Demon Core

Chapter 36: An Army Against a King (2/2)

Chapter 36: An Army Against a King (2/2)

~ [Primavera Bastille] ~

Fire flies through the night, streaks of crimson tearing through the darkness like the color visible behind a ripping curtain that had been obscuring the day beyond. Screams fill the air as men fly across the landscape, charred armor and bones rattling as they strike against tower-shields, rolling and sinking into the mud. Half dead men scream, clawing at the surface, as they try to fight their way above the muck, to stop themselves from sinking as their scorched and battered bodies are unable to resist the pull of the ooze. Hundreds drown in ankle-high sludge, their screams vanishing below the brack before the splashing of their comrades boots even finishes, trampling over the wounded masses as they storm toward the Demon-King.

He stands there in the middle of the onslaught, surrounded by a swarm of thousands of blades, his silhouette entirely invisible beyond the great mass of explosions, blasts, and arrows that never stops, targeting him as he stands there in their midst. His form is entirely indistinguishable amidst the chaos. The mud all around them bubbles and boils, vapors of steam rising into the air like the souls of the departed. Ghosts howl, spin, and dance all around the battlefield, their voices and lights joining those of the spirits of the thousands of soldiers in the garrison.

Cadet Advanced Botticelli slips, falling down into the mud as the world explodes next to him, pieces of meat and metal flying in all directions past his blurred vision.

The spinning world is filled with a loud, high-pitched whining. In a daze, he sits there in the mass of soldiers, turning his head to look toward the blackened smoke. The area where the Demon-King had been is entirely charred, crusted over, and covered in soot from the countless explosions that had happened there. There is a deep, tense silence.

Someone yanks Botticelli below his arms, pulling him up to his feet from behind. Mud schlocks around his legs, as if desperate to swallow him down into it.

Get the hell up to your feet, Cadet! yells a voice in his ears, finally breaking through past the insect whining that had been ringing in his head. Botticelli turns his gaze, looking at the captain.

He closes his eyes for a second, trying to stop the spinning of his vision. Everything is quiet. Did we Boticelli stops, holding his head, as the captain lets go of him. Did we get him, Sir? he asks, looking back toward the clearing smoke that endless ghosts drift through, flying over the landscape.

Everything is silent, apart from the schlocking of wet, thick mud.

- Sir? asks Boticelli, looking around himself in confusion. The battlefield has fallen silent, too much so. The men of the forward assault group have stopped screaming, stopped talking, stopped crying. The sounds of metal have come to an end. The sounds of screeching anqas have fallen still. All he can hear is the schlocking, the damp, pressing sounds of something moving, something writhing. Something something is present all around the scene that he cant quite make out. A squiggle, a line. Theres something

Theres something wrong.

Everything is too still.

Boticellis eyes scan the smoke-covered battlefield as his head slowly turns back toward his captain, standing behind him. The old mans hands are still below his shoulders, as they were when he helped him to his feet.

He screams, pulling away and dredging back, stepping through the mud in horror as he looks at the captains eyes, which are full of life but without the spark of possession, as his gaze lifts only an inch further to the long, tubular protrusion that presses in through his captains left temple and exits out of the opposite on the right side of his head, piercing it from side to side.

Its a long, fleshy, tubular thing, like a rope or a a string, a cord, perhaps. It has a softness to it, like such an object being let slack. Yet it now holds a tightness to it, as if something were pulling on the opposite end.

Ca.. Captain mutters Boticelli, taking another step back as he looks around himself, his eyes following the elongation.

It presses in through the next mans skull, always through the temples, and then moves on to the next, and the next, creating a daisy-chain that is as long as every face his eyes manage to move towards. Some of them try to move their mouths, but no words come out. Its more of a spasming of their lips than a coherent movement, which would indicate intent, really. Yet the spasming indicates a signal being sent, a movement being commanded, that never arrives.

All around him, a great movement begins as a thousand not quite dead men and women slowly rise from the deep mud. Those who were trampled and drowned beneath it are spared not, being raised just the same as their compatriots with fewer shards of loose bones in their shins, jaws, and fingers.

Give me a word, says a voice from the distance behind him, a commanding voice, heavy in tone and so thick and coarse that it feels like someone is pushing sharpened rocks against his ears.

Boticelli looks toward the smoke, and as the elongation rises, a cord of a thousand strung bodies, all pierced through their temples and freely dangling, silhouettes the night. Their blank faces and expressions are only barely visible in the tense firelight, which now begins to drown within the rain and steam.

The smoke begins to dissipate, being overpowered by the heavy rain. The ground quakes, the thick, gore-stirred mud rippling towards him, splashing up toward his waist and stomach, sloshing around inside of his boots and trousers.

Within the gray cloud, hovering over the bog, towers an indistinct mass, and all along behind it slides a chain of bodies strung up in the air, suspended from one point to another both of which he cannot see.

Boticelli screams as loud as he can and runs.

Bodies slide past him on all sides, stuck to the elongation. Their limp limbs, torsos, and legs dangle freely on necks that crack from the sharp, quick movements of the extension. Blank faces rush past him, together with hundreds of suits of armor over bodies, like clothes on a drying line being stretched out from tree to tree.

The man flails, swiping his arms around himself in terror as he goes, running toward the next regiment as the sole survivor.

RUN! screams Boticelli as loud as he can, as the second wave readies their bows, aiming hundreds of them up into the air toward the towering colossus that approaches. The scorching heat reaches them, reaching him. RUN! repeats the man, his voice carrying through the air as new screams arise, overpowering his tone.

Arrows hiss, the whistle of a swarm filling his ears as countless feathers shoot through the night that never ends, a flock of needles flying toward the enemy half of them ignite in the air before even reaching their arc, their feathers igniting and causing them to fly wildly off course.

FORWARD! screams a commander as thousands of soldiers of the next wave press against him.

Boticelli runs in horror toward the wave, thousands of armored, heavy soldiers pressing forward. Support crews solidify their footing, casting magical barriers over the mud to make platforms for them to run over as they charge in the exact opposite direction of him. He covers his face as he runs, as the wave of bodies runs straight toward him, weapons drawn and heavy armor stampeding forward. Metal grazes his elbows, screams fill his ears, and the thudding of boots next to his own vibrates up his spine as he sprints.

By the time he opens his eyes in confusion, he realizes that hes somehow run straight through the assault group, as if they had opened a channel of bodies for him to move through, as if not a single man in heavy armor had collided with him.

He watches in silent horror as they vanish into the night.

A hand yanks him to the side.

CADET! screams a voice next to him. He turns to look, his wide eyes carrying the same terror as before as he looks at the commander.

Sir! says Boticelli. We have to pull back! he yells. We have to retreat back to the Primavera!

The commander of the legion narrows his eyes, pulling him in. Do you know what the punishment for desertion is, Cadet? asks the man. Ill put you in irons!

S- sir! starts Boticelli. Were dead! Everyones dead! he argues, pointing back toward the darkness from which he had come. Fires glow in it at a hauntingly far distance, off on the horizon. Yet none glow anymore in the span between here and there. It is as if the middle of the world had been consumed whole. The Demon-King is too much!

A second later, a scream fills the night as the man throws himself over the edge.

~ [The Demon-King] ~

Swain looks down at the paper in his hands as he sits there in the ruins of the fortress, the sounds of jangling metal and grim laughter filling the air as the Demon-Carnival, which has always been closed, moves in toward the bastille.

He rests on the rubble of the thing, staring up toward the skies and toward the ghosts that continue to dance as contentedly now as they had been doing before the destruction. The white shadow, the shape, the feeling that he had been chasing it gone. The goose and whatever it represented have fled from his heart and senses, leaving his mind only to teeter on the edge of knowing a word, but never quite finding it to deliver to the tip of his tongue.

Oh well.

It is no matter.

The Demon-King looks down at the poem that he had written and drops it down onto the rock as he steps toward the caravan. The carriage that is his own opens its side, the stage unfolding as his gallu and servants stand there to greet him and welcome him back to his castle.

Did you find what you were looking for? asks Cartouche as he walks past them all.

No replies Swain. But Im not sure what I was looking for anyway, explains the Demon-King, as he enters back into his domain.

The demons look at one another, confused, and shrug. The carriage closes itself, and the Demon-Carnival continues on toward the human capital, leaving behind a scene of destruction and grim horror all painted under the glow of unexplainable pageantry as ghosts waltz overhead and over the string of ten-thousand bodies that hangs in the air.

That single piece of paper he had dropped a poem that was missing a word lands on a burning stone and begins disintegrating into ash.

The Elongation

For I am there where you are not

And here within this tie of heart,

Is tied a knot, so tight and wound,

So that I may not see what I have had once found,

I think you are here, so close and abreast,

Yet when I try to understand the nature of this grace,

I find not, within my mind, the smell of your hair,

Or the touch of the sight of your face,

My memory stretches on to reach far and oh so wide,

So that I might find you,

- The one who there hides,

In a place that is dark.

Ill stretch and Ill reach, Ill crawl and Ill press,

Until I find where you went,

Until I find where you rest,

My days are now short,

The nights are now long,

And longer, longer, still longer I long,

For you, the one I once knew,

Whose voice in siren song did once so strongly sing,

But a simple trick, to lure me in,

But a simple thing, a word, a sound,

A sound that went wrong

The poem ends there. The final word, wrong, is scribbled through, its creator having wanted something different, but having never found it.

And as for the ghosts that dance over the ashes, they do so only to celebrate their last moments before the end of all things, both living and dead, that is soon to come.