*scrunches nose* I hate working out where these things go.
________________________________________
The cannons boomed; smoke billowing from their empty mouths. One by one, the ramparts fell as the wood burnt thick black smog. As the hazy sun filtered through the already darkening sky, the enemy had struck one final blow upon those who were within Caiene’s wall. The thunder of many cannons blasted offensively as the wall crumbled down upon its defenders, with the screams of anguish and horror filling the air.
The yells of pain echoed in the cavernous valley as sounds of death pitched through living ears. The allies were demoralised with their men dying around them; no end to the slaughter in sight. Those few who were not gushing blood were standing fast, and retaliating to the cannons with fierce firepower. But their cause was lost. Their home was in ruins. It was the end.
War rendered the air thick with the stench of death and decay with the taste of blood falling hard upon every tongue. A slick river of blood pooled out the doors of the city; signs of children murdered where they huddled, their eyes staring sightless into the souls of their captors. Their mouths were frozen in the forms of their plaintive cries. Mothers, fathers and grandparents, all were dead, lying broken and bleeding in their homes. Lives thrust into the oblivion of the underworld merely for existing.
There was no longer anyone to fight, for or against. Caiene was deserted where it stood and as the old light of day faded with the thick fog, the shuffle of weary feet was the last dying noise of the harsh winter’s day. A slow shuffle that began at the door of one of the many crushed houses and continued, moving slowly forward, to reach the courtyard of the city. Caiene’s court was one of great majesty, and the colours and lights produced in that one square of land had been unrivaled in any other city, this land or other. There the young girl stood amongst the ravaged bodies and teetering fires. She had hair the rich red of fine cherries and fresh blood; a face covered in the refuse of the war with dirt and ash mingling her small features. But even she, she who stood silent in her watching, sighed bitterly, before crumpling to the cold ground. As her eyes fluttered closed, the beginnings of the new winter snow swirled, and pure white flakes fell gracefully to land upon her visage, covering her slowly in a blanket of snow, as if the gods wished to keep her warm.
