A Sinners Lot

[Proddy 2415]

 

The Charge of the Clevite Brigade, 2044

 

And for their hearts could not know wisdom…

 

Nor contentment in their greed…

 

Render upon them only appetite…

 

Eternal in life, eternal in hunger…

 

Transgression for their sin most foule…

 

Spoiler

 

 

“CHARGE! CHARGEEEE!”

 

“BLOOD FOR ASHFORD!”

 

“DEATH TO THE HARRENITE!”

 

“WOE TO THE HALFBREEDS!”

 

The cry for war, echoed by Druscan men baring hearts infused with zeal and passion for their liege lord, rang out across the valley. The thunderous claps of a thousand hooves soon joined in tandem, a prelude to the cacophonic battle to come.

 

Frederick van Haeger rode amongst strangers that day. Farmhanders and fletchers, blacksmiths and stonemasons, soldiers and the sons of lords both greater and lesser. Each of them rode as one that day, in spite of their differences in station and class, into the charnel pit that was war.

 

Yet unlike those around him, van Haeger knew his death was writ large. As he smashed down the reins of his horse, pale steed spurred into a gallop alongside the men and women of Drusco, the battle to come made him snarly lowly beneath his helm. The hunger. How many years had it been, since he had last drank deep? The quenching of his thirst that had been denied to him would be his undoing, he knew - he rode forth to desolation and desolation alone awaited him. 

 

From beneath the veil of his bascinet helm, Frederick could not help but smile. Death would come for him on his own terms, at the very least.

 

 

Let them know only folly and ruin, these monsters of the night…

 

Let the finality of death elude them…

 

Just as the worth of mortal life…

 

Steel rang against steel in baleful song as the riders clashed against eachother like battering waves. Much of the cavalry - Druscan, Myrinese, Numenor - found their horses toppling against their enemy in the initial clash. Frederick held firm for only a minute before a pike smashed against his cranium, sending him toppling down from his horse. 

 

In a few more moments, the fallen huntsman had managed to recompose himself, arising to his feet. He gazed all about him - from both sides of the battlefield, infantrymen charged forth, their swords raised skyward as they screamed cries of combat. With each swing of the blade against one another, the sons of Horen rendered bloodshed anew. Frederick found himself mesmerized, stood still like a statue…

 

Blood…

 

Blood..

Blood

 

BLOOD.

 

The Beast stirred and wrestled within like a giant. That which lived within all his kind, doomed to forever exist behind their eyes. The monster amongst men swivelled his head, his attention struck upon a young Myrinese infantryman. A boy, from the look of him, no older than sixteen winters. The unfortunate youth clutched a longsword in hand, looking this way and that with frenzied, beady eyes.

 

This one was terrified. He had no place on a battlefield. 

 

Good, van Haeger thought. The weak are as meat, and the strong do eat.

 

Frederick’s head tilted at the lad, as if in challenge. Yet he drew no weapon - his hands reached up, yanking his helmet from his scalp and tossing it aside. The youth only grew more terrified as he set his sights on the man watching him ahead - his face was coated in his own twisted ichor, his skin pale and sickly. He looked halfway between beast and man, the moustached vagrant’s top lip parted to display two ravenous fangs. Frederick’s eyes were cold and hungry, yet his mouth could only grin with such hideous abundance…

 

 

 

 

Before the hunter could move a muscle, before the accursed transformation could finish, he felt a pressure upon his chest. One deeper than the hunger he felt, one more visceral…

 

He gazed downward, and his grin soon faded into a scowl. A blade rippled through his chest from behind, the sword struck true - it had punctured his heart, a fatal bane for even an immortal.

 

“Damn…” The Vampyre murmured with disappointment in his last breath, crumpling limp onto the grass.

 

And as the battle raged, and Drusco tasted the sour grapes of defeat…

 

There, amongst the dead, Frederick van Haeger would be found - body frozen in death, a dissapointed scowl still held upon blood-soaked lips.

 

Mortis.

[femurlord 3751]

Frederick rose from battle again, his body taking time to heal. But as it remains, he was the last Frederick standing..

[Axelu 4333]

Another laid in wait for her kith, sired by the same ilk of Aeldinic blood; but, he never came. Not after that battle. The blood moon had grown dim, until the moment when it would again eclipse all other stars. 

[Lasombruh 612]

A bloodsoaked bannerman mourns the fallen Frederick.

[Bogatyr 335]

In the compact of her hand, a mountaingirl loosed the noose knots of her rosary. Many beads—one for every soldier fought and been fought—strung together and forming a lattice in her palms. And then the rosary did what strawberry plants often would before they shot out their thin vines: the quality of the string changed. In strawberry plants, the vine threads came after that, then the buds. By the time the pale petals shrunk and the mint-coloured berries bounded out of the plant ovary, the leaf shine was gilded tight and waxy.

That, also, was how Julia looked on her prayer beads: her mountainperson eyes were gilded tight and waxy. And, in each bead she looked on the blood-smeared face of a man God made none sweeter than demanded more. A face reddened like fresh strawberries and scant of their tartness.

[Nestro_Miner 589]

Kalenz raises his bloody fists to the skies as, a prayer sung beneath his breath for all his fallen comrades.

[ChainedDragons 1374]

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