From the Ashes

[Gildarts]

Ashes rained down from the heavens. Blood bore down from his wounds. And gravity burdened the Prime’s shoulders, who had still yet to stand. After Gildarts’ hand had reached the skull, the Prime’s single, bloodshot eye had widened, with what was something only akin to fear. He could not find it in himself to throw it aside, as though it were just another rock, nor, could Gildarts simply set it in the stones in which he had come.

His lips were dry, and caked with hot blood, which was streaming down from his temple. Gildarts held the skull in his hand, and perhaps, had the strength, he may have set it to rest. Gildarts had to set it aside, for he felt the pouring drain of fatigue rinse from his muscles, and could no longer be tasked to even take a second to halt upon his way. In the distance, the dragon flew, laying siege for cause of their own instigation. Somehow, in his heart, he wished he could have stopped it. Yet there was nothing left, for the Prime, who only originally had one working leg and arm, was now reduced to a place lower than his own knees.

Blood gurgled once more in Gildarts’ gut. Sulfur continued to burn in his single-open eye, and the pain, the bone-hollowing pain, formed a burning tear in the corner of the Prime’s eye as it trickled downward, and fell upon the ashen ground of this all too broken verse. Dust flurried from the air, the sky, and anything above his shoulders, and it smelt like the dust of the dead.

A heavier burden crunched on the mage’s shoulders, as he attempted to lift himself upright with the last shreds of his arm. Two decent sized gashes could be seen thinning the man’s once sinewy arm, though they had been burnt over to cease the bleeding, Gildarts, the mighty Prime, could not even stand, and looked like a haggard shadow of his once-strong self.

He had not even the strength to turn his own head over his shoulder, in order to regard the dead. The mage wondered, if he had even the strength to roll down the mountain at the expense of every still-solid bone in his body. Blood trickled onto the whites of his teeth now, while his mouth hung open, rasping for each and every breath, and spraying out some with each exhale. The man’s face and body looked rugged, kissed by death once, and beaten endlessly by all the forces that resulted defeat.

His own strength had diminished, Gildarts, perched with his back against a rock, with but a single hand moving, and only one eye blinking, may have forgotten to breathe, had his view not fixed on something remarkable, donned in black, and struggling on his own to stand. Zack Fair, one of his companions had lived.

The burden of the Strongest Prime was lifted, and Gildarts heard his own relieved breath leave his lungs, and fill his body with a happier reason to live again.