Tarmon Gai'don [The Blight, Wednesday afternoon, Fandom Time]
Mat, flanked by Rand on one side and Perrin on the other, sat on Pips and gazed out at all of the armies of the Light as he tuned out whatever speech Rand was giving. He couldn't hear anything over the hammering of the dice in his head anyway, and Rand was really terrible at speeches.
Mat had heard tales of Tarmon Gai'don--the Last Battle, the final fight between the Dragon Reborn and the Dark One--from the time he was a small child, and the tens of thousands of soldiers, horses, Aes Sedai and Asha'man that had gathered to stop the Dark One from breaking free of his prison and remaking the world in his own image would have been reassuring in a "I can't bloody believe I'm at the front line of a fight for humanity's existence and not three miles away and riding hard" way if he wasn't seeing huge patches in the lines where people should be and weren't. No one else had the slightest idea what he was talking about and Mat had stop mentioning it, fearing he'd be shuffled over to stand with the more insane and heavily-supervised Asha'man.
He reached down to check that the Horn of Valere was still safely in his lap for the hundreth time since Egwene had given it back to him and then disappeared from everyone's memory but his own. He glanced up and realized that Perrin was giving him a slightly sympathetic grin (not that it was easy to see through the beard he'd insisted upon growing) and Rand was glaring at him. He'd apparently missed his cue.
Well, he'd sooner kiss a Trolloc (and there were plenty waiting just over the hill, according to the Aiel scouts) than hold this bloody thing up any further: he lifted the Horn to his lips and blew. A perfectly pure note--out of place in this blasted land where even the sun seemed afraid to come out--floated out and clouds rolled across the sky...and the heroes and heroines whose brave deads had bound them for all time to the Horn of Valere galloped from...wherever it was they stayed when they weren't being called to fight on the side of the Light. Mat had never really asked Brigette and now she was gone, too.
He was annoyed with himself for looking eagerly for Arthur and getting the hook-nosed and autocratic Artur Paendrag instead. Arthur would have come if he could--the man had a finely honed sense of duty, even for a noble, and Mat had sent a letter just in case the dice turned up the Dark One's Eyes this round--and he turned to give final orders to the Band.
And froze.
"Someone else bloody sees that, right?" he said, pointing at the black wave that was racing for them. He got mostly blank stares in reply.
"Bloody hell," he spat. "Dovie'andi se tovya sagain." He pushed his heels into Pips' flanks and charged toward...whatever it was because if you were going to be a bloody hero, you might as well be a bloody stupid hero too.
Just before the darkness engulfed him and the dice in his head came to a sudden, deathly stop, he heard a voice--if thunder could be considered a voice--chuckle. I WIN AGAIN, LEWS THERIN.
[OOC: Bye, Mat...]
Mat had heard tales of Tarmon Gai'don--the Last Battle, the final fight between the Dragon Reborn and the Dark One--from the time he was a small child, and the tens of thousands of soldiers, horses, Aes Sedai and Asha'man that had gathered to stop the Dark One from breaking free of his prison and remaking the world in his own image would have been reassuring in a "I can't bloody believe I'm at the front line of a fight for humanity's existence and not three miles away and riding hard" way if he wasn't seeing huge patches in the lines where people should be and weren't. No one else had the slightest idea what he was talking about and Mat had stop mentioning it, fearing he'd be shuffled over to stand with the more insane and heavily-supervised Asha'man.
He reached down to check that the Horn of Valere was still safely in his lap for the hundreth time since Egwene had given it back to him and then disappeared from everyone's memory but his own. He glanced up and realized that Perrin was giving him a slightly sympathetic grin (not that it was easy to see through the beard he'd insisted upon growing) and Rand was glaring at him. He'd apparently missed his cue.
Well, he'd sooner kiss a Trolloc (and there were plenty waiting just over the hill, according to the Aiel scouts) than hold this bloody thing up any further: he lifted the Horn to his lips and blew. A perfectly pure note--out of place in this blasted land where even the sun seemed afraid to come out--floated out and clouds rolled across the sky...and the heroes and heroines whose brave deads had bound them for all time to the Horn of Valere galloped from...wherever it was they stayed when they weren't being called to fight on the side of the Light. Mat had never really asked Brigette and now she was gone, too.
He was annoyed with himself for looking eagerly for Arthur and getting the hook-nosed and autocratic Artur Paendrag instead. Arthur would have come if he could--the man had a finely honed sense of duty, even for a noble, and Mat had sent a letter just in case the dice turned up the Dark One's Eyes this round--and he turned to give final orders to the Band.
And froze.
"Someone else bloody sees that, right?" he said, pointing at the black wave that was racing for them. He got mostly blank stares in reply.
"Bloody hell," he spat. "Dovie'andi se tovya sagain." He pushed his heels into Pips' flanks and charged toward...whatever it was because if you were going to be a bloody hero, you might as well be a bloody stupid hero too.
Just before the darkness engulfed him and the dice in his head came to a sudden, deathly stop, he heard a voice--if thunder could be considered a voice--chuckle. I WIN AGAIN, LEWS THERIN.
[OOC: Bye, Mat...]