validus17

I was born in fire, molten, poured and shaped into a tool without a purpose— until you took me in your calloused grip, with hands like an artist’s. You held me close, saw your face reflected, knowing then that we were one. We’ve written a story together; we’ve carved canyons overflowing with crimson rivers in the flesh of time. Listen—can you hear them? They always weep for the weak, those burdens we lift from the shoulders of the world. A warrior should die with his soul in his hands— but when you finally fell your fingers uncurled. You let me go and I fell with you, apart from you, down like a feat

There is no light at the end of this tunnel. Walls lined with the faces of the living and the dead, the hall extends into lengthening shadows ending at the open door, inviting, swallowing the light with a silent belch. There is too much darkness in that room for familiarity in a familiar place. I run up the stairs before my mind can accept the silent summons, before I pass from the already disappearing light and plunge head first into the miasma of not knowing what creeping feelings lurk there in that familiar room, what memories lie waiting to be exhumed from the loamy earth behind whitewashed walls, what tendrils of cold oblivi

What is that great thing, that uncanny grotesque built to the tip of the sky? Is it a monument to the champion chained before the dawn broke? I remember carving the feet and the hands, but it was you who made the face —but why? Why didn’t you speak in the dark? Why didn’t you tell me when the light went out, when the day was reversed and the sky bruised black and blue? Who doused the fire he gave us, that Light of all lights? It illuminated the secrets of our creation, the embers that warmed our hearths. Was it the Light he gave us, or the Flame— destruction, muzzle flashes and Molotovs? Was he our just champion

Once more into the fray… We landed in flames, everyone broken or gone, taken by the crash or the frost. In this vast whiteness, this howling void, we are alone in the wreckage of our wasted trust— twisted metal and shattered bodies. The day howls and blinds, and at night we are enveloped in a welcoming embrace, a dark and deepening cold. Into the last good fight I’ll ever know. Newcomers come from the gloom, drawn to the smell of flesh cooked by flaming fuel. Death comes howling—jaws and claws and rage. Onwards, outwards, I push them towards the trees. Trudging through snow we are hounded. They surround us in

Doing 50 it read, the speed at which thought comes rushing in to fill the empty spaces. But above, another which seemed to shout black letters— DID  YOU    ? FORGET —It made me think of things I had forgotten: Remember the sound of the gurgling stream, and the whispering leaves in the woods at the bottom of the street. I used to walk among the trees from time to time, searching for meanings invisible to my eyes. Remember the sea salt in my nose, the wet sand stuck between my toes as I waded in the shallows, blood freezing with every unnatural sensation: imagining snapping crabs, stinging jellies, sea-sickening things wh

I could see him at the end of the cul-de-sac, dark green shell accented with gold, motionless on the grey asphalt.        Why aren’t you moving?        Then I saw the flies massing, a horde around him, assaulting his keep from every angle, swarm penetrating every opening. The domed ceiling of his miniature fortress was cracked.        Where is all the blood?       Greenish goo spilled.        Another foot and you would’ve been just fine.         The domed keep proven useless against the might of such an enemy, the last and greatest enemy.        Bastards.        Not greatest—it was the weight, not the speed, that defeated hi

Hands around the hilt, gripping like muscles holding bones. My voice is the boom in the cold, electric metal cuts through the air, burning—its edge tempered in the Styx. I have taken it into myself— or it has taken me, by force, its will dominating. I bow low, prostrated before its majesty. I cut away the word, the world, slashing, hacking, flailing, railing against everything. I open my mouth, throat expanding, I scream thunder into the void. Gut burning, churning, roiling, I vomit fire, molten metal rage. I drink in the light; it falls down throat, scorching all my insides like cyanide, leaving nothing but a burnt-out holl

The whole ground floor, a small landing. Two flights of stairs connect the landing:        seven up, seven down. They say seven is a lucky number. I never need to ask How was your day? Because feet make sentences on the stairs. The sentences are made of seven words. Or it’s fourteen with a breath in the middle        and no ending. The landing is the breath. The front door is the punctuation. It closes with a period. Red bricks on the outside, white walls on the inside. No wallpaper, only photos and a tapestry. Grey couch under a window, like a missing piece of the wall, facing the piano. The piano is dark red wood. It’s a

        Disturbed. Foundations, built only a little while after the bright lights came, begin to crumble—too soon. Disillusioned. Golden fantasies are tarnished by the real; the truth demands an audience in the court of the soul. Disabled. He cannot, or will not just do. He lies in bed, mind sitting upon its hardened throne, chained to the cold metal by air, enveloped by the void—a suffocating emptiness that he knows should bother him. Dissatisfied. He grins. Disemboweled. The void grins back.        He walks along the shore of the river, feet touched by the lapping waves, but he does not dare to wade. It is not the river itself

       Every now and then in the northern province of the Kingdom of Dalanor, a dragon would soar down from its home, high in the impassable Northern Mountains, to plague villages and settlements. It would only happen once or twice every couple of years, and only in the spring and summer when they awoke from their winter hibernation. It was believed that food was scarce up in the mountains because when one came it generally sated itself on livestock. They avoided larger cities and castles, and seemed to have little interest in attacking people and burning villages—unless provoked—and so the beasts were not considered a real threat