"Red Requiem: Hell-Clouds Over Skanskaraz" by Skyler Crouse

Hell-Clouds over Skanskaraz

The air is stuffed with fetid fumes

That drifted to this place -

Skanskaraz, once beheld in plumes

Of gold and fluid grace.

Grand dragons spluttered final breaths

In this destroy’d realm -

Life’s punctured with predestined death

When Satan’s at the helm.

She cackles at Grim’s drastic plan

To strike her softened heart –

But hell-clouds from her lithe blade ran

When evil did depart.

She slices doom and parries fate

With strokes of sword benign –

But victory came far too late

Once demons bore their sign.

Smog of underworld chokes her faith

Forging fright anew -

 Not cried from the eyes of that wraith

Are tears but darkened dew.

In it comes; it weaves between light

And leaves trails of night soot –

Such sorrow resides in the sight

And sound of ebon flute.

Notes bind her shackles viper tight

Stanzas silence her soul –

Each bar holds a sinful blight;

Sanity takes its toll.

She can’t fight this tune with blades

Nor slay this symphony –

She sees hell-clouds, but all else fades

And dies in harmony.

Fogg’d drops trickle down her face

As her last time draws near –

But all her hopes to woe give chase

And now her dreams are clear.

At last she breaks free, shackles gone.

And Ardentyre in hand –

Tirania brings a new dawn

And the past she reprimands.

Away it goes, fluttering far

In its deserve’d rout –

Skanskaraz it no longer mars

And fled with it was doubt.

But will alone is not enough

To bring the Chanter down –

The Paladin had found it tough

But in blood it didn’t drown.

The clouds lift off a joyous world

The land bursts through its cell

But now she sees what else is hurled

Into this horrid hell.

Tirania, Paladin of the Blood-Moon;

Answer the song your fate now sings

Or watch as life’s coda ends without you.