Fire, the city is ablaze and screams of all ages are heard and they are endless. Buildings becoming ruins and vestiges are becoming rife within the kingdom. As it all crumbles and unfolds, the king in his purple and white robe is leaning forward with wrinkles and a grey complexion as he and his kingdom is helpless. His jewels and necklaces were futile, for they fell onto the stone pathway, for they also sensed enslavement and despair was forthcoming. All had abandoned him it seemed, and it was true, for his men had surrendered, but not before valiantly vying for a foothold. The swords swung for hours, along with blood, going in all directions as it escaped its cage of biology. Metal crafted into armor was now sparse and disfigured, and all shall be wasted as the centerpiece of a triumph, if the king doesn’t deprive his heart of life. Chants and drums, cacophonies of language of tongue, noises of fire devouring structures, like an untrammeled hyena feasting upon a gazelle, which just only hours before, rose and took sight upon the world around it; I’m sure his world was much like this world, a battlefield, soon to be barren and destitute. Slaves being herded like cattle, jewels and wine being drunk and work in mockery, spit and blood being casted upon our streets in disdain, and light from all torches and hope were soon doused with the words and saliva of the barbarous invaders. “To whatever end” Was once said when this war was waged, however, I am confident the king expected not destruction and dissolution. I stand there in dismay, as I watch my father, the king of kings as he was once dubbed, succumb to despair and the horseman that rode it in his mind, with his black horse and reigns of bones and steel, forever agonizing and inescapable. It was incumbent that I succeed my father if death struck him, but how was I to succeed him if I were without an empire? I absconded to rally survivors, and through ash and fire I went on like a schizophrenic rallying mendicants, aristocrats, though many of them had already poisoned themselves, “peasants”, evangelists, house servants, and other inhabitants. The harbor had yet to be besieged and proselytized, therefore, embarked traveling to it, but not before retrieving my apostate of a father, though he was hated, he was also loved, the tragedy and Yin Yang of kingship. The endless staircase as it seemed, luxurious and wasteful as my father preferred all to be, I treaded upon with haste. Behold, the threshold, before me lay the doorframe and before it, the king’s domicile, and as it was only fitting, it would forever be his tomb, as he was dormant, awaiting trial and resurrection by the Holy Spirit. Without conflict at last, I led the exodus to the harbor, where angels stood in wood and cloth form. As we departed, a final look and closing of the 7th chapter of the old, raggedy and tattered book that is my life, ends with glum but acceptance. The fire grows like the leviathan rising from the water, and I, laughing at it because I have escaped, though I am sure we will one day have our duel.