Notes: I started this series of vignettes sometime last spring and have recently dug them up again. My plan is to post one vignette a week, and this should, I hope, give me adequate time to finish the last two vignettes. It's also my hope that by posting this my creative energies will raise and that the sharing of comments, questions, and ideas will spur my Muses and myself to get back on track. Anyway, on with the story.

With the Last of This Day's Sun

There is no light to guide me on my long and painful Road

I wait in Silence, I wait for Death with the last of this Day's Sun...

Fallen

And the sun became as black as sackcloth, and the moon became as blood, Rev. 6:12

Eighteen years after the first downfall herald the day the battle ends, the day the world stands still, the day the Order falls, and the night the Dark takes precedence.

Noon had seen the blackness of a Solar Eclipse, and when light surged across the land once more, it was to mourn its fallen champions and meet its victorious enemies.

Deep in the Scottish countryside there is a hill, lush and green and blanketed with death and decay; the stench of rot clings to the blades of grass, is picked up by the wind and blown over the horizon, carrying the scent of defeat into neighboring towns.

The Saviour has fallen.

This Champion of the weak, the common, the muggle-born, and the Light is hung at the crown of the hill. He is to be executed in antiquated muggle fashion, arms splayed wide across the roughened wood, feet bound together, head resting against the top of the cross.

Unlike the muggle's Sacrificed God his eyes do not stare heavenward in accusation or reproach, they look straight ahead, into the gaze of the abyss1.

The red eyed figure in black robes blinks and smiles thinly at the wizened man strung before him. It is a fitting fate, he thinks, for this man to be brought to death through such means.

"You have lost old man." The words are twisted, coming from a mouth that is neither human nor reptilian; they slither along the night wind, carried on the updraft to the cross.

The old wizard smiles and the parts of his long white hair not matted with blood and sweat or tears whip around his face. "I have taken nothing which was not given freely in the beginning—therefore, I have lost nothing. Omnia Mea Mecum Porto." He pauses, the pain in his tendons has grown, the toughened sinew is stretched to its limits and there is a growing rattle somewhere deep in his chest. "Will you—be able to say the same?" He coughs and blood spots the roots of his white beard.

The creature's mouth twists in the mockery of a human smile.

"A cold answer, considering the blood that has been spilt." He pauses, a long white finger pressed to his mouth. "You might have done well a Slytherin. Pity." A flick of his thin wrist sends a shower of putrescent green and mottled purple light in vicious assault on the old wizard.

His body seizes, fingers and hands curl tightly, as if seeking to grasp and rip out the nails driven into the space between the bones of his wrists. Tendons rip, tear, and fall away over bone.

The light dissipates and he sags against the cross, drawing in a shuddering breath. With it come the images of his long tenure in the world, of memorable days both pleasant and terrible, of his life. Of his children. The countless numbers of them who passed beneath his hands to be molded, and protected, and sent out into the world to find their paths. For better or worse. He can recall every one of their faces, each of their names.

They gave their souls for him.

He can do no less.

He smiles and a phrase that he has come back to so often in his long life falls from his cracked and bloodied lips, taken away by the wind.

He doesn't breath again.

The moon has risen behind the cross, a shard of silvery bone marred deep red. Blood on the moon. Signature of bad omens, signature of changing tides. It arcs across the silver surface, stains the lunar face.

The black robed figure moves close to the cross, reaches into some inner pocket on the older wizards robes and extracts something small and round that gleams in the moonlight, reflects the shower of green stars that have just begun to fill the night sky.

Another twist of his mouth, and the figure disapparates, leaving cross and corpse alone to greet the rising of the night.

to be continued...

**Omnia mea mecum porto --- All that is mine, I carry with me.


1 "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

Friedrich Nietzsche