And So He Laid, Still

[bloomtiara 379]

When did it all go wrong?

 

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Was it when they first approached the city?

Or maybe, it was deciding to go inside the way they did… No matter what the case was, what’s done is done, so they say.

 

What’s done is done, her corpse crushed into the grass like mulch;

What’s done is done, his body buried beneath the sand akin to cruel coffin. 

 

What’s done is done, as his spine was crushed beneath the weight of the stone wall, his skin peppered in bruises like rain drops splattered upon fresh clothes. His limbs snapped like twigs in the woods he walked at age fourteen, ribs each cracked like fallen leaves in autumn; even his mind mangled just like the letter he’d read to signal his dear sister’s demise.

 

As they encroached over the stone wall, all balanced atop, so too that thing catch sight of them. The numerous monstrosities were more than any of them had ever imagined, after all. Nothing could have prepared them for this as it slammed straight through brick as if it were no more than fresh snow. Nor could they have foreseen its quickness. 

 

It trampled that idle woman down into the dirt to be no more than food for the worms.

 

It raced at Auden, where he took the bull by the horns. It slammed strongly into his plate, crumpling the metal akin to no more than paper. Having blinded it, it went through the stone again, crushing him between it. 

So too did crimson spill from him, being thrown into his elder Templar standing some ways aside after putting the monster to his end aside that of Auden’s own nephew. Fire splattered over it, taking hold violently, blasting them away. So then did he lay, upon death’s mighty door, caught by the ankle. 

 

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Scream upon screech upon shout, his comrades fought around that dying man.

He couldn’t see, nor hear their voices, calling around him violently. And so, he had but a small idea. You’re supposed to keep awake so gravely wounded, and so did that man shove out a hum from the depths of his bloodied throat.

Whistling, and picturing that lovely day.

Sitting upon a bench outside his home of Halstaig, right by his sister’s side. 

 

Frogs hopped about the pond’s edge, croaking into the sky.

 

So did he, screeching out in pain as he laid upon that cot, all the way back in Ironguard, wrought from that memory with force as each limb was shoved back into place, bones skidding against each other as ichor poured upon the cot.

The man cried and wept, sobbed and screamed as his body fought against him, wounds sickeningly tied back together. They would not allow him to leave, not yet.

Even when the option was made available, from that Lord’s son, he couldn't take it.

His sister would be disappointed for giving up, and his brother whole and true, more so family than that brother of his own blood.. He wondered if that old man would cry, all the same?

 

With those murmured words, maybe thought to even be his last, were he left to lay.

His last eye stuck to the ceiling while his mind wailed away at him, left to digest that bloodshed and sand that had been spilt atop him.

 

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For how long would he be able to think?

He could only withstand that wretched ache of his dying body for so long, choking upon his own throat in struggle against death, as if suffocating beneath that very pond back home.

How long, indeed.

And So He Laid, Still.