Chapter Eight, Fields of Mourning

Snowcrest 29th 19 AD, Valkingrad village

Valkingrad lay in ruins, behind the trail of the Lord’s path to purge his blazing ire. The rebellious battlements & their stalwart defense had proved stubborn, at the cost of many bovine anemics and faded spirits among the Drakoni, but ultimately futile. Devoured by the Dragon’s Breath of Albrecht’s design, those launchers of fire that stole the forests & folk of this stubborn townstead. The maddening echo of proclamation for the demise of the hearth & woods around lived in the lingering winds. That minstrel accompaniment which drummed abyssal singularity of sound, the wheezing anthem of immolation. Ghoulish gusts curtained the elements with the essence Drakkon’s sentencing of the town to mad fyre from beyond the grave of its speech: “Call to Thunder! Evocation ov Flame!”

The men went about the gruesome work of tossing husks unto funeral pyres and stringing up a couple more spikes. But they found not the bard’s body among the dead, though Heimskal and many a valiant traitor lay as ruinous relics. Then an abrupt horn of war resounded from the nearby woods. After ordering his captains to continue the burning until no bodies remained, Drakkon went to his advance scouts outside the charred skeleton of Valkingrad. His skittish sentinels reported that more of Baron’s banner waving militants amass by the forest across the valley snow. Through the falling flakes the lone lord thought he gleaned his friend of long ago. Atop a horse outstretching the flag of the People’s Protectorate and blowing the horn’s shrill scream. Scowling at the world he saddled his horse and made out to meet him.

The two leaders rode towards one another. Each brashly refusing any bodyguards to accompany them and ready to engage in combat of either word or sword. That luminescent green between them deigned as the midpoint to meet, Drakkon reached the Andrasil tree, standing in solitude at the center of the field in eternal defiance of (or stubborn harmony with) the elements. Unhorsing, he propped himself against the trunk and under glowing flakes waited for his rival.

Baron went on foot nearing the great tree. Marching beneath foreboding branches with hurt branded on his brow. “DRAKKON!” He bellows across gray landscape. “You killed them all?! You placed the carcasses of children & mothers on that balefire all for embittered delusion?!” Closing the gap, the glow of the embers from the ruin in the distance cast faint light their faces, shining no intent on forgiveness.

Drakkon stood his ground and claimed more, expanding his stance to show that he would not falter. Even if he knew his feet planted on hollow foundation save the support of his reprisal). “Thou art but a stinging pest that should long been crushed the moment thou wert exposed as treacherous scum and a lecherous lout. Betrayer of all oaths, all friendship and decency!”

“Now instead of honoring the chance at life and reflection granted to thee, thou riled the realm against rule & order and return to me with a swarm of arrows & spite – always a gaping wound in my side till the death, but thy thorn shall soon be torn out. I regret showing mercy to thee on that eve, it was a weakness of heart. But I will not waver for a second this time, when the moment comes to strike thee down. My resolve will not wither in this cold. I know what I am and what I am capable of – what I must take to erase this stain of fleeting life. Thy breath draws thin, to the last!”

“Killing me would have saved me from the pain of witnessing you grow evermore into monster. Would that you had a heart perhaps you could understand the rupture you cause mine. Already your reign is ash, yet you can still be more than that. The people demand to rule themselves. You know you hath no right so put this farce down. You may yet be more than maddening knave!”

The restless lord’s pupils flare at Baron, staring beneath the heavy boughs of ancient tree. “That very misguided idealism which instilled in you the hateful urge to raise a sword against your Emperor deceives you again! Fools ye into believing petty band of rag tied peasants can ever persevere against my might. You will be destroyed; of that I assure you. I would rather make thee a bleeding ‘martyr’ than allow thee another day of life! One cannot lead troops from the grave and without guidance they will fall as quick and hard as winter hail.”

“There need be no more graves if you will only sheathe this rage. Temper steel with your humanity. I may yet one day add redeeming verse to your song, that it be more than a parable against tyranny.” Baron’s tense gaze fell into thought. He fought back reluctant tears, but they bled from his ducts despite him. “I hate what has transgressed. But I will not allow my woesto get in the way of duty to rescind what befalls our people by your cruel hand. If we must meet on the field of battle, I shall sever it. Your reign must end, and I shall be the one to record the history of it. Etch in the annals either how a humbled man of legend forwent his throne for peace or as a despot who clung too harshly to empty crown, bought by blood. That all can remember how he became a far more terrible dragon than any former serpent. Or as he who ushered in an era in which the people earn the right to command their lives and not bow before pretenders.”

Drakkon’s thoughts swelled. Yet his tears failed to flee from his frigid surface, keeping to cold demeanor when next he spoke. “You were nothing to me but a useful little songbird whose gentle tune brought me the love of the people. So that I could seize what was mine by destiny, I made a champion of you! You were my left hand! You used the power I bestowed upon you to undermine my rulings and corrupt the foundation of the empire we fought to build! Do not think that I feel even a shard of kinship nor mercy to you simply on that basis of past service. You are no friend of mine! But an enemy & stain that must be smote! One that will rot beneath this tree.”

Baron’s pained hysteric laugh shivered, mocking and feverish. “You cannot hide what we were behind your distant words. I know we were as brothers once, you and I... A close thread about us with twisted connection – the travesty of what once was - brings me to tears of disgust! While you refuse to address me as an equal, man to man, the threads of the past yet bind you. Truly, this is tragedy, in more ways than one… I looked up to you, Drakkon! You were a living inspiration to me. Not as a ‘god’ or deity on a pedestal, but as a friend and leader who stood for something that mattered!”

He inched closer to the man he accused, nearly battering the bridge of Drakkon’s nose with his own. His eye acutely transfixed on those of his rival and former ruler, Baron pressed on with a grinding ire. “Ah, That glint in your eye… I see! You must know the truth of your birth. Has it settled well in the chasm within that skull of yours? That you had me damned for knowing the truth you must yourself accept? You are no ‘god’! You never were. Nor will you ever be. The drapery of delusion which you and your witch of a mother toiled so hard to cast over the eyes of the people is being pulled back to reveal the truth! Soon to be torn open!”

But the bearer of the crown of blasphemy would not stand to be berated. Not when his soul already stabbed such cycles of doubt & damnation within. “God or not, I am your better. At least I was faithful. Loyal, even to lie. Knowing what I am cannot unlink me from this shape I’ve chained! Shall not shake my ire for treachery & covetousness, nor save a rebel’s fate from being exiled in death along Helrivers of the nether – past all astral light! I would rather be a hermit, deny my crown, were it not that a knave yet challenges me, in thee!”

“Then let us both depart for exile if it should save the rest from senseless fate?” Baron spit sorrowful want, followed by war-song. “Yet war is thy want and my men do not fear thee. Thy tactics of intimidation are as devoid of meaning as that hollow crown! Our resolve shall outlast that bloodthirsty beast hiding behind an empty helm. Must this shape be so: more revolting than any treachery, any slime that lathers the dark and dank places at the fringes of earth? At least I know who I am, as a man and what this world demands of me! No more honorifics of thee, should thou not forsake this course and find a soul, only steel to meet & fell thy tainted trunk if reason cannot avail!”

Drakkon’s wrath unearthed with quivering quickness. Unsheathing his sword to posture threat at the bold skald. “Thrall! Traitor! I swear by all the elements abound and by my arm that when the day rises thy head will impaled on a spike! I will make an example of thee that will silence the dissent sown by thee. It all will have been for naught – every furious sound of thy passion proclaimed drowned in deafening void of death! All the light built up by thee to be washed away by a single storm - as every one of thy men falls before the axe of my vengeance! Unless thou kneel!”

“Nay, I will not kneel who one who will not show his face beneath the mask. Surrender this violence of be forever worse a fiend than Kassan ever could hath been.” The bard then flung taunting rebuttal, “Thou art the spitting image of thy father before he fell. Do be so kind as to emulate his fatal step if our blades must cross tomorrow.”

The edge of Drakkon’s blade nicked Baron’s neck. But he did not draw his blade in retaliatory defense. His refusal only infuriated the wielder by denying him the gratification of the fight he so needed to pacify inner turmoil. He added slight force to the gesture, drawing careful drops. His temperament seethed at this peaceful acceptance of death. He searched in his mind with haste as to what words could be the most lethal to yield a fighting stance, to arise impulsive act to justify want for execution. “Once thy demons lay rotten on this field I shall press on, to scour the land for all those libraries and Illuminaries. I shall cast their contents to devouring torch. Thy life’s work of shall be erased, and thy name struck from the tablet of life. Then I shall carve fresh history from thine festering body of work…Desecrate it! Rewrite it as my tale, in my fashion, that will become the Truth! This I shall do out of spite for thee!”

“Shave thy spite! Thou would go so far in hate & hubris to snuff out the lamplight of illumination in this world and deny folk knowledge and wisdom all to secure thine decrepit lie?! For thee, future generations would be damned to wallow in ignorance, blinded by shallow ideology? Then that man I once knew and admired is too far gone. The thing that appears before me is nothing but a husk already beginning to crack.”

Baron exhaled, no sigh of fear but of sadness. “Ah, but it doesn’t matter. Thy threats are soon to be annulled anyways! I know in my deepest of hearts that those bastions of sanctified Light shall persist to press against thine Age of Dark. Even if thou command expeditions to the brim of thy death bed, they will remain far from thine wicked sight! Whatever knowledge that thou wouldst forbid shall be free from thy talons. In the alcoves of the earth, even if but in the humble groves known only to the smallfolk who work and toil this land as their own self that light will always burn for those who seek it.”

Drakkon retracted his edge. Then moved to swing wildly across. A feigned aggression meant to force his enemy to fend and incur the need of a swift & violent conclusion to their quarrel. Baron however did not fluster nor flinch in the face of belligerent posturing. Thus, he replied as stalwart but sad stone. “I can see thou art in maddening midst of feral desperation. It is as if thou art longing for the very fate thou doth claim to will unto me. Death is in thine eyes. It calls to thee.”

The bard tasted a fallen sprinkle from tree leaf then swirled parting words about his tongue. “If I must, I will put thee down; take thee to the pyre as thou hast done to that poor village. Thou shalt become but a pile of cinders. Thy legacy will of ash and despair. Should anyone remember thy name it will be spoken in whispers as a curse or cried with relief from the horror brought by thee. Thy dark age but brief. Unless you redeem some light in thyself?”

“Back thy spit with steel, skald!” The emperor of waning reign lunged his blade into the Andrasil trunk. Effervescent sap lapped up the stab. But the proclaimed martyr simply shifted from the feeble attempt. “Answer for thy covetous crime, oh agent of misrule!”

“If thou will not accept the mantle of common humanity then thou deserve nothing.” Baron refused to draw his iron in protest. Denying him the gratification of the duel. After the moment and chance passed, and Drakkon’s sword did not run through his friend turned rival, the rebel captain turned away. With great grief exhaled vowed curse. “If thou cannot abandon thy title and become something then may thy thoughts be forever haunted, anchored to thy sins. Lift that crest from thy head before it falls or may thine hours stretch lonely, creeping onto deathly passage.”

“Before the next sun can set, I will burn thy body and with it wish that I could so easily cleanse all memories of thee with it.” Came the venom of Drakkon’s counter curse.

The singer mounted his steed and tossed a pouch of coin that spilt by the cursed Lord’s boots. They surged, flickering emblem not of tribute but of taunt; for the coins shined fresh mintage of Protectorate symbol, a cross of farm rake of common folk & scroll of learning. With this he swung a bitter jeer, telling his erstwhile emperor that upon his fall the lineage to his rabble would be legitimized & flourish. No matter his pitiful triumphs Drakkon could not crush their spirit, the people would reclaim their place & prosperity without his imperial didacts.

Prelude to Apocalypse

The Morning of Battle, Snowcrest 30th, 19 AD

The small hours of the morning passed without an ounce of sleep. Drakkon denied himself reprieve (or snare) of dreams. He stirred, pacing frantically about the perimeter of the camp. Baron’s words pierced his thoughts like a knife. Even as he tried to deny them space in his mind they grew, expanding anxieties. Azarra’s agonized wail joined the clamor of curses, repeating. Over & over again he heard the splashing of blood rained by his command. Shuddering hand felt the shakes of his sword in flesh of fallen foes. Cries echo with abrasive effect, no matter his muttering protests. Every negative aspect of both of his parents branded insignia in his chest. As if they were there haunting, dictating his actions by nature and guiding the flow of his thoughts.

He, a creature designed by shrewd influence rather than personal chisel. Paranoia blocked him from accepting his thoughts and being as true. No longer could he call upon heavenly fire nor gravity of will power and belief. He had not the power nor faith to call upon any support from the realms beyond his own. No miracle was with him. In this fading realm so dismal and empty. That no lightning from the gods struck down this imposter of storm crown showed the sky emptied of Divine influence. Whispers on welkin of glorified delusions cast no ire from above. Surrounded by starved soldiers he was yet alone.

When the begrimed dawn shyly peeked from behind a cloud blanket, a young and enthusiastic scout equipped with a report gave salutation. The poor boy thought he smelt glory on the winds. “Hail Imperator! I bear report on the enemy’s number camped across the valley: During the sparse hours of the night, the rebels rallied more arms to their cause, locals & late retainers. I regret informing you that many shameful souls slithered from our camp. They have managed to outnumber us by a few hundred men. Although many of these reinforcements have only pitchforks and wood cutting tools so should be no match for our forces. By your sign we move. We stand to win a Living triumph, Lord.”

Drakkon scratched at his bushy, ill-fitting beard while he fenced his attention in on what this news provoked in him. Clever. The traitorous singer took advantage of our hesitation by rallying more to his side while we razed the village. What a waste they would throw their lives away for a backwater stain as Valkingrad. Still, the vanguard and the Calvary should provide us with the winning hand. With wings and works of fire, the tide of battle flows in my favor. If only to wash away that thief of Corinna’s heart in the wake of withering fate…

He clasped the scout’s shoulder feigning as much inspirational push as his withering heart could beckon. “We must not waste initiative. I will rally the captains and assemble our host. We set upon our charge to take the center hill and the forest flanks as soon as we can. The rush of our attack should catch them off guard and send whatever formations they plan into disarray. A final bolt of thunder for them! Mark Mordaunt to leave his best man with a good crew here with camp & cart, if more rabble creeps up this route. Then ready his position for the charge. His riders wax their wings. They will hammer them by wind when the hour is ripe!”

This morning there were no motivating speeches to reverberate their legacy throughout the ages with pride and passion for what is reaped of fateful field. Instead, the High Lord quietly ordered his forces onward. Beginning in eerie silence save creaking greaves and grunts. The men following their emperor felt then no great fealty, nor fierceness in the face of their foes. When battle spawned it roused as worn, delirious dream.

Their Living Lord fights as reckless gale. Lunging to engage any opponent, opening himself up for attack as if he cared not to survive this encounter but to slay as many others as possible. Berserker chaunt compels him. Eclipsing cool strategy. Yet this inspires intimidation in the rebels, wary to incur retribution from this lunatic’s sword; no godly blade but compelled by a mad storm of loathing for all life. An anarchistic gambit became the mess of combat upon the white-gray fields. Battle formations forgone for single grudges and blind clash.

Emptiness besieges every soul who took up blade, bow or blunt force that day. Pervading gloom of purposeless struggle sunders the air and morale of each soldier. Exhaustion seizes the Drakoni, weary of vain conflict without lasting grounds. And though the Protectorate sought revenge, they too were tired and felt victory against the imperials impossible. The drift and direction of the battle, as apathetic and neutral in its shambling pushes from either side. Flow of the field never bending to one side.

With progress moot, Drakkon finds himself carried to small rest among his henchmen. Wherein he siphons the fury remaining in his breath to blow the appalling siren. He releases a pair of brooding bellows, for thunder & wings. Signals the cavalry charge of his Winged Drakes & their mercenary cohorts under Mordaunt. The abrasion of ascendant horns thrashes the spirit of every pawn on the board. Funeral chimes to bring down a hail of dragon fire behind the rebels & riders of apocalypse unto their unruly ranks.

Its resonance is heard but the answer only shatters the front furthermore. Fragmenting the men into frenzy as an avalanche of arrows and the lightning of the Manticore crackles indiscriminately. Summoning pandemonium to the front. For while Mordaunt obeys the alarum of thunder he hails havoc with it, and heeds not the call for his steeds. Blasting Helwinds of bolts & flame from Dragon’s Breath powder against imperials and peasant alike.

Across the field the master of these mercenaries and those veteran Drakes loyal to him dug in stubborn hoof with taciturn analysis of the sway of slaughter. He denies the dissonant call for mounted aid. Turns to address his men, to be the first of his fresh legions. For his hour ripens, as he stands to inherit the throne of creation & the storm of Selenic retribution.

“This battle is already lost. Retreat and turn round from whence we came. Drakkon’s day is over, though our hour yet approaches and our honour is unspoiled. To the North and to the West we ride! To Silverwood Grove and the spoils of a respite we hath earned well!” Nearly ubiquitously his soldiers move to his command. Turning away from the battlefield at his whim. Drakkon’s reign ends upon this tiny hill & a death in disgrace. Let the Lord rot in this field as those he forgot do in mass graves. I shall tether the threads of tomorrow to a future woven with Will alone. This day is yours, Selene, as much as mine. For the ‘gods’ who abandoned you are gutted by the disease of their dishonor. Let them perish in smoke!

But before he could humor his thoughts further one disobedient scout seated at the back of the line interrupted with a refusal of this critical command to turn cloak. This lone, young dissident rode up to Mordaunt as he led the battalion’s route. Contested his commander in brash, if foolish, dissent. “NAY!! We cannot abandon this cause! The field is grown for the taking! So why do you flee from it?”

Mordaunt nearly unsheathed his sword to slice the dissenter’s neck but stayed himself. This little lad simply found himself in the wrong company, and yet he still deserved the choice. “We forge our destinies this day. We forsake not the throne. For ours is to raise a court of our own standing. Yet you may yet choose to ride to fatal fantasy out there in hobbling, hopeless slaughter. The rest of us are thinking of our families & futures that are still yet flesh & reality. Go to your whim.”

The ‘little lad’ spat from his saddle. Rushed to the cart at the back to snatch a weapon worth two dozen men – draconic fire spitters – and rode alone into the fray. “For the emperor!”

Meanwhile Mordaunt, cut into the sky with his obsidian Fang of Vizzarion. He spoke his ambition, raising blasphemous exclamation. “We ride out for destinies that are ours to own! Follow me and be given wings to spread above & beyond the barriers of the old, cursed crown which led us here. The mind of man and soul of this land is free to be shaped. We are a force unto our own. Drakkon’s Light fails. Let them grind each other for petty vanity. I will lead us to a life of enrichment and glory. Move out!”

He signed the retreat, sealing Drakkon to defeat. Thus began the solemn march away from their Emperor’s call of grave desperation. If any among them should have felt troubled at this blatant betrayal, they dared not show it. Their teeth jittered in the cold but holding simple thoughts of a warm fire and bed away from all this strife betwixt kin hastened their hooves. What worth was there to harboring regrets when the rest were so weary & beaten and they, so ripe for glory? As they rode beyond the valley the winter wind bemoaned the tragedy caught within its icy fold.

Drakkon’s sanity fled from him alongside those faithless riders. His fingers drug his eyelids and spay his nostrils. Terrible howl of insipid resent shatters the seals of many fighting men around. His standard quakes. Fearing they’d been cursed with incapacity before an imminent doom. To the rebels the sound signified the waning power of this false god and jolted them with vigor to win the day and silence that wounded cry.

As he ushers commands to his nearest warriors, his final tinge of grand posture evaporates in fumes of impotent rage. His brow folds to strenuous, beet red. Veins bulge from his neck and forehead, exposing erratic flaying of any dignity. The strain on his throat breaks his voice while issuing bloated execution mandates. Demands death for all the turncoats and cowards following Mordaunt. Croaks orders never to be carried out, given the circumstance. Yet he would not release control even as the rigid, unbending edges of his grip on reality bleed. The odors of his decaying mental vapors alienate those around him as their faith melts away.

The emperor’s verbal retinue regresses to crude insults and rough profanity, flung with futility at Mordaunt. He cast slurs and slights at his soldiers. Whether fled or bled for him. Declares them ‘incompetent morons’, ‘buffoonish babes of brittle bone’, and ‘the slime spawn of witches’ cunnies’ who crumble under the pressures of a real fight. With the forlorn affair of Drakkon’s ranks, his ravings of retribution ring hollow. Lined meekly with the hopeless anger of a hateful man wrangling with his wits.

Unwilling to lay down and die, abandoned by all, he hammers his heart with iron. Charges the enemy front with mindless ferocity. His mindset a vacuous swamp of scorn’s sludge. He swings & stabs wildly, without restrain or care. His rancor outweighing any trace of remorse as he cuts up countless men who once fought for him as comrades. Feral strikes show no compassion reserved for his life, carelessly endangered, or others. Death was his Hand. His arm & bridge to carry him along to its dark country beyond life, where he’d delivered countless souls and would reap many more (including Baron’s) on the course. Adrift upon consummate gales of morbid fortune from the dark caster-cousins of Malderath & her Hels.

A flurry of blades floods the field with haphazard havoc. Both sides break ranks and fall into destitute lunges. Scattered patches of fighting without clear patterns. The sky above shares in their despair. Conceals the sparse pockets of light beaming as beacons over small sections of the gorge. The winter storm overruns much of the day’s dim glow. Blackens the halo of Solaris, tainting its orb to aspect of night. Discord takes the reins of the field and leaves no soul untorn nor body unscarred. In the mayhem, a shattered and jagged bearded axe forces its way towards a gap in the Imperator’s plates from behind.

The reprobate who stabbed between his shoulders, one of his partisans. Who just as swiftly pays for this (not by the blade of the lord he betrayed but) by an arrow shot by a rebel aiming for the man’s mark. The plate and mesh beneath hold the serrated metal mouth off, yet its tiny trident portends torrent of mass confusion sweeping up all. Disorienting spell confounds all until any recognizable form of proper battle is stripped bare. With brother hesitant to engage with his brother. Old friends gaping at one another across clanging swords. Rivals lusting for cathartic duels. Each man clasped to his small world and shrunk to sheer survival. For most, nothing left but to push through the flesh and mettle of the man immediately ahead.

The most resilient Drakoni loyalists carve out a tenuous position at the center by the Andrasil tree. This reverent tree, the only relic of order in the barbarous conflict. A brave scout of near seventeen cycles dares the route to its roots. Sliding from the bridle of his skittering steed, snorting paranoic frenzy and ailing whinnies, this loyal youth delivers to his liege a sparse stockpile of precious powder projectiles. His ephemeral gift to glory that day.

Baron’s battle horn contests the white crests of the dale. His contingent of horsemen dash with haste towards the weakening lines. A brown and cherry wave to wash the Drakes into red tide. Intent on lancing the Lord of Imperium and bringing the battle, already prolonged, to swift end.

Assembled beneath the boughs of the Andrasil the waning Lord fastidiously orders those last few Dragon’s Breath pillars aimed the cavalry. Although they were few the riders still presented a clear advantage against them. Flint strikes the fuses. Discharges the blazing lances. Many of them find their mark, obliterate the advancing aspiring knights. Spitting fire unto the riders, igniting the leather of their uniforms. Frightens what steeds & men were not instantly scorched.

But the rigged-up lines of fiery bolt spitters (ugly projectile-launching contraptions carved with a belligerent sneer in wooden face, in front of its mechanism and had singed Valkingrad with their tongues) prove unpredictable. Just in front of their improvised command post failed to fire properly. Its aborted flight sparked a dangerous new state. These crude contraptions dreamt up by the mind of Albrecht, serving as Primus to Ty-Drasil and Magus ov Imperial arms without slightest snicker or scorn for his utility (abandoning study & healing of the body in favor of warfare engineering), not so infallible as espoused.

The fickle fuse burns back into itself, misfiring disastrously. The blast kills the operator of the fyre-missile and sends his seared palms into the air. Tosses Drakkon and many defenders backwards. Ash and charcoal exhaust coat the area with profuse pitch-black ether. The discharge crumples Drakkon’s chest plate like parchment. Caves it in and crushes his air passage. He rasps and wheezes amidst smoke as he claws at the broken, burdensome armor to shuffle it off. The bright white, azure, and gold insignia on the plate, completely wiped by the corrosion. No trace of the imperial star of storm. The color black with ash.

“Your legacy will be one of ash and despair.” Baron’s curse burns through the barriers in his brain with painful clarity. All as cinders spit up into the branches of the tree, igniting them in a less than miraculous glow. He struggles there beneath shower of burning boughs until a nearby footman helps him remove the shattered armour and assists him in rising to his feet. Drakkon prays his ribcage hadn’t shattered though it felt so. Though to what gods he prayed he no longer knew. How could he beseech those of the high pantheon for help when he stole their glory to cloak himself? Was it luck he prayed to, or a universal current carrying chance and guiding all through some subtle undertow? No matter, the desperation and reflection pass in the smoke.

Through the smoggy haze a figure in cherry-brown jack plate appears upon steed of mist. Cutting through the thinned strips of imperial guard, and zealously scouring the gray hill for his challenger. Drakkon faces this contender, drawn to clash by the drawstrings of insidious determinism. This rival, none other than Baron himself. His glare burns by fuel of loathsome malice. No penitence from the one nor fluttering of intent in the other’s eyes.

The rebel skald’s swift storm of dodges flew by in slow motion as their engagement struck. Every swipe stretched over an incomprehensible length. Drakkon’s mind was not to be found in the present either for an odd and irritable dissociation had taken him. None of it felt real. A construct of nefarious destiny or Saatharian sham to soon fade. Half-seeking severance from his form. Through this cyclone the present reeled him in. He witnessed his obsidian blade shatter the steel challenging his to continue carving down, to skewer shoulder & slice through the sinews of the bard’s body. Yet his command fell flat midway, the blade stalling with capricious smirk.

Ready to strike the killing blow and close this dreadful chapter, the Helwinds deny Drakkon. Wings of fate flap about Baron, their speed his mantle. The breeze of battle whips him from the path of the blade. Phantom clasps arrest the sword ov imperium. A ghostly whisper blows through the emperor’s core. Faint and distant at first, it escalates to ethereal wail striking from dimension beyond this. A cyclone of disembodied voices whirls about his head. Their wordless chorus splits his chords inside, exposes him by haunting lilt. The vapors of powder explosion bury his fallen blade. A phalanx of wraiths encompasses him. Manifest from residue of misfire & misrule.

An abominable apparition arises from this phantasmal wall. A specter of colossal stature, its shadowy body the lingering smoke. Soon the smog rears a ghastly head, bearing a crown of great spiked horns. A vision of one long dead… Kassan! Father! Above this vision another incorporeal specter appears, impending over the ghastly antlered skull. The looming image of his mother, whose revenant claims the air over his head. Joins with it. Azarra’s astral messenger, as mistress of the netherworld, born of sulfur scent & bearing the Scepter of erosion.

Her phantasm extends arms to him with neither scorn nor succor. The clamor ceases, the world goes deaf. Her gaping jaw pours crescendo of ashen lament. Voice of horror sends his spine into shock. Her will, unrelenting, chains him, even from the gulf of distance or afterlife. Her spindling threads tether him to psychotic paralysis as the flesh of his father’s face melts to ursine skull. Azarra’s aurora divides the dreary air, streaming sapphire & emerald bolts into her son’s eyes, blinding him to all but the haze of their hue. Cataracts of blighting curse.

A lonely blade, his own slices through the spectral curtain about him and exorcises daemonic shroud with steel. Reveals the cold, critical reality cutting into him. Baron’s triumph bites into him while bewitched by wraiths, taken in trance. Drakkon’s befuddled sense too slow to parry to the blow. His shambled tunic, slashed. A bloody ravine across his chest. The Lord repels back to the snowy ground, wounds spilling stains. Fingers claw at the snow. Fists digs into the texture to anchor staggered self to earth. Clamoring up to the trunk of the Andrasil.

But Baron must’ve hesitated or else his fading hastened, for the edge failed to be fatal. He slashed when should’ve stabbed. The bard faltered, stumbling his chance. The reddish-brown of his armor concealed much of the injuries, hiding blood with its hue. Yet they were minor compared to those of the marred lord, who wrestled with want to let this final stake strike his coil to the tree and shed the darkness all around. But this fatal thrust never came. The star-blade disobeyed its passing master, or else heard command of mercy. For the sword flung not into head of regal pretender but to the ground near the ailing grip of it’s true master. Eyeless hands shambled to find the hilt as the color of the present flashed to form. Yet the great blade felt too heavy to wield even with sight returning.

“Let this maimed pride scar over and heal you of that sickly hubris.” The warrior poet’s words shivered with the branches above. “Stay down till you can renounce that burdensome crown. If you should rise, do so as a man, humbled. Or else rot as a defeated demigod.”

As the wispy ocean ebbed from his lids Drakkon saw the skald clutching his heart, having spent it in second wind, before vanishing amid smoke and trailing mist. “I must raise one last fyrd. This sword is shattered but our lot is not lost. I wish not to rally arms over your tomb but to hunt the manticore, Mordaunt, and save our Corinna.”

Drifting back against the trunk of the Andrasil, Drakkon glimpsed how few of the Protectorate revolt remained. Yet the faith of his loyalist had waned, and few gave chase to fight for a fallen lord. As he let fall the curtains of his eyes, abandoning all awareness, ruin seized the field…

Ashen Winds

After the battle

The bite of the breeze nibbled on open wounds. The icy squalls gnawed at tender lesions. His hands clutched his chest setting his greaves against the bleeding wound which pours out into the snows which drank up the sanguine flood like wine and became drunk on his pain. Bellows of agony instinctually left him, limping to the center of the hilltop to beset his eyes over the field. Scanning the tumbledown field, he found it littered with corpses strewn about all within sight. Birds of carrion long circling above in the darkening skies chose this as their hour. They swooped down in mass to pick upon the flesh of the dead without discrimination.

Gargling whimpers of maimed men, laid out on the ground. Friends mourn, some even offer weeping comfort as they pass. Yet many now kneel beside men not of their own camp but rather mates and kin who had taken up arms against each other. Charged by their commanders to spill the blood of their lines, beset in vain opposition to one another. The tainted white-gilt standard of the Drakoni forces and the red brown of the People’s Protectorate blend in morbid unity. Nothing but Death hailed that day. The bonds of allegiance, as mutilated as the bodies about the holy tree.

A few survivors on either side flew to the cover of the woods. Drakkon’s howl echoed in ailing winds and over the ears of the dead. At the side of the hill stirred a contingent of Drakoni warriors, among the last. Despair was written on their expressions with more clarity than words could say. He rose his body with his sword and bellowed to them.

“To me! To me!” Desperation and the pale grip of the cold travelled with his cry and many a man in the surviving rank shook their head in silent protest while they contemplated amongst themselves the next move. Only a single young scout chose to hear to his plea and approach the charred tree. Few had fight or hope still in them. The rest turned their back on their former master and fled into the woods. From fury of the firmament.

“I require assistance! Aid thy emperor!” His breath and speech, sparser than stern. So hoarse & hollow, carrying none of the spirit which once rallied them to him. “Carry me back will thee? We must find Corinna; she may heal me. Nay, return to Windhand. Mordaunt - the fell knight - betrays me. Tis he who designed this day’s destruction by fleeing the field… As such I-I demand his execution!” Blood seeped from side of his mouth, deadening vicious voice.

But there was nothing to siphon loyalty from the last who, spying his condition, sensed that it was he who had been betrayed. Seeing his lord leak from wound of mortal arm the boyish man sliced a pact of flight in different form. Tearfully falling from faith onto his sword, that shame split his stomach. His imperator lacked the fortitude to admonish, let alone stop, this shedding departure. Why live on when your god rots before you?

His limbs tremor uncontrollably, and his stature sloops against ashen stump. His shade, a ghastly pale, casting morbid aspect & showing him frail. My cause is abandoned… All the songs of earth & wind so baleful to me. This ruination is what I sowed as my destiny. To think that I thought myself a god! Upraised on a shrine above and before all the world to be but a playground for my fantasies! But Baron was right. I tightened my grip so harshly over the reins that I now rule over nothing but a graveyard! All I heralded with this ‘Living Aeon’ was evermore strife. A ‘glorious’ grave of godhood & glut for dominion.

I cannot even blame Mother. My ear yearned for her falsity; my faith fevered for her dream of dogma. What am I without that delusion? A ghost. A faint shadow beneath the doorstep, soon to be obscured by greater dark. I am nothing! I should crawl into the deepest hole and hope that all remembrance of my existence be buried with me. In this, final hour, his ghost saw the gaping maw of infinity open wide. In scope of that sepulcher snout how laughably small he was.

No signs of life appear across the site. Silence culls every cry, the souls that uttered them devoid of life or faraway fled. Flames & foul mist of forlorn fighting, snuffed by Snowcrest blanket. Drakkon stood among terrible disquietude. Shivering, awaiting the end of his vain candle. The torn flesh beneath tattered garb, gushes out sympathy for the dead. Yet he bled envy for them, and fears for the fate of the living. Those who would inherit the vestige of his legacy.

This necropolis of rotting flesh and glazed over eyes no longer seen as people. These sapped souls, no longer recognizable as fixtures of his life, his ailing sway, but seemed effigies of all selves he could have been without being bound to gross godhead. & paintings, blighted by those reins of feeble storm croon. Mocking delirium pervades. The legions of crows treating themselves to the eyes of the fallen laugh at his expense. The only creatures grateful to him, hailing them as a friend for this lordly feast. Their gratitude expressed by saving his carrion for desert, as the blistered base of the Andrasil tree. Burnt saplings fell beside premonitions of blizzard.

Slowly his weary lids start to fall. All vision, coated with sweat and sobs. The bawling of the towering whiteout drowns out these sickly sniffles. In his mind’s eye: picturesque scene of wheat field & garden grove gaining clarity, changing shape under his curtains. Oh! To be anything but that which I am! To forsake the ruin, I wrought on to all I ever knew. To be anything but this. Awareness of the self that I possess tortures me! What could I be another life, another world untouched by the blight of this being? To be a simple farmer far away. Tending to his pastures and to the care of my love. To occupy my mind with mere contentment of a nice breeze and sweet caress. To graze that graine of another life, field abundant with humble beauty. To fill my lungs with the aroma of love, to kiss her and brim with glow of infinity in smallest joys. To warm my limbs by the fire, with her at my side.

His conscious attention drifts into this sphere of fantasy, but cold reality snatches him back. His heart splinters as memories wind through its yarns. Impressions of the horror he’d imposed on this world brands his inner mind. His sobbing renews. He curses his blind ambition that drove him to this doom. Waits for the caress of death and whatever it may bring. If it brought anything.

Snare of crowing gloom snaps at pounding of hooves. Living fate reverberates steps upon that steed, stirs him from the wintry red sheet covering his soul. Through watery veil of tears and congeal blood his focus strains a figure riding toward him with immense haste and intent. The rider, cloaked in the shade of snows and ethereal pace, races against the windstorm.

The steed, bounding over white-gray sea, wore emblem of his sign. Though this detail flashed no hope for he knew he no friends nor fanatics left to carry him out of this wretched hole. The great, corroded, tree behind him groans, semblance of waning enchantment. As undying as the man resting against its ruin, who steers his sloping chin to see this visitor or avenger.

The face was too distant to make out. And white visor concealed the visage of mounted apparition. Aspect paler than the wraith webs wreathing his wits. Drakkon’s eyelids seal and again the gentle waft of dreaming golden meadow blows into his soul.