Month: November 2015

Demons

~ bwbodie ~ Leave a comment

Demons

Remember these words my child, for this is the story of our people, and this is the story of how we were ended.

We lived here on the earth for many years, growing strong – sometimes growing wise – and all the while spreading across our mother planet’s surface. We learned to fly great kites of bronze and fire across the skies. We could touch the moon and her sister the sun. An age of peace lasting a thousand-thousand years dwelt upon us. We could heal the sick, stave off the scythe of Death. We ate food till we grew fat like slugs, and such wonders and pleasures we knew that happiness gave way to boredom.
Towers of glass and steel were built, stretching into the sky so tall that the gods themselves moved away, giving us more room. Such was our might that we rivaled the divine.

That is why the demons came.

It happened without warning, great castles of steel descended from the stars. They spoke to us, begged us for parlay, mistaking us for the gods due to our strength. We were such fools, full of hubris and arrogance. They traded us for our secrets, and for all the good we gave them they returned wickedness. We gave them the cures to sickness, and in return we received plagues. We showed them that we could love, and in return they provoked our hate. We taught them of our gods, and in return they built idols unto themselves. We showed them our mightiest warriors, and in return they clad themselves in dark armor, their faces shining with single golden eyes. We showed them our fields of plenty, and in return they sewed thorns and poisons.

It was only some months when our great chieftans decided they could no longer stay, that the castles in the sky had become ominous, haunting our dreams. The spirit world, the voice of our old gods still spoke to us, telling us to rid ourselves of these demons. The demons wanted nothing of it, insisting that we turn over our holy earth to them, for the great beads of glass and the black-blood beneath her trees. If only we had listened. If only we had said “No.”

They bled the earth, spreading corrosion and pestilence wherever they went. Fish died, birds flew away, and the beasts of the field and forest were slaughtered by the dozens, the flesh-eaters amongst the demons slaking their thirst and hunger in meat and blood. Even our sacred beasts that no-one could touch became nothing more than a casual meal to their soulless gullets, while their equally heartless machines ate the trees themselves, belching smoke and rancid gas.

The demons struck first, slaying our great chieftans. Their horrors knew no bounds, and they killed all tribes, all colors, and all ages. Our warriors fought back, hurling spears like lightning. But the demons’ armor repelled them, and their swords clapped with thunder, shredding flesh from bone. The castles in the sky opened up a rain of stones upon us, hellfire streamed from the skies, and they hurled their own spears like flaming hail.

Horrors were known by us that we will never see again, and we are thankful. Our people flayed alive for their study, our children raised as animals in cages for their entertainment. Our food was turned
against us, poisoned by their taint. They shackled us, pitted us against animals in their pits, and sometimes against each other. They set their beasts upon us, monsters the demons had enslaved from other worlds, taught to consume our flesh.

The demons moved faster than our bronzed fire-kites, riding their own wicked winged steeds. Their claws shred stone from steel, their mouths spat venom that blinded us, burned our eyes out with snake-tongues. They commanded fire and steel like a parent does a child. We fell in droves. When our warriors died, the women took up the call, only to be culled like cattle. Then our babes were dashed on their swords, and the demons laughed, mocked us.

We made our final stand in the charred hollows that had once been our greatest forests, jungles that thrummed with the life-essence of a thousand thousand trees and their children, the beasts that dwelt
there. We prayed in circles, like in the days of old. Many came together that night. Dark and light, young and old, zealot and free-spirit. Our love destroyed hate in that moment, and the demons retreated to their steel-fortresses in the sky. We had such celebration! We drank wine and danced in the starlight. We had won! Love had destroyed the universe’s greatest evil!

We were wrong.

The greatest horror then presented itself: the demons summoned pillars of poisonous fire. Columns of Hell stretched to the sky, taller than our mirror-towers and churning the sky black with venomous ash that poisoned with the great-eater. Know their sign: the death-cap mushroom made of smoke and hate made manifest, the truest expression of these demons’ nature ever presented forth. It was a death-sentence for our people, and all life on this world.

Now as the Eternal winter draws closer, I know we as a people are doomed. Great machinations of steel-flesh and starlight-eyes churn forth the prizes for the demons. The slaves made of metal heed the
endless hunger of their masters for planet-souls. The oceans have boiled away, long ago becoming barren and drier than mud. The demons themselves rove the ash-dunes in packs, hunting us down wherever we hide. Most of their castles are gone, or hiding in the endless clouds of soot that roll across our once beautiful blue sky.

I tell you these things with hope that you live, that some day you will not make the same mistakes we made. Do not fall to hubris. Do not fill yourself with arrogance. Do not trust the things called Humans. Do not trust the things called Man. They are the demons that did this to us, and they cannot be stopped.

Strom’s Hate

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Strom’s Hate

They were the last of their troops, and from opposite armies. The wind passed cold and bitter through the fields of tall grass around them, carrying hungry crows in lazy circles above the golden waves. They stared at one another with tired arms and burning lungs, the red wash of a blood-skirmish all around them. Strom’s detachment from the main Vilharthan expedition had sought to scout for more Median forces high in the mountains that locked their homeland in its fertile valley, but instead all of them had fallen prey to roving mercenaries under the prince’s employment. The battle had been long and fruitless, every swordsman put down by someone better or more opportunistic on either side, until just two remained: Strom, and the nameless warrior in front of him.

The other warrior was tall and terrifying. Wrapped in thick cords of muscle with skin burned leathery-brown by the suns of the south, and no longer wearing armor except scars and a horned helm that obscured his face. His long hair hung loose beneath its metal. The warrior’s broadsword had been broken, and his shield dashed to ribbons before his mail-shirt was shredded.  He stood lazily picking ringlets of iron from a shallow gash in his shoulder, his cleaved blade in his non-sword arm. Strom already hated him.

Strom grimaced beneath his own helm and readied his sword and kite-shield. While they were both yards from one another he was indifferent to slaying another man despite the war, least of all a paid fighting man who sought no ideal save the gleam of gold and the prizes it could buy him. A sour taste filled the Vilharthan’s mouth, and he glowered across the ring of trampled wheat beneath bodies and blood. Strom decided he could make an exception.

He had long held that the most ruthless and hate-filled won in war, and Strom knew of no person more capable of anger or violence than himself. It’s why he’d made sergeant, and why he’d stayed that rank rather than become a captain or join the cavalry. Hate let one best one’s enemies, but one had to temper hate with those that deserved it, and any who challenged Strom deserved it.

“It seems we are both routed,” Strom called out to the man, “Your captain cannot vouch for your pay, nor can I return to my own forces without accusation of desertion and cowardice. If we lay down arms, at least we can scrounge the battlefield and use what we find to last the night.”

The helmed stranger gave no words in return, but bent low to retrieve a shield from a fallen comrade, and a blade from one of Strom’s dead allies. Strom cheered inside his bitter mind, glad for a final opponent, but decided to see if the stranger would take the easy route.

“We don’t have to do this you know. It’s easy. My army is dead and so is yours, there is nothing left for us except to move on.”

With ominous silence the stranger strode forward, brass-greaved boots stalking up the hill and over corpses, his red sash moving in the wind like a crimson waterfall that was played with by the breeze, staining the earth below it with its color. Strom’s heart grew bitter with anger, and he hated all that was around him: the earth, the grass, the crows, the dead, but most of all he hated the stranger. He hated his silence. He hated his commitment to the slaughter. He hated his skill or luck or whatever had led to his survival. He hated the color of his clothes and the color of his skin and his immunity to the damnable cold. Strom tightened his grip on his blade and drew up his shield as the warrior strode closer.

The silent stranger pointed at the ground with his sword, motioning for Strom to lay down his arms. The Vilharthan snorted.

“Surely you jest? You expect me to lay down my sword while you stand armed. I think not. Answer and promise that we’ll have peace and I’ll sheathe my blade.”

The stranger did not answer, only lowered the gaze of his fierce helm to the direction of Strom’s feet. Strom’s hate grew stronger, and his adrenaline pumped harder in his veins. He steeled his mind against the battle to come, wickedly greedy for more violence.

“Very well. If I am to die, let it at least be by my own people!”

And with that he lashed out at the stranger, bringing his sword in with a massive overhand chop that would cleave a man to his sternum. The blow met the buckle of the silent stranger’s shield, sparking in the air as he swung at his helm with the edge of his shield, bringing it around in a huge hook. The stranger stepped back, raising his sword to catch the blow while shoving forward with his shield to disengage Strom’s forearm. His moves were lazy, tired — as were Strom’s — the signs of the combat before showing in their sluggard movements.

Panting, Strom focused his anger and stabbed forward, the point of his sword meeting the wood of the warrior’s shield, the sword warped, bent, and he quickly pedaled backwards. The warrior’s own broadsword came down to ring hard and heavy against the metal edge of Strom’s shield, sending numbing vibrations through his arm. Steel sprang back into shape as Strom pulled his blade free, sending a fist sized chunk of painted wood flying, and he roared as he leapt forward with a sideways swipe. The red helmed warrior ducked low, readying to pounce, and raised his shield, punching the sword out wide and sprang forward with his own stab. Strom brought the kite-shield up just in time.

Steel rang on steel, and the two warriors slipped in the mud made from blood and earth, tumbling down through the waist-high plains. End over end they went, Strom cursing and hating the whole way down, until at last they crashed into a rock, Strom’s own armor absorbing the blow as he threw the helmeted stranger off into the grass. Strom’s head swam, and the Vilharthan warrior struggled to make his head aware of his surroundings. There in the grass next to him, he saw the pommel of the broadsword the silent stranger had dropped, like a ball of steel in an ocean of gold, his hand swept out and caught the leather-wrapped handle, and he pushed himself to his feet. At last he’d end this damned wretch here and now!

Two feet of crimson stained steel pushed through Strom’s stomach as the stranger ran his own sword through his back. He felt a hand on his shoulder through the white-heat of pain, and there was a jolt of force as the stranger pushed harder and put it to the hilt through his middle.

Strom fell to his knees and coughed up blood, his head growing light as the warrior came around, lifting his helmet from his head. His face was a crag of a thing, worn and scarred, pocked by plague or acne, two smoldering dark eyes beneath long brown hair. Across his throat was a bright white line, a scar of considerable age and depth, as though his throat had been slit, or he’d been hung. Realization stung at Strom’s heart as hard as the blade in his belly, and he tried to choke an apology to the warrior in front of him. Instead, he just spat out wads of scarlet phlegm. Hatred, so long an ally in war, had blinded him, and now he paid the price for his over-reliance on wrath.

The mute warrior lifted Strom’s broadsword from the earth, and turned to face Strom as tunnel-vision began to set in. Strom felt the chill of steel on his neck, like he was being knighted, or shaving without water. He tried to fill his lungs, but he couldn’t move his chest.

“Do it.” he rasped.

And all went dark.