calls, not to her but his own, yet she hears, and she hears. The locusts will chew through her ragged wings in a second more, and she will not let them. Thin-fingered insect-jointed arms wrap around L and Iskierka warps, Iskierka grows into something vast and feathered and unbearably bright in the dark.
The locusts still chew, but they must now chew through massed feather and skin and muscle and bone and eyes and eyes thick as three men, to get at the precious burden she holds cradled against the down of her chest. A basso warble rumbles from her fanged maw; it does not deter their attackers, but perhaps some deep fundamental note carries to the lost part of L's soul, braided with the detective's own call. help. come.
Somewhere that is not Trench--that is not anywhere at all, for Throne-space is space out of space and time out of time even when it is not wrapped into a self-singular bubble made out of one man's stories--Illarion staggers and falls beneath another tide of insects.
cw: character death by insect
Omen... L calls, not to her but his own, yet she hears, and she hears. The locusts will chew through her ragged wings in a second more, and she will not let them. Thin-fingered insect-jointed arms wrap around L and Iskierka warps, Iskierka grows into something vast and feathered and unbearably bright in the dark.
The locusts still chew, but they must now chew through massed feather and skin and muscle and bone and eyes and
eyesthick as three men, to get at the precious burden she holds cradled against the down of her chest. A basso warble rumbles from her fanged maw; it does not deter their attackers, but perhaps some deep fundamental note carries to the lost part of L's soul, braided with the detective's own call. help. come.Somewhere that is not Trench--that is not anywhere at all, for Throne-space is space out of space and time out of time even when it is not wrapped into a self-singular bubble made out of one man's stories--Illarion staggers and falls beneath another tide of insects.
They feast.]