Hero's Elegy

by The Red Blur Wed Oct 25, 2017 11:57 pm

It was late at night, and a red hedgehog lay fast asleep in his bed, a small chao snoring quietly next to him. Violent pictures rushed through his mind, that of a massive battle, of grotesque creatures emerging from a portal, of one giant, bony arm stretching through a forest clearing, then… Nothing.

BANG

Caen awoke, sitting bolt upright, his breathing sharp, and shallow. His hand was placed on his chest, as his breathing slowly returned to normal. Droplets of sweat made the hedgehog’s forehead glisten in the moonlight. “Something’s wrong… Something is terribly, terribly wrong…” he whispered. He sat there for what seemed like hours, unable to fall asleep. Eventually, the phone rang, and Caen raced to pick it up, speaking in a quiet fashion “hello?”

“Caen, it’s me,” Raito, a good friend of the hedgehog, spoke. “I-I’ve got some bad news… It’s… Its about Shrike. When we heard a battle taking place in the forest, our scouts were sent out… He…”
“Rai. This is no time for jokes,” he spoke, tears starting to well up in his eyes, “there’s no way Shrike would…”
“Look, Caen. I’m more sorry than words can possibly say… He’s gone. An explosion of some sort of extraterrestrial energy obliterated him within seconds. We couldn’t get troops there in time…”

Caen shook his head “there’s no way… He wouldn’t… He wouldn’t go down, just like that. He’s been through so much as it is!”
“Caen, I know how hard this is for you, but…” She sighed, unable to find the words to comfort the hedgehog “would you… Would you like to go to where he…?”
“Yes.” Caen said simply, his voice almost breathless.
“I’ll come and pick you up in a few hours. Please, be strong.”

With those words, the call ended. Caen put the phone back on its holder, before putting his hands on the table that it sat on. Tears were already streaming down his face at this point, he bit his tongue, fighting back the urge to sob loudly. “Shrike…” he whispered to himself.

---

A few hours later, Raito pulled up outside of the block of apartments where Caen lived. He was waiting next to a nearby wall, dressed in a thick jacket, and black jeans. He walked slowly to the car, opening the door and climbing in. Raito simply looked over, her amber eyes filled with concern “Caen, I know I could’ve done more-“
“No, Rai. You couldn’t. There was nothing any of us could do.” Caen spoke, his voice melancholic, and somber.

Raito stopped the car, a few metres from the clearing where just hours before the marine had drew his last breath “should I leave you alone?” She asked, raising her eyebrow. Caen got out of the car, nodding “yes, I… I’ll just be a few minutes.”

Everything was still, and quiet around the crater. The birds seemed to stop chirping, and just observe the scene. It was as though the world was in mourning, back Caen knew it wasn’t. There would be no grand funeral for a hero such as Shrike. He would be forever forgotten by the world.

Caen sighed, making his way down the crater carefully, looking around, possibly in the dire hope that Shrike would hop out of the bushes, telling him that it was all a joke. “As if… He was never one for jokes,” Caen muttered to himself. Just as he had made his way down, he spotted something black jutting out from the brown dirt. He made his way closer. It was a weapon of some kind? A rifle. The rifle that Shrike always carried with him. With a light pull, the firearm came free, and Caen held it, his eyes scanning across it, until it fell on three words engraved on the side. “Fire of hope…” he repeated to himself. “How apt. He was always there to give hope when all of it seemed lost…” Caen said, slinging it over his shoulder. Taking one last look, he began to make his way out of the clearing, a song familiar to the marine suddenly popping into his head. “One more bullet through the heart…. He sang, his voice filled with a sense of sadness. “We take this tyranny from the start... Our quest will not finish ‘til the deed is done… As we take their whole army down…” he reached the edge of the crater, climbing out of the hole. “One by one…”