I was stopped in my tracks by this art, reminicscent of one of the most iconic and influential fantasy artists around: Frank Frazetta. To this day, he captures motion like no other. Despite the fact that I tend to have an issue creating an interesting story from a battle (in my opinion), I thought I’d give it a shot.
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Team CousCous
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lxWgoa
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Pandemon, I will finish your name. A blade disturbs my thoughts, cutting the air while a greater blade made of shadow cuts the wall. Made of men and swords and banners and spears. A great serpent rising. A battle soaring above the battle. I must soar higher. I will soar higher.
The steps rage with blood. Where it doesn’t flow it spatters. I find those steps with a heavy foot heavy with plate. The blade that distrubed me does no longer. It is the last thing the man holds, longer than his breath, longer than the daydreams of home where a humble home made of stones placed by his own hands atop a field tilled by his own hands sits empty but for a motherless child. I know this for the dirt under his nails tell me the tale, the pendant of twig and feather made by child around his neck, the grip of the hilt. I do not linger. I do not think of him again.
A bowman next, wild-eyed, spies me from rubble colored of soil in which no crop would grow, and this triggers a memory of a wasteland he fled to die among the bugs that swarm around him. Glory he sought? A life where his life would matter? I will never know the answer because as he realizes he is a bug like all the others, they take him down in their fury, not out of anger or fear, but because he’s there, among them, unable to navigate the tide. A good draw he had on that bow. But I am no stag, frozen by the winter of the arrowhead. I am a slayer of serpents, and I must rise to slay it.
A spear tied to a spear is a banner of tattered cloth and bleached skulls. It tries to rise higher, to show me it brings death. But it should know skulls of blood and fractures, oozing eyes and brains show the true meaning of battle. Yet it does hold my gaze long enough for another to think he can best me. A large man, he is, greatsword at the ready, careful steps around severed limbs and fallen bodies toward me as if we are the only two men in this hell.
I grant him the first attack, and what power he has. My shield buckles, wanting nothing more than burst into splinters, but somehow it holds, and I punch it up into the man’s face to punish it for its near betrayal. Heavy of arm but not heavy of mind, this man. I return the sword to him as he had sent it to me, straight up the middle to divide him, and it nearly did, lodging in his skull where his eyes crossed to observe the spectacle, yet somehow he tore another blade from his side and pivoted an attack. My axe silences the song of the blade by taking his arm. It tumbles behind me to never speak again. I step over this man, sorry to have not learned his tale.
Another banner, torn and stitched with dragon scale mirrors the one of skulls that still stands. Symbols I do not know. My side, their side, no side. A carpet of bodies sprawls before me, of all sides, and I use it to usher me to the top, no more steps to be had, so steps I make. The serpent shadow undulates a victory of sorts, spilling scales made of men.
Higher than the serpent loom the uncaring gods, hewn from stone, looking at nothing, not bothered to witness the slaughter done in their name. Not me, but surely someone in this swirling mess. Strange that men dress their halls with gods that cannot nor will not aid them. I wonder if when looking up, these men, with eyes dimming to black, if they realize their folly, and that even in the moment they believe they will ascend to these gods who give them nothing but an expression of apathy. Never think yourself lower than anything but the sky, I tell these men. With my thoughts, with my heart, with my axe, because they can hear me no other way. Acknowledgement or hate or fear or disagreement they show me in their eyes, dying candle flames drowning in the pitch of helms that will not save them.
A clash of steel, a tear of flesh, a break of bone calls from behind me. It could have been mine if not for the man who I do not know, pike not finished with the one who will not give up, clutching the end as if all he has to do is remove it and all will be well. A smell of pine of earth of musk assaults me from the pikeman, and though I cannot give my thanks now, I know his tale, and can give my thanks to what he holds sacred when these halls of stone are done, empty but for death and flies.
I stand tall then, because there is no place to stand taller. The shadow serpent writhes, losing more spines and scales, yet I have lost none of mine. Others see this, from all sides, and I stand taller than their gods in that moment, and they look upon me with awe as the light the serpent cannot steal catches my helm, my blade purging the blood of their brothers, and allies and enemies alike. But I am a humble man, no god, not at all. They realize this because I allow them to realize it, and the first man comes for me, with an axe as mine, a beard unlike mine, eyes of the ink I bring and bring and bring.
I will not survive this day, nor tell the tales I have learned. A quest of mine that never was. Rise above the serpent, rise above the day to do what no other man could. Finish a name. And I have finished your name.
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