Among the Ruins
I know this city well.
One-hundred years of being stranded. One-hundred years since the End War began, and was lost immediately afterward. One-hundred years since Heaven was betrayed, and closed its gates to other realms. One-hundred years to behold the desolation of the Third Kingdom.
When was it that the last son of Man died? What of this realm's other creatures? The dogs that roamed the streets, feasting off the flesh of the living. The birds who would sing in dust-filled silence. Where are they now, that we have taken their place? We, whose wings once carried us so high, now fated to sit on ruined effigies like scavengers? Demons like gargoyles, we like angels – idealized, unfulfilled versions, imagined by those who can no longer dream, now condemned to dreamless slumber, sleepwalking through the ruins of their civilization?
Where are the rivers and oceans of this world? Water not yet clogged by blood and ash? Water that can flow freely, no longer diverted to the wastelands? Where is water in place of fire, that runs through this world like veins of blood, erupting to the surface as if wounded? Not yet Hell, but close enough – all the despair, all the ash and ruin. So stands this kingdom in testament to the power of fire, as wind carries the ash and dust over where once flowed water. And thus defiled is the earth, from which there can grow no forest, nor sense of spirit outside the tendrils of damnation.
No concept of the elements could have saved those who called this realm home.
And so I ask, what of the future? A hundred more years, a thousand? Nothing to the universe, less than nothing to the Charred Council, inconceivable by the Creator, long departed from even angel eyes. Why return to one's creation if this is all one can behold? We, the scavengers, fighting with the dregs, in the ruins of those who could not even call themselves great? What then, I ask, as I slay those who stalk the ruins of Man? What then, I ask, as I put those of my kind who have fallen to rest? What then, I ask, when all I have left is death, be it at the hands of my foes, or by my own hand itself? What then? What then, when time itself has lost all meaning, and all that is left is entropy, or the fires of Hell? What then, if the light of Heaven shines once more, and these eyes are so long closed that I could never see it, even if it outshone all the stars of Creation, and burnt brighter than Creation's beginning?
I know not, and never will. I have only my sword and wings. Dust my wine, blood my sustenance, and the echoes of the dead and damned my only companions.
So my wings spread once more, and my sword joins my hundredth sigh.
I know this city well.