Another cool night of solemn duty loomed ahead. Sad and lonely moonlight spilled over the snowy mountains and the few soldiers that inhabited them, reminding them of their service. Tonight, all would sleep but one.
Exhaustion coursed lazily through me until I was almost blinded to the stars above. The great expanse of the Empire’s wall stretched around me. My chest swelled with pride, a defiant rebel to the biting wind. No matter how small my contribution, I had helped to build the Empire. The lakes and rivers and fields and villages and towns within His Majesty’s Wall’s confines were there, at least in part, because of my shield. My sword. My arrow. The phoenix’s claws stretched protectively around its kingdom, fierce, powerful and beautiful. At the thought of the phoenix, the symbol of the Empire, I clutched my shield, embellished with the same symbol, even harder. While staying on alert and preserving the sharpness of my senses, despite my exhaustion, I allowed myself to recall a memory from the night before.
An old fortune-teller in the mountains twisted and curled her hands above her runes. Reading the message from the ancient symbols, she froze. The rings and bracelets which covered the time-wisened hands ceased their raucous jangling.
“A savage wolf,” she whispered. Finding her voice, she continued, her voice booming and crackling with her importance as a messenger of fate. “A savage wolf will attack the phoenix by tomorrow’s moon.”
My eyes returned to the night from the foggy glimmer of memory of the prophecy. It had been whispered that, along the Empire’s borders, savages sharpened their axes and waited to attack. Was the fortune-teller right? Had her judgment been numbed by age or wine? I couldn’t stand the thought of her being wrong, but her being right horrified me far more. The night began to seem colder. The wind travelled straight to my bones, though I was sure that the chill that spread through them was not due, at all, to weather. My body begged for rest, but my mind argued strongly enough to keep me awake and on guard for a short while.
I soon crumpled weakly against the wall, closing my eyes for what I promised would only be a short while.
It was shorter than I meant it to be.
My eyes snapped open, narrow and hawk-ish, at a thumping sound far beneath me, at the bottom of the wall. Its dismissal came quickly, and sleep clawed to take me again in its embrace and keep me there. I was stolen from it again, and this time I was able to summon the strength to lift myself up and peer over the wall.
Savages.
They were swarming up the walls, covering their vast expanse in ladders and ropes. The fire. The fire. I needed a torch. I had to raise the alarm. Silent and serpentine, they still advanced, gnashing their teeth and raising their daggers. Could this be some foul delusion or dream? No. The clarity of reality was borne upon me with the night’s sarcasm, as it gloated about its distance from the battle while humanity quarreled below.
I would not allow this. My feet carried me faster than I thought they possibly could, as I hurled myself in the direction of the main offices. There were torches there. I could reach them. A sudden pain seared through my back, as a sharp arrow pierced a weak point in my armor. I could hear the thudding of pursuers behind me, which somehow urged me on. The pain was nothing. My duty was everything. As a guard of the walls, I was a keeper of the Empire, and I would fight as one.
Reaching the general’s offices, I grabbed a torch that lay in a holder by the entrance. Fighting the agony of trying to stay upright, I let my legs burn for one last run. A massive pile of logs, doused in oil, was prepared as a signal of attack to spread across guardian offices across the wall. I reached out with the torch as soon as I was near it, and, within seconds, the fire roared and crackled. My hand was scorched, while my will to stand or run left me. Collapsing to the ground, I waited. Would the empire collapse with me? Perhaps. Would I be remembered? Yes. As surely as the fire consumed the night, I would be.
