Work Text:
When the end came it was in winter.
The whole world had marvelled at how hot the previous summers had been and how brief, short flickers of heat amidst the cold. The rains changed the times of their coming, and were fiercer than any could remember before. The winters were colder, and stayed longer, the beasts of the field creeping close about the houses. In their garrisons, the gentile soldiers shivered and joked that the boys sent to Brittania surely fared far worse. In the country, the farmers gazed dull-eyed at the ruin of their crops and knew they must either starve this year, or eat their seed-grain and starve the next. Those who interpreted the signs and the seasons shook their heads and spoke no words of hope, either fleeing south or shutting themselves up in their houses to die.
At last the young men who burned with zeal for the law prevailed in the councils of the wise, and they rose up to cast out the gentiles who had so defiled the land. For a time they had success, until the forces evacuated from Germania, well used to fighting in the depths of winter and against more ungodly foes, reached the City. Hollow-cheeked and wrapped in wolf-skin cloaks, they fell upon the people like the wild beasts they resembled. Those who had fled to the mountains looked down upon the destruction, and wondered if they had fled far enough. The soldiers, grim and fell of aspect, slew all whom they found within the City, their distant gaze seeing no people beneath their swords, but only the horrors of the north.
One young soldier did not kill, for succumbing to cowardice he fled, casting from him all that marked him as a soldier save the heavy sandals he had worn in during the countless miles of marching. Dressed in a dead farmer's clothes he stood with a group of refugees, shivering in the frigid air. They spoke of peace, love and hope and all the other things he knew he should never have again, just as he knew he would see his City no more.
The smoke rose up from below for day after day until there was nothing left to burn. Then the days that were now so short grew shorter yet, and the shaking earth was covered with darkness. Watching the stars fall from the sky, the young soldier trembled.
"It is Ragnarok," he whispered, remembering Germania.
The refugees covered him with their own thin cloaks and embraced him consolingly.
"It is the coming of the Son of Man," they said.
The sky tore from end to end. The light was unbearable.