A CORPSE'S TALE: A STEEMMONSTER STORY

I am dying. I don’t know when it will happen but I feel my body rebelling against me. My hair is falling off, my eyes are sunken pools of liquid darkness, my ribs stand out like the carcasses of old forests, and my skin hang languid from my bony frame. What is wrong with me, you ask? Death my friend, ordinary death.

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_{Image taken from my steemmonsters card deck}

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You know the war has ended when you can’t find a reason to keep swinging your sword, to keep gripping your spear shaft, to keep screaming in fear at men with fear in their eyes, spittle on their lips, swinging wildly at you. You know it is over when all you hear is the laughter of hyenas, the cackle of crows and the wet pleadings of dying men calling for their mothers. You will know.

I have been walking this path for days now. We were six at first but the five are silent now, signposts for future travelers. I have survived on the sour water from the last well we saw before, moon sickness struck them one by one and they died. Why I am still walking on this path, alive is any body’s guess. I should be dead like them, yes I should be dead.

I am tired but I cannot stop. I fear that if I should place my back on a tree's bark, I will never rise again. I want to get back to my village. I want to die in the arms of the one I love. I want to hold my son in my arms and whisper the secrets of my lineage to him before I go. I want so many things but I don’t think I will get any of them. The gods are cruel. I dream.

This war has raged across the Splinterlands for too long and sometimes I wonder who I have sacrificed so much for. The commander of my troops said we fight for the Life but I saw nothing but death while on the battlefield. The soldiers of Life killed as much as the soldiers of Death and in some instances it was worse. This was not why I left my village. This was not why I left my wife and unborn child. I joined because he said that the Splinterlands needed to unify and it was life that had the power to do so. He said so at the village square, his cloak waving in the soft afternoon breeze, that the banner of life was the hope of all and with the divine purpose behind the banner, all will flock to us and we will be victorious. I had lied to myself for my reasons were not pure. Back then, in what feels like many years ago, it was easy to believe the knight.

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I had farmed my father’s land for thirty six moons before the rumours of the wars began to filter into our village. Soon after the rumours arrived on ill winds, the peddlers came with news. Their news was bleak and it would seem that the world had gone mad all over. The land had splintered into different parts and each splinter sought dominion over the others. The great magisters of the different splinters were summoning monsters from the void to battle enemy splinters and they were also recruiting massively, both man and material.

The people of my village thanked the gods that the stink of war was a faraway thing. We all knew that the lords of the different splinters sought dominion over each other but our village was too far away on the edge of the splinter called Life, for anyone to bother. It was therefore a surprise when a Silvershield Knight appeared in our village. Who has not heard of the knights of life? Their glittering armour and huge white warhorses they rode on had filled the night time fantasy of many a little boy and even men who should know better. They were the elites of the life splinter and they were blessed by the gods to bring justice and peace to all of the different splinters, so did the doctrine go. I who was once loved by Lyanna, now lost to me, what did I know?

He was a hardened warrior, this knight. Wrinkles and scars battled in his face and he was gruff of speech. He told us that the war was almost won but they needed men who believed, who were willing to act on their belief. He said there was reward for any who joined and powers too, to be as strong as the knights. He didn’t need to say more, I was tired of my people, I needed to do something and truth be told, I harboured anger for they who took Lyanna away from me. So I packed my sack, kissed my wife, tied the rope about my waist and joined the long line of fools who trudged away from the warmth of their loved ones.

The knight, he lied. There was no victory, no light, no honour in war. We trudged for days before we joined other knights and their crop of village youths seeking glory. We heard them whisper of a rendezvous at a temple not far from where we camped. That night we were separated into groups and each group was led away by a separate area in the camp. I found myself with a different knight and I observed that all of us in that area were of a particular size. We would be team mates, I thought. We would fight together and save the world together, I thought. That night, as the moon rose, red as blood, monsters attacked and the screams of dying men filled the air.

By the time, the smoke had cleared and the thunder of magic had ceased, I was the only man standing in that space, my hand gripping tight, the staff I had carried with me from home. The knight in charge of my area came to me and gruffly told me to get a horse and join with the others, they were leaving. What about the dead, will they not be buried, I asked foolishly. He looked at me and told me that the carrion eaters will take care of that. Carrion eaters?

I joined the others and found that the loss was major. What I had thought to be an isolated incident was actually spread across the whole camp. Only the new recruits had died. Out of over three hundred men, about eighty remained. There were enough horses for all of us and so we rode. We rode as hard as we could for the temple but every night we were harried and attacked by monsters. The men gave their best but we were untrained and unprepared for all of it. When we got to the temple, we were twelve men left besides the six knights who had led us.

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At the temple I met other weary men, eyes wide with the shock I am sure was also lurking in my own eyes. We stood about lost and confused. So this was war? But little did we know that war had not begun for us. What we had experienced was simply the whittling down of the weak. One of the healers, an old crone, came to me and placed her claw-like hands on my head and soon I felt the fatigue of the past weeks flee my body. My eyes brightened and I thanked her. She cackled, flicking her tongue over her toothless gums and moved on to some other man.

Another selection process was carried out again and soon men were led away. I will never see any of those men again but I have no bother, I never learnt their names. There was no time to make friends, there was no time to speak of home. I and others were led away and soon I was training to be a warrior in the army of Life. Finally, I was where I wanted to be. Two months after, we were given our mail and swords and sent off to war. We were to make a stand at the Tar Pits of Creation, we were to look death in the eye.

The news had not gone down well with the men. The Pits were a place of terror and pain. It was were the horde of corpses that you had to kill and kill again came out from. I laughed at the stories. The monsters that had ravaged us before should have been enough lesson but I am but a simple farmer; what did I know of dark magic and the machinations of men?

It took us a month to reach Mortis. Monsters harried us all the way but I made it and I knew I was on the victorious side until I saw the vast horde of undead waiting in eerie silence. It is something to fight living men. They scream, they curse, they bleed, they sweat, there is something in their eyes that tell you that they are as desperate and as afraid as you but to find these silent corpses was something else. Men threw up, shat and urinated on themselves as they stared at the horror before them. When the trumpet ordered the charge, it was a broken mass that ran at the silent unblinking horde of dead things.

A cackle filled the sky and the earth trembled then opened its maw and swallowed whole regiments. Men and horses screamed. Lightning flashed as I ran at the undead, fear at my heels, desperation in my scream. Blood and dust filled the air and rained on me. The undead horde moved and the battle began. While we screamed and died, these things that once used to be men mowed us down in silence like we were trees and grass in their path.

Light flashed and the horde trembled and burst into flames. Not a sound escaped them as they were consumed. We roared in glee; victory was ours, we thought then more clambered out of the ground to fill the empty spaces. I suddenly realised that this was not war. This was refined suicide. We were being butchered to test the efficacy of a new weapon. We were being used as an experiment. I tried to flee. I swear, I turned my back and tried to flee but a rotting sword changed all that. It tore through my mail like knife through water and I stumbled into the arms of grinning death.

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There are things you remember when you feel death close to your elbow, when you listen to men weep, bleed, steal another breath of air from dying bodies, when you hear men, big strong men, veterans of several campaigns call to their gods, to their mothers, to their sweethearts, to their sons. I could remember the taste of Lyanna’s lips on mine the summer we went to the great forests for the feast of harvests. I could remember the taste of mead after I threw up from drinking too much with Davin and his eight brothers. I could remember the bee that perched on the chrysanthemum just before Obred plucked it and placed it on Lyanna’s hair. I could remember the sound of horses on the packed earth taking Lyanna away from me.

I have walked far but it seemed like I have never moved. My legs buckled and I staggered then I take another step forward. A wind came and pushed aside the curtain of dew and the scene before me stopped me. I had walked in circles. I was back at Mortis, at the Tar Pits of Creation. K fell to my knees and a cackle fill my ears. The laughter rage through my body and I realise that I am laughing. It was over. I closed my eyes one last time.

I awoke to silence. The sky was green and purple, red and orange. It was as if the sun was setting and rising at the same time. I struggled to my feet and for the first time, I felt no pain. What I felt was immeasurable thirst. The thirst clawed my insides and ate into my skin like sulphur. I needed something to stop it but I did not know what I needed. I stumbled and fell to my hands and knees. I retched and nothing came out, dry heaves followed then the pain began; I screamed then I passed out.

I do not know how long I was out. When I came to, it was night but it was as clear as day. I knew it was night because I could see bats winging away in search of meat. I stood up and I stopped short. Surrounding me was a horde like nothing I have seen before. Rotting flesh sloughing off faces, twisted purple muscles wrapped around pale skeletons, shredded clothes and a stink that we had all become used to, the stink of death, filled my eyes. I stumbled backwards in horror and fear and fell into a puddle of what was part blood, part visceral, part water. A pale moon rose from behind my head in the image that rippled into view. It was me or something close. There was no flesh on my face and my chest spied my ribs and a black shriveled heart. I was like the other things standing motionless in the night. I screamed and laughter cackled through the sky then a voice spoke;

“You are all mine now, bought and paid for. No more soldiers of life, in dying you have become warriors of death, my undead soldiers, my men of foot. I have summoned you from the grave to do my bidding. Do it and there will be rewards. Go into the Splinterlands – sow terror, horror, death and tears. I have given you life eternal. Use it well. Go!”

I have found truth in death and this time I knew better albeit too late. There will be no victory for me. I will not face Lyanna across the battlefield and ask her what became of the love we professed. I could not go back to my wife and child. There was nothing but death. I could have wept but my tear ducts were dry. I yelled within my soul, in my chains and with the others, took my first step in the half darkness.

We moved, this great horde of dead monsters and dead men. No one questioned, not even me. My legs moved as if they belonged to another and soon from shuffling, we moved to running. We spread like locusts in the night and the Splinterlands were never the same again.

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©warpedpoetic, 2019.