All good soldiers crack like boulders
The sun climbs up to a razon, violins, new boots,
And numbers on a chain
All good soldiers
All good soldiers fall in line
When they march and shout
Are a spectacle marching and singing-
Will go anywhere the president says-
Because the president believes in God-
Like all good soldiers wait like warheads-
When the fighting starts who will be accountable, a cannibal, a cannonball
Their horses danced around each other like hummingbirds, flitting from side to side as their swords clashed above heads, passing each other, circling, slashing, trying to find some advantage over the other as hours like minutes sped by.
Doyle reined his horse around, breathing heavily and drenched in sweat from the sweltering noonday sun, to look at Saeryth. He was sporting a neat slash in his upper arm, the dull pain of which fueled his irritation. Red blood dripped down between the plates of his armor, dulling the metal luster as it formed a sticky puddle on his thigh. The human looked back at him with a slightly disappointed expression. "Ah General, you seem preoccupied. Have you come to terms with your inevitable defeat, or is your saddle just chaffing?"
Doyle scowled, touched the blood on his arm and ground it dry between his fingers. "You never shut up, do you Saer? I bet I could cut of yer head an' its lips'd still be movin' fer days after it was disconnected from your body. Why don't we find out?"
Saeryth smirked in triumph. "There you are. About time some fire was lit underneath you, General. I was beginning to think my victory was going to be extremely one-sided if you didn't liven up a little."
Doyle glowered, kicked his horse to circle around his opponent. "What makes you so confident, boyo? Think I can't run you through like your rotten da? Think I won't suspect the archer this time, like last?"
Saeryth managed to seem insulted. "General, you wound me," he protested. "I have no intention of letting someone else kill you. As for that fight with my father, it was extremely fortunate for the both of us that your reflexes are so good, don't you agree?"
"You wantin' to take me's gotta be the stupidest thing I've ever heard, Saer. Like your givin' me a get out o' jail free card throughout the whole damn field. Ain't the same on this side, ya know." There was suspicious light of maliciousness in Doyle's eye now. "I gave my men instructions ta take you down the moment they lay eyes on you. I don't care who kills ya, long as you die."
Saeryth laughed and saluted by touching the hilt of his sword to his head, like the tip of a hat. "I wouldn't have it any other way, General. But no one will kill you but me."
Without further comment, he smiled prettily at Doyle and spurred his steed forward, quite ready to face whatever his adversary saw fit to throw at him. A similar spark could be seen in the demon leader's eyes, though from within it Saeryth detected fury rather than jubilation. But the spark was enough. What joy!
~~~~~~~~~~
Breia had to shield her eyes with her arm when the flash had first hit, something impossibly bright, incandescent and heavenly in the middle of her very own battlefield. She closed them then, to protect from the sting of brightness as it grew more so, even as she knew her men were similarly being enveloped by its strange rays. She could hear the sounds of fighting die out to an eerie silence as the contenders ceased moving altogether, dropping weapons as they stood mesmerized by the fluorescent aura embracing them, as their movements were forced still at the feeling of increased dizziness that saw fit to overtake them. There was a clatter as several hundred men fell to their knees.
She had been ready to destroy Maj, who had been laying waste to her men as wild animals were wont to do. She had been ready to decapitate her own greatest foe while he had been distracted with no small amount of relish, much as Saeryth now sought his own arch nemesis. And then this strange light appeared, as if it had come out of nowhere just to embrace her, a warm buzzing sound of reassurance in her ear. The need to kill suddenly dulled inside her, her hatred of that blasted wolf played second fiddle to whatever it was she was experiencing. She swayed on her horse, dropped her sword mid-arc.
It felt as if something was gently settling into her bones, probing little hooks into her psyche as it usurped everything inside of her that had been previously so well established, shook her from the very foundations of her being so that it could find suitable purchase within her forever. And then the unsettling feeling of it all was suddenly replaced by a riptide of strange emotion, washed through her and left her feeling caught between absolute nausea and elation.
Then it was gone, a brief reprove, leaving her vision behind her closed eyelids more fuzzy than black. She swayed, moaned, and clutched one hand at her head, the other coiled tightly around the reigns of her steed to keep from falling. Embarrassing indeed would it be for the officer who could not stay astride her mount… the exceedingly vain thought flashed out of her head as quickly as it had appeared, which seemed rather odd…
Another lurch, another rolling wave shook her thoughts back to jumbled, and she clenched her teeth. It was as if the very apocalypse itself had come and she was on the scales of judgment, character being weighed and measured…
And then it was gone once more, one final time… the unnatural brightness, the floodtide of strange emotion… she forced her eyes open, squinted at the plainness of day before her, shut them again. She felt…clean. She opened her eyes again, was startled by the abrupt silence of the field. Had there not been a battle moments before? She shook her head, trying to remember specifics. Maj! She had been… she frowned to herself as her memory began reworking itself. She had wanted to kill Maj. She looked downward to where he had been moments before, only to see him lying prostrate at her feet, having stumbled at the strange turn of events, rolling to avoid her blow and glancing his temple quite sharply against a rock. Something sick welled up in her stomach as she looked at the blood flowing from the gash in his head, down past his eye and along his cheek.
What was happening?
Ignoring the unconscious form of her formerly greatest foe, she reined her horse in a tight circle to survey the field. The forms of her men and of Maj's creatures littered the area in a strange array of multihued pockmarks as far as the eye could see, sedentary as statues, silent save for the sound of shuffling feet, creaking metal, and the moans of the injured. They seemed lost in thought. She snapped back to attention. Saeryth was counting on her to hold this line for his invasion…
She looked at the bodies littering the field and had not the courage to fight any more. She urged her horse forward slowly, reluctantly. Her men, equally astounded, all of them, appeared just as hesitant to resume battle as she, while the creatures only seemed minutely disoriented at the event. She rode forward and touched the shoulder of one of her men, who was standing ramrod straight, staring at the horizon. "Private?" her voice was soft.
He started at contact, turned around. "Colonel!" he gasped, seeing her. Timidly, he posed a question. "What happened?"
She shook her head, for once not taking note of his insolence when voicing the inquiry. "I don't know," she responded simply.
He looked around him, lad of twenty that he was, horrified. "Yesterday's dead have not been attended too," he muttered, not knowing what else to say. He moved to pick up the sword he had dropped, but stopped, looked at the blood on it. He swallowed and turned back to her. "Colonel?"
She was staring curiously at one of the creature's soldiers twenty feet forward, unconscious and slumped against the mane of her horse, the docile animal standing stalk still, awaiting an order from its rider. The girl stood out amongst the corps in her high seat, unmistakable amongst all others. Breia inhaled. "Private, she's human," she muttered, not able to voice the flurry of thoughts running through her head and thus speaking only the simplest one.
The young man followed her gaze to the young girl, not much older than himself. "She is, Colonel," he responded, in a similar fashion.
"She appears injured," Breia stated softly, watching the girl's countenance as looks of pain came across it every so often.
The man swallowed. "Should we? She's the enemy…should I…kill…?" He was shaken.
"No, no, Private," she soothed. "She needs our aide. As a fellow human, we must give it." The statement was optimistic, as Saeryth was more likely to take the dark haired girl and seduce her into becoming his own personal trophy rather than help her, but she could not help but feel hopeful. Surely if he loved her as he claimed he did, he would allow her this one thing. It was the only excuse she could come up with, this sudden inability to take another human life; any life... she cringed at the thought. Had it really been moments ago she had been cutting a bloody swath through the ranks of living creatures as if they held no consequence?
The girl swayed on her mount, precariously balanced within the saddle. Her first instinct was to save her from the fall, and she rode forward hastily.
~~~~~~~~
Maj groaned, his head throbbing. He rolled over onto his side, smacked his lips…tasted…blood. Not his own. That was a plus. He peeled an eyelid open, only to shut it as it triggered a feeling of nausea deep within his bowels when he was met with the sun glaring into his vision. **What the hell just happened?** He had been fighting. Was he dead? He forced himself to open his eyes again, shut the left one when the sting of warm blood invaded it. That blood was his own. The other eye managed to stay open and he used it to try survey the field. That wasn't much help, considering he was on the ground. He perked up an ear. It was silent…was the battle over? Groaning he clenched his teeth and pushed himself to his feet with no small effort. And promptly jumped at seeing a human soldier not three feet from where he stood, looking not at him, but over his shoulder, curiously.
"What the hell?" he turned to regard the rest of the field. The opposing armies, previously engaged in bloodthirsty battle rage, stood docile (if not somewhat disconcerted) and quiet, some within arm's reach of an enemy opponent. A few held weapons, some did not. His men looked confused. The humans looked outright dumbfounded.
The sound of horse's hooves encouraged him to turn around. He did it too fast for the liking of his brain however, and was overcome by a brief bout of dizziness, where the outsides of his vision blurred together in a fuzzy black-white line and he was forced to shut his eyes quickly to keep from toppling over outright. When he'd regained some of his equilibrium, he opened his eyes again, only to recoil in horror at the sight of Breia, Saeryth's most notorious Colonel, ride past at a brisk pace, an unconscious Cordelia Chase draped over the front of her saddle like a wreath.
He sputtered a moment, before finding his voice. If his men were in as much disarray as he found himself, they would need word for word instructions. "What are you waiting for? Attack!!!" he snarled loudly, taking off after the horse as fast as his befuddled mind would allow, repeating the command over and over so others could hear as he did.
Upon hearing their Colonel's command, the soldiers of the Protective Army surged forward, as if awakened from a debilitating form of paralysis. They regained their weapons, went forward seeking the kill…stopped.
On seeing the confused human at his feet, looking up with haunted eyes at him, a demon Private ceased mid-swing, could not bring himself to cut down that which moments before he would have without a second thought. Bewildered, he studied the human, those haunted eyes, before dropping back towards one of his comrades, a purple-horned beast who found himself in an equal position of disconcertment.
"What should we do?" he questioned the purple officer, throwing a furtive glance over his shoulder at his Colonel, who in a fury, was pounding after Colonel Breia's horse, heedless of the confused regiment.
"We can't just kill them…they're unarmed," the purple one replied, voice monotone with disbelief. "We're supposed to be the good guys."
"What the hell just happened?"
"I don't know. Big flash, and all of a sudden, they won't fight…" He nudged a prostrate human at his foot with the toe of his boot, could make out its pathetic murmurs of, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
They studied the field. "It's not all the same," the Private offered, seeing that some humans had regained battle posture, were fighting back for their lives. "What do we do?"
Purple grunted, and sheathed his weapon, wondering why he suddenly felt sorry for the miserable wrecks that were once the bane of his existence. "What else can we do? We take prisoners," he muttered, trussing up the crying man by drawing his wrists and ankles together. He spit on them, and the saliva congealed into a solid substance not unlike dry paste. They'd never taken prisoners before, not on so grand a scale.
Strange.
All good soldiers crack like boulders
The sun climbs up to a razon, violins, new boots,
And numbers on a chain
All good soldiers
All good soldiers fall in line
When they march and shout
Are a spectacle marching and singing-
Will go anywhere the president says-
Because the president believes in God-
Like all good soldiers wait like warheads-
When the fighting starts who will be accountable, a cannibal, a cannonball