Ephialtes - [Rp Story]

[ChainedDragons 1374]

[[WAR TRAUMA - This is something I wrote for Hart with the latest battle and all]

Ephialtes

---------------------

It was his birthday. His 17th. Hart grunted as he shifted stones aside, laying down a clay and mud mixture before putting stone upon stone. He was building a fire place. He had become quite good at it after 10 years of practice. 17 years of breathing, living. How time flew for humans. It was like he arrived in Petra yesterday and now...

He places a stone in place, letting out a tired sigh as he sat back against the pillar holding up his bedroom, resting his head to face upward. 

Must everything be uncertain, He thought. The nordling looked at his hands. They were caked in drying clay and crackling with moisture escaping. His eyes fluttered as he watched his hands tremble lightly. He hadn't really done much for the past several days except work on the inn and his home.

Hart blinks, his vision tunneling on his hands once more. Red.
The squire lets out a gasp. There was red. All over. Running off his hands. The 17 year old scrambled backward, finding his back wasn't registering his resting spot. He wasn't in his room anymore. He was in the pines.

The sounds of horses screaming, men and women dying around him sent the teen crawling through the muck and slathered grasses. He had to get away from here. It wasn't safe. A sharp kick hit his gut, sending the squire flying several feet. He landed harshly with a roll, gasping as his face face skyward to the pines surrounding him like a crown. Hart let out a cry of fear as a horses hoof came down to his face - out of reflex he tried to cover his face with his bloodied arms. 

 

"You wanna fight?"
Hart felt himself be yanked to his feet, his eyes registering on a helmed grail men before him. Who-
His mind didn't get to register the figure as he let out a frightened yell, the figure now appearing to be a rotten visage of itself.
"I said do you want to fight? War isn't a game boy- PICK UP YOUR SWORD!"
Hart felt his body trying to move but it couldn't frozen in the grasp of the dead curia man. The body cackled, its snaggly teeth falling out from beneath the helm.

"PICK UP YOUR SWORD!"

 

How was he to pick up a weapon when none were near. The teen whimpered unable to do anything as he squeezed his eyes shut.
"You're just a kid."
Just a kid. Just a kid. Just a kid.
The phrase repeated itself over and over as Hart felt himself locked in a tornado of multiple scenarios of being told those three words. He was just a kid. He couldn't stop any of what was happening.
Not Stigandrs death.
Not the war.
Nothing.

Hart awoke in a cold sweat, gasping as he threw his arms before him, trying to shove his invisible attacker. But there was no one. Just him.. and the partly built fireplace. Hart sat in silence before his lip began to quiver. He let his head sink between his knees as he rocked himself back and forth, crying in the empty room. 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited April 2, 2025 by ChainedDragons
file fail