Regret

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, the hero thinks blankly. But how else would it have ended, if not like this?

For all the stars in the sky, the light does nothing to make the bloodstained field any less terrible. On the ground, the corpse stares soullessly at the uncaring heavens. The hero had always imagined it would end differently, hundreds of different confrontations like shattered glass strewn around him.

A battle for the ages, like the prophesy had proclaimed, some grand confrontation on a thunder-backed hill, clashing swords until the grass catches, til it burns down the hill in a terrific crescendo? The villain, begging for mercy as words of vengeance were spat down to tear-filled eyes? Or a softer ending, perhaps: the impossible confrontation that ends with clasping hands. How laughable.

Nothing so grand. A battle is never the fairytale it's presented as. There is no grand strike, no singing, no stairs of Valhalla, shining with the long-sought rewards.

Just the sounds of soldiers rooting through the bodies. Just the distant sounds of weeping, the cries of the wounded, those who refuse to be claimed by death without a fight.

Just a corpse at his feet, torn apart.

Just the strange thought that lingers behind his eyes - In the eyes of a stranger, would this all look different? Would a different set of eyes notice how similar the armour was, rather than the stark difference in the colours of the tattered flags strewn around the hill?

The start of this all had felt like foreplay, a burning so deep that he’d been screaming the battlecry, rather than chanting the words. But now it’s just terrible silence, and the dead eyes of a man.

He stares out at the countless bodies - fallen heroes, that’s what they’ll be called in the songs. No one will bother telling how many cried in the end, nor how the arrogance that comes from tempting fate shrivels in the face of a raised sword or hissing arrow, a charging horse.

Even now, the few survivors well enough to stand are trudging up the hill towards him with tired grins on their faces, insults thrown at the corpse on the ground when they notice it.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, the hero thinks.