The Sky Queen's head was down-cast, as men always claimed to see her. Her two women regarded me cooly as I approached on foot. They greeted me in unison, predictably using their wiles and angelic voices in the manner that had made so many smaller, less stoic men go mad with rapture. I dare not apply to parchment what exactly was said, for even in ink I fear it would retain its horrible power.

They watched me stand idle, unaffected by their powers. I was tired of this conflict, and moreover I was offended by the abuse they had just done to all decency with their attempts to defile this ancient, sacred custom of warriors offering one another their respect.

Tersely, I said, "Very well then. I will look for you on the battlefield."

I turned and walked away. I am no orator. I will let history write a better quote for me.

When I returned, there was no noise. No jangling of arms, no whinnying of horses. My men had stared in awe as I rejected the whores and returned maintaining my free will and sanity. My display of solidarity had bolstered their confidence.

"When the time comes, Antoni, both armies will each run down towards the valley with our soldiers behind us. As for the three? We are going for each other."

The feeling was half of relief, half of despair. No man wanted to face any of the three. No man thought that one man could defeat them all, either.

"As your advisor, I must speak out," Antoni the hospitaller who had learned to wage war over decades upon gorey decades against men, arrogant men who thought their childish scheeming and plotting were relevant to the outcome, began to council me. I allowed him to continue, "You could lure their brainless masses to attack with a feint of your own. I would lead it. Cause them to abandon their advantageous position, then call in your reserves from on the reverse slope and envelope them."

"This is not a war, this is suicide." I quietly whispered to his ear, so as to not discredit his wisdom in front of his men, "It's not a battle meant to be won."

"Well then I suggest we regroup, we wait for forces abroad to realize they are next to face the Sky Queen and enlist their aid!" He gave me more sound advice, as he had always. The suggestion was sound advice for fighting any king who had any nation behind him.

"This is each of us destroying ourselves."

"All battles are meant to be won."

"THIS IS A BATTLE FOR HONOR!" I shouted as I lost my patience with his reasoning. Our assembled lords looked on, becoming more aware of the bleakness of their circumstances.

"The victor determines what is recorded for all time. Once we smash their empty, soul-less heads upon our gauntlets, you can have your histories say you ran down the hill and fought in the valley all by yourself. None of us would care to call you a liar for it."

"What others think is irrelevant. This is for my honor. This is about Her."

"I see. You are the only man who has survived meeting any one them in person and you remain intrinsically free of their control. You have some way to protect yourself from becoming another shambling, crying, miserable pawn in their thrall. I will trust you, I will die to prevent more men from being lured into her gaze." I heard more of Antoni's words. They did not inspire me. The other men cheered and yowled. They were not aware of their luck, for they would only be putting their mortal bodies at risk.

The spirits of my men were as high as they could be. Across the valley, a beam of sunlight shone through the blackened clouds onto a singular focused spot, it shone always onto the Sky Queen. There was no point waiting any further, my men would only lose their confidence in the face of these circumstances. I lead the way into the valley. My men marched behind me. Their heavy boots shook the earth as they stomped in unison. Very effective against heathen Moors, but it would do no good against this enemy.

The mass of meat on the other side of the valley seeped slowly towards the low point in the middle, headed directly for us. As it neared, we could make out the sounds of the fallen. They moaned bleakly. Some were screaming. Most were crying as they ambled pitifully towards us.

As the mass neared, it turned into distinct men. They still bore their herarldry, only they had replaced all the original figures, human, animal or divine, with two blacks ears, a three red marks below. My men began to see their brothers and comrades within that mass. They began to understand that the only thing seperating their march of justice from this pitiful ooze was circumstance. Circumstance of not meeting one of the three.

Our triumphant march had degenerated into a chaotic racket, as though we were children playing with pots and pans. We were only larger children who had pressed our cookware into clothing and weaponry.

My valiant infants charged into the enemy. Were they still human, they would have shattered under the force. Instead we were absorbed, and any semblence of order and strategy vanished within a moment.

Amid the sounds of battle, my men screaming from physical pain along with their former brothers in their mental anguish, Antoni rode up beside me. From his vantage point high on his horse he pointed with his sword. No words were needed between us. I saw my first opponent there, the infamous Ravager of Rav.

She was armoured in goat bone. The bones had small needle like spikes pressed through them. She wore the mark of the sky-queen on her face, a red nose, with two small splotches also on her cheekbones under her eyes. It was menstrual blood. Thick chunks of uterus clung to her pores. He had a man trapped, laying on the ground in her net. She had him pegged to the ground with her spear. The Ravager laid down on top of him, her spikes pressed through his armour and into his flesh as he wailed. She squeezed him tightly in her arms, and was mouthing all manner of demonic incantations into his ear. His eyes rolled back into his head and she lost interest.

She saw me as I approached. Looking right into my eyes, she smirked.

"Jauffre." She turned and addressed me. With warmth. "It's a shame we have to meet again like this."

It was genuine warmth of course, and I could hear genuine shame in her voice. I continued to approach her, with my own weapon at my side. Implements of violence crashed into people all around us.

She readied her weaponry as I walked towards her by retrieving her spear, and untangling her net with a quickl flick of her wrist. She dug her heels into the ground in a wide, agile stance. I removed my armoured gauntlets as I came within arms reach. She retained her combatitive pose.

I slapped her. Hard. In the face. The force of my slap spun her upper body around. She turned back around partially, still blading her body away from me. She averted her eyes downwards.

"I'm sorry. About, you know, earlier. With those other two around, I had to make it look like I tried." She explained, stuttering in between each word. "I'm so sorry. I knew it wouldn't work. I tried to tell them. You're the only man it wouldn't work on."

"That's not important," I began, "You promised."

"Well, we always do though. It's part of stealing their soul, of binding them to us."

Her eyes were still facing away from me.

"Look at me." I instructed her. She turned her head slowly to meet mine. "You know when you promised me, you actually meant it. Despite what you've been telling yourself all these years since."

Tears began to well in her eyes. I carried on.

"For all the others, it was an idle promise. To lure them in. I know how you work. But the promise you made was so unlike the other ones, you promised -"

"To kill..." she cut me off and stopped. Her tears mixed with the mark of the Sky Queen and washing the reproductive detrius from her face, "To kill Cracky. The Sky Queen. With you."

She dropped her weapons and reached out to hold me, then stopped.

"You are too much of a man to care for my embrace. My feelings don't matter to you. That's all these other men, the thousands I've led astray care about, but you... you're so far above that." She fell to her knees, crying.

I turned, towards the darkened sky of the ruined valley. I began to walk deeper into the mass of the Sky Queen's zombies. The Ravager, left behind, picked up her weapons and ran to catch up with me. We carried on, protected as Antoni's knights cut a swath into the whirlwind of maddened violence. His men fought for their homes, their honour and their lives. The Sky Queen's men faught fearlessly for her love.

Antoni's knights parted ahead, allowing me and the Ravager into an opening, a barren sphere of desolation amid the carnage. The ground here was covered in brazen pyramids. I watched as a hospitaller knight charged into the field. The horse's hoof knocked the tip of a pyramid, causing the pyramid's sides to swing out over the top, catching the horse's leg. The contraption then sprung again, releasing its rended flesh in a violent spray and relatching further upon the limb. It continued climbing the horse, causing the horse to fall over into the field with its rider. The pyramids consumed the pair, covering the ground with a thin paste before resettling in their original configuration.

In the centre of this field, the Dutchess of Faux had contained a group of Antoni's soldiers from their fellows. As Antoni's men attempted to charge through, the pyramids would rend the rescuers to shreds within moments. She leapt around the isolated group of men, swinging from poleaxe shaft over to limb onto horse like a monkey, slipping her thin misericord through the eye holes in men's helmets as she passed, blinding them. After a few moments they were all writing on the ground. She lifted up her purple cloak, and removed a brush and palette from within. She ran around over the writhing bodies and removed the men's helmets. With her brush, she painted them. Onto this writhing mass as a whole, as though it were a steady canvas, she painted. She painted patterns clear over armour, over faces, over legs, limbs, and pieces of horses. Colours appeared on her palette sporadically, and as soon as she dipped her brush in them they would change to a completely other shade and hue.

The image took form. The entire wounded mass of blinded men became the image of little pale girls crying. As the men jostled each other and rolled on the ground clutching their faces, the images of little girls would sprout tears from their own great, shining bright eyes. The tears fell and mixed with blood seeping from the girl's vaginas. The mixture collected at the opposite end of this human canvas. As the stained tears filled the canvas, entire men would become submerged in the liquid image. They clutched their throats and coughed, hacking and gasping for air. Eventually they went limp. The mixture built up quickly, and the entire canvas became a pool of dark purple. Instantly, in unison, the drowned men stood up. They retrieved their weapons, and slowly filed out of the pyramid field to join the battle on the side of the Skyqueen.

The Ravager and I tiptoed cautiously through the field. The Dutchess of Faux watched her canvas disperse into the battle. We came to the centre of the pyramid field, a bare patch of ground now wet with salt water. The Dutchess turned, as she slid her brush into her cloak.

"Oh my, it's you, and you've brought a friend!" Faux squealed happily, "How did you manage this one? He was being so difficult earlier."

Faux approached me, ignoring the Ravager. She opened the face mask on my helmet, and inspected my face. From the close distance, I realized her entire set of facial features, eyes, nose, mouth, were nothing but makeup.

"How did you do it? You usually need to mark him with your own blood..." Her voice trailed off, as she pulled her head back. My eyes refocused on her face and her features appeared completely normal once more.

The Ravager threw her net at Faux. Faux quickly reached into her cloak and flung her knife back towards Rav as the net flew through the air. The two weapons impacted simultaneously. The net's barbs and hooks dug into Faux, and wrapped her tightly. She remained silent, standing. She didn't struggle. Rav fell to the ground.

I walked over to Ravager first. The knife was in her throat. Blood pumped out. She said to me, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She was coughing up blood as she said this. "I'm sorry I couldn't kill Cracky with you. I tried. I did my best."

I realized with the amount of blood she was losing, she'd be dead soon. She was no longer of use to me. I stood up and turned to Faux. Ravager, from behind, choked out, "I love you."

I walked over to Faux and picked her up. She was very tiny, and as a result weighed next to nothing. I heaved her into the pyramid field, and the wrapped body exploded into a vibrant green mist.

I kept walking towards the ray of light shining through the darkened sky. Towards Her. Slowly crossed the pyramid field once more. Enemies locked in combat parted ways and let me through as I approached. After an hour of walking, I had walked out the other side of the fray.

I saw Her then. She was exactly in the spot she where we had met before, only the battle had pushed and pulled itself back over the same spot. The battle, which Antoni and my men were apparently losing, had left her behind. She was alone in the open field.

She was in the exact same position, atop her mutilated horse which stood in a self replicating puddle of rats. Her blue, pleated skirt was simply a tatter wrapped across the rigid waist of her full plate suit of armour. Her blue tie, however, was pristine. Her entire body, from neck to feet, was wrapped loosely in bandages. She was looking down at the ground. Her eyes stared straight into the earth and rapidly scanned back and forth, as though examining this precise placement, wondering why, of all the places, she was in this one specifically.

The Queen of the sky stirred. Her scraggly, braided green hair turned grey and fell out. Red buds quickly sprouted from her head and grew to her neck. She turned her head towards me, while casting her eyes down to avoid my gaze. Cracks appeard in her polished steel armour, running from her heart towards her fingertips. From where the cracks intersected, blood issued forth at a drip. From beneath her skirt bubbling black pitch began to flow. It was flowing slowly at first. As I watched the flow accelerated and small foetuses began to appear in the stream. The sticky pitch sizzled and burnt the horse as it crawled downwards carrying the abortive children. When the Sky Princes and Princesses were finally ejected by the drooping pitch, they fell towards the ground and were feasted upon by the swarming vermin. All that ate the foetuses died. All that ate the dead, died. The pitch then dissolved the lifeless vermin into more steaming tar. Soon there was nothing between her legs but death.

As I watched the demonstration, I felt as though she might know my pain of being surrounded by the living, while being only able to love the dead. She snapped her eyes towards me then. She did not look into my eyes. She had no need to, for she saw into my soul long before we had ever actually met. As she allowed me to stare into her eyes, I fell into her. I saw her soul was a place equally barren and dead as my own. It was this place she was trying to express into reality. I knew she understood me as no other person in existence or beyond would ever be able to. I saw her all encompassing empathy for me, for what I was. I saw that she understood what would happen next; she knew I thought she was the most perfect and beautiful woman in the world that could ever live; she knew why she could never bend me to her and make me love her:

She was not dead.

I dropped my sword, and my shield. I hadn't had much use for them anyways. I removed my armour, too. I stood there in the cold, completely naked. The bandages around her unravelled, and reached out for me. The softly wrapped around my wrists, they bound both my ankles together, and then lifted me. Her bandages scrolled back around her as she brought me nearer. I couldn't break contact with her eyes. She pulled me close.

She had let so many thousands of men look into her heart; she drove each one of them completely insane as they tried and failed to comprehend what was inside. Aftewards, each of them inexplicably had set out to find for her what she had lost. I realized then how other men looked into her; they only saw her as beautiful for what she had once been, a happy little girl. They had all felt as though a world which could destroy such naive innocence was a world that should be destroyed itself. The world and the people that made it, should all be punished for what it had done to the one divinely innocent being they had ever known.

As they all punished the world, they began a search to find that part deep inside of her that had been lost so long ago. They swarmed around her, capturing land, destroying cities. They raped young girls and built cathedrals to house their bulging, pregnant bodies. They brought the babies to be sacrificed. They had bathed their Queen in the babies' blood, believing somehow they could transfer that essense of innocence BACK. As though they could cast out all the pain in the world by inflicting more pain to the world. In doing so, her followers had excoriated any slightest hint that was left inside Cracky's heart.

And they had damaged tens of thousands of other girls. My mind reeled into the future, and I saw how each tormented, pregnant child was herself destined to become a painful echo of the Sky Queen in her own time. But that is not mine to solve. I, myself, am the key to releasing this Cracky from this curse. I know the secret to it now. To be a grown woman, and yet to yearn for childhood. And to always be surrounded by nothing but toys. Dolls. Playthings.

She wrapped her arms around me and embraced me. I put my hands around her throat. She kept looking into my eyes. I felt her pulse race. It began to slow.

I don't know when the beating ceased. Her eyes stayed open, and I fell into them again. Her soul was empty now. I saw all those bubbling adult foetuses replaced by emptiness. Calmness. Beauty. I took the reigns of the horse, and I left the battle behind. There will be a new Sky Queen, a new reluctant angel. You can destroy an entire planet, but you can't kill a single Cracky. You can only release her from her torment.

Hauntingly beautiful.

One of the best Crackyfics I've seen. Gets high marks in my book.

awesome