It only took Athvor a moment to get his priorities strait. He joined Eeno in the cleanup effort. It was not right leaving all these bodies to decompose for all to see. Not only would it smell but it would cause the land to die with disease.

Together they sorted through the bodies. They stacked all the evil creatures into several piles, lighting them on fire when they felt they could not stack them any higher. There seemed to be no end to these creatures. Whenever they thought they had found them all a new set of bodies would appear out of nowhere. There must have been over one hundred thousand total.

As they sorted through they did find a great number of STEEL children. There were several times that Athvor would recognize them and shed a tear. He created a burial plot on the edge of the battlefield next to a green patch of forest where everything had not died. A small stream ran through the area. It would have been beautiful if it had not been for all the destruction next to it.

He buried the STEEL children one by one, memorializing them the same way he memorialized Junis. If he knew their name he would write it in the hardened stone top. If he didn’t know the STEEL child, he still wrote “Blessed Child of STEEL” on the stone.

Athvor could not believe what he was seeing. He knew that this battle was going to be a brutal one, but He never imagined that it would be like this. There was so much death. There was so much damage to the world around them. All life had been extinguished. There was not a living soul on the battlefield. There was not a living tree or even a balde of grass. He didn’t even see scavengers out looking for a quick and easy meal. He figured he would have seen a small band of vultures picking at the brains of some poor creature who had its head bashed in.

“I’m not sure what to think.” Athvor scratched his head the edge of his wing. “Did we win?”

“Eeno think… nobody win” Eeno stepped forward towards the closest dead bodies.

Together they looked around. The more they searched, the more they realized that there were a whole lot more of dead evil creatures than there were dead STEEL children.

“Eeno think…. Eeno think we need give proper burial. Eeno no like all this death.” He grabbed the ankle of the closest creature and dragged it to another, stacking them in no particular order. He grabbed another and continued to stack. Evil creature after evil creature was added to the pile. After he got a good hundred foot area cleared of bodies, he let out a small burst of flame, setting the bodies on fire.

Athvor was knocked out of his amazement by Eeno’s little burst of fire. It hadn’t occurred to him that Eeno was a dragon, therefore, could breathe fire.

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The battlefield was covered with bodies. The ground was completely covered, if not with bodies, with blood from all the carnage. The STEEL children had done a great work there that day. Athvor was sure of that. There was just a lot of death that went along with the victory. One could not think of all the death without thinking about how many families were now without fathers, sons, uncles, friends.

He tried to count the dead from where they stood; even a rough guestimate would be enough to tell others he came in contact with. The only problem was that he had no clue if Verlor had been killed. He figured he would be able to find that small information out pretty easily. All he had to do was ask a few of the locals. If they were followers of the STEEL children they would most likely be spreading the news of Verlor’s death as fast and the spoken word could travel. The opposite would also be true. If they were followers of Verlor, they would be overjoyed by the defeat of the STEEL children.

Athvor continued to look down at the hundreds of thousands of bodies. They were mounded up in places. There were huge scorch marks where he had fought side by side with his friend. The most unusual thing about the battlefield was the two giant craters in the center of the field. It was almost as if this battle was put to an end by two meteors flying through the atmosphere and landing on ground zero of this battle. The bodies stopped at the edges of these craters and the inside of each of them were covered in ash.

The burial was short for a Rodlum burial. Athvor wished he could have done more. He wished he knew how to conduct some of the ceremonies that Junis’ family would cave conducted if they were there. He just didn’t have the supplies or the knowledge to conduct those traditions.

Athvor and Eeno walked together through the woods towards the rising smoke in the distance. They didn’t have a sense of urgency to get to the battle zone. Athvor had done his share of fighting and he didn’t know if he would be able to fight, not to the point where he would not allow himself to get killed. If they were in any kind of hurry Athvor would have flown.

It took them several hours to reach the battle zone. There was a little talking, talking about Junis and stories of their life together. They talked about Eeno and his experiences with death and how he lost his beautiful wife. Most of the trip was quiet, the two new friends listening to the sounds of the forest.

Several hours passed and the sun began to set. The sky shone in multiple shades of yellows, red, and orange through the branches of the canopy. The sun had met the horizon when the two dragons came to the edge of the forest. The battlefield opened up to them. Both of them stood silent for a long while, their mouthed hung open with shock. What they saw was heart wrenching.

“You should say words” Eeno said as they stood over the freshly covered grave.

There was a low grunt from Athvor. It was obvious that he didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to remember his friend. Eeno didn’t push the subject any further.

Athvor stood up on all fours and took in a deep breath. Eeno stepped back a bit. He knew that there was going to be some great gesture and he didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire. Athvor breathed a extra hot flame against the clay packed soil. Within moments the ground melted and melded together glowing red. He pointed with one claw and wrote several words into the molten clay.

After writing a few heart felt words, he wiped his claw against the scales on his hip, knocking off the cooling stone from his talon. The scales around his claw was singed and would probably hurt for several days, but that was a small price to pay to memorialize his friend.

The glow of the hot clay subsided slowly. There were several cracks that shot across the newly formed stone because it didn’t cool evenly, but the words were still clearly visible. Eeno read what his new partner wrote about the great warrior. This is what it said:

Athvor had forgotten that he had dropped Junis. It wasn’t ‘til he smelled his friends body in the forest that he remembered. He has dropped his friend from several thousand feet up. There was not going to be anything pretty left of his body, that is if the scavengers had not picked his bones clean before now.

“Junis is around here somewhere. He needs a proper burial.” Eeno agreed in silence. He knew that there was no need to share any kind of sympathy/. It would not have helped. He just wanted to help his new friend. He stood on the big dragon’s back and started looking around. By this time he had picked up the rotting stench of the body. It was close, very close.

“Up there.” Eeno pointed. Athvor looked back at Eeno for a moment then up into the trees. He was hanging upside down, his ankle caught between a couple of branches. There was a buzzard perched on a nearby branch. One of its talons were gripping into his side while it gorged itself on Junis’ guts. Several other buzzards were looking for a way to get in on the feast.

An anger filled rawr came from deep within Athvor. Eeno was forced to jump to the nearest tree as Athvor’s wings opened and he flew at the buzzards. They scattered quickly as Athvor’s talons grabbed hold of the tree trunk. He grabbed hold of the branches that entrapped his friend, then lowered him gently to the ground.