Ragnarǫk - Finish the Story 20

in #contest6 years ago (edited)

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Illustration by Simo "Nork" Denti for Shintiara, all rights reserved

Black Star


by @f3nix

And finally dawn came, mercilessly, to reveal the blasphemous massacre of that night. The sulphur smell of the Flaegreian fields was blending with that of blood and entrails, while clots of death, horribly coagulated one with the other, slowly melted inside the iridescent acid water pools. There was no honour of weapons for the vanquished, whose remains were hideously smeared on the battlefield.

Instead, something else was crawling in that silent scene: the unnatural profanity of a rape, far beyond the concept of victory of one army over the other. It was as if the ground, pierced by fumaroles and teeming with mutilated bodies, wanted to shout to the sky a silent cry of faltering horror.

From the piles of corrupt meat, a black pillar emerged in the middle of the plain. An invisible and incandescent flame was emanating from that dark mountain, making the landscape all around tremulous due to the intense heat.

"I brought you some wine, Xarag." The man in armour approached cautiously to the black and immobile human tower.

"I do not find it right that you have to stay still for all this time instead of celebrating ..".

"Tell me you did not come alone just with that nauseating spicy wine." Glaring through the black metal of the helmet, the paladin abruptly interrupted the officer.

"I also have the serum, Xarag. Our queen never forgets the needs of her most valiant servants"

"Oh yes, she's always so thoughtful". The sudden pain obliged the paladin to an added effort for emitting the last word, which barely came out through the bloody clenched teeth.

"Do not worry, I cannot figure out how much you suffer, Xarag, and I won’t even dare to, but I promise you that also this time, when it has cooled down, we will manage to get you out of the gift".

"The gift, of course, guard of the queen. I know you'll do a good job with that piece of meat that still sticks to my bones," the black tower murmured in a metal hiss. "Now pour the whey into the wine and then leave me. You, at least, go and celebrate."

Xarag, the Black Star, barely approached the chalice at the deformed hole of the helmet and drank avidly. His meats, slowly devoured by his own armour, produced sounds that he would never get used to. He wanted to look up from that vision of death, he wanted to look for a star in the sky, among the poisonous and sulphur fumes, but the steel colour of the abyss no longer allowed it by many battles. He wanted to think to her, if only he didn’t have to bleed for the effort of not being torn apart in his body, mind and soul at the same time. For him, the battle would have still continued in solitude for long hours.

The fires projected cheerful arabesques on the cobalt walls of the camp tents, where the unrestrained bacchanal of victory was taking place. A group of officers argued in the galley tent, away from the crowds.

"I told you they did not fight! The angel approached, and they just looked at each other for a very long time .. at least that's what I saw as long as I could," said the young man with shelled eyes to the rest of the group.

"If only I could fight one of those damned celestials simply by standing by.. Maybe even while scratching my balls.” The silly laugh of the inexperienced official interrupted in a strangled sob.

"Listen to me well, piece of dung. Just because you miraculously survived your first battle and you got good marks at the academy, do you think you gained the right to talk about the Black Star?" The veteran's arm had relentlessly triggered at the young man's throat with a ruthless grip.

"First of all, that was not just an angel, but it was one of the Powers, sent into battle directly from the third triad. Have you already forgotten the lessons on the enemy hierarchy, cutie?" The grip loosened just before the colour of the young officer passed from red to dark purple.

"Also," continued the veteran, "you can bet they were fighting, as the Power had managed to overtake the first two auras of Xarag's armour and was now attempting to force the third inner one.. "

"Disintegration of the essence." Like gnarled invisibile fingers, a murmur ran through the soldiers.

The senior officer would have continued but was interrupted by a loud disturbing roar. The immediate shock-wave overwhelmed those present and all the contents of the tent. Perhaps the battle was not completely over.



Ragnarǫk


by me

The officers disentangled themselves from the tattered remains of the tent in a grotesque anemone of limbs and field furniture, while the panic poured over the training for long moments.

The tangle of bodies was illuminated by a sinister aurora borealis that came from the Flaegreian fields, blinking irregularly, anticipating the roaring sounds that the air saturated with the stench of the massacre bore.

The senior officer was the first to recover, to let the fear conveyed in tension of nerves, in dry orders that catalyzed the transformation of the less experienced comrades in machines of muscles and bones, animated by the procedures internalized in years of Academy.

Platoons were torn from the oblivion of victory, from the long-awaited end of the state of danger, from the lick of wounds, from the mourn of the fallen, and were forcibly rejected in hell, in which they were both damned and tormentors.

Sinking to the knees in the sea of death they had just abandoned, they plodded compactly between the fumaroles with a lugubrious determination. They did not have the strength to fight again, but they had mental conditioning to die trying.

"Halt!" several officers echoed in unison, while the phalanxes slid over the guts of enemies and comrades.

The Black Star had not moved. He was like a fragment of meteoric rock stuck in the ground, propped up on its toothed sword. A trembling dance of light with colors in the spectrum of carmine and purple emanated from the armor.

Around him, like a pearly nebulosity, vast wings danced, whose immensity seemed to go beyond the physical space. Thunders of annihilating violence exploded from the friction between the wings and the armor's aura.

Several soldiers fell to their knees in the bloody sewage, many others were thrown to the ground by the psychic wave when they heard the Powers speak.

"Why you fell from the sky, Xarag, son of the dawn?"

"Why you were lying on the ground, lord of peoples?"

In the spaces between their words, like roars in the plasma belly of incandescent stars, there was a long, thin groan, a breath from cracking, like a string of glass in the storm.

"I loved!"

"Yet you thought: I will go up to heaven, on the stars of the Queen I will raise the throne, I will dwell in the heart of the brightest, in the most remote parts of the firmament."

"I remember the light!"

"I will ascend the upper regions of the nebulae, I will do the same as the Most High. And instead you have been plunged into the underworld, into the depths of the abyss! "

"I bleed of life!"

"Your Queen has rushed you into the prison of her ambition. You consume yourself, coal for her flame of hatred. "

"I am free!"

"No! You're burdened with chains you refuse to see! "

"I choose, NOW!!!"

The red light intensified to the point where it became impossible to see. Thousands of soldiers screamed, and for a moment, in the bright light, they could see beyond the looming shadows, on the other side of the battlefield, the other host equally rushed to witness the clash between the Black Star and the Powers. In the dazzling light, for just that moment, the enemies saw each other, equal, in the reaction of astonishment and terror.

A sound of tremendous tearing filled the unbreathable air. The huge wings seemed to dilate and thin out, until they disappeared. The light went out suddenly. There was only a small smoking spot in the middle, like a worn match. The twisted and charred figure, armor, flesh and spirit consumed, was a warning: no longer Black Star, no longer Powers, only astonished men, as if they had just been reborn. Supreme choice, absolute freedom, self-sacrifice.


This is my entry for the week #20 of the awesome contest held by @f3nix: Finish the Story, and earn Steem Basic Income Shares.
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Thank you for reading!




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This line caught my attention reminding me of the carnage on the battlefield:

"Halt!" several officers echoed in unison, while the phalanxes slid over the guts of enemies and comrades.

And then:

"Several soldiers fell to their knees in the bloody sewage"

Really painted a picture for me there. Yikes!

Thank you! My goal was to transmit to the reader the sense of a huge and useless carnage

Hi marcoriccardi,

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Great sense of battle in this piece Marco. I loved your epic ending also. Great stuff! :-)

Thank you! I had a doubt about the sentence at the end. I was tempted to not include it in my story because it's a bit too didactic

Very nice Marco, other than great action you touched a theme which is interesting and I hoped that someone would have had.. free will. Noone so far however twisted the celestial hierarchies making them evil, and probed till the end the inner nature of Xarag.. but you did I've to say especially in the epic dialogue. 😎🤙🐠🍌

You know, I've got this "blasphemous" side in me... You put some angel-like entity in your story in the antagonist side, so I treated Xarag like a "good Lucifer" ;)

Exactely! But next time the angels have to be real sons of bitches... that noone really did it and would have made the story special IMO (a bit like Gabriel in Constantine). :-P

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