The Centurion

The centurion squinted through the battlements. The splinters in the rough stakes blurred in the foreground, and beyond that the vast reaches of the Andarran Steppes, the rampant plateaus and sheer drops and sprinkles of snow like teardrops down the valleys, the forbidding beauty of the red sun and the ashen gravel that littered the mountain pass from volcanoes of eons past.

He tightened his grip on his gladius, breathing grimly, his brothers leaning alongside him on the roped drawbridge, muttering prayers and clasping idols.

His grizzled face was hardened and hopeless, and as he adjusted his helmet’s clasps his eyes stared pitilessly across the battlefield. The very mountains trembled and his brother staggered but the centurion braced himself against the post and his sandals hissed deep into the gravel, his lean muscles aching. He pushed back. This was the call of destiny or childhood – he knew not what – but he had no choice now. He had died and been reborn too many times not to face this with courage.

“Haauuu! HAAUU! HAAUU! HAAUU!”

He slammed his gladius against his gold buckler, the drawbridge raising, and the mountains under the red sky crumbling, shivering, moving, as valleys became as legs, as peaks shrugged off stone, as entire hillsides slid away from a tail, as the great beast reared from its resting place within the mountain, wings darkening the sky.

The centurion sprinted forward as the dragon tore impossibly out of the rock and screamed its fury to the heavens.

“We shall become as Gods!” he cried as the men alongside him broke and ran in terror.

The centurion’s plume ran across the plateau, a tiny red dot in the great space running, disappearing as a hot wind swept through the battlements.