[AW] crumbling light

[Antiope]

of glory which the world hath known

stands she not nobly and alone

T

he attack is over in seconds.

Or, at least, it feels that way. War, it always feels like it struggles on and on, clawing its way through the days, weeks, months, doing whatever it takes to last and last and survive. Almost desperately. But this one, it is different. She remembers walking out to that clearing like walking out to certain death, like she is walking them out to certain death. Is she not leading them to their deaths, every day of their lives?

Has that not, blindly, been her purpose the entire time? How has she been so foolish.

The field is dusted in frost and snow, not white but crisp and frozen. Her breath—all of their breaths—fog in the air, filling it like ash and smoke. She holds her axe deftly in her hand, her shield hanging carefully from the straps of her harness. The ends of her scarf flap in the breeze like some kind of flag.

She still doesn’t know what changed, but when she couldn’t swing her axe down… that had been the moment that everything had changed. Her head turns, just in time to see the other equine aiming the spear directly behind her outstretched legs. It enters between her ribs, burning, burning.

Is that where the burning had been born?

~~~

She wakes, chest searing, half expecting to find green eyes looking down at her with concern. She knows better, she should know better.

Antiope stands, opening doors on empty and dark halls. Her steps echo like voices off the walls, damning and condemning. If they are trying to tell her something, she doesn’t understand them. There is too much hunger in her, too much aching, to make room for them.

Outside it is dark, everything is limned in silver and dusted with winter’s touch. The night is laughing at her; snow falling from the sky like ash, her breaths filling the air like smoke. Her things are abandoned in her room: her axe, her ribbons, her choker, her beads. There is only her, standing in the cold, with her hair wild and long upon the ground, and firelight dancing over the stripes on her skin.

There are smears of red under her eyes that look like they could be bruises or blood but right now on this night Antiope does not look like a god-thing or a god-killer. She breathes in the cold air like a salve for the flame in her chest, and descends the steps of the court to walk the streets below. She has never slept well, anyway.

"Speaking."

Open to anyone who wants to thread with Antiope <3

∞