Rihaku
12-20-2006, 08:38 PM
Un-proofread and un-revised, so it kinda sucks. One-shot. Wrote it as a challenge, in thirty minutes.
When they came the blades sheared through our flesh like silk but their betrayal was dagger-sharp.
There was a thunderous blast and we ran out of the smithy, plaster caked on our faces along with soot. An arcing splatter of blood against my coat and my eyes widened as they cut us down. We were slow to retaliate, and there were too many of them. People rushed out of homes that were slowly engorged by flame. Some clutched at each other, shivering, weeping; others tried to fight back. Ash fell upon us like snowflakes in the heat of summer and we scented fear and blood and flame. I ran, jaw jarring as my feet pounded against packed-earth roads and grassy meadows.
I flung myself behind the sturdy stone of our keep, and holed up in a crevice. Ironic that I, who had dispersed so much death, would spend my last moments clinging to life.
Or perhaps not, since according to them, oblivion and death are very different things. But then they tell me the lowest circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers, and I wonder if they are committing hypocrisy or courage.
Was this an isolated thing, this genocide? I could not believe it. If they did something they rarely did it half-baked. But why?
That had never been a question I had been good at answering. From the first time I picked up my bow it was not a question of why but how, when, what, where. Dispensing justice is tricky business, let me tell you. Half the time you’re not sure whether or not you’re actually managing it and the other half you’re too scared to care. The color of fear is yellow and when you first lay back the string you can smell it on your breath and rising in your gut. It soils you, even if you hold your bladder. After a while you can scent yellow like a taint. And it’s always following you around.
The sun was painfully bright in my eyes but as I scrunched there I could not afford to close them. I heard them tramping on wooden steps, moving up the keep. Two feet of stone between me and death: I’d been closer but not by much. Usually when you kill them you kill them from far away.
I could rally the survivors, launch a counterattack, but what purpose would that further? They would only send more and we would never have peace – not that we had it much before. I had always tried to keep the destruction as minimal as possible.
Wait, what am I saying! One of my kind, minimize destruction? The thought is ludicrous. We were made to destroy, and far better at it than them. But then someone told us that destruction was not the goal, had never been, and we let pride get to our heads. Six thousand years of legacy does that to you.
It was getting hot under the merciless sun and I peeled itchy, sweaty garments from my skin, shaking sweat loose from my brow – was that from heat or terror? Probably both.
The stones were granite and coarse against my palms. With my practiced vision I could see the last resisters cut down and then I was one. The grass beneath my boots: sun-baked, yellow. I had always disliked summer. It wasn’t a good time to die.
I brushed ink-black hair out of my eyes and sweat stuck to my fingers but I pulled my hands back and called upon the power. When it came it was familiar and throbbing and desperate, as if it, too, sensed the end. I was weak, though, and it fizzled between my trembling fingers. And now I had blown my cover. They would be upon my reiatsu like hounds and my hands were suddenly too cold to move, as if death had come early for them.
Then the wind blew, stirring the trees. As they flailed their branches at the sky I heard the swishing of their leaves and I knew it would be the last music I would hear. And they appeared, one with blood smeared over his cheekbones, the other sad-faced, and the bloody one grunted.
“This one stinks of fear. Let’s get it over with.”
And as their slayers came slashing down I jumped and looked down upon them, and then in a sudden, torrid, beautiful stream the yellow was washed away. I felt the tempo of my heartbeat like a war drum and my muscles thrummed, loose yet ready. The bow came again, intense and familiar, and as they peered at my figure in the sky I saw red.
And one flashed up to kill me and I ducked, smashing a boot into his gut, and before his breath returned I had put an arrow into his throat. He gagged as he fell and his partner, screaming, bounded off the stone wall towards me.
His eyes were first sad but then they were empty, after I had put an arrow between them. I landed on the top of the keep and swung around, watching them search for me, and felled one, two, ten. They died in spurts of brilliant blue but to me it was all the same, red blood against a red sky and I could smell my own, through the back of my nostrils, like iron but alive.
It was the first time I had ever been alive, I think, in my entire life. And in that moment, as the swarm surged towards me, I realized why they had done it. The greatest destroyers always end up destroying themselves.
The veil of red wasn’t lifted but their blades flashed brilliant blue reflecting the energy of my bow. One dove down, into my guard, and I kneed him brutally in the face, felt cartilage snap, shot him through the back of the neck. They roared and kept coming and as their swords bit into my palms I saw no other way. I kept firing, point-blank now, and the bowstring twanged and zinged to the time of their deaths. Then there was one, shining, headed towards my gut, and I faced the man wielding it, my arrow to his head.
We sought to make ourselves the ultimate destroyers.
We succeeded.
I let go.
When they came the blades sheared through our flesh like silk but their betrayal was dagger-sharp.
There was a thunderous blast and we ran out of the smithy, plaster caked on our faces along with soot. An arcing splatter of blood against my coat and my eyes widened as they cut us down. We were slow to retaliate, and there were too many of them. People rushed out of homes that were slowly engorged by flame. Some clutched at each other, shivering, weeping; others tried to fight back. Ash fell upon us like snowflakes in the heat of summer and we scented fear and blood and flame. I ran, jaw jarring as my feet pounded against packed-earth roads and grassy meadows.
I flung myself behind the sturdy stone of our keep, and holed up in a crevice. Ironic that I, who had dispersed so much death, would spend my last moments clinging to life.
Or perhaps not, since according to them, oblivion and death are very different things. But then they tell me the lowest circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers, and I wonder if they are committing hypocrisy or courage.
Was this an isolated thing, this genocide? I could not believe it. If they did something they rarely did it half-baked. But why?
That had never been a question I had been good at answering. From the first time I picked up my bow it was not a question of why but how, when, what, where. Dispensing justice is tricky business, let me tell you. Half the time you’re not sure whether or not you’re actually managing it and the other half you’re too scared to care. The color of fear is yellow and when you first lay back the string you can smell it on your breath and rising in your gut. It soils you, even if you hold your bladder. After a while you can scent yellow like a taint. And it’s always following you around.
The sun was painfully bright in my eyes but as I scrunched there I could not afford to close them. I heard them tramping on wooden steps, moving up the keep. Two feet of stone between me and death: I’d been closer but not by much. Usually when you kill them you kill them from far away.
I could rally the survivors, launch a counterattack, but what purpose would that further? They would only send more and we would never have peace – not that we had it much before. I had always tried to keep the destruction as minimal as possible.
Wait, what am I saying! One of my kind, minimize destruction? The thought is ludicrous. We were made to destroy, and far better at it than them. But then someone told us that destruction was not the goal, had never been, and we let pride get to our heads. Six thousand years of legacy does that to you.
It was getting hot under the merciless sun and I peeled itchy, sweaty garments from my skin, shaking sweat loose from my brow – was that from heat or terror? Probably both.
The stones were granite and coarse against my palms. With my practiced vision I could see the last resisters cut down and then I was one. The grass beneath my boots: sun-baked, yellow. I had always disliked summer. It wasn’t a good time to die.
I brushed ink-black hair out of my eyes and sweat stuck to my fingers but I pulled my hands back and called upon the power. When it came it was familiar and throbbing and desperate, as if it, too, sensed the end. I was weak, though, and it fizzled between my trembling fingers. And now I had blown my cover. They would be upon my reiatsu like hounds and my hands were suddenly too cold to move, as if death had come early for them.
Then the wind blew, stirring the trees. As they flailed their branches at the sky I heard the swishing of their leaves and I knew it would be the last music I would hear. And they appeared, one with blood smeared over his cheekbones, the other sad-faced, and the bloody one grunted.
“This one stinks of fear. Let’s get it over with.”
And as their slayers came slashing down I jumped and looked down upon them, and then in a sudden, torrid, beautiful stream the yellow was washed away. I felt the tempo of my heartbeat like a war drum and my muscles thrummed, loose yet ready. The bow came again, intense and familiar, and as they peered at my figure in the sky I saw red.
And one flashed up to kill me and I ducked, smashing a boot into his gut, and before his breath returned I had put an arrow into his throat. He gagged as he fell and his partner, screaming, bounded off the stone wall towards me.
His eyes were first sad but then they were empty, after I had put an arrow between them. I landed on the top of the keep and swung around, watching them search for me, and felled one, two, ten. They died in spurts of brilliant blue but to me it was all the same, red blood against a red sky and I could smell my own, through the back of my nostrils, like iron but alive.
It was the first time I had ever been alive, I think, in my entire life. And in that moment, as the swarm surged towards me, I realized why they had done it. The greatest destroyers always end up destroying themselves.
The veil of red wasn’t lifted but their blades flashed brilliant blue reflecting the energy of my bow. One dove down, into my guard, and I kneed him brutally in the face, felt cartilage snap, shot him through the back of the neck. They roared and kept coming and as their swords bit into my palms I saw no other way. I kept firing, point-blank now, and the bowstring twanged and zinged to the time of their deaths. Then there was one, shining, headed towards my gut, and I faced the man wielding it, my arrow to his head.
We sought to make ourselves the ultimate destroyers.
We succeeded.
I let go.