As the final piece of aged marble fell to the ground upon the soot-stained grounds did the man, older than his time, sit down, as dusk broke over the mountain. His 100th birthday had come and gone without anyone to celebrate it with, or with the mind to recognize it. He took but a moment’s rest before a courier appeared before him, parting the dense, dimming fog with the wave of a hand.
“You’re with the construction crew for St. Lothar?” he asked, holding out a piece of rough, poly-fibrous scroll, held together by a fraying piece of twine.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Grand Duke’ll be here with the rest of the team soon. Figured you were project head. Pass this on to him and the Duke, won’t you?”
The old man sat silently, staring blankly into the eyes of the courier through the narrow slits in his helm, that inner cold piercing out and striking a chord deeply within the poor man; one that escorted him from the long abandoned hill in less than a minute. He’d grumble with a rue he’d grown accustomed to at that point.
“Damn Imperials coming to start more trouble. Should’ve killed the bastard while he was still grieving,“ he’d spit, tearing away the twine and unfurling the missive, letting the contents, splotched with homemade ink with what was left of his decadent mind.
. . .
"Horses! Horses, fine bred, yes! Come over and, ah... buy one!" she'd trail off, letting her body fall slack. Shaking her head, she'd pull tighter on the stubborn, mutt-like horse into the town square. Bar-goers at the Novellen watched, occasionally popping a smirk or snicker before downing their beverages as the two were dragged along by the frail, discolored thing. It was a mare they'd found at the bottom of the steps, trotting through the weed-filled wheat fields that cut into the bank of the river. It was a struggle in of itself to drag it up the stairs; now, it would be a completely different ordeal trying to pawn it off to some sucker.
"Yes, you, sir in the brown coat! Well- no, not the one with the wig. No, not the soldier. Yes, you! Please, do come over!"
"Carted it over from Arcas! Yes, a fine bred- no, no, that doesn't mean it's forty years old... No, please! Come back!"
After dragging the starved thing around Providence for the past day, the two siblings collapsed on the steps to the Novellen; their horse, collapsed unto its stomach before him, legs broken and splayed out unto its sides. "...You know something? I've been ranching these things for ten years now, and I've never seen one do that before."
"Not the best sign. Think they could stand to get back up?"
The girl whistled; in response, the horse's face fell further into the ground. "...Forget it. We're not selling this thing. Guess we'll have to find some other way to eat tonight."
Both of the two, begrudgingly, looked upon the greatsword laying between the two of them. The boy in blue picked it up, heaving it across his shoulders, and sighed, before lifting it above his head, and slamming it down upon the cobbles.
. . .
A trail of reddened, black sludge seeped into the ground before the armor-clad figure. It stained nothing; leaving no mark upon that heirloom suit, the only proof it had ever existed were the thankful, exhausted cries of the knight, leaning back against the pile of rubble, missive cast to the side. As he wept, that reddened substance would seep through the paper; pieces of that substance seemed to lightly tug at it, as though desperate to scan, memorize every character inked into the page, before becoming wisps among the fog, dissipating into the air. And as that ethereal substance was cast into nothingness, what remained of the paper would fly off. Sunlight fettered through the uneven textures of the broken paper, dampened by morning’s dew and whatever had fallen from that broken creature’s armor. One piece was caught upon the trees; another landed in the center of the pond, slowly melting away into an illegible, pulpy mess. The rest continued to be blown away, strung about the rocks of the valley, and caught upon the sticker-bushes and briar-trees that lay a carpet of green upon those untamed hills, where they would lay till nature or traveler did them waste- no more the sum of its parts, but forever divided, destroyed, irreparable. Maybe it was better this way. After all, he could always get another copy.
“Finally… We won.”