[center][h1][i]VICTORY[/i][/h1][/center]


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What is the price of victory?

Dark clouds hung low in the sky, moving like a vast angry ocean of dark. The very air was still, like a stifling blanket that absorbed all. The wind had fled long ago, unable to depart without leaving even a breeze. Thus it was always quiet across that bleak landscape where nothing grew and nothing dwelt. They had made sure of that, in the end. Now none of them could recall the taste of the sun, the pitter patter of rain, a running brook, the taste of dew, not even the snow. It was all gone, not that any that remained cared. For such hearts only blackened could endure now in the Anathema Heights. 

There was however, a lonely spot where one could glimpse the old and be powerless to change it. Oh, they had tried, even she, but all failed and it had grown upon her heart like a thorn. She journeyed there away from the lifeless land to see what once had been, time and time again. Day after day, like a call she had no choice but to answer. There upon the battlefield of old it haunted her- Last monument of what had been. Protected by an invisible shield, staving off the corruption. The battle once won, never ending. 

The grass was green before her in that small clearing. Not a dry green tinged with yellow but deep and rich, as if after a good rain. The earth was still brown and black, not the cracked gray and lifeless dust etched all around it. Even the light within was radiant, colorful, filtered of the choking air that surrounded. There also lay flowers within, of ivory petals held high by sturdy stocks. Now and again she felt as if she could smell them, a sweet scent of growth but no others were able. And in the center of it all was the one who’s body had never decayed since the day she had first fallen there. For it was not just a monument but also a tomb.

The demon with her pale skin and her cracked carapace, arms at her sides where they had fallen, whilst her legs were covered in a blanket of flowers. A mane of thick white hair sprawled out from her head and mingled with the grass. Such hair had once been flaming red, now no longer. Her features were so that it looked as if she was merely sleeping and at any moment she might wake up and do battle once more, with the mighty sword sheathed within the earth beside her. 

That sword… The very reason she was left undisturbed. Purity was its name, wielded only by her and one other. The blade shined silver in the light, waiting for someone to come along and pick it up. She had long known, no one ever would. Yet Purity still stood, proud and untouched, just like everything within. The sword that had almost struck her down. 

Long had she wished it had.

Maeve sighed where she knelt. Coming to that place only made the memories more vivid but long had she known how much she needed it. A sickness never healed, only worsening as time passed. 
 
Her shaky voice at last burst forth, for rare was it she spoke at all there, “Not a day passes I do not wish I had died upon the field of battle. Struck down by your hand. Not cheated by what had happened well out of our control. You would have won, I wish you had won. It would have been better that way. My Tingalina…” Speaking her name aloud made the Fae shudder with great longing. “She would never have taken up the sword against me. She would not have died that day with you. But you just… The will was gone, blown away like your mother.” She had learned the truth of that day only by chance and it was really only a hunch. It had been enough to placate her thoughts. Such a warrior the demon had been, she should not have fallen like that without outside cause.

Her thoughts, never far from it, focused on her love, “Tingalina… Would have hurt a long while if I had died. But you would have helped ease my passing, wouldn’t you? For we call you demon but even I know an angel when I look upon one. Even fallen as you are now. Such is war and its cruelty.”

Maeve stood, thoughts turning back to her own demise. “If only it had been so.” Her emotions ran thick in the air. “But I slew her. I struck down my love and for what? I have no one at my side and there hasn’t been a day I go without thinking of her smile… Her touch… Her laugh!” She cried, slamming her fist into the invisible wall. “Our gods abandoned us! We are alone in a wasteland of our making! And you angel, dearest Newygnog, you get to rest forevermore! No one now lives to remember you save me and even then I never knew you. Not really and I cannot die to deliver you this final death. The death of memory. Try as I have, this is my curse. A punishment for my sins.” Her voice fell silent. She looked down at her hands and began to weep.

Maeve’s thoughts turned to the question that had long since haunted her. She knew in her black heart, only the dead found lasting peace when Fae turned against Fae. When their dust settled and their screams heard no more. Even after crushing defeats and the great victorious battle. Those who remained as living memory of the war were now forced to watch the world change without them, on either side. Forever tarnished, few as they were. Now unable or unwilling to move on, they suffered. She suffered.

That was the price of victory.

[hider=Summary]
Long after the great Fae war ended, Maeve laments in the broken and corrupted land she now rules, beside the tomb of Newygnog, last bastion of Purity. 
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