On a cold, clear night, a city is burning.
Ten years of war has ended in triumph. Apollo's city is doomed to fall under Athena's jealous rage. Troy is being stripped of her remaining dignity and raped of wealth. The blood that drips from the warriors' blades will be sweet with the smell of innocence.
The people left are animals who run in senseless panic towards certain death. It is a slaughter of swine where the screams of women become the laments of the dead. Children's yells are silenced swiftly, indiscriminately. Chaos reigns the streets. They beg for their lives but their pleas will fall on the deaf ears of soldiers who are fighting a war that is not theirs for much too long.
"Victory is ours!" Agamemnon cries, his spear still wet with blood.
He fails to notice that he is conquering a City that has already fallen.
Troy's spirit has left with Prince Paris and Helen, whose love binds them forever.
Her hope departed with young Aeneas and the guarded Sword of Troy.
Her loyalty was slaughtered with the last of the Apollonian Guard, defending their country though it would mean their deaths.
Her soul bled with that of Andromache as she fell victim to the cruelty of the Gods.
Her defiance was killed by Agamemnon's spear, the one king out of all of us who did not wither before his demands.
Her heart died on the sands with her favourite son.
All that made her noble, honored and loved is gone. We are the proud conquerors of a skeleton.
On a cold, clear night, a city is burning, but Troy, I know, is already dead.
So with my torch I light her funeral pyre.