“Do what you have to do.”
Those six words.
With no hesitation they slipped out of his crisp, cracked lips and slim jaw.
Ground-shaking, burly words from such a decaying body.
His royalty rippled across the fields, touching every soldier’s soul.
Souls ready to strip life away with their own weathered hands.
A haunting, transcendent song reverberates over the hills, meadows, and forests.
Its voice was incomprehensible. Divine and deep. Unlike ours, in any form.
Shaking the core of every stirring bird, cattle, fish, canid, and insect. Every man.
Moreover, its hazy beam of light illuminated each corner of earth.
Wrapped in feathered wings, uncountable. Sweeping the air tenderly.
What an awful song.
“Affirmative, your Majesty.”
The crowd of men scattered across the grass like a swarm of hungry flies.
Boots scuffing up dirt in a rush to the armories. If not in bravery, in petrifying fear.
They grabbed their crossbows, cannons, and firearms in an adrenaline-pumped flurry.
The King stood still as a stone on his throne, parting the flow of men.
Hopelessly he gazed up at the creature in the clouds.
It glared right back. New pairs of eyes appeared and disappeared from its hazy outline.
Eyes that never flinched when arrows ricocheted off its body.
Fire exploded, then huffed out. Cannonballs bounced clean off.
Harder they shot, more arrows they bequeathed, more blades they threw.
It smiled at the men with peaceful, holy eyes.
“Again.”
The skies tore in half. Once more, it allowed feathered arrows to fly, fire to skyrocket.
But miraculously, in the opposite direction, they came soaring back.
Some arrowheads striking right through the very men they departed. A minefield of karma.
The Kingdom’s human shields depleted, as fire backfired and cannonballs plummeted.
Screams challenged the enigma’s song for dominance. Competition only the men sought.
Not a scratch, not a scrape. Calmly it brushed the clouds with its many, many wings.
Confidence withered down as the flowering meadow reddened with soldier blood.
A rush of boots as men fled, rushing to their leader dressed in blue. Pleading for guidance.
Abysmal, tired eye-bags cradled his eyes, yet still so full of strength.
“No more. Stay here”
Gently his aged, spindly hands caressed his throne arm as he arose from his planting place.
He stood with a black bear’s stature. And like fish, the crowd split as he lumbered forward.
Limping sickly, he departed the grand gates of his castle, stepping out onto the red lawn.
Sunlight wrapped him tight, glimmering yellow and outlining his elegant aging features.
Grass crunched under his feet as he stepped; but then, he stopped. Up, his head craned.
Two human eyes were met with hundreds of eyes. He’d never glared at them directly before.
Because when he squinted, the being’s irises churned with every color of the rainbow.
Swirling hues, with glimmering lights. Almost like a colossal galaxy in each one.
This close, its song rumbled his shallow breaths, pulling his adrenaline out with it.
What a peaceful song…
“Forgive me.”
The King kneeled down with a thump, a cape of velvet flowing behind him in ripples.
Tears caressed his cheekbones, flinging off his chin with each pathetic sob.
For the creature’s radiant glow brightened, wings swiveling behind it with awesome force.
Opening up to him, revealing, and breaking him all in the same heartbeat.
What he saw within was everything in the universe at once.