The White Field

The sun beat down upon the dead. No soul came to claim the rotting flesh. It was a sea of carnage, dried and desolate. The dogs and birds feasted for seasons, were gorged through the year. The worms wiggled in the blackening flesh, making of it a home. So all of death’s children came to play after that great disaster, that orgy, that war.

In the end, there were only bones, and stories. As man regrouped, and as man again built up cities, that necropolis grew in two ways. The surrounding cities would at times send a lone young man out to prove his courage, and he would return a man. Yet, men were also sent there who were no longer the builders of cities. Men were exiled into the land of death. No gate would again welcome them, no walls protect them. And they became the inhabitants of that field.

The sun bleached bones of men

into pale sand have crumbled,

and that white field a desert made.

Some go to come again,

some there forever stay,

but all in death will one day fade.

Cities will all surround

that long desolate waste

forgetting what was lost, Death’s blade.

Yet rumors persist, and the wild ones search for the king’s sword out there amid those ruins. One day the king of death shall again seek a throne, and then the cities’ gates will fall.