Topic: Reminiscence

Unorthodox

Date: 2014-08-11 18:50 EST
The day was long. The day was hot. The day was blood red.

A specific kind of war had driven many of them mad, not that they were not already a maddened sort. They were the strong and beautiful. Ghostly sculptures of cold skin that often times deceived the cattle into believing they were at least tepid. Left out to rot meat under a baking sun and now cooled to a degree that made them interesting. Many of them had wild, wild eyes that were black enough to collect the stars. Often thought as of shamans, of soothsayers for a generation still building seance circles and massive structures meant for appeasing long dead gods.

But this day? This day the gods awoke.

Screams were a verse that played over and over. The broken jargon of the dead feasting on the dead. They came in swarms like too fast insects on two legs, some on four, and they all seemed to sing the very same song. One of carnage. One of a rabid need to snuff out what had banded together a family of Thirteen.

And the children of Shaitan wept, but they did not flee.

Each one of them fought against their brethren, against their sisters, and became shredded ribbons of corpses that no longer had the thirst. They lay in the final death and spit their curses at those that put them to their graves. Burned their bones, salted the ashes.

These were the last moments of sweet, sweet beasts that carried the last connection to Ashur. For they never breathed in the shadow of Knossos but felt the white hot magma of her bosom. The milk of the fire which cleansed the stronghold of Chorazin.

Together, they held their ashen hands until no longer could they. Brittle as dried wood and just as quick to burst into flames. The Thirteen watched as the horrors were drawn to the cloaks of the Neverborns and pulled far, far to the thickest edges of Oblivion. And how they cheered! They roared with their bellies and their frozen tongues while the black blood of their most hated kin became history for their dusty tomes.

But I did not join my children in their demise.

Unorthodox

Date: 2015-10-07 18:47 EST
( *For the Post Mortem prompt from the always creative team in Broken Parts, Missing Pieces )

300 BC Chorazin
War of Thirteen

The world was painted red.

Dust rose from the bleeding earth. Heavy enough to act as a fog that not even the wind could push aside, a blanket of it to make the scene look surreal. This was a dream that had quickly escalated into a nightmare. Outlines lay in the sludge, marks of fingers that skidded across the top soil in a last show of rebellion. None had been able to muster enough to survive but they left their sigils in their own cruor. Flags that weathered the battle were tipped over, crooked when planted in the nothing that was left behind from the dead. Each banner flew a color; there was blue lined in gold, green threaded with amber, white branded with black, all belonging to those that had found victory in the slaughter of beautiful beasts.

Watching it unfold had been harrowing, more severe was not being able to care for the collapsed bloodline. Shaitan would have shut their eyes had they been able to. Black magic, a single filament from each of the Thirteen's oldest, kept Shaitan shackled. Chained by nefarious tendrils of black. Deformed by razor thin cracks in brimstone bones, skin pulled back, filleted to expose giant gaps of wounds that once hid vital organs that even devils had. Shaitan thrashed, possibly damaging itself even more, fighting against the clutches of the Thirteen, and howled awful sounds with its many tongues.

Its cries were not from physical pain.

Its cries were from the maternal sorrow of losing its lambs.

"Throw it into the tomb so I won't have to hear it anymore,? Orontes, warrior of Ventrue, with his brow bloodied and his fingers gouging into the wet dirt, said tiredly. Many of his own lay in the same ashen grave of those they were sent to slay.

Onward they pulled, forcing it to lose footing, skidding back with heels digging in, waging a personal crusade against its captors. The struggle erupted into terrible hysteria that startled Orontes and the others, goading them into standing to defend themselves had it broken the groping leashes of their abilities.

A clawed hand fell just at Orontes? feet, dwarfing him completely and reminding all of the Thirteen that this was no ordinary fiend. The planet rattled beneath them at the impact it made, tearing into the disturbed soil of this unholy kingdom. All these voices came from all angles, all directions, echoes of banshee wails. Tide of hells own butchered choir that now sang a grim song, puncturing all that remained in venomous carols, clutching at their ears in malady that invaded their skulls.

?You will pay, Orontes. All of you will pay. All of you will feast on nothing but the vengeance I shall seek out. That day will come, Orontes! I will not forget a single slight you have made to my children and to me. You will wish that you, all of you, had burned up into nothing this night after I am finished feeding my hungry heart with your screams. I will hunt you all in their name, give them rest for the atrocity of your pathetic war! They may be gone, the bloodline wiped out -- but you have now brought a mothers wrath unto this world! DO YOU ALL HEAR!? I WILL NEVER FORGET!?

?Throw it in!?

Every eye, unblinking, wide enough to swallow the moon, kept a fierce watch on Orontes. Pupils quivering from the flex of unquenched umbrage. Every one of them glew in the dark that the abomination was unwilling to die in. They fixated until the tomb was sealed. Until Orontes and the rest felt a false sense of security at no longer seeing its mutated form.

Since that hostile night, none slept soundly. Their spectral lives haunted by those unyielding eyes.