Chapter 11: Dust to Dust

These constructs are strange.
Filling a quiet and gray landscape, dotted with the trees that can survive the banks of snow beneath them.
I know this place.
A memory,
but from where?

Mine?
It couldn't be.

I see a boy, struggling to walk through the snow.
His clothing is stained, his skin filthy.
He's shivering, teeth chattering in the face of the biting wind.

Flashes of light, far off. Fire. Pillars of blinding smoke.
Beyond the mountains silhouetted in the snow.
The boy stops, mesmerized by the intense light forming a halo around the mountains' tallest peaks.

MY GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT.
THE CONVOLUTION AND DESTRUCTION OF MY ENEMY'S PRIZED WORLD.

Another flash, the light envelops the boy.

 

And the memory vanishes.

The boy is older now.

The young man trudges through piles of ashen snow, towards a crumbling building.

 

I see an angel, lighting the snow around it, following him home.

It speaks a wonderful and beautiful language.

 

It guards him while he sleeps, and keeps the thorns from his heart.

It speaks dreams to his mind, and keeps the wolf in the night.

COWARD.