Empty Kingdom

[crimsonbro]

I was going to do something more with this but, well, I didn't. Maybe some day a character will wander into my head that can grasp that sword and begin to heal a broken place.

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The world was numb. Sweetly numb. All the arrows that were pierced through him, all the cuts that had made it through his guard, it was all gone. How sweet it was. Smiling, he pushed his sword deeply into the ground and raised his bleeding eyes to those creeping slowly towards him. Creeping like the rats they were. Vermin. Scared. Weak little vermin. But so many. So many. A few more arrows hit him, he felt a few that struck where his armor had fallen away but most twanged away.

 

It was not pain now. No. Even those arrows that had punctured him anew were nothing. He sneered at the rats around him, his face a bloodied mask. His eyes burning with the pure fury that raged within. Green orbs of hate, glaring, sending cold shivers down their spines.

 

“Come! Come to me…” His voice wasn’t much more than a rumbling gurgle but the enemy still hesitated. A fatally wounded animal was always the most dangerous. They had him trapped and dying and they all knew it. Yet none wanted to die with him. All had seen what he could do. For those just arriving to this last, standing figure, the ring of bodies around him was proof enough of what awaited them.

 

What they didn’t know was what he had waiting for them. He was trapped? Ha! They all were. He struggled to stay up right. Something went. A knee? His leg? Either way, he dropped to the ground, holding the sword for balance. Now they came. The cowards. But they came to death. It was time. As far as he could see, they were close enough. They were all in for a big surprise.

 

“Aphee–” He only had to mumble the word. Not even finish before the dark power began spilling out of him. It was the word. The word to ignite the little blue bubble on the hilt of his sword. One little word. One little sound. He laughed before he could finish as he felt the power seize him. That ragged sound froze them. Too late. The remaining army was too close. They should have sent more men. Ah, if only they had sent their entire Kingdom against him!

 

His eyes burned with a growing fire even as his life faded. A fire so intense that those close enough took a step back. “Apheena.” Echoed hollowly across all the Kingdoms. A sound that sent livestock running. Nightmares to those that slumbered. Apheena had been her name. His love. His life. When she died, he had died. So many years ago. And now… with that word complete… his sword ignited in full. Blossomed suddenly in its full, deadly glory.

 

The blue flash could be seen for miles around. Curious men and women stared at the sudden flare. It took time, yet soon enough the polluted wind pushed at the people that were unlucky enough to be outside at the time. None would ever forget it. They couldn’t. It changed them. Deformed a few poor souls. Hurt the hearts of others. The wind was just a touch of the spell that had been used. The wind it threw out was thick with the smell of death and decay and all things foul. All that could touch the magical plane shuddered as the spell twisted and corrupted it. A death spell like no other. One filled with decades, lifetimes, of hate, rage and soul crushing loneliness.

 

A spell so large, so devastating, it knocked a few seers senseless around the lands. The spell was so powerful and made in such a way that the likes of it had never been triggered before. Or since. The entire magical plane was drained a little that day. Darkened by the death it brought. So much death. Land, air, water. All life in its reach. All gone. It was years before the glow faded. Years more before a group of Magi dared enter the once Kingdom now re-named the Cursed land.

 

For miles around, there was nothing. No life. Nothing growing. No sound. No sight but flat, black earth. Wind would stir the fine black powder that coated everything. A fine dust of death that never left the boundaries of the Cursed land. It was hard to remember that this once had been a flourishing Kingdom. Once, there had been life. Songs. Happiness. Life. It took them days to reach the slight, sickly throbbing sensation they could feel. The sore spot that all Magi of any type in all the Kingdoms could feel.

 

They found a strange void. As they neared, they began to make out a shape. It was a sword. Only a sword. No. Not just a sword. Not that throbbing, lonely and lost thing. Not just a sword. The Magi moved about it, testing various spells but nothing could touch it. It stood defiant to all. A gleaming dark beacon. A monument to those countless lives lost in its deadly net. Those lost to its wrath. The Magi stayed as long as they could. Soon, they felt their own magic being pulled, slowly, oh so slowly, into that deathly void around the weapon.

 

They left as fast as they could. Never to return. Spreading the word of what they’d found. Leaving the sword standing alone and defiant in its empty Kingdom. A symbol of loss so potent that generations yet to come would hear and know and mourn with the sword’s bearer whose name was lost in time.