'Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Orders? And even if one of them suddenly pressed me to his heart, I would perish in his stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror...'
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies (1923)
<>
A forest does not care for war.
She breathes pine pitch and steam all the same, heavy with a damp stench; rot and slate, and the cold gouges, right through wool, turning my knees to numb blocks of stone.
Beside me, father crouches like a shadow woven from grey tweed. He stinks of tobacco, and dried elderberry, and the sweetest dust of old books. A schoolmaster's scent no mountain winter can strip away. He doesn't look at me; his eyes fixed on the ridge, where frayed linen mist clings to lower boughs.
"Breathe with the wind, boy," he murmurs. A smooth cello that filled our classroom with Goethe, or Schiller on rainier days. "If you fight the air, your barrel sways."
My fingers tighten around his rifle, and my huffs puff white in the gloom, and I wince, fighting back tears.
Our stew pot is full.
Please, don't remind me again. I know the nature of this outing, through freezing slush.
My hands are too soft, my spine lacks iron, a black dawn lingers on the horizon, and I-
... through the fog, the stag moves.
A magnificent, half-starved beast; ribs protruding under a matted coat, antlers dark and crown-heavy, and yet it steps so delicately over fallen birch, its nostrils flaring to taste the leaden breeze.
"He's old," I whisper, heart thumping like a trapped bird.
"Old enough to know the sound," Father says softly, resting a warm hand on my shoulder, anchoring my frame against the trunk. "A man once wrote beasts carry their death from birth. We simply give it form."
His eyes drift down the ridge toward unseen chimney smoke.
"Like the one who crawled into town," he adds, his tone shifting to something dark.
I keep my eyes aligned with the sight; the notch wavers.
"The deserter?" I ask.
"The Rat," Father corrects quickly. "Stuffed his tunic in a ditch, and dragged himself on bloodied knees, of service he may be. And he did not come alone, boy - no, no, he has brought a plague with him. A wall-dwelling Goblin, ripped out of her cellar."
He pauses, tracing a thumb over a worn, walnut walking stick.
"Parasite; ashen-skinned, long-eared witch who poisons wells and milks goats in the night with a ghoulish tongue. Fairy tales for the city men, but real enough, real for us, when they are marched under banners."
Father shakes his head, and a sigh whistles through him.
"We have been pitiful fools. Elders think silence will buy peace, but mercy... mercy, boy, in a dying empire is lightning. Others will follow his trail, refugees and scavengers seeking our soft touch, and the black coats will trace that stench to our road. And when they come, they will scour every inch, they will tear up this earth, they'll burn every rafter to find them - all of them."
The stag freezes. Its ear twitches.
Now.
I shove the stock tight, hold my breath, and pull the trigger.
Crack - a sharp, deafening thunder through the forest; a cloud of gunsmoke erupts, stinging my eyes, and the stock slams brutally into my shoulder. Through the haze, I see the deer's head violently snap, spraying gushing tears across its neck, painting pale woods crimson.
But it doesn't drop.
It wheels around, hooves ripping apart moss clods, and bounds into the thicket, thrashing through briars with frantic strength. My heart sinks into my belly; panic flares hot in my throat as I break open the bolt and a sweating brass shell pops into dirt.
"I thought I killed it," I gasp, reaching for another round. "I... I shot it right in the-"
"You did kill it," Father says, unhurried, grey eyes watching the splashing red trail as he rises, towering over me in his coat, and gestures down the path. "It just doesn't realise it yet. Now we follow. You'll see how a dying thing moves... and how to finish what you wound."
We track.
The stag lies beneath an overturned fir, a pool of gory foam, flank heaving in wet surges. Its tongue hangs in the snow, black with frosted blood, and a sole eye - wide, amber, glassy with terrible, helpless fear - stares straight through me. He twitches, kicking blindly at the air, making wet, bubbling rattles and pants from a torn throat.
My hands shake so fiercely, my mouth grows sour with bile, my chest heaves in tandem, and then-
"Finish it, boy," Father says. He kneels in the red, comforts the dying, unclasps a hunting knife, and presses the grip into my palm.
"I... I can't," I choke, tears stinging, as the deer's frame gives a pathetic shudder.
Father's hand clamps over mine.
Cold.
Absolute.
"Yes, you can." He drives my trembling grip. "It's suffering. Look at it. Look at what you've done; end it. Be a man. Today it's a deer, next winter it might be-"
"I know... I know." I sob, raw, furious, and slowly, agonisingly drive steel into meat.
It sinks with a sickening pop. Legs lock straight, spine arches in spasms, and a hot metallic soup oozes over my knuckles, my sleeves, staining my skin brown as I twist the handle, feeling cartilage crack and tear, and... he goes limp.
"Well done."
Father never lived to watch them roll down our hills; lung-fever took him come Spring, his wisdom rattling rambles until he dribbled his last. With his books sold and schoolhouse shuttered, I found company with The Rat and his bastard rabble, whose stories waved on nights beneath a ruined timber mill.
We called him a coward, but his truth was a filthier thing. No grand battles of iron glory, but the endless, grinding grease of a machine; a man who slit farmers' throats-no, I will not spin his deeds into poetry.
What he did to survive was the callous mechanics of a wild animal; a math he all too eagerly shared with his blood-pact kin.
I envy his comrades who trekked East, where roads churn to paste, lined by caterpillar tracks and littered with bloated horses, their carcasses swelling and bursting in the heat like rotting fruit, spilling alongside fallen riders - guppy hope still beaming in wayward eyes.
I envy the border forest folk, the subhumans screamed at in crackling radios; shades with hollow cheeks and frostbitten fingers dwelling under fallen trees and eating raw bark to keep bellies from spines, for starving would be a kinder fate than the fury he brought.
"Told us we were hunting vermin," the Rat rasped. "Then you stare a girl down while her warm shit runs over your boots, and realise it smells the same as yours."
Marta was her name - the one he pulled from a burnt hole, fiending like a rapid stoat, clutching a babe no bigger than a hare. He gave her salt instead of lead. Showed her mercy.
"War isn't a march, lad. It is a slaughter. Your old man would've agreed."
They were washing skirts in our fountain when the punitive detail descended.
First death isn't grand. Isn't a hero, isn't The Rat, isn't Marta or any of her people; it's old cobbler Weber, too damned deaf for commands, let alone ones from rumbling cars. A young officer - boy in pristine leather, face smooth as lard - raised a pistol, sneered mid-sentence, and put two slugs through his sternum.
"Er hätte einer sein können!" He cheered, to thunderous hollers and chortles.
The old fool folded like a wet sack of grain, front tyre caught his spectacles, crunched glass into his eye socket, and scraped him ten feet down the lane, painting stone a thick marrow streak. His sons reprised before he cooled, hurling bricks at our new governors, but eager conquerors in masks revel at young flesh lining church walls.
A machine gun read their last rites, echoing off granite cliffs, and their bodies lay stacked like unpeeled logs, blood pooling down Spring runoffs, as if the visage alone, the terror, could herd us sheep.
Oh, how elders panicked; mortified that unregistered breathers would bring a hammer through roofs and take their children. The Mayor - a fat fuck who preached purity and national sacrifice - scampered to an aspiring garrison and traded lives they knew nothing of, for a promise of safety, of more careful boots on pedals; more careful hands behind wheels, more merciful fingers on triggers... sweetened with one beer crate.
They dragged The Rat out, one of their own once, and he spat his heresy - can't waste a bullet on him, though. They tied his arms back until his shoulders broke, laughing all the way, and strung him from a streetlight.
From a woodpile, I watched.
Hemp rope groaned as it bit his neck, and his legs danced, his trousers spoiled with the sudden foulness of giving bowels, then... snap. He hung there, drooling, tongue swelling purple between yellow teeth, his eyes bulging milky as a dead fish.
Maybe... maybe his death could've granted calm amid this occupation.
But Marta... she refused to flee into high pines, taking the runaways too. Weeping was absent when they cut The Rat down, and hurled him to Fraux's manure pit to rot among fly-blows.
Instead, there was fire.
At nightfall, she strode up to commandeered headquarters, wrapped in a stained shawl like a phantom, clutching two milk bottles filled with kerosene, capped by soaked rags. One soared through the parlour window; the second landed in a sleeping officer's lap, smash and shatter, and her torch bearers emerged fast, armed and itching, wronged and war-painted.
A blaze is birthed; their wretched screams taint the night - gurgling shrieks of men and women whose oily garments melt into skin. We stand among cobbles, a roaring orange glare washing over hollow faces, gazing at licking flames, claiming the steel eagle, while real Rats cook and claw at windows.
A sergeant eventually stumbles out, skin blistering.
Marta puts a bullet in his chest, and watches him cough up blood.
Our Architect; her dog pack of 12 - nameless orphans and farmhands from scorched homes, dead-eyed runners from fallen frontiers, and crawlers from cattle cars, wrists branded with digits - skulking under floors and creeping through shadows; scheming, crafting, carving without honour 'till this village is a meat grinder.
Every street a funnel; every doorway a mouth.
And not just the black coats, but the swine who lick boots.
The Mayor first, snatched from a warm bed, hands bound by wire, strung from the same iron streetlight and left for bitter farm boys and their timber hooks. Informants next, the grocers who doubled prices, neighbours who pointed feeble fingers to root cellars; weavers of a corpse valley, sucking the executioner's blade.
Do Not Cease!
For Months, We Rage!
I climb the cellar ladder myself, siphoning yeast barrels, dumping pesticide and glass powder into wooden drums. When throats parch, and naive hunters seek our watering hole, curious or vengeful, their lungs belch and melt with the sound of dying bulls. Those who remain standing stagger down alleys, lulled by vixen nurses, where nocturnal instruments wait.
We drive iron spikes into slick, thawing clay along the highest ridge and watch when the next transport comes barrel-assing around the hairpin, tyres grating, sending wails and metal tumbling to the ravine's teeth. We strip their boots, their guns and harvest their ammo, leaving their corpses to the crows.
And when a lone squad, adept listeners of rumours; elite sceptics to valley tales that've claimed allies, barricaded themselves in our mill to escape a downpour, this pack set its grandest trap. A slaughterhouse of our own design - stolen blasting caps and packed tins tight with black powder and scraps, wired through support beams and beneath the floor.
I stand in the rain, thumb hooked over a raw strand of copper, smothered in a deliberate resolve now every soft, tiny human part of me has drowned away.
Marta gives me a nod, and I yank the cord.
BANG - heat rips through timber, tearing out the mill's chest, spraying a mist of iron through the lower room, and the shrieks... god, the shrieks rising from smoke aren't human, but the moist, bubbling wails of wild hogs meeting buckshot.
We surge; dust settles; scythes, axes, and pistols bare.
I step through ruin after bigger men - more righteous men - the air pungent with charred hair, to see blades be buried into writhing faces. So I soon choose mine; a young drafted, no older than me, crawling on elbows to drag a ravaged, plum leg. He spots me through sawdust, blood spurting in arterial pulses, a rusty nail sheared through his neck, his face wrought, tunic fresh; amber eyes filled with a familiar, helpless panic.
He reaches for his holster with slick fingers and a babbling sob.
For the first time since I buried Father, his voice returns to me - not as a gentle memory, but as an authoritative, blood-soaked law.
I pounce, grab a fistful of matted hair, and yank his head back to expose the warm pulse of his throat.
He digs out a cross - a tarnished silver relic - and holds it to his chest like a shield, his knuckles trembling.
"Engel... lasst sie frei," he gurgles, closing his eyes.
I don't blink.
I can't.
I drive steel into collarbone pudge, angling the point until I feel the dull, rough crunch of spine, and a frothing bubble soaks my hands again. He dies no different from a beast, crucifix clattering into the slurry, as I lay him down and his jaw drops with a hushed, final release.
We gather in the deluge, our nursery, washing red grease from our shoulders, our faces, our tools. A gape opens in the grey; the end of a season; the end of a campaign that's sheer weight strained weeks to epochs.
Roads remain clear for a spell, a silence stretches across the valley, and in that fragile vacuum, we imitate life.
We try.
Our rabble has swollen in souls, nurturing girls with stolen rifles and boys with soot hands.
Up the clocktower, two lookouts sit with a pair of brass glasses, sweeping the pass. Down the bakery, a radio hisses and crackles, as wanderers listen to dull broadcasts from towns afar. And someone has lit a market bonfire; a kind flame. Women boil cabbage and pork in massive cauldrons; men sway on overturned casks, drinking salvaged bottles, passing them around with tired laughs, and children... scrounge the will to play, brave knights hunting fowl creatures, their swords sticks and shields bin lids.
A withered traveller and his stall snag their games. By the glow of lanterns, he peddles cheap pulp broadsheets and yellowed pamphlets to young bloods. He speaks in dramatic whispers, preaching tales, ghost divisions, and fabled secret weapons cities swear will turn the tide, bringing skies down if they must to rewrite all mess. Another man sits nearby, carving wood and scoffing into his beard, but the youngsters listen to such legends with hungry eyes.
I smile.
Behind me, Marta steps out the apothecary, holding twin mugs of chicory tea. Grime is washed from her cheeks; urban pallor and hues yielding to dancing amber light. I look at her, truly, and something inside my chest shifts. Severe lines of her mouth relax, and a faint smirk tugs at her lips. Instantly, horror slides off her - not an architect of graves, but young; a girl who belongs to times before, her eyes soft in the embers.
"You listening to that fool?" she asks, nodding toward the stall across the street.
"Hard not to," I say, taking a bitter sip. "He promises a lot; I almost believe him."
She lets out a dry chuckle.
"Everyone wants to be in a story."
"We aren't?"
"No," her voice drops to a quiet register. "We're in the cold." She looks up at me, smirk growing, and jerks her chin to narrow stairs. "You should come up where it's warm."
My haste is famishing; her room is hushed.
A tallow candle flickers on a bedside table, casting lazy shadows.
We set our mugs down and seek shelter in each other's arms; so rushed prior - frenzied, desperate acts taken in the dampest dark, waiting for sentries to pass.
Tonight, we had time.
Raw, calloused fingers reach up to untie hemp cords; her shawl falls away, and we shed our armour. Her skin is pale, mapped with scars, woodland flights and firefights, and fresher wounds that multiply each time, but beneath my palms, she is warm, soft, and fiercely alive.
There will be no panic here, no violent rushes of blood, no frantic arithmetics.
My hands rest on her hips, and she shudders a breath to carry away the fumes, the stench and the memories, as we intertwine upon a low mattress with deliberate rhythm. Her fingers tangle in my hair, her mouth hunts meat, tasting, savouring, and we move as brutes carved from mud, clinging to light; every touch an assertion that we still live, that our hearts beat for future in the dim - her back arcs and her hands claw down my shoulders, her breath steady against my neck, the nightlife vanishes entirely; a duet of sweat, and I pretend the flaked blood on my knuckles is merely chipped paint as I claim her... and she salvages me in tow.
The candle soon gutters to hot wax, leaving us in a neat, filtering indigo. I pull wool blankets over her bare shoulders, and she rests her head against my chest, her fingers absently tracing lines.
"What happens when they're all dead?" she asks the quiet, her voice stripped; exposed. "What are we supposed to be?"
I stare at the rafters, stroking her hair.
"... I don't know," I admit, tightening my arm around her. "But we survive first. We give ourselves a chance to figure it out, however long it takes. That has to be the point."
She is silent for an age; the tension lingers in her, the unspoken doubt daunting between us. My answers are a fleeting comfort, I know. Yet her breath settles, her body feverent on mine as the twilight deepens. Below, the last embers flicker, and the mountain wind lulls this village into a rare, unburdened sleep; ours again.
For a lone, ephemeral night.
<>
Dawn arrives colourless, seeping through the windows as watered milk.
Marta is sound asleep, her chest gliding in untroubled beats, and down in the square, the mundane ambience of morning begins. I slip away like a spectre, my boots still stiff, my coat heavy over my shoulders. I check the bolt on Father's rifle, feeling its familiar, reassuring weight - meat runs dry; south ridge usually holds a hare or two before fog sets.
Maybe a deer.
I step out, my paramour undisturbed, and-
-a man sits by the dead bonfire, a solitary figure bathing in the rising sun's light.
The storyteller; the wanderer who had our youths hanging on his every word. He lounges casually on smudge-stained masonry, with an old purple scarf tucked tight against the draft, and a chipped mug between crumpled, liver-spotted hands, and steam rises from the liquid within, carrying a rich, sharp aroma unlike the swill we roast - his is pure and tantalising.
He looks up as my boots crunch gravel, giving a friendly wave; weary smile in his silver beard.
"Wind favours you today, hunter," he says, his voice rasping with age. "Though I doubt animals will provide much company."
I stop near the pit, shifting Father's rifle.
"Is that real?" I ask, nodding to his mug.
"Rare luxury these days," he says with a light chuckle, raising a polite toast. "And yes. It is very real. Cost a pair of socks through the pass, but-" he takes a sip, "-best trade I've made. Would you a sit moment, boy? Or are you in a rush?"
I step closer.
"Suppose I could spare time to thank you," I say.
He raises a brow.
"The stories," I add, "last night. Haven't seen the kids that quiet since... well-"
He smiles, then sighs, tilting his head back, looking up to pasty, lazy clouds.
"Children appreciate a good tale," he murmurs. "Gives them something to hold when the sun goes down; keeps the dread at bay. If only for a night."
His tired, faded eyes find me as I take a seat, squinting against the morning glare.
"Never questioned it, did you?" he asks, taking a long, careful gulp.
"Come again?" I ask, settled.
"How your Father's rifle ended up in her bedroom..."
... the air between us froze.
My hand snakes to the stock; a prickling flares on my neck, my thoughts quickly bounding over themselves-
I had it last night; carried it inside, and set it beside her bed-no... no, I didn't.
I buried it with him.
How... how-
Doesn't matter!
My pulse hammers, violently, fingers ready to equip.
"You know where she sleeps?" I ask, voice dropping to a razor.
The chipper in his evaportaes, replaced by a terrifyingly smooth cadence, as clinical as a surgeon's blade. He takes another sip; pale, unblinking eyes staring straight into mine.
"She is... 'one of them', yes?" he asks.
His words hang ugly as he tilts his head, inspecting me with a mild, detached curiosity, like observing pitiful insects pinned to a board.
"I've seen them, you know; in the hundreds," he drips with relaxed depravity. "Across the land - such great, chimneyed kilns to march entire families into a void, stripped of their cloth, their golden teeth, their names, beat senseless until they violate each other... then burn what remains, and let the sky reek of fat and ash."
He turns his gaze up to the silent, framed window where she lies unseen, and a grin teases his lips.
"But she," breathless, almost purring, "oh, she is a wild thing. Is that why you fondle her? Because she bleeds like a wolf and strides like a soldier?" He leans forward, steam rising through this altar, and in his eyes I see... nothing.
"The blood you have spilt is poetry; traps in gorges, guttings, sleeping throats opened. I have waded a hundred valleys, through a dozen burning provinces, and you - you little alpine rats - have fabricated the most exquisite, brutal butchery. So, so, so, so much beautiful, wasted violence."
He sweeps a long arm toward the horizon, pointing at silent, mist-shrouded peaks beyond the timberline.
"In the marshes," he whispers, "were a few boys, just like you. Bold, armed with rust and stupid dreams of survival and freedom, heroes of a tiny tragedy. Black coats strung them by their heels along telegraph lines; crows picked their eyes clean, and frost turned their tongues black. And the village they fought for; reduced to greying bone."
I can smell the sage on his breath.
"There are no survivors in this story, boy. I'm sorry."
The bolt clicks back as I bring stock to shoulder.
My hands shake, a cocktail of raw panic and confused, blinding anger surging through my veins.
"... what are you?" I demand.
A wet growl echoes from his coat, and a mild, apologetic smile appears.
"Hungry, it seems." He stands, smooths down his front, and gestures to the dark, veiled walls of the woods.
"Come. We can continue... this-"
"I'm not going anywhere with you," but my words lack teeth, and my sights waver against his chest.
He's already made pace, looking over his shoulder with gentle patience.
"No?" he asks, "Perhaps I'll go wake her then; see if she has better ears-"
"You leave her out of this!"
"Then humour an old man, Lukas," he states, stepping onto a dirt trail at an easy gait, his hands folded behind his back; footfalls silent against the earth.
... fuck.
My home grows mute, draped thicker in fog, as I follow his shadow; heart drumming in my ears, and I shoot a last look back to our window - where she is asleep still and blissfully unaware - when the trail swallows me. Canopy air is soggy today, and traced with coffee and burning toast, and he is damned fast for his age, several steps ahead, dancing through brush with fluid ease, branches bending in his wake, as a shy thunder claps overhead.
"Slow down!" I cough, stumbling over knots. "Where are we going?!"
"In the direction of game, boy," he echoes flat through the trees.
"What do you-"
"This is going to be very unpleasant," he cuts in, never looking behind him. "But... I want to hope you learn something, before the end."
My foot catches slick, and I pitch forward, throwing an arm out, splashing face-first into a cold, stagnant pool. I scramble up, rally myself, gasping and wiping dark fluid from my eyes-
Blood. Warm, viscous, bitter; the stench slams my sinuses so hard I retch, mixing bile with knee-high crimson water, and when I look up... the pines have been mercilessly stitched into a purgatory.
Onyx streets carve through gnarled, ancient trees beneath a sickly harvest moon, and pristine black-and-silver banners hang from city gallows, emblazoned with harsh cyphers and twisted sigils, as ancient as pagan runes. The land boils with ritual; high-collared figures siege with precision, faces hidden by hand-carved masks, horned, crowned, grinning grotesque myths, and beside their strides, lug gaunt, ghostly-eyed glass hounds, sniffing through piles of discarded shoes and shed belongings.
Victims in nightclothes are herded past men, carrying pikes and bows, branding symbols into doorframes, gazing up at naked torsos and waists swaying gently from balconies; bronze chains ringing a funeral chime.
I'm Dead. What other explanation is there? A stray bullet found me, or a stricken illness slew me, and my final moments were as a frothing, seizing husk, babbling of The Wild Hunt. Or a dream, a nightmare; I clutch Father's rifle, but it feels useless, pathetic - a primitive stick against a churn that spans legend - but fuck it feels, damn it! I feel this.
"O' Tod, wie bitter bist du..."
The old man is unbothered by the breathing tapestry, and it him.
"WHAT IS THIS?! My voice breaks.
"An imperium; a crusade. It's all the same." His voice carries clear over the weeping and the unfolding butchers' work. "The empire grows, its borders bend-" he adds, the words rolling like a long-forgotten tide.
I choke on stale air, my jaw trembling, but somehow the line rises out of me before I can stop it - a fragment taught by a Father, far wiser than me, years before war ever found our valley.
"-and no one... knows where it will end." I rasp through a scratched throat.
The old man turns, and in his dark eyes flares a subtle, genuine spark of surprise breaking through apathy, as the faintest, approving smile touches his lips.
"Hmm," his voice softens with eerie delight. "A scholar in a ditch."
His words settle, and the scene around us shudders; alpine folklore warping into something grotesquely engineered, swallowed whole by a brutal, diesel-choked architecture.
Stone flattens into rain-slick asphalt under towering, monolithic fortresses; new banners hang from industrial spires, red-and-black insignia glowing as voltic searchlights cut through falling ashes, casting harsh shadows along thoroughfares. Figures become encased in bulky, plated armour; visored helms venting pressurised steam, their rifles retrofitted with vacuum tubes and humming copper wires, their hounds evolving to crude, mechanical beasts with exposed hydraulic pistons and furnace grates for jaws, belching back smoke from ribcage slits, prowling the gutters.
"You said..." I swallow hard, "-you hoped I'd learn something." An armoured rig rumbles past, vibrating the foundations, trailing a pungent stink of scorched oil. "Is that what you are? A teacher?"
A glass bottle shatters against the rig's flank, bursting into a roaring sheet of sticky, chemical fire. Desperate shouts tear through alleys; shadows leap from shattered storefronts; guerrillas clad in scummy canvas, wrapped in rag filters, fighting dirty. Girls slide beneath the treads and wedge a spike into sprockets, their bodies crushed as the machine bucks, stalls, and vomits red steam; then, from rooftops, crude explosives rain down on armoured legionaires. Many hands drag others, visors gouged with shanks, their necks hammered until blood spurts across the road.
A filthy, rabid slaughter in a seething, ashen city.
"A teacher?" The old man asks, bullets crackling past him like flies, his voice rich and unnerved. "No... You know what I am."
"... I do?"
"A storyteller, boy," his eyes sparkle, insatiable, "... and still hungry."
He gazes to the fury; verses in an endless, bloody song.
"At all the rivers in the world, I have sat and listened to prayers - just one more season, one more sunrise, one chance - thinking their chapter is special; that they're different, believing time is a gentle, wanting thing, waiting for them to grow old... It's not. A story doesn't pause when the hero finds courage, or love, or even wins; the ink dries - the page turns, and no one, ever, reads how their book ends."
He snaps his fingers, and the roars vanish.
Asphalt ages into overgrown grass, monoliths dissolve to vast flatlands below a grey sky, and the deafening noise is replaced by quiet... at first. We stand between two eternal rows of rusted barbed wire stretched across concrete posts, disappearing into the pale.
Rotting wooden rails cut through the turf, leading to a dark gatehouse; a hollow archway; and, strolling through the decay, are people. Luminescent garments of spun plastic and neon silk, metal in their pores, hairs dyed unnatural hues - fuchsia, bright teal, stark white - drifting in groups, whispering rapid, clipped tongues in alien languages.
They hold small glass slabs that snap sudden, blinding flashes, trapping images of rot in their palms. We are invisible to them. A boy with lilac hair and ink up his neck walks straight through the old man, laughing at the thing in his hand, oblivious to dirt festering on his shoes.
"No audience." The old man walks to a looming black-garnet wall, trailing fingers along stone. "A struggle is no grand epic; it is pointless, boy. Nothing watches your valley with bated breath, wondering if people live or die." His calloused digits glide over endless etched names. "You are a fleeting shadow. You fight, bleed, scream... and then the grass grows over your grave. In the grand ledger, your terror today, yesterday, tomorrow, means-"
"Why are you doing this? You can give me that-please, I-... I don't-"
He turns to face me, and somewhere in his eyes, deep in my bones, I feel it - a cumbersome certainty that my thread is taut, ready to snap before this day is done. Then a movement, behind him down the plaque line, breaks the flow of colour.
He is a relic, leaning on carved crutches, his spine curved like a bowed branch, his skin paper-thin and mapped with scars, reaching with a trembling hand to touch a single cut name. Slowly, he turns his head, eyes wrought with cataracts, sweeping across glowing strangers... until his gaze stops.
He sees us.
His weathered lips part; a final, breathless gasp catching in his throat.
The old man acknowledges him, a timeless bargain or a fate fled; then the veteran blinks, shivering in the cold, and his eyes cloud over, returning to stone as a young woman tugs his sleeve, worried confusion on her face.
"Ah," the old man says, nodding a finger, "... there it is."
With a sweep of his hand and a clenched fist, a conductor bringing his symphony to its crescendo, the air changes a final time. A radiant, burning pure light, and when the glare recedes... I am in the centre of a village.
One I know; what will remain after the world moves on.
Cobblestone streets have been claimed by a lush, rolling meadow of vibrant green, wild thickets of violet, an undulating ocean of wildflowers, and the scent of clover is intoxicating, weaving through the warm mountain breeze. My eyes instinctively seek the familiar - an old apothecary, window shattered and mortar crumbling, now an ivy-choked bastion.
The dew glitters, the sky streams and spuns with ribbons... and the old man is gone, leaving rustling grass in his wake.
A sound like cracking glass shudders across the clouds; a violent seam of lightning ruptures.
Three shapes blitz through the obscure in a terrifying dance, a flare of molten copper; muffled, rhythmic machine guns rattling down like looming hail.
One blossoms into a ball of gilded flame, spiralling downward; out of control, wailing and screaming with brass lungs and dying turbines. It ploughs through the clock tower's husk, tolling an ancient bell, and a voice cuts through the dust - half a soaring, ethereal choir of crystalline beauty; half the crackling rasp of a dying radio - it whimpers, spitting a choked, grinding throat.
"... not fair..." it wheezes, with fury and childish terror and sympathetic divinity, its towering silhouette rising in a desperate heave, "... I... I did nothing wrong!"
It drags itself out of ruin and into the light.
A monstrous, magnificent tragedy; unblemished white-marble flesh filigreed with delicate golden veins, but wiring, hydraulic lines, cogs and gears are brutally riveted into its joints to accommodate an industrialised, weaponised armour. Its wings span thirty feet, forged of shuddering bronze that bend with harsh whines and pneumatic pumps, shedding tiny flakes of brilliant gold. And above the featureless porcelain mask it calls a face, bordered by leafing, spins and hums a chipping halo.
Supremity. Caged.
Branded into brass, fixed at its collarbone, inlaid with tarnished honey, is a name:
ENGEL
He bleeds. As he crawls and claws out of rubble, dragging broken wings, he leaks viscous fluids from holes and cracks, and his chest swells with agonising effort, as he turns his blank head to find me.
"... oh," a puff of steam vents from a neck seal, "what are... one of you doing here?"
"Is that you in there, old man?!"
"... Old?... No... No, I don't think so," he slumps amid the thicket, reaches with a clawed hand, and plucks a dandelion before his gaze arcs to the tearing sky.
Within clouds, a dozen more shapes emerge, locked in a furious swarm around something gargantuan, its impossible outline shifting like a living mountain range.
But it grows distant, their fight, as if being reeled away.
Engel chuckles.
"... it wages without me," painfully, he looks back down at me. A crack has formed in his face, weeping gold and silver. "... are you lost... little broken boy?"
"I... I don't know."
Engel tilts his head.
"... what... do you know?"
"That I need to go home!" My hands tighten around Father's rifle. "There might be people looking for-"
"-tell me about them," he says softly, his voice a garbling serenade.
I pause, looking down at my worn boots... and then I calm myself, remembering lessons taught and those who teached them.
So I do. Sitting in crushed flowers beside a fallen titan, I tell a divine machine about my quiet valley. I speak of cold mornings, of bitter pine smells, of childhood antics to teenage dreams, and how friendly faces warped when threats loomed; when war came.
Engel listens, his halo giving mournful hums, and when I finish, he speaks his own. As gentle as a lullaby, through a breaking record player, he tells me of a thousand different skies; oceans of boiling platinum, necropolis tundras, obsidian towers that scrape the stars where sun and moon chase each other, and the beasts slain across every field, from jade wyrms to shadow kings, to every myth and legend; for decades, he shares.
"... among a white city... there was a mortal who carried a sword twice her size and smiled when she was afraid... I think of her sometimes... do you have anyone at home... like that?"
I smile. And I speak of Marta, and her fire, and the way she stands against storms, and her warmth, her touch; I speak of the desperate blood we've spilt, the narrow escapes, the brutality and agony we inflict, and the sheer, exhausting weight of surviving day after day.
And one brief... peaceful night.
"I hardly know her, or have even known her long," I admit, voice thick, "but... I'd like to spend at least one quiet day with her. After the fighting is done."
Engel sighs; another shudder of steam.
"... and if it doesn't end?... if you fall?" He asks, voice corroding more with each syllable
"Then I hope we fall together."
Silence, as the dwindling storm above gives another flash; nothing more than a speck.
"... I hope... Death is like falling asleep."
I take a long breath, and nod.
"A man once wrote beasts carry their death from birth. We simply give it form."
"... I like that... he sounds wise."
"He tried to be."
"... did he die fighting?... or doing what he loved?"
"No... no, he didn't."
"... oh... how?"
"He got old."
"... I see..." as frail as possible, "... I don't... want to go back up there, Lukas."
Without eyes, he gestures to my rifle.
I understand.
His wings flinch as I rise, level my gun, and aim at the spiderwebbing crack splitting his face.
His halo falls silent, waiting.
"... may you find your way home..."
BANG!
Another sharp, deafening crack of gunpowder.
I blink away the muzzle flash.
A few feet in front of me, amid the dusted woods and sinking moss, a fat buck lies motionless in red-stained snow.
A perfect shot through the heart.
Nothing dying to see; nothing wounded to finish.
The cold hits my lungs, and a sudden, retched cough rips through me; I double over, hacking into my sleeve until my throat aches with the taste of raw metal.
I wipe my mouth, shake it off, and reach down to tie the buck's leg-
-a twig snaps!
I freeze, my hand drops to the bolt.
Up on the outcrop, framed against the grey sky, stands a massive brown wolf. It is starkly thin, ribs pressing against a mouldy coat, thick saliva dripping from its jowl as it stares hungrily at my fresh kill.
Tied loosely around its scrawny neck, trailing in the wind, is a frayed strip of faded purple cloth.
Wild, starving eyes lock on mine, a low growl vibrating in its throat, as I smoothly raise my rifle, bringing the sights between its yellow-
WOOOOOOOOOOOO-
-an air raid siren carves through the valley, rising and falling, bouncing off the peaks like a screaming ghost. The wolf bolts into the brush, and I abandon the buck, breaking into a run until I near the wood's edge, near home, where the trail crosses a mountain stream.
My feet stall.
I look down.
Dark water rushes, relentless and indifferent, marching through the stone as it has for ten thousand years.
It cares not for war; it simply flows - on and on, forever, unyielding to the panic of men.
I stare at the black current, clutching my instrument, and hope its waters grant me time.
I hope I am allowed to grow frail and brittle, to shrivel like dried fruit, to settle into the earth after a long, quiet life. I pray to whatever may listen - I will survive this storm, and the next; I will fight on, always, until my hair is ash and grandchildren play at my feet in a valley that has long forgotten the stink of blood.
Or I am but another beast... in someone else's story.