[Original Fic] "You That Kill The Prophets"
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Title: "You That Kill The Prophets"
Author: wizzard890
Fandom: Uh. Original fic, I guess. Though the whole "steampunk crusades" thing was lindensphinx's idea.
Words: 274. This shit is short.
Rating: R. Maybe. For stilted descriptions of the grotesque.
Timestamp: 1212 A.D.
Summary: A child cannot journey to Jerusalem unless God equips his spirit. And a child cannot row a galley unless a master equips his body.
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They say that a German boy led them, gathered the other children from their homes. That at his behest, they boarded a ship at the blue coast of Sardinia. That he trusted the slave traders. That he was the first to have his arms taken.
No one knew his name; only that the Lord was with him.
But in the end, it made no difference. He drowned with all the rest.
Sunlight seeps through the surface of the Great Sea, fades and fades until it strikes miles of sand below. Waves shiver up in the distant quiet, and cast blue shadows; tiny fish flash silver across the seams of sun and dark.
This is not where ships come to die. It is where ships come to sleep. But death seeps in belowdecks, where the tiny saints float suspended, clamped three to an oar. Garfish and rot have attacked their faces, leaving open, bloodless wounds, like gaping little mouths in their hollow cheeks and sagging jaws. Beneath their rags, their bodies are similarly effected: flashes of rib, strangely white and picked clean, or the splatter of a birthmark on a floating bit of skin.
Only their arms remain intact.
A light film of salt cakes the elbow joints, and the hard copper spaces between those gripping fingers. Two rows of pins run down the sides, front and back, where a bronze rod inside is joined to the fleshy leftover stump of each shoulder. The cogs and gears inside ground to a halt long ago, but the husks--retrieved, detached and cleaned-- are capable of nearly three hundred strokes a minute.
They are heavy arms, for children.
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-The first Children's Crusade took place in 1212, and began in the rural hills of Germany. In the history Chronica Regiae Coloniensis, a chronicler described it thus: In this year occurred an outstanding thing and one much to be marveled at, for it is unheard of throughout the ages. About the time of Easter and Pentecost, prompted by I know not what spirit, many thousands of boys, ranging in age from six years to full maturity, left the plows or carts which they were driving, the flocks which they were pasturing, and anything else which they were doing. This they did despite the wishes of their parents, relatives, and friends who sought to make them draw back. Suddenly one ran after another to take the cross...whether they crossed to the Holy Land or what their end was is uncertain. One thing is sure: that of the many thousands who rose up, only very few returned.
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Title: "You That Kill The Prophets"
Author: wizzard890
Fandom: Uh. Original fic, I guess. Though the whole "steampunk crusades" thing was lindensphinx's idea.
Words: 274. This shit is short.
Rating: R. Maybe. For stilted descriptions of the grotesque.
Timestamp: 1212 A.D.
Summary: A child cannot journey to Jerusalem unless God equips his spirit. And a child cannot row a galley unless a master equips his body.
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They say that a German boy led them, gathered the other children from their homes. That at his behest, they boarded a ship at the blue coast of Sardinia. That he trusted the slave traders. That he was the first to have his arms taken.
No one knew his name; only that the Lord was with him.
But in the end, it made no difference. He drowned with all the rest.
Sunlight seeps through the surface of the Great Sea, fades and fades until it strikes miles of sand below. Waves shiver up in the distant quiet, and cast blue shadows; tiny fish flash silver across the seams of sun and dark.
This is not where ships come to die. It is where ships come to sleep. But death seeps in belowdecks, where the tiny saints float suspended, clamped three to an oar. Garfish and rot have attacked their faces, leaving open, bloodless wounds, like gaping little mouths in their hollow cheeks and sagging jaws. Beneath their rags, their bodies are similarly effected: flashes of rib, strangely white and picked clean, or the splatter of a birthmark on a floating bit of skin.
Only their arms remain intact.
A light film of salt cakes the elbow joints, and the hard copper spaces between those gripping fingers. Two rows of pins run down the sides, front and back, where a bronze rod inside is joined to the fleshy leftover stump of each shoulder. The cogs and gears inside ground to a halt long ago, but the husks--retrieved, detached and cleaned-- are capable of nearly three hundred strokes a minute.
They are heavy arms, for children.
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-The first Children's Crusade took place in 1212, and began in the rural hills of Germany. In the history Chronica Regiae Coloniensis, a chronicler described it thus: In this year occurred an outstanding thing and one much to be marveled at, for it is unheard of throughout the ages. About the time of Easter and Pentecost, prompted by I know not what spirit, many thousands of boys, ranging in age from six years to full maturity, left the plows or carts which they were driving, the flocks which they were pasturing, and anything else which they were doing. This they did despite the wishes of their parents, relatives, and friends who sought to make them draw back. Suddenly one ran after another to take the cross...whether they crossed to the Holy Land or what their end was is uncertain. One thing is sure: that of the many thousands who rose up, only very few returned.
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