Clattering resounds from a lonely shack stuck in a hostile wastescape, and Eros has to raise his head. He's so close to her, the mare he condemned as the end of the world.
His claws have crunched bony mulch for days. The feathers on his wings sag: his feathers and fur weigh like the world breaking down his own bones already on the way out. His coughs turned violent weeks ago. Phlegm and blood mixed like pollution, like filth the old archon railed against for decades on the pulpit, under a statue of Boreas and the rest of the Gods.
That's a ghost of a time now. Revolution burned in a holy city, heralding the slaughter of those who had only faith, dancing to the tune of nobility's flock of vultures—bickering dukes and duchesses, they all are. A child-emperor was what the final years gave him. A mere child. No value to anyone save for what his imperial heritage could bestow upon them. That child stood, once, in a tunnel, his shotgun oversized for his feeble claws, overwhelmed by a rush of rotting flesh and naked bones. That sacrifice allowed Eros to have his 107th birthday weeks ago (and the near-decade of birthdays before that). They oppress him in the form of aching eye bags.
His head is still raised, eyeing the dilapidated shack. Its chimney has fallen to the wayside. Soot and ash blend in with the darkness that turned this land into a tangible void that must be waded through. He sometimes spies the rare tree stump that survived the undead's hunger for more material, more weapons, just more.
More clattering pierces through his hard hearing.
His decaying body electrifies with fear. An enemy lurks... or someone in need. The last one, he almost killed out of instinct—his blade taken by a trip on a flimsy bridge, falling down a cliff then a river. She had been a pony, calling those rivers her home. The griffons' empire and her riverlands had strenuous histories before burying the hatchet to unite against the undead menace up north. That last one, the previous one... a simple hooded peasant, begging for him to stay. Please, mister, they... I don't know where they took my husband and my foals. C-can you be with me? I d-don't want to die... alone...
He shoots a claw into his pockets. Three more vials of holy water and a tiny package of bread shaped like a three-leaf clover: signs with which to strike fear in the hearts of liches' ghouls and vampires' thralls. Come closer, creature of Boreas. You shall be commended to Him...and be provided a path to the life hereafter. The prayers were as he remembers, for Boreas and the other Gods to have mercy on her, to spare her from a wicked demise, to have her sins confessed and laid open to the heavens for forgiveness. The rites were as he remembers, for with him still are the drops of holy water (for absolution and purification) and the three breads (to symbolize life and provisions for the mare's final earthly travels). He trudges closer to the shack's open windows and doors that yawn like an abyss. A stench rises, the warning of a dead creature.
Several steps away, a griffon is cast against a table and the dim light of a sun locked in the horizon, surrounded by fallen kitchenware. A pot has just finished rolling around. Slumped on the wooden surface are the remains of another griffon. Its skeleton is held up by thin strands of muscles, with many pieces missing.
Eros takes another step forward to partake in some shelter.
A cough from the table-bound creature is a sign of life, and gold eyes flash open.
Eros clutches his holy implements, scanning the not-so-dead griffon. Among other details, hiding among eating utensils, is a fallen gun; bullets are strewn about, all silver. Eros feels for a weapon of his own. He knows he has none.
"You're..." The would-be corpse creaks, his own head rising to meet Eros' scanning gaze. The voice is young and weary. A record player used to hang around in Eros' former abode, an old broken one, and the way it scratched every vinyl—that is this. "...Archon... Archon Eros... you... you enjoy this, don't you? Heathen, cast down... scum.. don't say sorry! I am scum... you'll say it! I've... heard... of you saying sorry... I see through you!"
The old griff's wings bend at the accusations. A hasty escape, maybe. Not yet. He holds his robe tight. Holy water won't stop bullets.
"What's... Boreas gonna do with... me, huh? Some bandit... a merc!" The stranger lifts his gun in the air. The digits of his claw pretend to pull the trigger, pretend to shoot the sky. "Wetwork, you name... it! Griffonstone-born... what have you? No Idol... no diplomacy, just... war..." His chipped beak is home to a wicked sneer. "I'm... as... holy as you are. Bang, bang... all dead, in the name of... Boreas, a regent for a helpless chick..."
It had been for all that was holy.
A cough kills the silence. That stranger bends over, that fragile beak crunching against the floor and a pot. His lungs hack themselves dry, fighting against whatever's clogging the airways. His newly revealed back shows off sharpened bones, like swords, having stabbed his wings.
"You're... just like me, old rooster." He spits out blood at Eros' face, under a glower. Liquid disgust melts on his cheeks. "I know what... who you want to kill... she, Rosa... I was hoping... to see the look on her face… the phylactery I stole…"
That grips Eros' heart. His graying eyes widen.
"Watertowns, village... her... weakness... my last mission... good pay..."
Holy springs—
"Her phylactery is... buried, hut, house..." Narrower directions, detailed coordinates, out of rote, he continues to slur a flurry of it.
Dark glee races through Eros' veins. What arms has he brought to the fight ahead? Nothing to protect himself with, only a distant hope that Boreas will provide, to save from the final fire that is his upcoming trial.
Rosa’s phylactery is a bargaining chip, something to dangle over her. Distance is an obstacle: Watertowns is far off. The southern roads ask him of time of which he is not sure he has in stock. Any food to scavenge will have been rotten when he gets there, if his frail body pushes its limit to reach the secret forests of those mysterious hooded ponies laden with copse-shrouded secrets.
The stranger coughs once more. There's a retch; it fouls up his ears. Shaking claws fetch a holy vial, another on bread—
He's pulled down; he falls to his level. A tinkle, and a crack—the vial spills holiness through the fragments, then crushed by the pummels of the stranger's weakening claw.
"I see through you!" croaks the stranger. "You won't make... me holy!" Another pummel bleeds his punching claw thanks to the sharp glass. "You will... kill Rosa! That's what... your bloody Empire fought... for... last..."
Coughs attack Eros, and he bends over. His limbs go limp, so the wooden floor becomes an ocean to struggle against, sinking deeper into the boards. A gun is felt. He brushes it away. Another vial, another vial. He feels for it. He prays silently when he grasps solid glass.
His lungs and throat free for now, Eros affords one more look at the stranger.
On its beak, a lifeless grin is fixed, a claw pointed at the archon, the regent, the heart of the griffon continent, ravaged by blood and an attempt at a rejuvenated Empire from centuries past...
Sinner, I am. The greatest and poorest of them all.
The dead griff's eyes have been closed for half an hour, blind to the cold eternal twilight outside.
He's felt its neck, its wrists. The stranger has no pulse; the blood cooled. Its clothes were taken, pockets upturned. Coins fell, small boxes of ammunition. The gun has apparently been broken for a long while.
Eros wheezes, takes out a canister of water to drink, sitting against that dead griff's table. Past the window, everything fades into blurs. Failing eyesight is another reminder from the Gods of his limited time.
Holy archon, holy regent. Palatial pillars and palisades of Griffenheim, where the child-emperor lived and died, where the other archons and priests stood their crumbling ground. What a blood-stained joy it was to see the Imperial ranks fly the standards of every corner of heartlands. A Boreas-blessed variety, pledging their allegiance to burning tatters, demolished statues, fathers and sons torn apart, divided, forced to tear each other apart where one glows greenly, diseased—already dead, yet still demonically alive.
Rosa had been there, the ringmaster of the undead, The Dread League, leading the Black Crusade to annihilate life. The squabble of nobles, the intrigue of soldiers, glories of a reunified Empire, glories of a holy people—these and this stranger disintegrated into ash in the face of Rosa.
Rising to standing, Eros' joints pop and ache, like he is clogging the air around him trying to move. A southward journey to the Watertowns first, then a cadaver's directions branded in his one-track (it's only Rosa, Rosa) mind.
He clutches for the vials once more. Two are left.
Fire burns him all, spears of agony in his legs, and the ground darkly rumbles. Eros wheezes and falls a second time, defiantly unwilling to stoop down to screams.