A Prologue In Snow

Black was suddenly alight with flashes of yellow and purple followed by distant screams and celebratory cheers. The clang of metal against metal resounded through the trees and the white sleet, stained crimson. Atop two bodies stood a boy, his sword brandished with the same blood spilled across the forest floors. Much like the lightning striking the enemy, the boy moved swiftly through the throats of two more men. The light in his eyes faded even more so. Two more people, their faces covered in cuts and bruises, ran to the boy with their swords drawn by their sides. From his left and right they started towards him, and their yells attempted to fill his ears. The boy listened to the depth of their breath and feeling the sounds of their footsteps in the sleet he ducked low. Impaling one another the pair stared into each others eyes as they died together.

The boy released their arms from their bodies and moved ever onward. Groups of clad warriors stood with torches ablaze beside the houses and stores he grew up in. Again, he would lose more of his home. The invaders cheered and threw the torches into the puddles on the floor, lighting the whole forest and filling their nostrils with smoke. His throat burned but still he ran, this time slicing the legs off of each soldier in the small village. A club struck his head but without flinching the boy jumped onto the host and tore through his chest with a dagger. The boy looked up, now in the centre of burning huts, and saw a pile of bodies. Each face he could recognise, the lady from the vegetable stalls, the old man that fished by the river. At the bottom of the pile he saw a young boy with a face like his own. He thought his brother had escaped.

He turned away and ran in the direction of the mountains. Thunder roared deeply and shook the very ground the boy was on, snow fell from the leaves and without stopping he dodged it all. His eyes were set on the base on the mountain where his house stood. No smoke was visible from that direction, at least not that he could see with what limited vision the dark gave him. His grip tightened on his sword.

The house stood untouched by the battle and the silence this far from it all made the boy uneasy. His guard was heightened much more, and without making a sound he crept into his home. Scents of fresh wood and flowers filled the living space, a change from the smells outside. They boy moved into his brothers room only to see the window wide open. His hands felt the snow, old tracks that matched his size left in the snow. His heart stopped, and his mouth went dry.

Slowly he moved outside the house and his eyes could not focus on where he stood. The image of the bodies filled his mind and his blood began to boil in hatred. Small lights moved between the trunks of trees and yelling followed the silhouettes as they fled in the direction of the mainland. The sword suddenly pointed at them following their movements. The boy grunted and began into a much faster sprint. The wind scratched his face and drew the tears the sat on his cheek away into the darkness.

Twelve of the invaders stopped in a small clearing, their heads jolted at the slightest sounds and their weapons were drawn close to their bodies. A faint cry came from the bushes and the group moved backwards. The boy moved swiftly and with twelve strikes. The first came from the right, his sword digging deep into the closest person. His second was a slash exiting the body and through the throat of the next person. Third was a clean cut of the head and fourth he plunged the sword through the heart of one. The fifth and sixth were identical slashes from head to toe, the seventh was and aggressive and deep cut, the eight and ninth through the stomachs. Tenth eleventh and twelfth were a flash, and a blur. The sword dripped with thick blood and the boy's eyes faded with every drop. In his rage he neglected to count the final five strikes to a tree nearby. The marks looked like the claws of an animal. One that would have to have had swords for claws.

The night began to swirl around the boy and the rest of the group faded into the distance as the light drew further and further away. He leaned against another tree gasping for breath, the first moment of respite during these long days. As he stared into his hand which was filled with blood, he wasn't sure whether it was his own or the hundreds that fell from him. There was a brief silence much like when he went to his house. There was no more sounds of cheering, the enemy had fled now.

A familiar scream drew from the tip of a longsword across the empty battlefield cutting the silence from the air. Without thinking, the child darted through mounds of the fallen unto the river that separated his village and the mainland. There across the river she kneeled, blood flowing from her like the water she was slain next to.

The boy called her name but her only response was a gesture to the man standing above her. His face wrinkled and smirking, turned to face the boy and began to chuckle. Staring into the void behind his eyes, he lifted the blade to the throat of the woman and tilted her head upwards. Words drew themselves wickedly from his lips but the raging tide of the river drowned them out. In one quick movement her head fell to the floor and rolled to the river's edge. The man laughed once more before meticulously wiping his weapon clean and sheathing it. With one last glance at the distraught boy he turned and fled back into the mainland.

Clenching the handle of his own sword, the boy waded through the river until his hands lay upon the bodiless head. Her face was soft and the ground had instantly frozen the cut. Her eyes were still full of life and her body twitched as though she were still alive. The boy touched his forehead onto hers, the blood joining the tears on his own face. As her life drained, so did his, their fates were intertwined since the beginning and yet now they had been torn apart.

His heart like the body before him became cold, the icy fingers of the gods caressing it as if they were trying to remove the pain that ached so, in that hollow place. The woman that had raised him into this world was taken so abruptly from him. He was not powerful enough, not quick enough to have stopped anything. The weight of the bodies he left behind began to feel meaningless in comparison to this loss. His mouth opened and his shriek became a howl of pain and aggression. The blade rung in resonance with this tune, mocking his tragedy. Gripping the neck of it, he threw it into the river, the spot where it landed dyed into an opaque red. The storm that had brewed long into the season's start began to unleash the full brunt of its collection. White water washed up onto the snowy bank, quickly dissolving the land. It was as though the world was reaching closer and closer, trying to retrieve the bodies that no longer walked amongst the living.

He set the head down and marched forward past the burnt huts and houses. The smell of flesh hung low in the air and the slow whines of the nearly departed filled his ears. Dead horses scattered the streets, and the falling snow and rain began to cover the scenes left behind from the previous days. There at the edge of the village stood the man, again cleaning his blade and brandishing it in the moonlight as though it were a sacred treasure. The boy reached for his own, but found it absent. His own doing.

The man turned to see the child stand alone in the field. His face covered in blood and snow. The eyes he carried were now empty and devoid of life, he was revenge and anger incarnate, no longer did human child stand before him. The man removed his own smile, for once feeling relieved that the long days were over and that this boy would finally put an end to the suffering. A small price to pay for his eternal suffering. Slowly he slipped the blade into the deepening snow. Crouching low and then taking a seat upon the ground, the man crossed his legs and sighed.

"This war has taken much a toll on us both child. We've taken more lives than we can count. But perhaps mine can be the last?" His head tilted to the blade beside him. Sleep is what he wished for, and he could see that the boy too longed for it. His hatred would end here, tonight.

The boy slowly paced forward, eyeing the man who was now smaller than he. Quickly he grabbed the weapon dragging its hefty body through the sleet. The man only looked ahead, ignoring the movements of the wary boy. The sword dropped hard on the man's arm, his bone holding it together just barely. Not a single sound came from him. The boy walked to his front, as he had done to his mother. With all his strength he lifted the sword to the throat of the man.

"Such a look does not suit a child. You have yet to even experience this world, truly. When you see it in its rotten entirety then surely you'll find me. And then we can laugh together." He smiled and gave out a small chuckle one last time. It was cut short by the sound of his head being cleaved from his body.

The boy listened not to the riddles the man chimed, his mind was empty and his body was tired. Without thinking he moved back to the river. The water had engulfed the body and its head, but still the boy waded across. As he moved through, rocks smashed into his thin legs and twigs caught onto his skin. He moved even further beyond the bank. His foot pushed aside bodies of his neighbours, toppling them across the ground. The snow continued to fall upon the crimson fields, and on the white sleet and piles of bodies lay his sword. It was clean, as though it was untouched by death or sin. It glowed magnificently like the stars above. The boy did not question why or how it sat alone there.

With eyes that could no longer see and ears that no longer heard, the world silent, he reached to the handle, to the place that was so illuminous in his fading existence. The sword sung its lullaby and soothing his pain it whispered the words he could not comprehend as his ears did not wish to listen nor did his mind wish to think. The sword was shaped now into the likeness of a person, their hand moving further away despite him reaching closer. The sword let go of its oppressor and allowed the white fate that awaited him to proceed while trading him for his grief...

For an eternity it seemed as if the night dragged on, his mind losing the memories of the events of his own life. The sight of his own mother faded, her gentle touch and her unbending strength disappeared like she never existed. The first time he held his sword seemed like a dream, and his first kill a figment of his imagination. It soothed him and drew him to rest, the weight of the bodies fell aside and the stains of blood soaked up by the layering snow.

His mind closed.

He faded into sleep...