Oh lonesome warrior, Oh crimson blade
Why do you persist, when so many have desisted?
And so many more have died
Why do you paint this bloody swathe across our land?
Your spine is long since broken, is it spite that keeps you up?
Why do you stay on your feet, why don't you just die!


Die? No

Let their blood form an ocean and their marrow litter the soil
None shall remain unsplit
Every falsehood shall be sundered
Every pretence cast aside
Even stone will yield to the unceasing edge

Just keep your grip on that blade and all shall be set aright
After all, it's all you have
No friends, no family, rift long empty...

But to fall is to give up, to say they've -won-
So slice and hack and break apart
Rend flesh from bone
Hew them limb from limb and call it Ugrach's mercy
Keep cleaving until silence is the only answer given


Are you still you or did you become the blade itself?
Are you the wielder or the wielded?
Does that sword drag you by the arm?
Pulling your limbs like a puppeteer's strings?
Carving its own arc through the air and flesh
Never resting, even when the battlefield is bare?
As if to rend reality and memory itself apart

But no

You chose this, didn't you?
If anything you're partners now

You've felt this before
You'll feel it again
When the last corpse lies cold
And there is nothing left to cut

Will you still hunger?

For there is always more
Another field
Another proudly bellowed name
Another body to split in twain

And when there is nothing left in this world to feed your blade
Perhaps it will turn upon you


Penned by my hand on the 2nd of Mayan, in the year 1011 AF.