A Dream Of Blood

  The barbarian dreams of blood.

  The swing of an axe. The scream of a dying man. The dull thud of bodies hitting the earth.

  The barbarian charges.

  Steel on steel. A blade glances off your shoulder. You don’t feel it. A shield breaks.

  A man falls. Another stumbles. Another dies.

  The barbarian pushes forward.

  Always forward.

  A roar tears loose from their throat—raw, guttural, unthinking—something that belongs more to the beast than the man. Their axe rises. Flashes. Bites. The haft jars in their hands as it sinks deep. Bone parts. Flesh gives. The body buckles.

  Another comes.

  No time to think. They pivot. Swing. Miss. Turn again.

  They parry. Sidestep. Riposte. The blade glances. The enemy stumbles.

  The barbarian doesn't stop.

  They fight. They kill. They bleed.

  A spear kisses their side. They grunt. Wrench it out. Toss it away. Stagger. Rise again.

  The press of bodies thickens. The clash grows louder. The smoke curls tighter. The barbarian moves through it like a storm, swinging, ducking, crushing, hacking — always forward.

  Another enemy steps forward.

  This one taller. Broader. Sword raised high.

  They lift their axe. Their arms ache. The swing comes slower. Heavier.

  The enemy's sword arcs toward them, but it's slower too, as though the air has thickened between them, fatigue, plaguing their every motion.

  They step forward. Each step heavier than the last.

  The distance between them feels longer now. Their boots sink into mud that wasn't there before. The axe lifts again, muscles straining, shoulders burning. The enemy's face comes into sharper focus—a grim set mouth, eyes shadowed beneath a battered helm. His breath fogs the space between them.

  The barbarian swings down. The blade cuts a long arc through the thickening air, the space between them widening somehow, the distance refusing to close. The enemy's sword is raised, frozen at its apex. His body tilts forward, but doesn't fall. His mouth opens around a word that never leaves his lips.

  The barbarian's arms strain beneath the weight of the axe, every muscle trembling with the effort, the tendons pulling taut beneath skin slick with sweat and blood. The blade hovers mid-arc, a glint of steel catching the dim light that filters through the thick, cloud-choked sky above, light that feels thinner now, faded, drained of warmth, as though the sun itself has pulled back beyond some distant veil. The enemy's throat gleams pale and vulnerable beneath the edge, a fragile column of flesh trembling faintly with the slow, shuddering pull of breath, a breath that seems to take an eternity to rise and fall, to move from ribcage to throat to parted lips.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  A gust of wind stirs the battlefield, or what remains of it—ash drifting in long, lazy spirals, curling through the air like strands of forgotten smoke, hanging too long before descending in delicate patterns onto the churned, blood-muddied earth. Around them, the bodies stand motionless: warriors frozen in the act of war, blades suspended mid-swing, shields raised halfway, mouths open in soundless cries that never quite escape their throats. A thousand moments, carved from battle, stretched into statuesque stillness, as though some unseen force has pressed pause upon the entire world. The barbarian's chest heaves, but even that movement feels slowed, each breath drawn thick and labored, as if inhaling through water, as if the very air has grown dense, heavy, unwilling. Their heartbeat thunders, not in quick battle rhythm, but in a slow, ponderous beat that echoes hollowly inside their skull, each pulse reverberating like a distant war drum sounding across endless plains. Sweat beads along their brow, tracing a path down the bridge of their nose, clinging there for what feels like a lifetime before falling, slowly, inexorably, toward the ground—a single drop suspended in the widening gap between action and consequence.

  The weight of the axe digs into their shoulders, the iron haft trembling beneath their hands, not from exertion, but from the refusal of resolution. Their breath thickens behind their teeth. The air resists it—cool, damp, soured by ash and blood and something older. Each lungful drags behind the one before, as though the very act of breathing demands more than the body can give. Their muscles clench, but the motion is meaningless, a gesture stripped of momentum, as though the strike they summoned now belongs to another world, one governed by slowness, by stillness, by the exquisite torment of almost. The battlefield does not breathe with them. Smoke eddies in the air but never clears. The figures around them—warriors, enemies, brothers, strangers—are suspended mid-motion, caught in a dream of violence that never finishes. One man's blade is raised high above his head, frozen in the moment before it falls. Another lies beneath a fallen horse, arm stretched outward, eyes wide, mouth open—but no cry escapes. A woman beside them has a javelin locked in mid-throw, hair lifting in some vanished wind. All of them held in place, carved from war, abandoned by time.

  And overhead, the sky hangs low and ponderous, clouds swelled and distended like storm-bloated corpses drifting across a sea of iron. Their undersides catch a light too dim to name, not gold, not grey, but some sickly echo of illumination. The sun—if it still exists—has hidden itself behind some veil too thick to pierce. And still, the wind does not come. Nothing shifts. Even the blood in the mud seems not to spread, congealed in the shape of a splash, no ripples, no insects. Their arms shake with the effort of holding the axe aloft, but not from fatigue—no, the ache is different now. It is not exhaustion but suspension, the pain of something unresolved. A blow summoned, but not delivered. A violence demanded, but never allowed. Their fingers cramp. Their chest burns. And all around them, the moment deepens, as though time itself has become a weight, pressing down with every heartbeat, thickening each second into tar. They see the enemy's throat, pale and open, the cords of it twitching with a breath that takes far too long to complete. His eyes are locked on theirs, unblinking, their surface reflecting not just the barbarian's shape, but their stillness. A single droplet of sweat trails down their cheek, slides along their jaw, hangs there for an impossible moment—then falls. They follow it with their eyes. It spins once in the air before striking the flat of their axe blade, ringing out with a sound so faint it might be imagined.

  Still the blade does not fall.

  Still the air does not move.

  Still the space between them—barely a finger's breadth—yawns wide as a canyon, untraversable.

  Stillness presses into their skin like cold metal. It hums through their bones, replacing rhythm with resonance. Around them, the entire world is caught between breath and strike, suspended on the cusp of impact, a moment that can neither resolve nor collapse, a tension spun too tight to break.

  And there, on the edge of violence, with the axe poised and the world held in breathless hush, the dream holds.

  Not ending.

  Not breaking.

  Only waiting.

  Forever.