Early autumn leaves dust across my mud covered sabatons, embered and carried by the hot winds of a smoldering battlefield. The sweat dripped from my nose and hit the inside of my helmet. I fell to a knee and relinquished my sword and shield, my holy protectors, ensuring my passage. The hot metal prison is torn from my head and tossed aside, landing by a corpse.
A friend.
The blinding sun's attempts to keep the fort from my sight were in vain. Before me laid the last bastion of opposition. A campaign of purification nearly at an end.
Behind me was a cenotaph of the trials we suffered, and I alone endured. The banners burnt away before me. Leaving their cloth and legacy in ash. Men turned to mounds, their ideals and valor as dead as the kings they held them for. The fields of war is no place for a farm hand, but I endured.
An age of war made the realm of men low. Kings rose and fell. Castles. Gods. All gone. Flame and ambition. Dragon and king. The fallen and the ascended. Each more destructive than the next and in their eternal vitriolic dance, felled all. Leaving only two.
My sword and shield found me once again as I arose for what could be the last time to fight or die for my king. The one true king. His grace, born of crimson and iron and cut down the same. My flesh had rendered during the scrimmage, leaving me bare for the world to see.
Should it've persisted.
The bloody breadcrumb trail leaves no reprieve of destiny. Known or not. Soon there would be one knight. And then none. This much is certain. And yet I endure. The cold shadow of the monolith of inevitability washed over me as I hobbled towards the archway. The metal of my gauntlet scraped the stone as I steadied my gait. The sound accompanied by my labored heaves, both dancing all around me.
The cold dark echoes of the interior mocked me. Glimpses and stories. The walls given purpose. I don't mind. Like a child, I close my eyes and give in to the whispers and promises. Enemies I'd never make. Friends I'd never meet. No pretty maidens, or old crones. Their voices still found me here.They can be my audience. Victory and defeat are synonymous when achieved without witness or consequence.
Rhythmic were my feet. Falling one after the other, a cadence of discipline and fundamental repetition. Toward the threshold and its luminescent beckoning. The smell of war disappearing behind, giving way to something more, stale and rigid.
My shambling had brought me to finality anew. The room where I was always meant to be. Blood-laden stone. A crumbling throne supporting a crowned corpse. A knight of nobility and loyalty unending.
A scared farm boy.
No. His killer. His replacement. The remnants of a one who was cut up and made into a useful thing. A mirror. The balance of what is different yet almost indistinguishable. Another boy on another farm in another kingdom with another dead king. Wielding his fear. Wearing his training as a mask. He stands to his feet.
The stage set, he draws and I draw in kind. A dance written in the stars. The dance that raised mountains. The kinds of mountain I just left. Piles of men. Once friend and foe, now all flesh indistinguishable.
We step.
The dance begins. The orchestra of our footwork and choir of our breath drives us on. Both leaking and dripping. Leaving our mark on this historic and most inconsequential of grounds. Metal clashes and withdraws at it always has. True strikes and sure footing, masters at work. Cracked leather and chipped steel and scarred limbs and tender hearts. The walls may grow strong but the fruits within remain unchanged. Pierced through the slowing machines have stopped.
I endured.
Driven through and headless, each has a sealed fate and my legs finally fail me. As I fall to my knees, gripping the blade plunged within me, I sit, leaning on the throne. The king's champion and honored guest. Sobs escape as there is no shame in solitude.
A naive child emerges once more as fantasies of a place beyond the oceans, a far off land, untouched by any of this horror. Where a farm boy never has to leave the farm. Where mounds are dirt. And leaves fall, not burn. A paradise worthy of sacrifice.
I need only persist.
I need only endure.