A phone rings.

Two men stand in the midst of a crumbled city.

‘Is that your bloody phone,’ enquired the rasping voice of a man in a black cloak.

‘Oh shit, hang on I need to pause, it’s the old ball and chain, if you know what I mean,’ replied the other man who wore a white cloak. His voice of rolling velvet.

‘Yes, I guess our battle could do with a water break, probably don’t want to miss that call aye.’

The man in white pulled an old flip phone, one of those slick looking early 00’s phones. The edgy ones with the bright colours.

‘Hello Margaret, what seems to be…’ he began to say as he was cut off with a grimace on his face. A few minutes later he closed the phone.

‘So?’ asked the man in black.

‘She says we are making a bit of a mess.’

The two men looked around.

‘Ah, I see,’ said the man in black. ‘Seems we have once again wiped out a good chunk of humanity. The curse of immortality.’

‘The curse of immortality,’ repeated the man in white. ‘It was a jolly good old scrap though.’

‘A duel for the ageless.’

The man in white nodded in agreement and looked perplexed in thought before he came up with a marvellous idea, ‘I say, should we get something to eat then?’

‘Yes, let’s see what’s around.’

The two men did in fact look around. Rubble. An eerie silence except perhaps the screams of mortals dying. Dogs yelping. Cats clawing. The dull aroma of dust and smoke.

‘It could have been worse,’ said the main in black.

‘Indeed. A shame really as this was a rather splendid battleground. Great atmosphere, good crowd’

‘A sporting lot, a few little obstacles to keep the game full of surprises. I bless the rebuild.’

‘The rebuild be blessed.’

The two men smiled, nodded gallantly and launched into the air like falcons in rewind. They flew many times faster than the speed of sound, shattering any glass and any ear not already ruptured by the great duel. From there they raced across the earth scorching everything beneath them until they came upon a bamboo forest and suddenly stopped.

‘I say good chap, it’s bean a while since I had Chinese,’ suggested man in white.

‘Ah yes, I could also go for that myself.’

The men landed gracefully next to a big furry ball of black and white happiness chewing on a bamboo branch. They both smiled a glorious smile, a very satisfied smile.

A dark and terrible scream filled the sky and shook the world.

There was smoke, and blackness, and then silence.

'Blethine… your voice grows weak.'

'Yours also, Jlin. You are no longer powerful like you once were. Our voices may be tired for now, but I grow mightier every day, while you crumble into old age. How long until you are expended? How long until I may consume you?'

'You know the answer to that. The world will die a thousand times over befor- AGH!' 

Jlin yelped and hesitated. Flakes of the skin around his wrist, crackled and grey, crumbled off and was gone. Both the immortals paused and stared in confusion.

This was not their doing.

For many ages, the two immortals had clashed in close combat. Slowly they had stalked one another, circling, approaching and finally, wrestling. Their voices belching forth their power, black-white fumes blasting out with every cry of war, the skies darkening in return. The trees had burned and the animals fled. The forces of nature unleashed.

But now they went silent. The empty eyesockets of their craggy faces stared, seemingly blinking, at the injury, not understanding. Neither had ever landed a blow. Never suffered this kind of injury. This was beyond their understanding. The hole was small and dark. A tiny speck of flesh.

'Blethine… what have you done?' asked Jlin slowly, his wizened face contorted. Flashes of red fire tinged his lips, a bubbling anger within.

'I have done nothing, I know nothing! What tricks have you devised?!' Blethine yelled back, his soot-black visage broken only by a thin cap of white hair. 

'This is no trick…' Jlin leaned his head down towards his hand, craning to see. The immortals were powerful, but ponderous. Their arms rested loosely at their sides, their heads atop fat, broken necks. They both struggled to move at any pace. But they had time.

'it is a hole…' said Jlin, slowly. A craggy, open hole had opened in his wrist, the white and grey flesh beneath exposed. It was not deep, but wide. There was no blood. 

'You lie. That is no hole I have ever seen.' spat Blethine. 'Holes are deep and winding, forged over an eon, a testament to time. That is-... It's…'

'-a hole' said Jlin, firmly. He stood upright again and glared at Blethine. 'I see only what it is, not that which you would prefe- AGH!' 

He screamed again, clutching to the side of his torso, where another hole had appeared, larger than the first.

'WHAT IS HAPPENING' he yelled, black smoke pouring forth, mixed with the red flame of fury.

Blethine stared, still confused. Then he saw it; a tiny trail of white leading away from Jlin's Pierced side. A tiny, winding sliver, almost too thin to see amongst the distant green and undulating hillocks.

It was a trail of Jlin's flesh. Thin, long and white.

'You are beset, Jlin'. Said Blethine with confidence. 'you are weakening, your form crumbles each day, and now your flesh is being taken. You will not long survive.'

'don't mock me…! If this thing comes for me, it will  surely come for you too!' snarled Jlin, fire and fury cascading from his mouth. The black and red smothered the trail and hillocks, coating all with darkness again.

The darkness cleared again quickly, the black soot turned to green.

Jlin yelped once again. Another chunk was taken.

He swatted with his grey, oversized arms, flailing and casting grey pieces of skin askew, rubbing until the white flesh beneath was exposed. 

Blethine laughed, then paused.

It was more than a trail now. It was… something. Piles? Circles? Something was putting Jlin's flesh into mounds. Something smaller and faster than Blethine could make out. They were stripping Jlin of his flesh and making it into… nests?

'Jlin, look, your mysterious tormentors…' he said pointing with a smile. 'they come for you now, but why?'

Jlin looked up at Blethine, with a red glare of rage. Fire dripped from his mouth.

'Isn't it clear, Blethine? They come for what lies within; our power, our grace, the fire of the undying. They see it within us and they come to claim it as their own '

Blethine balked, hesitated. He looked at the flakes of Jlin's body being carried away in a blur, to become part of the growing piles of flesh.

He then laughed.

'they come for yours perhaps Jlin. Mine remains untouched.' he gloated.

'for now. Perhaps they save the worst until last.' Jlin spat.

'perhaps I'm made of different stuff', said Blethine, pointing to his rougher, tougher skin. The two were not identical, it was true.

Jlin winced and slumped. Great flakes were now coming away, charged by some tiny, blurry beasts below. The piles grew closer and taller. The green hillocks around them changed shape.

The things, whatever they were, were using the green on the hills to made other little piles. They were swarming around Jlin, barely paying attention to Blethine.

'your flesh is tasty to them, Jlin, you have become a delicacy. It's a pity that I could not be the one to devour you.'

Jlin closed his eyes and curled himself up tight; the smoke and fire trapped inside.

'No. They want the fire of the undying, of this I am quite sure. If they want it, and I am destined to die, then I will give them what they seek.'

The smoke and fire vanished, bubbling inside Jlin's mighty chest.

Blethine laughed and belched black fumes. The smoke and darkness made the tiny things wary, but they were quickly back, scraping the skin from Jlin.

Jlin could feel himself being broken away, tony flake by flake. He was mighty, yes, but Blethine was quite right; he was losing this fight. The two had been locked in combat, to drown and consume the other in the fire of the undying, and now Blethine had somehow beaten him with this trick.

No. He will not die on Blethine's terms.

He silenced himself, felt his belly churn red. The smoke and fire rose higher, and stronger. The mounds of his flesh grew closer and larger, until he was covered in them, coated in the nests of these… things.

Blethine watched, bemused, smoking and puffing and laughing.

Jlin felt the holes grow deeper inside him, his surface being flattened and stripped away. The tunnels bored faster and faster, until they reached his fire within. It barely tapped the pressure growing inside.

This was it. All the time he had left.

Jlin stood up and screamed his deepest scream. The fire and smoke erupted, too much to evem glow red. This scream was too much for Jlin, it's power too intense. He had built this chance. the fire of the undying could never be contained for long.

His face broke apart and was pulverised, his grey-white flesh turned to dust. His sides slipped away and broke wide open, and flowed away like water.

The sky darkened once again and the earth shook with pain. The tiny blurry animals and all their carefully arranged piles of flesh were flattened, buried, burned away. The dust of Jlin's once mighty form buried them.

And when it cleared, Blethine still stood proud and tall, overlooking the shattered remains of Jlin. He would rise again. And then, their fight would resume.

Jlin the volcano had not yet spoken for the last time.

"Stop!!" Thor thunders, raising his palm to his enemy of the past hundred centuries.

Thunder roared from above. Not the kind brought on by a mixture of hot and cool air, but a deep crimson lightning, forced to break the clouds by Thor's impatience. The bolt shatters through the countless drops of rain before striking the ground before Thor, sending his enemy tumbling backwards.

His enemy, Anubis, The god of death; Bringer of the end; Baker of delectable cakes. Whatever his name was, he was for now at least, Thor's enemy.

“OW!! That hurt, you buffoon of Asgard!” he shouts, tending to his wounded tuckus.

“I did not stop for banter, tall dog” Thor roars, his voice mimicked by the striking bolts of crimson around them.

“I’m not a dog. I’m a GOD!. Got that!? G.O.D.” The baker of sweet treats replies. “Odin's beard, who taught you to spell?”.

A bolt strikes behind Thor. His silhouette looming over Anubis. “Bite your tongue mongrel! I’ll not have you bismerch my mother!”.

Moments of silence. Nothing but the patter of rain hitting the ground around them. Windows, Cars and blocks of stone that once belonged to quite a nice bakery litter the ground around them. For the first time in a hundred centuries, the pair's heated battle had simmered. Each taking their time to notice their surroundings for the first time their eyes split apart.

Their battle started on the desert of mars. A barren and rather wasteful portion of the solar system, the pair thought it would be a good place to host their battle. It would appear that, while spinning Anubis around, Thor had launched him towards earth. He had meant to throw him to the moon, but it was a little late to apologise to the scattered bones that now occupied the city.

“I thought we were on that despicable bitches planet. Why are we here?” Anubis questioned, picking up the tattered remains of a children's bear. The haunted memories of it’s previous owner etch themselves into Anubis’ mind. A lesser known ability or more accurately curse bestowed to the god of death. Possessions owned by the dead would play their most tortured memories to the god of death. His mind would warp to match the owners, inflicting the same traumatic experience exactly as it would have been felt.

The memory brought forth by this bear was that of the girl playing quietly within her home. Her parents were smiling gleefully at her, trying to get the next photo for their album. Suddenly. Lighting strikes their building. Lights flicker. Bickering of hosts within the TV turns to static before bursting shards of glass into the room. Her father is hit first. A large shard flew through the air with the determination of an eagle. Hitting its intended target quickly and concisely. Blood spewed from her fathers neck, covering her mothers face as she laments in horror trying to stop the wound.

This moment's grief shocked her to her core. She trembled, holding her teddy close for comfort. Her mother, tossing the cold remains of her father aside, leaps from the sofa. Before her outstretched hand could reach her daughter she is sucked into a vacuum. The force of Anubis throwing Thor into the building had scraped away the wall to the flat, sucking in the limp bodies of humans and scattered possessions. Quickly, her mothers hand was sucked away. Tumbling along the gust of air her mothers head shattered on some blocks of stone, covering the daughter's face and teddy.

Anubis drops the teddy in shock. His mind reforms back to that of an infinitely old god. “Dear Osiris… What have we done” he trembles, falling to his knees.

Noticing his enemy's shock, Thor approaches. Raising a hand he places it on the god’s shoulder. “What we have done is unforgivable… I’m sorry… I should have shared your cake instead of being a selfish asgardian. My mother will be most displeased”.

I feel my arms strangle my foe. His glare in delicious in my eyes. Finally, after so many seasons I will be victorious. His vital essence drains slowly drains from his face. I laugh. Finally, can live in...

*frummmm*

What is that! I look around. The bugs that have flittered around our conflict have returned. They have rested around our arena, bit at our legs but mostly been inconsequential to our contest. But now, they are surrounding us. Why! Don't they understand? He is evil, he is strangeling the world and keeping me and my children from thriving! He must be stopped!

*FRUMMMMMMMMM*

Their strange protrusions hum with a horrifying sounds. They use them to bite into my arms. I scream silently in pain. My enemy grins at my pain. They're removing my fingers from his neck. These foolish bugs! My arms fall to the ground, digging deeply between our feet, exposing our toes.

My foe gloats. The bugs are nursing his wounds. They apply a fireless burn to the mutilation they preformed to my limbs. They will never grow to strike my foe again. I must start anew. My nemesis will retaliate and I might not survive again.

These bugs will pay. Their stone nests around us will crumble and fall; I will see to it. My conflict continues. None will survive but me and my descendants. We will cover the land as far as my eyes can see...

"Inter arma enim silent leges"

I don't know his name. He doesn't know mine.

For all the violence we've inflicted upon each other, he looks none the worse for the wear. Really, it looks…right. It's hard to imagine my opponent not covered in slashes, with all the intact, unbloodied skin dusted with the pulverized asphalt beneath us.

It’s said that battle warps time and space around you. Minutes slow until they become lifetimes of their own, and when you’ve been fighting for weeks, months, years? You’re not the same person after that. The struggle to kill another of your kind drags you through time and through as many versions of you as your soul can generate, until you are left as a husk with a weapon.

If that’s the way I’m supposed to feel, then there is something wrong with me. The longer this goes on, the more I feel like myself. Every passing minute I spend struggling to end the life of that *thing* standing a meter in front of me, the more I am sure that I’ve arrived.

But I don’t know why I feel this way. I only know well enough to ask the question.

“Today,” He says, wiping blood from a deep slash in his chest into a perfect diagonal war stripe, “You meet your end. And I will be the one to introduce you.”

I look down at the gun in my hand, and…

A gun?

No, that isn’t right. I never had a gun. It was a spear. Well…*was* a spear. Until we got too close for dory and aspis, and I had unsheathed my xiphos…

And then, beard aflame, I sighted the enemy captain, still at the helm. We drew pistols, fired, then charged, cutlasses slicing through the air…

Ululating as my horse galloped, sun dimming through the outgoing cloud of arrows, my gaze never wavering from the enemy general…

Screaming at the top of my lungs as I and ten thousand others like me thundered across the cannon-scarred plain, bayonets on our empty muskets facing forward, like the innumerable teeth of a hungry leviathan.

We were both in battle dress. His gray top was shredded around bullet wounds in his shoulder and chest; mine was still one piece, but covered in mud and the remains of my nosebleed that hadn’t washed off in the rain. He was racing to load his MP40 before I could do the same with my PPSh.

“Wait,” I said, raising a hand to show the sincerity of my pause while pointing the submachine gun away from him. There was recognition in his eyes, like he knew the confusion I felt. Like he too had experienced a moment of forgetful awakening.

“You wonder what you are,” He said, pulling the charging handle to load a round. I flinched as the bolt clanged into place.

“You know?” I said, half question, half statement. He had said it with a confidence that…wasn’t confidence? Maybe…weary resignation, or apathy from the years of bloodshed?

“Look around you, and you’ll know too,” He said, lowering his maschinepistole.

Eastern Europe. Leningrad, 1941. Smoke billows into the skyline of a dead city. Houses and churches still burn as the living thing we occupy decays, leaving only its broken bones.

Southeast Asia. Laos, 1968. He flies in the MiG pursuing me as I erase a village with air-dropped bombs, not in anger, but to let my Thunderchief turn just a little faster.

Constantinople, 1204. I turn my bloodlustful gaze upon him - a lone city guard - as I drop the gold I carry from an altar I destroyed with my axe. I will add his body to the others laying in this street. The Venetians may have come to loot, but my purpose here is slaughter.

Mediolanum, 539. After four years of famine, there is nothing left to take from our ruined city, but here he stands atop the parapet before me. We are both as emaciated as the ruins below us. One of us, Goth or Byzantine, will die to the sword today. The other, probably to hunger tomorrow.

He’s right. I know what this is. What I am.

There is no pity, no remorse, no mercy in his expression, but it is comforting in its familiarity. I don’t know who will win this skirmish; I never know, really. But this is a thing we’ve done before, and a thing we’ll do again. Here, and everywhere, for as long as these hairless apes want for anything, we’ll have each other, and we’ll despise each other for it. Until the end, there is no eternal except the enemy.

No matter the weapon, no matter the uniform, no matter the casus belli or the status quo antebellum or the degree to which Deus vult, we will remain the same.

“You are war,” He says, raising his weapon, “And so am I.”

A gunshot rings out. A knife leaves its sheath.

We take everything, leaving only blood.

The two figures are furiously punching at each other. Beards long, strange clothes torn. One with a full head of hair, the other bald. But none of them look tired or injured. If you look closely maybe you’ll notice a bit of blood when one of them gets punched, but when he turns back his head, it’s not there.

Trick of the eye probably?

Anyway they’ve been affectionately known as the ‘Fighting Hobos of Central Park’ for the longest time. They’re there all the time, duking it out.

They’re not always in the same part of the park, but they never seem to be anywhere but between Umpire Rock and Hernshead.

Some people have tried watching them for a whole day, but get tired after a few hours.

Others have tried approaching them but always change their mind when they get close. Even the police! That’s why they’ve never been stopped.

Then if you ask your parents, they’ll say ‘What? They’re still there? It can’t be the same two people, they were there when I was a kid!”

And if you ask your grandparents, they’ll say “Oh yes I’ve seen them before, must be some copycats trying to re-enact the ‘Central Park Fisticuffers’ from back when my grandad, your great great grandpa, used bring your great great grandma there for dates.”

And everybody seems to know somebody who has heard of them before. But nobody seems to be bothered that they’re there all the time just punching away. Occasionally a drop kick or two. Maybe a headlock.

——-

4:51 PM August 3 2022

“Hey Misters”.

The two men stopped mid punch, not having been spoken to in centuries.

A little girl was holding out a bottle of soda.

“Don’t you get tired playfighting all the time? Do you need a drink”

Both of the scruffy looking men looked at her.

The bald man asked the other one “How is she talking to us, the warding spell lasts for four hundred…”

Whitebeard lightly slapped him across the head.

“You fool! Look up there behind you!”

The bald one looked warily at him, as if it were a trick leading to be sucker punched, when he saw the strange, tall buildings beyond the trees, behind the other guy.

“Look behind me? Look behind YOU! What are those???”

Whitebeard cursed “Damn it! There’s nothing wrong with the Warding spell! It HAS been four hundred years! If only you had the brains to admit that rock was part of the agreement…”

Sweat rolling of his head the bald one went “NO!” I told you to keep yourself at that end! I built my house there at least three hundred years before you even ‘bought’ this ‘piece of land’ from who knows who? Look what you’ve done! An entire City has sprung up around us! Where’s your ‘territory’ now eh? And my house…”

He turned to look behind him, where Umpire rock was.

“my house is gone!!! My stuff! Oh brgggrrrhhlfmmmh I’m gonna get you for this!”

“Hey misters” said the little girl “Why don’t you take a break and …”

“Shut up!” Said the two men in unison.

The bald one took out a parchment from a still intact pocket (how?) and started reading from it.

There was a brief pulse of energy in the air that expanded, just enough to cover the area between Umpire Rock and Hernshead area.

The little girl’s eyes glazed over, and she shrugged and walked away, the two men having resumed decking each other in their faces.

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

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