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.