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Each time was identical, down to the ribbons of flesh in the air hazing to nothing, flashing away, their altitude and positioning. A shimmering bullet of light arced towards the ground, getting closer, the world held its breath in tensing anticipation. Someone would start to ask, “what’s that?”, and they were never able to finish the question. The screaming was faint; the light was too loud, enough to make the eyes and ears bleed, ringing like a clandestine bell, it decimated everything. There was a millisecond of quiet when it landed, a gentle bulb, and then it blew outward— the noise began then. From the corner of his eye, he saw it land, and was halfway past a building when it blew apart. He didn’t know what saved him; distance, circumstance, fate. Nothing stuck completely. When it was over— in moments— there were the sounds of stone falling, displacing; of collapse, and of silence, dust settling. Dust that had been alive once. The air smelled that chimeral way, almost electric, tinged with scorched rock and razed flesh. He would never forget that smell nor its particular association as long as he lived.
Toffee remembered that he didn’t scream— there was no time. The force of it knocked him to the ground. One second he was walking, passing others, normal, and the next he’s lying face down, curled up around his head to combat the noise, behind a scrap of stone that’d been something once. The only indication there was anything alive are the splatters of blood, thrown from vanishing bodies, against rock and warped metal. He rose slowly, after what feels like an eternity, his eyes wide and scrolling, more confused than he’s ever been or ever will be again. The hand run through his hair returned with smears of charcoal, the tips flayed and burnt. His few wounds took too long to heal, closing slowly, shock making it difficult to concentrate on sealing them. One leg had to be yanked out from under a slab of rock, and the twisted bone protests as he put weight to it. He wrapped his tail around the calf to stabilize it.
Several dragging steps; too quiet, he could hear the dust settling. Out in the open, he could see up through the layers of the kingdom, each plateau decimated, the citadel a crater. He couldn’t process it at all. Wasn’t everything just fine? Moments ago, everything had been fine. It was gone, it was all gone. He shook his head, tail re-snapping the bone of his leg and sending him to his hands and knees, tears beginning to bubble in the corners of his eyes. He folded in around himself, chirping weakly, some kind of last-ditch attempt to comfort himself, feel something familiar in the sound of his own voice. The chirping grew slowly into wailing, screaming. He held the sides of his head, crying into the dirt, and screamed. From his glance upward, he could already tell the part of the kingdom holding his home had been caved in and ruined. Gone. The air stank of death and char. He wavered between screaming, sobbing, and chirping, dragging deep lines of red into the sides of his face.
They came then. Toffee looked over his shoulder at the sound of footsteps, feeling a flood of hope so visceral he nearly fell over, but the sounds were wrong: hooves. Mewmans. He staggered to his feet and attempted a mad dash for cover, his leg leaving a wide drag of blood in its wake; small chirps and moans of pain; hid behind a fall of stone and warped metal between the sides of two building fragments. He watched them appear over the curve of a hill, their mounts tall and gray, a small palanquin strapped around the flank of one. Slowly, the thin curtains parted and a young woman stepped down from the creature. In her hand was a still-humming rod, intricate, multiple wings circling a crystal at its head. The smell of electricity and death grew stronger, and his eyes fixated on her, and the thing she held. It was so small, looked like a child’s toy really. But it smelled of the calamity, as did she. He covered his nose and held in the urge to vomit, staring rapt at her.
A whistle came from beneath the helmet of one soldier. “Damn. That’ll show em, huh. Geez, look at this place.” He laughed, albeit somewhat incredulously, and elbowed a man to his right. The woman shushed them, looking around, her eyes sweeping over the place where he hid, every muscle tightened in rage, in fear. He felt utterly paralyzed— Part of him ached to spring forward and kill as many of them as he could get his hands on, the monsters who spoke as if they had done this, whatever the fuck this was. But most of him was petrified: they were serene, poised and calm, barely a hair out of place. The party wasn’t even that big. They weren’t here to invade, they were here to survey the damage.
“I do wonder… If this was the best course of action…” the woman said, kicking a rock over with one delicate boot.
“Sure it was.”
“You did the right thing, majesty. Stubborn fucks.” spit flecked the ground.
“It was regrettable, but they left you with no choice,” said a voice that would one day, centuries in the future, become familiar to him.
“This should prevent further conflict, right? I mean,” she looked around, tone lightening, “There’s no one left.”
“That’s right. Goodbye, Septarsis!” Laughter.
She had the audacity to smile with them, and stepped back into her palanquin, the curtain swinging shut behind her. The mewman party turned slowly and disappeared the way they’d come.
It took everything he had to keep from blacking out, his whole being shaking with confusion, pain, and blinding hatred; the world spun red to white, flickering on and off. Guilt swarmed him: he had let them walk away, let them leave, without so much as a confrontation. The fear retreated, leaving him sick with the memory of it— Still, what remained of hit kept him from screaming his throat hoarse and drawing attention to himself. The tears, which had stopped in the wake of shock, returned in earnest now. He retreated back into a ball and allowed unconsciousness to take him, praying for it to be a dream, the worst nightmare imaginable.
When Toffee awoke, alone and covered in a fine skin of dust, clothes torn and burnt and his leg pulsing with a dull ache, the world still broken and emptied two days later, everything remained the same. It had been real, all of it. The anger returned, sharp and blackened, and he broke one hand slamming it into a wall, finally allowing himself to scream.
The remaining survivors from that area, a handful, no more than twelve of them, found him churning up the ground, nearly biting himself apart as he felt the pain would drive him mad; all things animal in him surfacing and compounding.
--
He usually woke up around that point, and woke up screaming, thrashing, and biting. The days when he was alone, it was much harder to calm down and convince himself to return to the present reality. Sometimes it got so bad a solider would poke his head through the strings of skulls and ask him if he was okay, only to find him down on all fours, khopesh in his mouth, snarling and searching for blood to spill. Their words would usually snap him more fully awake, and he could straighten up, dust himself off, and tell them to get the fuck out of there, with a reminder that if they shared what they had seen their head would soon accompany his other battle trophies. Most times he would also ask them to send Rasticore to his tent, and most would do so without question, some out of loyalty and others out of the look he would give them.
The times when Rast was already there were slightly better, as he would put up with the initial beating his panicked commanding officer would give him, and would snap him out of it more quickly, holding him and stroking his back until he calmed down. Having Rasticore already there also gave him a better place to hide himself as he would, inevitably, break down sobbing, clinging to the other septarian with the near-full force of every limb. He was fairly sure Rast hadn’t been alive for the calamity, and had been born well after it. Lord knew if he also got the nightmares, he’d never had one around Toffee.
It helped not to be alone when the crying abated and the guilt came— he remembered every detail about crouching alone in the half-dark, watching the current queen of Mewni and her fucking magic wand walk around the corruption of his home and his being with that infuriating mild interest, mild concern, clear that she didn’t care much at all. She spoke as if she’d accidentally placed one heel down upon a snail: tiny, inconsequential, a petty incident no one could fault her for. Regrettable, but nothing serious. How many times could the realization settle in his chest, that the genocide of his country had been nothing to her, and that she had died beloved and without regret. In her name he had struck down two mewnian queens, all that he could get his hands and his khopesh on; some part of him always hungry for another critical strike. He had been circling around the current queen for some time now, and there was now talk of an accord being struck between the army and Mewni.
They’d like that, wouldn’t they— the monsters willing to forget their own great massacre, never mind what’d happened to Septarsis, and the mewmans eager to rewrite history to pamper their egos: Septarsis the new Atlantis, falling to its own hubris. Punished by the gods.
His superiors might’ve been comfortable with such an embarrassing proposal, cut corners, save a few lives on both sides. It was diplomatic and safe, but the enemy deserved neither kindness.
Tonight was another night to wake up screaming, but each queen’s head did its part to lessen the blow. Toffee lay on his bed, slowly uncurling, and stared over to his armor. He could remember with perfect clarity where each skull had come from: one had pled and begged, the other had spat in his face. Neither reaction made their fate any different to him. Waiting for Rasticore’s company, he wondered where he’d put the new skull with butterflies on its cheeks.