Quashing the Inner Heart

[Rig 17591]

The Scourging of Caras Eldar, Attack of the September Prince.

 

      In the mind’s eye of a particular man, there was fermenting doubts, quarreling and cumbersome in their dredging pursuit of his innermost desires. The sword emblazoned with righteous fury does often trump the quill, and the man now sat prone contemplating the things he had done to reclaim his crown. His mind turned now to the unrelenting fervor of war; the drum that arduously beat in his throbbing heart, and the metal band that encircled his head growing heavier by the moment.

 

     He envisioned now smoggy skies as the engines of war toiled around him. The walls of the New Krag tumbling down, as he hurriedly sat down in a trench and labored over a piece of parchment, stroke by stroke of his pen biting the paper with his efforts. It was the first battle he had not fought in, he had assisted Emperor Aurelius I by helping man the siege weaponry. In him, he had noticed that he thirsted for something more, blood – but he quashed those thoughts, letting them wail in the deepest parts of his soul. He was no mere brute, he would not allow it, yet his thoughts turned again…

 

     The heart of a battlefield where he stood triumphant with his bare fists. An orc was beaten down before him, lumbering stature bent low and quivering with each rippling muscle, bruises and welts littering blue-tinted skin. Blood littered the ground and with the stroke of a sword the fight ended, and there was applause and rancorous screaming that followed. A grin split his lips as his breathing intensified, he thought of a beautiful woman back home that held his affections, and then he felt a crushing blow to his chest.

 

     Then down there below him, the carcass swam in a pool of wreathing shadows, his tall posture shrinking by the moment as he saw the whiskery face of his father, glaring and filled with intense rage. Failure. Killer. Mercenary. Demagogue. He felt his elations die, his insides turned to jelly and he fell to his knees with grief, for in his victories he had lost almost everything that mattered.

 

                   Tenpenny King. Tenpenny King. What you are is because of me, lay writhing in your absent dream.

 

      Those haunting words chilled him to the bone, the elegance and poise recognizable only to him, the tone of a brother turned hated foe. Now he imagined wide-eyed the carnage wrought, the bodies burned upon pyres, the green and mudskins facedown in the dirt as black-clad riders ripped spears from their bodies. He had once foolishly conceived peace to be a lie, but perhaps there was more that could be done? Lives to be spared?

 

      Now what pierced his eyes was a blazing phoenix, bright-eyed and inconceivably radiant. It emerged from the shallow depths of a pervasive darkness, an abysmal hole that usually only evil things crawled out of. The despair left him, the pain left him, and emerged a man anointed by his choices, resolve, and fire –  glorious, glorious fire.