Ozymandias
River-stones crunched beneath his feet as he crouched. Putting the black-hand-fire-stick back in its sheath, he withdrew the long-wood-crack-stick from his skins-pouch and, looking through the clear-far-close-pipe, gazed at his target.
A breath.
Thunder split the wilds.
Withdrawing his sight from the clear-far-close-pipe, he looked around with furrowed gaze. The air was again silent. No blood-flower-beasts.
A few minutes, and he was out on the white water, wood-water-eye holding fast against the rushing wind-water with his efforts with the water-plank-stick. It took him a bit, but eventually, he made it to the other side.
Wet, shivering, but alive, he dragged the wood-water-eye towards the forest on the edge of the river-stones. He looked round again, then, sensing no danger, started towards his fallen prey.
Ascending a grassy slope, he crouched again, withdrew the long-wood-crack-stick once more, and repeated his actions not ten ticks past…
Except the target looked at him.
He scrambled back in panic. Another one, but not them.
What was it doing here?
When he had managed to calm his drum-flesh, he looked once more. It was still looking at him.
He made ready to make bright-heat, but it simply held up a hand.
Another pause.
The hand twisted and curled inward. Come.
He obeyed.
He stared at it.
It stared back, pink sunrise-flesh parted to reveal piss-bones-small.
What are you? he gestured with his long-sharp-skin-bones.
"A traveler, you might say," it responded.
He shuddered at the strange sounds coming from its black-red-flesh-cave.
"Ah, you don't understand me." More piss-bones-small. "No matter. I have little time on this earth left, and I must tell you of the things I have seen."
A blank stare.
It sighed. "You have no idea where you stand, do you? This place was once the head of an empire, cruel and kind at the same time, but now-" It gestured.
He followed its motion to the ivory-black-stone cliff jutting over the riverbed. A sense of awe filled him, and then it spoke.
"When the wolves were let loose, the king fell."
Cold fire slipped between his chest-bones, and he coughed red. He looked at it with wide eyes. Yellow circles regarded him coldly, sunrise-flesh upturned, and he was afraid.
"I have seen the sands of time, have seen old men kill to save the girl-" It paused. "Ellie. The one who would have saved us all. He damned us all… for her.
He blinked slowly. The fire spread through him.
"Look at it." It gestured at the cliff again. "Look, and despair. For this is the way of all things."
Fire consuming him, he fell to the river-stones. The grey-white shore stretched far beyond him.
And then…
He awoke.
Author's Note: If you haven't read either Shelley's or Horace Smith's Ozymandias, go read those. Powerful poetry.
Anyways, backstory for this one-shot: This is set a long time (like, two or three centuries) after the end of the game, at a time when humanity is nearly extinct and the Old Earth and its ways are all but forgotten. Thus, the Infected are "blood-flower-beasts", guns and rifles are "black-hand-fire-stick" and "long-wood-crack-stick", etc. The "traveller" is a Firefly from the Old Earth who somehow got sent to the future and went a bit mad from the experience.
To be quite honest, I have only a little bit of an idea what I'm talking about. I just wanted to write something different from what I've done previously.
-Nate