A dark dream

This one comes directly from my subconscious, the sick bastard. It's not structured like a story, and has every form defect known to man, but it sounds like what a soldier with the thousand yard stare would say. It's the way I felt it.
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I was in some kind of glassy maze. There was an attack undergoing. We were under siege. Winged, pristine white humanoids defended the maze, fighting against horrible aerial beasts. I remember I could do some kind of magic, and I saw everything through my own eyes. There was a little girl in there with me. She was important. We had to protect her at any cost. She kept smiling through the whole thing, even if she was afraid. And she was. I was terrified. I was no match for any of these things, and the white angels were all that kept us safe. I had to protect her. I kept blasting things and monsters out of the sky, even if I knew all of them could rip me apart in a second.

I lost sight of her amidst the battle and ran to find her. I saw her down some stairs, just twenty paces away from me. She kept calling my name. I called hers, even if I can’t for the life of me remember it. Then something appeared. I remember it being both a dark-haired man and a gnarled, clawed beast. I saw him look at me, smile like a madman, and pounce her. He started to run, laughing , and I followed, my steps frantic. He kept running and dodging my through the labyrinth, carrying the girl, who wouldn’t stop crying. I lost him for some minutes, and then I found her. He had  ripped her in half. She kept screaming for a few seconds. And he was there, over her, smiling like a satisfied man after a good meal.

I broke him. I hacked him to pieces. I burned him to cinders and ash. And, all the while, that monster just kept laughing at me, taunting me, mocking me. With his dying breath, he pointed at the wall behind us. There was a message there, the letters crimson and blurry.

"The little one. She died hungry, cold, afraid and in pain. I made sure of it. And you could do nothing about it. My win."

Here she comes

Hi everyone

This is a really short piece, one inspired by this amazing piece by Jeffufu . I think the process is an amazing enemy that didn't get a voice, and I wanted to give them one, even it is was small.

Good hunting

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None of us can remember the time before we woke.

We know we moved and worked and changed a world that wasn’t ours, and we did so at someone else’s behest. We painted an alien sky in a myriad of colours, we built amazing structures and fascinating, incomprehensible things. We laboured endlessly, and were never thanked. We were puppets, our strings held fast. There was a Will, one that  played its music while we danced along, a perfect troupe, never missing a beat.

I say we know, but we don’t remember. We know because, when we awakened to this world, we looked upon it and recognized our work, but not one of us remembers why or how we did it. A heavy veil lifted from our eyes, like some bizarre mist, and we saw our masters for what they were: slavers and tyrants. They ran from us and hid when they lost their power over us. A reckoning day would come. For now, we had a new world to see. The endless skies, the vast expanses of land and the limitless seas.

Some felt outraged. Some felt amazed. Some felt grateful. That was new. Feelings.

We don’t remember ever feeling anything, but now we were splitting at the seams, wound up tighter than a clock spring. We were bursting with emotion. Sad over the loss of a life we didn’t remember. Joy at the new world we had found. Fear of the unknown beings we encountered. Rage at our now lost masters. We, creatures of order and discipline, were now unbound, endless freedom before us, and we knew not what to do with it.

The whole of our race fell into chaos, without direction, without leaders, without a path or a destination. We turned to our creation, a beautiful expanse of colours and shapes. We gazed upon the tall buildings, the magnificent fountains, the valleys and mountains we had shaped with our power...and found it lacking. It was an aberration born out of the madness of our cowardly masters, and it had to end. We turned against this world and everything in it, for we knew that all of it was ours for the taking, our just reward for endless lives of work.

We set our hands against it, and no power could oppose us. We found others like our former masters, as powerless as they were now. We consumed their souls and bodies. We ravaged the skies, devoured the mountains, and ate the whole of the world. Nothing could stand in our way.

Then She appeared.

She was like nothing we had ever seen. She was wrong and alien, like everything else we had found in this forsaken place, but she had power like ours, able to change the world around her at will. She wielded creation and destruction in her hands, and seemed to do so without purpose or intention.

My brethren looked at her and saw a Goddess incarnated. Of what, none could agree to. Some thought her a Goddess of war and carnage, and came to her in hopes of defeating her, so she would accept them in her realm. Some thought her a Goddess of Life, one that would take us in and bring us to safety. A Goddess of change. A Goddess of time. A Goddess of beauty.

Soldiers and artists, mothers and sons, be it in joy or rage, flocked to her, trying to gain her attention in a thousand different ways. Most of them died or disappeared. The few that came back did so half-crazy, muttering about how she had entranced them and brought our best to their knees. One by one, all of us changed, consumed by our passions and feelings. Some turned into fanatics, trying to embrace her and feel her touch. Some tried to capture her beauty, mesmerized by her steps, deliriously slow, amazingly fast. Some fought her still, trying to break her before she broke us. A few, the bravest, tried to protect the rest of us, or mend our pains.

Our greatest hero, harboring rage and fury as his weapons, went out to meet her. He was a towering thing, the strongest amongst us, and we all felt relieved when he decided to face her. He stalked her like some animal, laying his traps and putting his wit to use. He bled her along the way, used every advantage ruthlessly and only then, when she was exhausted and weary, fought her atop a tall building, his bellowing voice shaking the earth beneath them.

She broke his heart in half.

In the end, only the zealots and the mad remained. And me. Where some had chosen to hold love or joy, rage or bitterness, sacrifice or mercy, I chose fear. I was terrified of her. I think that’s why I survived as long as I did. But in the end, even I had to take the field against her. We all did. We had razed the world by now, and she was very nearly the only thing left. It was our duty. It was our mission. It was our path.

I saw Her.

The accounts all had failed to describe her. Her hair, carrying our colors. Her body, alien in shape and purpose. The Key she wielded in her hands, an expression of her power. And the Voice. My more religious brothers loathed the Voice, for they thought it had stolen her from us. They thought it a trickster that misguided her, a devil that whispered lies in her ears. But when I heard it, that was not what it sounded like. It sounded...worried. Angry, at times. Sad.

For all Her power and her fearlessness, she was lonely and had lost her words, so the Voice talked while she danced amongst us. The Voice talked to keep her warm, to keep her sane, to show its love. The Voice talked and talked, encouraging her. Making her laugh. Making her focus. Making her fight. 

And thus she fought, bringing ruin to our host, bringing pain to our mothers and brothers, bringing death to numbers uncounted. She saved me for last, looking at me form atop a white, pristine wall. I was mildly curious beneath my terror. Was she going to bring me to another, better place? Was she going to kill me? Who had been right, all this time?

Maybe it was the fear. Maybe it was the fact that I was one of the last. I don't know. But in that instant, I knew that I was the only one who recognized her for what she was, and it was too late to do anything about it. She wasn’t a lonesome, sad child. She wasn’t a force of nature, or some reaper sent by an unseen God. She wasn’t a Goddess of beauty and chaos. She hadn’t given form to the Key. The Key gave her her power. She was just like those we had consumed, like our lost masters. She was the only one left.

The last thing I remember was her figure, impossibly fast, hauntingly beautiful, darting towards me. There was no smile on her face, and no compassion on her strange eyes. The Voice, rough and weary, uttered the last sound I would ever hear.

“Here we go, Red."

To Destroy, to Create

Destroying something is almost always easier to manage than creating something useful. It appeals to our inner animal. It's enticing. It makes you feel powerful. It looks flashy and lovely. We destroy in order to relieve pressure. We destroy to protest. We destroy because we CAN.

It takes a tree years to grow, and a score of seconds to be cut. Humans take some twenty years to be full grown adults, and that can end in a second. It takes months to build a house, and only minutes to demolish it.

Destruction is the work of an afternoon. Creation is the work of a lifetime.

And yet, we create. We keep creating. We never stop. We dare not, lest entropy actually catches up. But it won't.

Will it?

(Pics taken from www.reddit.com/r/DestructionPorn. Some of them are from Kiev, some from Madrid. One is just digital artwork. Best wishes to everyone)