The Battle of Dreams Come True

The Kingdom of Dreams Come True laid defeated, destitute and destroyed.
Knights, squires and pages, the gloriously awe-inspiring war-horses,
despatched to reside in the land of the eternal winds, their influence now void.
Marauding bands of Neverforever warriors despatching all lingering life-forces.    
Upon the crumbling battlements, in-between a stoically renaming crenelation,
the Princess could be glimpsed, occasionally peering longingly over the land.
Hoping, wishing, praying to any God that would hear her desperate imploration
for her lover's safe return, increasingly despondent with the diminishing hour-glass sand.

The castle had withstood the week-long siege, the ceaseless pounding of the catapults.
The invading force had arrived without warning, rapidly overrunning the way stations,
bare-chested warriors, astride their hideous creatures, attacked the fortress in furious assaults.
Wave after wave were repulsed, fatigued defenders beseeching the Erinyes for preservation.
Seven days and seven passed in perpetual engagement, no relieving company still standing,
the Dream army having been dispatched when the skirmishers were viewed on the horizon.
Unprepared, many had ridden without donning armour, unbloodied, impetus headstrong men.
The king and Princes departing in resplendent armour, banners high, the dream weft emblazon.

The Princess, attended by maids and personal guards, watched with horror the ensuing melee.
Her brothers, distinguishable on their gleaming white steeds, were dismounted immediately,
singled out by trophy-hunting screaming banshees, their honour guards impotent to rally.
Remaining in the eye of the maelstrom, the King fought with the lust of battle-crazed hostility,
swords in both hands forming a continuous blur of motion, his horse kicking out unabashed
in the engrained style of all war-horses, guided purely by the subtle changes in his thighs.
A widening circle of the dead and dying surrounded the King as he stabbed and slashed,
the NeverForever Land multitude increasingly nervous at their companions easy demise.

He fell, eventually, taken down by an arrow that penetrated through his silver armour,
his remaining knights and lancers galloping blindly away towards the surrounding trees.
The Dream archers and footmen were slaughtered where they stood, devoid of fervour,
paralysed with fear at the speed that their compatriots had been reduced to their knees.
Within the sealed stronghold , the Princess scanned the fallen in despondent trepidation,
silently praying that her knight wouldn't be there but dreading that he had fled in cowardliness.
She was torn, knowing that she would forgo her life rather than continue in lonely isolation,
yet also knowing that she could never love a man who had deserted, abandoning her, defenceless.

The ensuing week passed without rest, nourishment partaken in the slight lull between actions,
her defenders ensuring that, before they fell, they took as many of the soulless spirits along.
But they did succumb eventually, drained to exhaustion, unable to even raise their weapons.
The palace priest made one last desperate dedication, sacrificing his life to enter the dream-song,
the land between the realms where the eternal winds blow, carrying the prayers and dreams
ever onwards so that they can be re-spun into the threads and weaves of alternative futures.
The shadow- form priest, unable to infiltrate the sealed boundaries of  the Majestic regimes
sang the dream-song to Gaea, imploring release of the Hecatonchires, the hundred-handed ogres.

Gaea, hearing his pleas, despatched the creatures, long-before forged within Nyx's womb,
allowing them a single sunset of sustenance to avenge the priest's life, not a drop more.
The Hecatonchires, aided by Tisiphone of the Furies, descended  into the increasing gloom,
appearing shrouded in the fire of pseudo birth, screaming with their intimidating battle roar.
Leading them, the Erinye unleashed her intense vengeance-fuelled might, the ogres in her wake,
her breath burning all who it touched, her serpent wreathed head spiting out deadly venom.
The multi-handed creations, impervious to injuries, walked with accompanying thunder quake,
dispassionately killing any they encountered alive, ripping trophy-tongues free from freanum.

As the last ray of daylight drained behind the horizon, the entities returned to their own realm,
leaving the blood and bones of two broken armies for the despised carrion to claim ownership.
Some bands of the NeverForever force had survived, their standing army too vast to overwhelm.
The Princess, still in awe of the change in fortunes, watched the mercy killings of her kinship.
Once the dead had been stripped of everything of value, the soulless warriors stood in dark silence,
looking as one towards the Princess, raised their arms in a respectful salute and departed.
She kept her vigil throughout the night, unable to sense the resonating love of her knights existence,
remaining in the dream-wake comfort of her mind, outwardly weeping tears of the broken-hearted.

Waggy   06.06.2012
     
(The Illustration 'Fighting Knights' by Edwin Howland Blashfield)