{"sf1_id":1714717,"sf2_id":"q1xYM9e0","title":"Ragnarok - V","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":1766,"posted_at":"2021-05-05T16:36:00.000Z","tags":["Epic","Iambic pentameter","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1714717-ragnarok-v","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/q1xYM9e0","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/c2/ab/c2abd986-325d-49cd-bbfc-dd2e1e985b4f","description":"#6 of Ragnarok\n\nAfter the interruption by the ominous approach of one of the mysterious enemies their souls have been drawn to this world to fight, Varr continues his tale to Shane.\nThis was, I believe, the very first time I actually committed myself to writing an action scene. I'd always assumed they were fiendishly difficult.\nI should credit, here, Mike Luce's comic \"Fite!\" which I still regard as an irreplaceable masterpiece. The first idea for this poem was a fan theory I had about what was going on in it. If you're familiar with the comic, you can probably see the \"boxer appears in mysterious forest, makes friends with a swordsman\" inspiration path.\nGuz and Luke, in Varr's tale here, are named in honor of \"Fite!\"\nI've kinda lost touch with him. Couldn't find him on SoFurry, I don't post on FA anymore, and I got kicked off of Tumblr in the NSFW-purge (despite my not having anything NSFW there), so if anyone knows where he's gone I'd be grateful to catch up.","content":"\"Before the sun had crossed the pinnacle\n\nOf hours upon the sky's superior side\n\nAnd any nightward momentum had gained,\n\nThe hall was emptying. The Old Man's words\n\nReverberated still between hard stone\n\nReproachful more the longer that we stayed.\n\nOur blood seemed turned to thunderbolts, that we\n\nAlready felt our bodies straining toward\n\nOur foes, like iron shards to a lodestone,\n\nTo fall on them, and crush, and make as dust\n\nAnd less than nothing, with a deafening crash.\n\nDelaying but a moment was torment.\n\nBy twos and threes and fours we journeyed forth.\n\nI went with two companions: one was tall\n\nAnd stronger than the knots of oaks. He spoke\n\nBut little, and he silent stood in pain.\n\nHe little cared for strategies, but struck\n\nAs much with his broad weight as with his spear.\n\nGuz was he called, surnamed All-Leveler\n\nFor many bouts that left us stunned and sprawled\n\nUpon the practice floor. With him there was\n\nAnother, Luke the Barefoot, swift in all:\n\nIn boast, in deed, to fellowship, to fight,\n\nAnd on his ever unshod feet in war.\n\nRash and quick tempered--very much like you--\n\nBut just as quick to laughter after wrath.\n\nOur armor scorned he. He with cadenced mock\n\nWould call us oysters, clams, and lobster shells.\n\nIn battle he seemed not to notice wounds\n\nBut plied with sabers twain as if he hewed\n\nAt nothing vicious more than firewood.\n\nToward the sunrise hills we turned, and looked\n\nNot back to see crystalline sunlight on\n\nThe parapets of home one final time.\n\nEre sunset, we were swallowed by the hills\n\nAnd shadows long. For days in readiness\n\nWe walked, that grew unhurriedly to weeks.\n\nWith every mile we went, the world was changed.\n\nIt was not only that it had grown cold:\n\nRecall that it was winter. It was not\n\nThe twisted stunted half-trees that watched us\n\nLike evil raven ghosts among the tombs:\n\nFor we were on a heath were such shrubs grew.\n\nIt was as if the world had stretched too thin\n\nAnd now was shrinking back, as does a leaf\n\nDead, dried out, and half-rotted, from a flame\n\nGreedily licking at the edges soft.\n\nThe air seemed shriveled, and could not be breathed.\n\nThe earth seemed tired, and crumbled at our tread.\n\nThe time seemed comatose, as if this day\n\nHad somehow inundated my whole life\n\nThat I had walked in colorless wetlands\n\nAs long as I had lived, and always would.\n\nYet reached we all too soon a slate-grey mere\n\nStretched wetly flat supine beneath slate sky.\n\nIt was the only place that I have seen\n\nSince I awoke that I would term ugly.\n\nUgly in mood, ugly in soul. Yet more\n\nUnsightly it was made by a great wound\n\nCarved down into the sodden earth as if\n\nA rat vast far beyond imagining\n\nHad gnawed down through the mud and morbid reeds,\n\nOr rather such a beast had burst up from\n\nA subterranean womb. Just so it bled\n\nPale brackish water, and just so it stank.\n\nBut that was not the worst. I had known war\n\nIn my life previous to this. I gave\n\nDeep wounds, and suffered blow for blow in turn.\n\nAnd even as a boy untested by\n\nThe trials of manhood, universe, and war\n\nI had beheld without emotion worse\n\nThan holes overlarge many times before.\n\nThe worst was that the gulf did open not\n\nTo earth below a swamp, to depth of silt,\n\nTo pool clay-flavored or peat scented, but\n\nTo something smoldering slowly. The plume\n\nOf oily smoke rose sluggish to the clouds.\n\nA moment brief I smelled it, then the stench\n\nMy nostrils numbed, as if for surgery.\n\nI only caught a whiff of ashes soaked\n\nBy water, sealed away for ages long,\n\nAnd only now unsepulchered and stirred.\n\nWe stood upon a knot of higher ground,\n\nThe only island in that waste of mud,\n\nAnd gaped, the three of us. I felt too sick\n\nTo speak. For as we watched we saw the hole\n\nWas vaster than at first we credited.\n\nJust as the darkling maggots in a heap\n\nOf compost rotting, suddenly exposed\n\nTo observation, writhe as one, the hole\n\nWith motion jerky, spastic, seizure-like\n\nBegan to crawl. The sides were come alive\n\nWith shapes that looked no bigger than a mite\n\nBut we could see were men. The hole was wide\n\nEnough to swallow up our hall, and still\n\nFit three more like it easily, and up\n\nThe sides came slowly someones. We knew not\n\nWhat sort of man could be birthed thus, nor what\n\nDamp hell this gulf had breached, but well we knew\n\nThese were our enemies. We were at war.\n\nThe shapes grew clear as they approached the lip.\n\nIn form they seemed like men completely sealed\n\nIn armor interlocking, twisted, bent\n\nAnd stained with rust. Inside, they were not men.\n\nImagine you a body set aflame\n\nThen pushed into the sea, so as it burned\n\nIt slowly foundered as it turned to ash.\n\nNow dress it in the crumbling spoils of tombs\n\nOf ancient heathen kings. Wrap it, perhaps,\n\nIn a moth-ravaged cloak, or on its head\n\nA helm more verdigris than metal set.\n\nSee it begin to stir, turn sightless face,\n\nAnd shuffle, raising slow a broken sword.\n\nNext do imagine that you hear within\n\nIts hollow chest for heartbeat the low hiss\n\nOf flame unquenchable at water's touch,\n\nOf embers buried under wood still wet,\n\nOf something rotten underneath the stones\n\nAround a chimney long abandoned, now\n\nTo fire and heat reintroduced at last.\n\nOne final touch remains, as this thing walks\n\nBehind it picture clumps of sodden ash\n\nFallen from every chink and armor hole\n\nLeaving of foul pollution a foul trail.\n\nIf your imagination matches to\n\nYour courage, you will understand why I\n\nFelt sickened as with fever at the sight:\n\nEither with anger or with nausea.\n\nWith one accord we three shook clean our heads.\n\nWithout a word, we three pronounced the things\n\nOur foes through death and ever after. None\n\nWho calls himself a man and means it, whose\n\nBlood in his heart is red, could otherwise\n\nHave done once he had seen them. No more than\n\nA heartbeat's time these thoughts flashed through us, for\n\nUp from the mists and meres the Things had come\n\nSlow as erosion. Now they stood around\n\nSurrounding us, the circle tightening.\n\nThey did not want to wait for us to choose\n\nBetween war and diplomacy, so we\n\nChose war, and drew our weapons, and began.\n\nThey came among us faster than they ought\n\nTo have been capable of moving, but\n\nWe met them head-on, from all ways at once.\n\nThe shock was like the crash of frigid air\n\nTo hot, that swells to storm and births cyclones.\n\nTo my right hand was Guz. With one long stride\n\nHe struck him deep among their foremost ranks\n\nAnd ere his forward boot had touched the ground\n\nHe struck three down: he whipped his spearhead flat\n\nAs if he held no lance, but sword twelve-foot\n\nAnd keen on every edge. Three crumpled down\n\nLike twigs deluged by hailstones. Then he thrust\n\nAnd pierced the nearest through, who was not near\n\nEven enough to strike were his reach grown\n\nTo double. Ere Guz could pull back his lance,\n\nTwo flanked him, and advancing from behind\n\nWere half-way brandishing half-crumbled swords.\n\nThe lance butt cracked against the first one's chin\n\nWith force enough to lift it from its feet\n\nBefore it dropped. An elbow, then a fist\n\nSlammed backward sent the other toppling flat,\n\nAnd lancepoint made it helpless evermore.\n\nWhile to my left, like whitewater through rocks,\n\nLuke danced among the enemy, his blades\n\nSometimes like scissors, sometimes like windmills\n\nBlown contradictory; one widershins\n\nOne with the sun, sometimes like steel-hard teeth\n\nOf rabid rodents gnawing bone-dry wood\n\nClean through, sometimes like each part of a storm\n\nIn turn--like lightning piercing, like sharp rain\n\nSwift driving jabs, like sweeping gusts of wind\n\nSlashing and trailing turbulence behind\n\nThat twisted past whatever small defense\n\nThe rotten armor offered. Often he\n\nLike silver flash of scales under the reeds,\n\nA slab of muscle singly bent to speed,\n\nWould dart under descending sword, and drift\n\nWith seemed effortlessness just out of reach\n\nAnd somehow surface from behind to strike.\n\nWhile I, with point of sword and edge of shield,\n\nBoth of them weapon, both defense, dealt death\n\nNot with the overwhelming strength, that snaps\n\nThe oak boughs in the storm, or crushes rocks\n\nBetween expanding roots, nor with the speed\n\nAnd dizzy acrobatic grace that bursts\n\nOut of the clouds where sunlight pokes a hole\n\nThat guarded both my flanks and watched my back,\n\nBut simply and directly, like the beat\n\nOf syllables in plain and honest speech.\n\nImpossible to tally up a score\n\nFor each of us. One blasphemy against\n\nStrong honor, clean existence, and sweet life\n\nEach breath we drew went crashing to the ground.\n\nI know not how to count up all we slew.\n\nThe wind was freshening, and cleared the stench.\n\nThe time seemed stunned, and slowed almost to naught.\n\nThe sunlight, strangled out by silky sheets\n\nOf cloud, grew now encouraged and shone through\n\nEnough to paint its shadow on the mists\n\nOf light and not of shade. All this we saw\n\nAs one hears drums inside a melody:\n\nWe did not stop to notice, till we found\n\nThat suddenly we had no enemies.\u0026nbsp;\n\nThen through the air the silence struck. We froze\n\nEach posed as if for sculpture at the peak\n\nOf some titanic lunge, blades up, arms straight\n\nEach muscle rigid with adrenal pain,\n\nHearts pounding, eyes ablaze with rage and joy.\n\nAround us in a ring lay double-dead\n\nThe slain abominations. Where they lay\n\nAlready they were rotting, as a fire\n\nCollapses inward with a hiss when doused.\n\nIf we appeared like statues, then they seemed\n\nThe shoddy masonry, for pedestal\n\nIntended, but incapable within\n\nOf holding piece to piece and self to self\n\nBeneath the thick weight of heroic bronze,\n\nAnd, crushed beneath it, scatters outwards from\n\nThe feet of the colossus that stands firm.\n\nBut even as we watched, each double-corpse\n\nBegan to shrivel swiftly, like a coal\n\nThat burns too long and deeply, and is turned\n\nTo self-consuming ash. So they grew grey,\n\nThen white, then brittle outlines bloomed, until\n\nA passing breeze and their own chaffy weight\n\nLeft only powder, as if sudden snow\n\nHad come confused unseasonal, and spread\n\nIts frigid blooms only about our feet\n\nLike flowers for a triumphal parade.\"\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Ragnarok","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1714337-ragnarok-iv.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1715138-ragnarok-vi.json"}}