Drums of the Tsaesci

The Tsaesci marched upon Tamriel with drums of steel and scale-skin, for they were arrogant and wished for their noise to be known and heard in every home and hold. And the snakemen beat out thunder not to align their feet with their hearts, but to weave magic with the drum-droned air from discordant sounds.

Town and traveller alike fell to the invading hordes, and the din of their destruction was thus: 1117 war-drummers playing in perfect disharmony, endless unpaired rhythms rising and falling into and out of sync like the wild last gasps of a many lunged beast that swallowed a storm. And with this clamor came strange curses:

The first curse, when the drums were low and distant, was a bitter sickness. The disease was as unfocused as its source, and no sage or seer could predict how many would fall ill. Even the strongest warrior if sound-sickened would become like a babe, unable to stand and wailing with pain, until the drum-song was a fading murmur.

When the drums were closer and clear in their chaos, they could wake things which were not sleeping. Forests, long spent unslumbering would bestir themselves and march with the Akavir. Yet trees’ feet are not made for walking, and the invaders had much love of fire, so ash and broken boughs became the after-banners of soldiers’ passing.

Finally, when the pale tabor faces could be seen gleaming in the sunlight, time fell in and out of place. Time rippled and bloated, it ran back on itself before reversing abruptly and hurrying ahead to catch its own tail. It was when heard through that ever shifting tempest that the meaning of the drums became clear. It was WAR that the Tsaesci beat out again and again.

And it was so that the Akaviri conquered city after city. Few can fight with inside out time, and it seemed no army could withstand the temporal-beat assault of the war-drums. But at Pale Pass, the Akavir were defeated when Reman, whose voice is louder than sky, shouted a word of silence and surcease. With that utterance, 1117 scale-skins were sundered, and blissful quiet descended upon the soundsoaked lands.