Tenebrous hymns, nefarious canticle, a droplet of cruor bubbling with the rain in her quivering nostrils—accomplishment and progress, gloom pooling within violet spheres, mud slapping against anchors and the dull eyed Jester careening after her wake.
The Nightingale is no mercenary upon the field, no Prince with a scar laden side, no, she is a mere commoner among the tids of royalties, a impure witch with pestilence in her stride— mindless to the whims, the ideals, the minds of bloated King's upon thrones and fed Princesses from their hallowed rooms. She is a bloodhound, a Sleuth, a visionary, the umber that blends along the corridors, a emissary, scrutinizing and callow in the ways of warfare, and it is this fault, this underestimation that writes her doom upon the wall, the misjudging concept that if she has not landed a blow aimed for death upon her Queen's withers, she would not aim for death upon hers.
   She was wrong.

Raucous and ringing, flat and Siberian echoes the lyrics, the depraved, the ruthless bellow, a howl echoing forth from a wolf's maw— fangs outstretched in the form of a crown, they are both wolves, both borne from the same pack, and when she flinches to the left from the outstretched scythe it is too late and the strangled wail that is brought forth from iron lungs is but a mewl within her own harks, listening and not, as if she has dunked her dome beneath the froth filtered waves, gathering salt upon her snowy lashes, the rain becoming the spray, the thunder the waves on the beach— drowning within her own sinew as the dagger slides beneath the upper layer of flesh, straight through the other side, glass drenched in cardinal liquor, dribbling from the edges of the wound inflicted, agonizing, scalding, melding and fusing with the twisted trauma that rises within her cranium, the distress, the daze, numbing her to her core.
The Queen had endeavored to kill her.

Horrified and stunned lavender turn alongside a alabaster and onyx dome to gaze, hazily, upon the blurred blotch within her vision, a half choked whimper sliding from her throat as she slices upwards, snapping through the layer of sinew, freed from her teetering frame, leaving behind raw tissue, and as a fractured dam the sanguine liquids overspill down her legs, leaving her to wobble and flounder further, sidestepping to the right, faltering and reeling with revulsion, hearing the clack of teeth mere milliseconds from snapping into her withers.
The turbulence from the storm continues, and with a mere breeze against her side she has fallen, knees grazing the muddied soil, the heavy odor of cruor in her nostrils, sticky and syrupy, and it is with vague recognition she realizes it is her own life that has begun to litter the earth around her.
   "Was this a training battle? Or a skirmish that the Asylum needs to take revenge for?"

The aroma of rot and demise, eradication and casualties, maggots writhing alongside bloated corpses— mad laughter, cackling cries, vermilion Mistresses and Jester crowned Queen's, lightning strikes upon the horizon— and is that the burdensome odor of smoke, laden upon her tongue?
"Circuta, come forward sister."

The weight of her dome feels all too heavy as she ambiguously observes the Jester, well aware of her vulnerable position upon the Earth, jaws hanging limp as a mere fish, teeth grazing, voice cracking, extending, benign and velvet as the cries of morning larks, the evensong of the rain. She had never been going to— to end her. "You.. sought to slay me. Am man?"
   Determination. She cannot give into failure.

She had pledged, assured, promised...
   "Dance with me?"

The Nightingale's throat clenches— something damp and warm pooling at the edges of her spheres, a sloppy laugh dancing from her cracked lips, a crimson bubble snorting from her left nostril. Her lyrics are drained, wasted, worn, collapsing into the roll of the thunder. "We don't need a monarch, Jester."
She thinks that the terrain is ever so serene place to be. Could she simply fuse into it, if she laid here long enough?
"We need to be cherished."