Darion the Defiant

   Nothing could have prepared them for it. Not the smell. Not the sounds. Especially not the sights. No, the things seen in battle could never be unseen. They visited them in their sleep, they appeared behind their eyelids every time they blinked shut. The screams echoed in their ears over and over, even when the ringing from the concussive blasts threatened to drown out all other sounds for the rest of their lives.
   Eternity stretched on as they hunkered down in their trenches and battle holes. Ditches dug into the farm lands that stretched for thousands of feet. Farmers who but a few short months ago were sowing seed into the fresh turned spring soil now dug like rabbits and fought like packs of rabid packs against an usurper unlike anything they had ever seen before. A man-- No, a monster of a man with no name that commanded an army of faceless savages larger than any other force that had dared to invade their lands before. The only thing worse than the savages were the robed and hooded figures that stood atop giant platforms with their hands folded together beneath over-sized sleeves as they overlooked the battlefield. The last mistake anyone could have made would be underestimating them based on how fragile they appeared. When their hands clapped together, a concussive blast rushed forth, shredding anything and everything that stood in its path.
   The first of the farmers-turned-soldiers over the the top of the trenches disintegrated and blew back over their companions as dust and ash would from a fire. They were not the first to die, nor would they be the last. The second wave of soldiers fared no better. The third wave, now in shock at the speed with which their friends and family members had been erased from this world, fell back into their trenches and wailed in defeat.
   Four lines behind them, one simple soul had not been paying attention to the demise of those who attempted to clear the way ahead of him, as he was lost in his blindness, praying to the heavens for deliverance from those that would wipe them from memory because they were caught in the middle of a feud that they neither cared about nor wanted any part of.
   Darion the Blind felt a tug at his heart, and his legs pulled him forward suddenly as the wails of agony washed over him. He crested the lip of the trench he had helped to cut out of the fields. Once out of the trench, he stood defiant, blade in one hand, walking cane in the other. He planted himself and raised his head to the sky he could not see and bellowed at the top of his lungs as he tamped his cane into the muck beside him.
   A ray of sunlight pierced the veil of shadowed clouds that hung low in the sky over the battlefield, casting its warmth upon the remaining farmers-turned-soldiers. Their wailing ceased, and a calming certainty filled them as Darion's call echoed out across the sundered fields. They began to poke their heads up above the safety of their trenches, and seeing Darion the Blind standing alone facing their enemy gave them the heart they so desperately needed in that moment.
   Darion's cry came to an end, and after a few breaths he leveled his gaze towards his unseen foe and bellowed one order that all his fellow men answered.
   "Scatter like the ash of our lost brethren, come upon them from all sides, and give no quarter!"
   Like locusts they swarmed up and over the trenches all at once in every direction, giving their enemy no point to focus on. Thunderclaps came and few turned to dust, but within moments every section of their lines were assaulted by hordes of defiant farmers filled with the rage that only those defending their homes could exude. With everything to lose, and no mercy to give, they fought the bloodiest and most savage battle their realm had every known. Many of them fell and were lost to naught but memory, but many more overcame the insurmountable odds.
   The robed men were not impervious to blade, spear, or pitch fork, and once encircled could not flee from their platforms. Their power was no less awful against a single man as it was against many, and they did their worst. Pillars of walking fire, bolts of lightning, and men turned to stone or salt all around their platforms as they faced their inevitable deaths.
   As the last of the platforms fell, a horn blared out as dusk crept in. The usurper had sounded retreat and with that call, fled alone into the south as his army was slain to the last faceless savage.
   On that day, Dorian became 'The Defiant', leader of the free men of the western plains where farmers became soldiers and an usurper's army became fertilizer for their lands.