HP FIC: Esdraelon (1/1)
I don't know what came over me. I just had this sudden image of the last thing a dying wizard would see on the last battle, given the current arrangement of allies and enemies - a shape so dark it cannot be seen, and the rising dawn flaring behind them, brighter than a halo.
It is possible that all this revision has broken my brain. Please feel free to hit me with things.
Esdraelon
*
The battle was long, and bloody, and winter snow fell to carpet the bodies already thick on the ground. They were not dead - not most of them, at least - but mortally injured, or bound in ways to make them helpless. And so they fell to the ground from their broomsticks and dragons and flying steeds, the young and the old, indiscriminately. Some crawled away, perhaps for a metre or two, but most lay where they had fallen, their wands or hands or bodies crushed. They lay, crying, and waited for the battle to end and for help to arrive.
Mayhap, they might have lived. Perhaps the battle would have ended sooner or later, with one general or the other taking a mortal blow. Perhaps the mortals sleeping soundly in their beds would have awoken, and looked westwards to where the lights of no aurora borealis waged bright war in their night sky.
Perhaps.
What do you want me to say?
There were others in this fight: hooded, nameless, bright and fiery and terrifying to behold. They plucked the souls of those dead or dying and feasted upon them, their empty maws stretched wide in hunger. All night they ate their fill, and still they hungered, their empty bellies screaming out for more more more and still the bodies fell, in twos and threes, with screams and curses and flashes of light, to carpet the green with blood.
The winter dawn rose slowly, flaring bright behind the hills. It burnt through the open eyes of the newly dead and dying, their mouths opened for a kiss. Through the snow, soundless, walked angels.
Above them, the battle raged on...
*
fin
It is possible that all this revision has broken my brain. Please feel free to hit me with things.
Esdraelon
*
The battle was long, and bloody, and winter snow fell to carpet the bodies already thick on the ground. They were not dead - not most of them, at least - but mortally injured, or bound in ways to make them helpless. And so they fell to the ground from their broomsticks and dragons and flying steeds, the young and the old, indiscriminately. Some crawled away, perhaps for a metre or two, but most lay where they had fallen, their wands or hands or bodies crushed. They lay, crying, and waited for the battle to end and for help to arrive.
Mayhap, they might have lived. Perhaps the battle would have ended sooner or later, with one general or the other taking a mortal blow. Perhaps the mortals sleeping soundly in their beds would have awoken, and looked westwards to where the lights of no aurora borealis waged bright war in their night sky.
Perhaps.
What do you want me to say?
There were others in this fight: hooded, nameless, bright and fiery and terrifying to behold. They plucked the souls of those dead or dying and feasted upon them, their empty maws stretched wide in hunger. All night they ate their fill, and still they hungered, their empty bellies screaming out for more more more and still the bodies fell, in twos and threes, with screams and curses and flashes of light, to carpet the green with blood.
The winter dawn rose slowly, flaring bright behind the hills. It burnt through the open eyes of the newly dead and dying, their mouths opened for a kiss. Through the snow, soundless, walked angels.
Above them, the battle raged on...
*
fin