#beforethebeast

A month may come when I fail to update, but it is not this month. #Writing #ByDeathDefined

Before the Beast, Pt 1 I peered out into the open with my hands gripping the balcony’s railing. I was overseeing the destruction that was fast approaching in a mighty unstoppable stampede. Of one. I stood taller than twenty men on top of the last wall standing. The beast, alas, stood higher. We never had a chance. The catapults and cannons might as well be firing pebbles. It looked increasingly…

Its bellow made a few of my men deaf. I felt my left ear drum burst as I had not cover it well enough. It arched backwards, a dozen of gigantic arrow projectile sticking to its eyes, needles in comparison to him, but needles can blind any man. He tripped over a half-crumbled tower and fell back onto the half-destroyed walls and battlements it had left in its wake, and something cracked as he did. It sounded like a bone, a bone the size of a tower. It bellowed again and kicked, wildly, bursting part of my last wall. It just burst like a massive explosion had taken effect.

I saw half my men crumbling back with the debris to rain over the city. Like everyone else, however, I was too overwhelmed to manage any kind of reaction. I stood still. Frozen.

I was a farmer once. There was a moment in the past when my biggest worry had been how to milk a cow. When my biggest failure was to have clothes dirtied by muddied rain.

...

Ten cities. Four castles. Twelve to fifteen thousand lives and the greater majority of the royal family. My left ear. A beast so big and mighty we thought it a mad god laying in front of me, its bellow shaking the earth hundreds of feet beneath the wall beneath me. Its wild kick having effortlessly shattered a third of said wall, of the last wall.

I had climbed in life with all of my ability only to now realize I had just made myself responsible for so much. For too much, my failures were impossible for me to perceive, let alone fathom. I could quantify it but I could never qualify it.

Lacking the ability to heal, however, the beast would be blind. That was all I could hope for now; that it, at least, would be unable to seek out other nations. 

As for me?

Its foot claw approached like a falling building. The size of one, too. I noticed the unholy hell that was stuck to it, an agglomeration of ground, buildings and corpses all pressed together in a muddled mess of despicable visage.

You have certainly experienced it.

You are sitting in a tavern or standing in a crowd or walking down a street and, for some inexplicable reason, you sense it. Someone is staring at you.

And you look around, happening to look in the right direction right off the bat. And you were right. How we feel this, I do not know, but I put all that I have, all that I am...into doing that to the beast.

Despite us calling it that, the way the beast has set upon our cities and defenses demonstrates intelligence. A reasoned will. My last plan, our last hope, hinges mostly on that being true. I hope my stare will bother it.

The walls are down. Only mine is left.

“Steady, men.“ I say, hoping it cannot hear me. “Stand as steel. And ready.”

I see it pausing. It senses my stare. It looks around, unexpectedly starting in my direction. I hope it is curious enough to take a closer look.

“Continue bombarding it.” With the pebbles. I hope it believes they are the last of our strength

It steps forward once and then it leans in, bringing its monstrous face in my direction. I hope it comes close enough.

It wishes to focus on me, it wishes to catch my eyes and see my stare. It wishes, I imagine, to make me blink. To make me wince. It wishes to fulfill its ego by taking out the last of the fight in me with just its stare. I hope its eyes are as fragile as our own.

The face fills my entire field of view. The eye is large enough to fit two of me side by side and the smell stemming from its head, mostly all from its breath, almost makes me pass out. I have never smelled so much death, I can feel it on my skin, such is the density of it all. I hope my men are still responsive and ready to act; I cannot, for the life of me, look to them. I hold its gaze, showing all the defiance I can muster, using every last ounce of courage available to me. I lift my hand in a hard breath.

I peered out into the open, leaning on the balcony, to oversee the destruction that was approaching. I stood higher than a stack of twenty men standing on top of each other, such was the height of the last wall standing.

The beast stood higher. And even if it didn’t, its wings would have compensated. We never had a chance. 

The catapults and cannons seemed to be throwing pebbles at it. It looked increasingly annoyed by them but in no way deterred. I looked down at the three levels of walls, each bigger than the farthest, spread apart by mere dozens of yards, and saw my men, ants. Ants under my command, working hard to defeat a thing that was unbeatable.

They would all die this day. As would I, most likely.

My mind then filtered out the noise of fear and violence as I remarked upon the weather. Despite the death. Despite the doom falling upon us, the sadness and misery setting into the hearts of all my people barricaded behind in the actual capital city. Despite the war, there was no rain and there were no clouds. I could see a rainbow and the sun was shining, the slightest of breezes freshening up against my face.

It was a pretty good day.

It made me feel so insignificant tears crept down my cheek. I would have expected my end to be worthy of rain and thunder, of dark clouds, cutting winds and moody lightning. But the day did not care about me or my nation.

I clenched my fists with a grin, a stubborn grin in which I bit my inner cheek. I focused on the beast again, my resolve hardening.