The Seven

by Landwerda

When the world is ending and there is nothing left for them to fight for, Seven Warriors stand tall and defend the world against a madman.

They are children, old before their age. They are warriors without mercy and survivors against all odds.

And they crazy part? They know no other way to live, no other way. They cannot imagine waking up to a blue sky and a warm bed and spending weeks trying to recover from broken bones or shattered minds.

They do not have that luxury. They burn, brighter and brighter, because letting themselves dim is akin to letting themselves die.

There are seven of them, seven warriors and seven leaders and seven healers.

There is the Inferno, with hair bright as the flame she is named for. Dressed in silk Acromantula robes and combat robes, a single ropy scar mars the fiery beauty of her face. She is a warrior and a Battle Mage, who breaks before she bends, and will shatter before she breaks. She has lost her family and her blood for this war, but she has stood strong despite it all.

There is the Innocent, who is stronger than many of the others in that he will bend before he breaks, and he will defend them to the ends of the earth. He was captured by the enemy before the battle began, but was rescued soon after. He is the biggest of them all, with muscles cording his arms and belying the soft voice with which he speaks, even when they have the blood of millions on his hands. He is the one who is least broken by the war.

There is the Dreamer, burning not the flame of all the others but the cool radiance of the moon. She is beautiful and ethereal and deals with the blood on her conscience by dissociating herself from the world. She cloaks herself in wonders that she claims to be able to see, in a hopeless wonder that she would be not be damned for her actions in both this world and the next.

There is the Bradwr, Welsh for Betrayer. He has turned and turned and turned in a dizzying dance around both sides in vain hope that he will, that he can survive. He walks the boundary of rage and fear and death, a razor's edge, a tightrope walk over the baying bloodhounds, but here the consequences of falling is not death, but torture, madness, surrender. And so he walks on, unable to see the end of the rope upon which he treads so lightly.

There is the Phoenix, the blood if the Inferno and the memories of his brothers burning inside out daily. He once envied them, once hated them for their greatness, but now he only sees their blank eyes in his nightmares and their chilling laughter in his dreams. He is named for the Phoenix, bird of rebirth and life, but he has only one life, and he has not managed to save any of the others for it. He wonders, often, why he was named thusly, why he is damaged and why the others taunt him by his name and by his past.

There is the Wych, Welsh for Brilliant. And she is the one who is the most damaged of them all, for every one she has ever loved has fallen to Him, but yet she fights on, wearily, hurting, a broken, battered body hosting a mind that in any other world would have been revered and worshipped. She has led them and she has followed them, but she has, more than any other, bent her body and broken herself trying to attain the acknowledgement of the others. She has vowed to live until He dies, and then she has sworn to let go, a vow that she knows she will not keep, for she will survive her friends and she will not die until they all have.

And lastly there is the Dia. He is the last of them, and he is the one who has led them where no one else has been able to. His body is a testament to the horrors he has seen, the horrors he has dealt, the horrors he has caused. On his left arm curls the edge of a hawk's beak, proud and raw, open in a silent scream of defiance. On his right arm blossoms the names of the people who were murdered, the innocents in a war that should never have existed. There are scars and marks and burns on a body that was damaged even as a child, there are scars and marks and burns on a soul that somehow retains its purity because he has believed it to be long gone.

They are the Seven, and they are the ones who stand between the Dark and the World. They are the Seven, and they have been broken and remade and broken once more. They are the Seven, and they will either tear down the Dark Lord or tear the world down around him. They are the Seven, and they will live for freedom or die. They are the Seven, and they will never break.