Battle in Scarlet Skies - Preview
This is a preview of a story I'll be writing over time. I'm planning on it being lengthy, emotional and an overall tear-jerker. I don't plan on including yiff or anything beyond "somewhat suggestive" as I feel it would disrupt the writing as a whole. Please leave feedback and thoughts on this little bit I wrote up in an hour or so, to preview what part of the story might turn out to be like. A disclaimer: this will be the first thing I've ever uploaded to SoFurry, so please be patient if I screwed something up, like tags, or formatting, or something like that.
The aged warrior stood her ground amidst the burning rubble, claws digging into stone and dirt in mental agony as she looked around with her one good eye, the faded white, green and black orb searching across the landscape from its home within the left side of her face, with her tattered wings flared out around her, rusted gold and faded red scales catching the light of the fire. The elegant swirls and intricate patterns didn't reflect light like they used to, decades of war had seen to that, and her ram-like horns weren't much better for wear, being dull in color, the right one broken to match her missing right eye. Looking around, the haze of battle had cleared but the smoke of many fires still rose from the ground, blocking out parts of her view of the city around her. Buildings of stone and wood stood, half-intact and crumbling away, burning with a dim orange haze, while a mixture of burning wood, broken stone and shattered glass took residence upon the ground. Amidst the countless towering structures, some of which were threatening to collapse and a few of which already were, the bodies of numerous creatures lay about. Humans and their war-horses, all colors, shapes and sizes of dragon, and the occasional odd bird-like creature. At the time, the dragoness standing tall couldn't tell what they were amidst the smoke in the sunset, whether they be griffin, phoenix or something else.
To her, though, what exactly they were didn't matter. Few thoughts could surface through the emotional maelstrom threatening to tear her apart, but one kept returning again and again. "Was this all really worth it?"_The war had finally been won, but at what cost? Good soldiers on all sides were slaughtered. And while some might be celebrating their victory at this point, _Rayna Metine was not such a blind creature, despite missing an eye. It was the rulers, the kings and queens, the nobles, the warlords and all their kin that had done this. All these bodies, lying within pools of both their own blood and the blood of others, had belonged to good people, no matter what species, who only did what they did because of duty to their kings and queens, and to protect their families. Few if any did it to seek bloody glory by claiming the lives of those selfless warriors who gave everything they had and laid their lives down for their loved ones.
But even then, the bloodshed hadn't remained on the battlefield. When the war began to intensify, assassinations became more and more common, whether it was the assassination of tacticians and generals on the front lines, or whether it was the assassination of their families back home in order to break them without ever hitting them. And countless cities were razed to the ground, with fire and with swords, with bows and arrows, and with all sorts of powerful war-machines, created solely to leave death and destruction in their wake. Of all those who had died, just as many innocent civilians -- no, just as many women and children were claimed by death, as were the men that fought to protect them.
And this is what brought the aging general to shed tears of sorrow and pain. Her voice began to crack, tears shedding from both her good left eye, and from the tear duct that had belonged to her right eye, which was now gone, with only a hole in the right side of her face to remember it by. Sobs of sadness and agony rocked her body, tears dripping to the ground as a gentle wind toyed with the fire and embers of the burning city around her as the bus-sized creature mourned for the fallen, all of them, both men, women and children. So many lives, lost for nothing. The kings and queens, the noblemen, the warlords, all of those whom were responsible for this still lived, and while the war was won, there would always be more fighting and bloodshed, as long as such cruel monsters existed in this life.
But, as sweet and tempting as revenge sounded, she knew it would be all for naught. Taking their lives might purge an evil from the world, but eventually, others would spring up to take their places in corrupting every last corner of the world that was already so scarred and wounded in the first place. At a loss, her gaze turned to the heavens, clouds of ash and real clouds both obscuring her view of the ever-darkening sky and the stars that would soon be appearing there. The pain shook her voice, along with the sobbing, as she cried out one last time, a hopeless prayer for death. "If there's a god up there, please, answer my prayer. End my suffering, allow me to return to ashes and dust with my comrades, while my spirit meets those valorous warriors who fought alongside me and against me in battle. Please, do this for me; it's all I can ask for."