The Phantom Soldier Marches On...
Lucius sheathed his sword.
To be truthful, it wasn't really a sword anymore, and there was no more need to sheathe it than there was for him to eat or rest.
But he went through the motions as much as he could to try and maintain some thread of connection to what he had been.
Battlefields always looked the same after battles...for some reason they were always overcast, the grim coloring of the sky being the eternal background for the stacks of bodies and the shrieks of the dying. At least the shrieks no longer bothered him now.
How long have I wielded a sword of flame, and marched the paths of wind?
Bah, not that it mattered anyway. What was now is what had always been and always will be: he supposed that had he feelings, that idea would have bothered him as much as the cries of the fallen used to have done.
He moved to the fallback line, where the side of Death had rallied and he had done the most damage. The old woman was tending to the wounded, although that wasn't as good for them as it would have sounded once upon a time. The Armies of the Dead would need replenishing after the battle.
Here, the mounds of the dead were the largest, and most of them were his doing. He had always done his best work from the reserve, moving quickly to the critical point and striking hard.
Get that fuhstest, fastest, with the mostest...indeed
And isn't that where he had started? Wasn't his greatest pride (when he still had pride), to take the brunt of the enemy attack, until they revealed their weakness, and then to strike brutally?
His mind, stripped of emotions like regret, could pinpoint the moment he had "enlisted" with the Armies of the Dead himself, even if he didn't have a sense of how long it had been.
While he still shed blood of his own; when he last been been able to do that. And it had been his pride to withstand and to retaliate for the victory. Up until that last battle. There were simply too many enemy. He knew he was lost and that pride could not withstand that.
So he had called on the forces of Death, and they had answered by shattering the battlefield, and his enemy with it.
The price for victory had been his soul, and that too is what had always been and always will be.
So it was time to "sheathe" his sword and prepare to march on to the next battle...
...Jarlax was calling again
Story Note
That pic of the old woman on the battlefield? I think there is a good card for the Death splinter just looking at the image ;>
Story submitted for the Steem Monsters Fantasy Story and Music Contest // Week 9 // 15 Booster Pack Prize!
Image Sources
Phantom Soldier
'Battlefield', by Käthe Kollwitz
The Wilderness Battlefield
Follow my curation trail, More Info
Hi @stevescoins!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 5.518 which ranks you at #634 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 1 places in the last three days (old rank 633).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 180 contributions, your post is ranked at #48.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
excellent short piece, great use of vocabulary, inspiring to say the least keep it up
glad you liked it
inspiring? ah, but your name is death ;>
haha, inspiring as well as witty, Ill have to check out your other work when i get some time, and yes reading what you did with phantom soldier inspired me to write myself, i like how you gave him a persona, a name, you made it feel like a real character, a creature you can have empathy and imagine about
I'll crank out a new fiction index in a bit; I've been writing politics instead of fiction for the last year or so
looking forward to it, ill keep my eye out
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by stevescoins from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
Hi, @stevescoins!
You just got a 0.11% upvote from SteemPlus!
To get higher upvotes, earn more SteemPlus Points (SPP). On your Steemit wallet, check your SPP balance and click on "How to earn SPP?" to find out all the ways to earn.
If you're not using SteemPlus yet, please check our last posts in here to see the many ways in which SteemPlus can improve your Steem experience on Steemit and Busy.