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As far as eyes could see, the fields were red. Red with blood, dark with ichor. A limb here, a head there, eyes staring blank and dim into the blooded sky. The sounds of battle had faded long hours since, yet still the horror of it had not settled in its entirety on Balor’s shoulders. But he conceived of it clearly as he gazed upon this grinning death’s mask, staring up at the sky, a feast for carrion eaters. Already the air was full of the throaty calls of crows and ravens. Clouds of them rose on the winds, moving from here to there, dark wings flashing in the dying light.
The Golden Army crouched in neat ranks behind him, just beyond his peripheral vision. Though he could not see them, he felt their presence like an iron weight around his neck. When he had commissioned the Army, he had sorely wanted to win this war against greedy humanity; the cost had not mattered. A swift end, and victory for he and his, was all he had desired.
But, he now knew, too late, at what cost, in truth, that victory would come. The Army was no longer a gift of the gods, but a curse, a bane upon his conscience and his house.
Balor lifted the crown from his brow, and held it between his hands, one of elven flesh, the other cut of Aeglin, the Father Tree that canopied fair Elfland. What a fool he had been, to think the crown a thing so striking and fair on his brow. Now he saw it winking in bloody hue, set as a single jewel against a field of slaughter.
“Father!”
Nuada came over the curve of the hill, spear in hand, its infinite edge dark, testifying how deeply it had drunk of human blood. Balor, to see his son, forced himself to turn, and his eyes could not help but fall on that baleful Army. Each golem dipped its head at the prince’s passing.
“Why do you pull the Army back?” Nuada’s expression was confusion, the battle joy dimmed from his eyes. “Our soldiers herd the humans back, even to the edge of the great forest. What remains of them will be easily crushed. What do you wait for?”
Another weight – heavier, even than the weight of the hundred thousand human lives crushed beneath his ambition – settled across Balor’s shoulders. What answer could he give his son that would not turn his mind against him? As surely as humanity was incomplete, that hole burned through their hearts and souls, Nuada’s thought was bent upon their ultimate destruction. Perhaps this was the fruit born of seeds Balor himself had planted in Nuada’s mind through these long years of conflict.
“This cannot go on, Nuada.” Balor turned his gaze away from his son, from the shining Army behind him. What visions that wrought in his brain, that his son might have the resolve to command the cursed golems! He spoke again into the confused silence: “The Army is not a force any one can, or should, control. I see this now. A weapon of such immense power can only bring death and sorrow, not joy and victory. Its presence will rot Aeglin as surely as it has obliterated the fair fields these once were.”
Nuada did not understand. He shifted his grip on his spear, stepping nearer to his father’s side. “How can you say such things when our war is nearly won?” he asked. “The loss of these fields rends all our hearts, but they will grow back anew, and brighter for the absence of thoughtless humanity to crush them—“
“They can never grow back, Nuada.” Balor did not need to see his son’s face to know the hurt written upon it. He signaled to one of his retainers, who stood a small distance away from him. The soldier bowed, then dropped to one knee at his king’s feet.
Nuada looked from his father to the soldier now kneeling on the grassy hill unmarred by blood. At first he did not understand, until he saw the first sparks kindling white and hot at his father’s feet, beneath the soldier’s hands. His eyes then fell upon the glinting crown.
“You cannot!” He would never raise a weapon against his father, but Nuada could not stand by. He swept forward, grabbing his father’s arm. “You cannot do this!”
“Is it not my right as king?” Balor looked to Nuada then with the eyes of a warrior long since tired of war.
“You sentence us all to death!”
“The Tree still stands,” Balor replied. “And our borders are secure. I will not be remembered as the Elf-King who sacrificed the earth for his crown. I will not have genocide appended to my name.”
“Will you not?” Nuada’s grip tightened on Balor’s arm, his fingers biting through fabric into flesh. “Our borders will not be safe from the humans. They will rally, and they will return, and they will take our lands and slaughter our people. You”—Pain was in his voice then, disbelief in his eyes.—“you, Father, would let your people be destroyed? You would sit by as every one of us were killed? Even my sister—even myself?”
“Nuala will understand.” Balor’s gaze was steel, cold and remote. “And you will, too, in time, my son.”
Balor let the crown drop from his fingers. Nuada let him go, reaching to snatch the crown from the air, to save it from the fire, but he was a heartbeat too slow. The gold slipped past his fingers, with the barest touch, and he would have plunged his arm into the fire to save it had not Balor pulled him back. White flames reached up like a flickering maw and engulfed the crown. It was half melted and sagging by the time it hit the ground, and slowly pooled there, the gears popping from their places, whining into silence as all became still and molten.
Behind them, seventy times seventy metal soldiers, crafted by goblin skill and secret sorceries, let out a collective gasp of steam and slowly sank to the ground. Their arms popped from their sockets, their heads fell in like too-ripe fruit. Rank by rank, the Army died, becoming but piles of scrap to further mar the blooded waste.
Nuada heard the deathly keening of the Army, but could not take his eyes from what remained of the crown. The soldier who kindled the fire had stepped back, and the flames had flickered and died, leaving the gold to snake around the grass, sending up flares of orange flame where it touched, as it bled its magics into the earth.
“What have you done?” Nuada whispered. “What have you done?”
The prince pulled his arm roughly away from his father, tearing himself from his grip. Even as he did so, the hold on his spear changed, and the wicked silver head turned its gaze from the ground to the sky. In that moment, Balor did not know what his son intended, and it was as a cloud had come over the sun and left the paths he would walk in shadow.
“My son…” the old king began, but his son’s blazing eyes stayed his words. Nuada took a step backwards from him, his expression closed, his gaze full of betrayal and angry misery. The prince turned away, and strode down the hill.
Balor did not call to him, could not call to him. He could only watch his son’s back and the silver glint of his spear as he retreated from him, passing twilit into shadow, vanishing from sight as night crept upon the earth.