Prompt: Kaleidoscope.
Simon had been a faithful man of God up until five minutes ago.
He was a twenty-two year old man in the Knights of the Order of Malta, fresh from a seminary in the Holy See itself, his father from Milan, his mother from Naples.
The only reason he was here was his hobbies of playing with guns and firearms.
He wasn't half bad a shot; good enough to get into the Knights, good enough to get by on that alone if he chose to, but nothing like a professional.
Word had come to his own superiors from higher up a few hours ago; gather up your faith and your arms, we're heading for London.
He hadn't questioned why at the time, he hadn't needed to; the whole world had seen the conflagration London had become on their televisions.
He was eager to help. The Protestants were still Christians after all, and no person except those truly steeped in black evil deserved to die in a vampiric-styled hell.
He had been such a fool.
He'd never been to London before; his face crinkled in sorrow under his hood as he saw the shattered remnants of monuments he had hoped to see one day, but not like this, never like this.
His lips had moved in prayer, for the innocent dead, for the burning city, for his comrades, that they may all survive and carry on with their work of spreading the Lord's word.
That had been twenty minutes ago.
His helicopter had landed with the others, and he had gotten out, along with his friend Miguel, whom he had met a few months ago. They'd shared lunches, talked about their futures, their families, the problems of their small flocks.
Miguel was somewhere behind him now, buried until a river of corpses, blood, and death.
That had happened ten minutes ago.
He had foolishly thought that nothing could ever shake his belief in God, back in the helicopter as others murmured prayers or oaths, depending on their nature.
That was before this monster, this horror, this thing had been unleashed.
Blood was all around him, on him, in his mouth, his eyes, his nose, his ears.
Death was on his tongue.
The whole world, the universe, narrowed to this street, and the next, and the next, an entire city, a city of death.
Screaming Catholics and fleeing Nazis were being sucked up into this tide, this vortex, this river of death, sucked up and crushed, pulverized, mashed together in a hideous kaleidoscope of friend, foe, friend, foe, and blood, blood, blood, then spilled out upon the fire-scorched blood-soaked streets like a long, shuddering runoff from a dying creature's veins.
He was scared. He was so scared.
He had dropped his gun a few streets back.
He dropped his faith now.
God could not permit such a thing to exist. The very mind itself shied away from this abomination, this blasphemy, this thing that should not be.
And yet, horribly, it was.
Faithless, friendless, and quite nearly mindless, he was almost glad when the first hand snapped around his ankle, his body was heaved off the ground, and he could at last submit to the voracious abyss.
Prompt: Icarus.
It hurt so much.
It hurt, it hurt.
Father, Archbishop Enrico Maxwell tried to breathe in, and breathed blood.
He choked, coughed, vomited up more blood.
He couldn't believe he was still alive.
He could see the shining, bloodied points of metal erupting from his stomach, knew the blow should've killed him, and yet, he lived.
Why did he live?!
He was suspended off the ground by spears, spears embedded in his guts, surrounded by the hungry dead, imprisoned in a city of flames, and yet, he still lived?!
Streams of blood flowed from his lips; he was choking, barely able to breathe. Memories drifted before his eyes.
Icarus was the son of a famous Greek architect. He and his father were imprisoned on the isle of Crete by its king, who had ordered his father to build a maze for a Minotaur.
Why had Anderson done this?!
Why, he wanted to scream, why!?
He had been doing the right thing!
To escape, Icarus's father fashioned two pairs of wings, made of feathers and wax. They were imprisoned in a tower with no doors at the base, just a window at the top; this was a fine plan.
He had been purging England like a cancer, a cancer in the body of the most holy Church!
So why, he wanted to howl at God, why was he being punished for that?!
Icarus was warned not to fly too low, for the moisture of the sea would undo his feathered constructs, nor too high, for the sun's rays would melt them from his back. But he was an impetuous and arrogant youth; he did not heed his father's wisdom.
His future had seemed so great.
An Archbishop, his heart cried, an Archbishop!
The bastard son, reviled and spat upon by humanity, now one of their greatest leaders!
But it was not to be.
Although at first the flight was frightening and strange, being as Icarus had never had the use of wings before, and both the sea below and the sky above seemed like gaping maws about to swallow him whole, it soon began to be almost pleasant. Disaster had not occurred, no matter what tentative maneuver he had cared to try. He grew bolder.
An army, an army, a Reconquista, the Ninth Crusade!
Pride brimmed in his heart. He was the leader of the Ninth Crusade, and his name would be shouted by screaming masses for centuries to come.
But pride is a sin.
And he thought not of the tone of the screaming crowds.
He began to swerve and dip, although his father implored him to focus and fly with all speed. Icarus was flighted! Soaring where only birds and gods had gone before, he was immortal, invincible! None could touch him, no hand could scratch him. None, except that of hubris.
And then the monster had been unleashed.
Horror, his mind cried out, abomination!
Dracula, the No-Life-King, this thing that should not be, the dragon that dashed his dreams to dust.
At least, fearing no danger, Icarus soared high in the sky, looking down at all the pitiful peasants who had not his power. Immortal, invincible! His mind cried to the heavens and the earth. Powerful, almighty! But a sudden heat upon his back checked his exultant heart.
The blades in his gut hurt far less than the one in his heart.
Even Anderson, his teacher, his father-figure, his loyal soldier, had dismissed him as unworthy.
Tears watered in his eyes, but he had not even the strength to cry.
Flying too close to the sun, Icarus's wings had melted. Wax flecked the sky, and to his horror, he felt himself falling down, down, down. His father, although perhaps wisest among living men, could not save his son from himself and his hubris, and Icarus fell and drowned in the ocean that now bears his name.
With one last cough and blood-flecked splutter, the Archbishop Enrico Maxwell yielded up his life.
Prompt: 1000 paper cranes.
They flecked the sky like insects, like bugs, like the biblical plague of locusts that they were.
Confident in their own holiness, confident in the unholy inferiority of their opponents, they rained death upon London.
Until he awoke.
The sky, dark with helicopters and infrequent white splotches of the uniformed crusaders, flashes of fire coming from above and below, was rent with red, the red of blood, the glowing crimson and black of the vampire's unholy shadows.
Like drones without a queen, the perfectly ordered rows soon became chaos, wheeling and crashing into each other in the sky as red, fiery flowers bloomed on the blackened canvas of the night.
Like fragile paper cranes destroyed by a spoiled child, they broke, bent, tore, and were slashed, ripped, rent, smashed.
The "child" below; Dracula, the No-Life King, vampire among all vampires.
His glowing crimson eyes bored holes in the night as he sent his own drones to do his will, still and unmoving as a marble statue.
Screams and bodies rained down from the sky, but still he stood, unmoving.
And a thousand paper cranes burned in the night.