And just like that, it is over.<br/><br/>The last arrow flies from my bow and strikes true.  The last opponent merges into the fuming muck of the moor.  The last line in this engagement is written:  We won.<br/><br/>Though of course, it is never really over.  Though, certainly, there are other opponents on their way - the rest of the column of raiders, making haste to this location in their formidable ranks.<br/><br/>Though we have many, many opportunities in the future to miss.  And we know it.  Still, end the story here, and we won.<br/><br/>Marius already has his bow aimed at our left flank - a treeline, furry with moss and warped wet and lean - ready for any enemy elements following close behind the vanguard.  As far as he is concerned, the battle is not over.  The battle never ends for him.  I suspect that as much as it pains him, the times between violence have become like the scenes left unwritten between chapters - the parts edited out as irrelevant, or too dull, or even nonsensical in light of the larger narrative's theme.<br/><br/>I suspect, as far as he is concerned, we are still fighting.<br/><br/>But the lads are grinning bitterly at each other, and breathing in that crazy quick way that adrenaline spurs the lungs into breathing.  Amara is not much calmer; her excitement has made her glassy, polished her past gleaming, past features, into a brilliant translucency.  Best to sustain that excitement - bright and brittle, she may crack a bit after she drops from the heights she is gliding at now.<br/><br/>I take hold of her shoulder and begin to move her into the bog.  The lads follow, and Marius silently, smoothly locks into the rear guard position.  We slip into place like steel bearings, only the tar of the swamp's environs making us seem at all ungainly.<br/><br/>As we proceed along, deeper into the bog in the hopes of finding another good locale to ambush the returning raiders, more of this land's story exposes itself.  It informs me of another narrative here; one that had an ending more glorious than any kingdom I have ever conceived of.  It tells me in gilt lettering - it insists - if the story had just been over as soon as its inscription was written, the world would have forever been heaven:<br/><br/>This dislodged chunk of story heaves like a rotting canine tooth out of the black milk of the bog.  It is hewn of a stone that resembles bronze, but that has an eerie, internal radiance to it - like the flesh of the earth with an eternal fever.  And onto its long, jagged shape is carved a kaleidoscopic spray of hieroglyphs and short, fine, insectile slashes.  Spirals of half-formed pictograms are tossed in the spindly fingers of this alien cuneiform, surrounding ghastly tableaus rendered in incomparably detailed relief that show lusty chimerae tumbling with half-human figures.  It emanates an alien aspect in every detail, as if the most basic of its creator's strokes would not be the first angle attempted by a mortal mind.  It aches with an inner energy long ago shattered, corrupted.<br/><br/>It is glorious.  And I stare at its soaring, seemingly endless writing and images as they sweep nearly twenty feet along the mutilated column, and wonder at how much devotion it took to create such a thing.<br/><br/>It is glorious and horrible.  Horrible to think that the bog is where it now dwells.  Horrible to consider how that might have twisted it.<br/><br/>Horrible most to realize how its creators could never have conceived such a tragic outcome for it.<br/><br/>The lags shuffle and mutter.  "We best go back," Parzi says.<br/><br/>"This is ... We need ..." Liam says.<br/><br/>"We shouldn't be here." Parzi says.<br/><br/>And suddenly the story is not of the young peasant guides who slew the monster.  Not about the two manly lads saving the little princess.  Not about cloth of gold and magic bows and cheering townspeople.<br/><br/>The lads look along with me at the column and realize they are not in a folk tale - not in that kind of a story at all.  They look at script impossibly elaborate, incomparably old, suggestive of all manner of madness and power, and they find themselves reading another story.  A horror story.  They can hardly breathe.<br/><br/>Amara fares little better, as I hear her hiss behind me.  It sounds like deep abominal cramps.  I will have to turn around and see what's afflicting her belly so.  I will have to ask if looking at the column's uncanny writing and lasciviously blasphemous scenes inspired it.  I will have to ask her what the story is.<br/><br/>But now I hear a drum beat bubbling up as one from all around the bog.  And the air is seeming to thicken, to swell, as though brewing black blood were infusing it like erectile tissue.  And the water is still, but the mist is gathering, and I can hear Marius' bow drawing back, but everywhere the mist charges in seems a target.  And the beat is felt buzzing in the blood, percolating through the bones, rising, rising. Boom.  BOOM.<strong>BOOM.</strong><br/><br/>And it smells like ozone.<br/><br/><strong>BOOM.</strong><br/><br/>And it smells like horse sex.<br/><br/><strong>BOOM.</strong><br/><br/>And I hear one of the lads whimper, and Marius is noticing Amara having some manner of spell, and the other boy smells the air and whines, "I think we should go<em>now</em>."<br/><br/><strong>BOOM.</strong><br/><br/>And I reflect that every story has a happy ending, so long as you decide when it's over.  And then ...