Time seemed to slow down suddenly for Dal'tek, as his eyes tried to look everywhere at once. He wanted to save his people, or at least as many of them as he could. He wanted to aid the outlanders, hopefully seeing them to safety, as well. The yahnus were swarming, now, all over the place and seemingly everywhere. Fire... there was fire in the village, biting and burning and moving swiftly from tree to home to platform to tree again, almost as if it had a mind of its own. Screams. Shouts. Warcries. The clash of arms, the scent of burning wood, greenery, and flesh.<br/><br/>Dal'tek could almost hear the Mother weeping, for the loss of life, not just aviari, but the trees, the plants, everything that was living that was being destroyed as part of this senseless violence.<br/><br/>His head turned, and he saw the ashen elf become a living whirlwind of death. Blood became like paint as she created a masterpiece from the bowels and bodies of the yahnus she eliminated. She even stopped to feast, and for a moment, Dal'tek wondered if he had lost control of his senses and had become so traumatized that he was imagining it. Even the fox-man was pitching-in, fighting for all he was worth, as well.<br/><br/>The Voice boomed, and the words of a prophecy seemed to echo throughout the village, and perhaps even father into the forest. Dal'tek only half-listened to the words, his mind far more focused on the complete and utter destruction of his home of over one hundred cycles, and the nearly complete butchery of his people.<br/><br/><i>"I see.. I see the End of time,"</i>the voice boomed.<br/><br/>Dal'tek turned his gaze from the carnage to a platform above and just to his left. It was the first platform he had ever taken flight from, over nine decades earlier. It had been a perilous flight and had ended with no shortage of damaged feathers - and a bruised ego. But it had been his first.<br/><br/><i>"The earth will shake a bleed blood of steel," </i>the voice boomed.<br/><br/>Dal'tek spotted a hut, burning in the night like an out of control candle set too close to dry kindling at this distance. He had assisted a couple in delivering their first offspring there, and it had been the first aviari child he had helped to bring into this world. Where were Ti'gan and Kal'nar now? Likely dead... and where was their child, Li'tan? Also dead, most likely, driven before this unknown foe without mercy.<br/><br/><i>"The Kaiser who has covered this earth with death like rain,"</i>the voice continued.<br/><br/>The 'Kaiser'... was that the source of this wickedness? Dal'tek turned his head, as if he were about to ask one of the outlanders, and just in time he saw the ashen elf kissing the one known as Darion, and the others were making haste to depart.<br/><br/>Kaiser...<br/><br/>It was a name he repeated in his mind, even as he fought back tears brought about by the horrors that those eyes were witnessing as much as they were brought about by the acrid smoke that was wafting through the village even now. Verita was rescued. The platform cleared of foes for the moment, but Dal'tek seemed to know, as if from a distance, that this brief reprieve would not last long. More of the invaders would arrive any moment, likely in larger numbers, and time was of the essence lest he and the outlanders join the dead that already littered the forest floor and the platforms around them.<br/><br/>Dal'tek didn't hear the rest of the words, or if he did, they had not settled in right at that point. Instead, survival and flight were his goals now - seeing the outlanders to the docks, and praying to the Mother all along the way that they would find surviving aviari there as well. The word had spread quickly enough, hadn't it? Should -some- of his people have made it? Or had the enemy launched an attack so perfect that he and the outlanders would find nothing but further death and carnage awaiting them at the dock?<br/><br/>A numbness slowly settled over Dal'tek as he moved, his eyes almost distant as he barely seemed to register much of what was going on around him. Drained nearly completely from his exertions both physical and magical, the wound on his shoulder, and the sheer horror of the situation all combined to threaten his spirit with complete devastation and destruction. For now, the only thing that kept him going was that slender strand of hope that at least some of his kin had made it to the boats, and if he had to expend his life in order to see at least some of his kind to safety, he would do so.<br/><br/>One foot in front of the other, then, he departed with the others, half-listening, half-hearing what was being said. Darion was repeating words that Dal'tek himself had just uttered - they needed to *flee* to the dock, and they needed to do it *now*.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>