Souls
Screams tore through the ashen grey sky, the sun hidden away refusing to witness the atrocities of mortals. What a cruel turn of fate, a selfish choice only lit the match and I had spread it. I spit out the blood from my mouth as I stood looking around the battlefield.
Fire burned down houses, children wept, holding their parent’s hands gone cold. Cobbled stone streets bled red, like an unholy festival purging the land, unbidden. The hero? The one that carried the sun in his eyes. The one that promised salvation once and for all...gone.
He never arrived. Countless tears of people wept, countless hours of labor wasted in sacrifice to him, and for what? Nothing.
A sword lay in stone in the midst of the field. Once a omen of hope, the hero’s blade, now abandoned, covered in blood, surrounded by the hands that tried to wield it too late.
The shadows drew closer, the last of the barrier breaking from the forest line. A mother ripped in half in front of her daughter, a son fighting a losing battle to save his dying father. The wisps of darkness broke through, their long tendrils differing not between friend or foe. This...this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
I moved, stumbling, before my pace steadied. A small boy was crouched before the sword, trembling, hugging his knees, eyes shut willing away everything, a fruitless task. I made it to him, falling to my knees, the ache in my mortal frame seeping away at what strength I had left. I wasn’t there for him in that moment, as my eyes went to the sword.
I grabbed the hilt of the sword in stone to pry myself up. I looked up, the sky only darkening even more. The boy clung to my waist, a sudden move taking me off guard, arms holding on tight, as I looked down in surprise. My other hand reached down as if on its own, gently tilting the boy’s face up.
My eyes widened, heart dropping into an abyss I’d long buried. The face of the boy was no other than my own, un-weathered by years, fragile, naïve. His familiar green eyes stared back into my own, brown curls dancing around tear-stained cheeks. My hand moved from his chin to under his eye, fingers barely hovering over the next tear as it fell.
The little boy’s grip tightened briefly, as did mines on the sword’s hilt. A screech tore my eyes away, a tendril of shadow heading right for us. It hit...not me, not the man sobbing behind the barn holding his dead wife, not the girl who lay bleeding, vultures feasting on her wounds...but him.
The shadows stripped into the boy’s skin, drew blood, yet he didn’t cry. I felt the pain instead of him. The burning agony tearing through my flesh, the embers of fire being fueled from my own panic, and terror as I could only watch the boy, myself, suffering unflinchingly. My own young eyes bore into mine, silently.
My grip refused to waver trying to hold onto the sword. Heart pounding wild, breaths heavy, throat choked, blood rushing, as a guttural scream tore through my soul. A blinding searing white hot pain shot behind my eyes. The boy lay there dead, I lay dead. Eyes lifeless, breaths stolen, and skin tainted with everything but light.
My hand pulled at the sword fueled with rage and monstrosity that would classify a wild beast tame. The stone base began to crack as the sword released finally. My heart no longer beat, I no longer breathed, I felt nothing but a pit that was ablaze, an inferno unleashed without bounds.
The sky cracked with thunder, the dark clouds aflame with red hues, embers falling from the skies. My movements were inhuman, blood red and black spilled around me in a symphony of justice paid. Limbs were torn, flesh suffered their mortal fatalities, and my hands worked with a drowning thirst for taking.
Nothing moved as I came to my senses, the fields, the sky, my hands, my body, everything was red. The color of madness, of love, of anger, of giving, of taking, red, red, all red. It seemed to seep into my very bones, consuming all I’d known, this redness, this madness, this...raw sense of power unknown.
A twig snapped behind me, instinct moving as the sword rushed to deliver a last dying breath only to stop inches from the little boy again. My own young eyes bearing into mine. He didn’t move, and neither did I. A silent battle of wills, the strongest fight I’d fought, my hands going cold.
“Will you give,” he asked, quiet voice echoing in the sea of brutality, "will you give for me to live?"
It was a slight waver at first, I would not break. I would not and I had deemed it so. Yet, the question seemed to deliver its blow, my sword falling from my hand, knees digging into the ground. Without any weapons he had torn my own flesh open to the rawest part hidden within: my soul.
“I gave for nothing,” I rasped, my voice foreign to my own ears, “How much more do I give?”
The little boy stepped closer, his tiny hands holding my face, “Why do you not want to give anymore?”
The questions were cracking away, hope seemed like a fool’s dream, and whimsy was universes away. Redemption was out of my league, but looking into his eyes, the inferno inside quietened a bit.
“I did give,” I said, voice cracking, “I gave, and gave and gave. I want to give...but when do I receive?”
The little boy smiled, wiping the tears I hadn’t realized were falling, “You gave a lot,” he said, voice filled with innocence, “and you received peace...not riches, not land, nothing but peace...for yourself and your heart”
I had nothing else left in me. My head fell to his tiny shoulder, his tiny arms wrapping around me.
“You gave when you had nothing...and that’s when you sowed your soul for a life worth living,” he whispered.
My hand gripped the back of his shirt tightly, the knot in my chest loosening as I took a slow deep breath. The tears had dried, the ache had settled deep into my bones, with heavy eyes I held onto him.
For neither of us were wrong, after all...in silent wrath do we protect our peace.
