Battle of Broken Stone

The wagons clacked, clanked, and gargled. Hungry for death, blood, and glory. Covered with spears, cannons, pikes, and trebuchets. Weighed down so that their wheels stuck in the muck, churning in the rain. Dwarven built and dwarven made, the dwarves were leading the charge. It was to be the final day of the Briar Matrons rule.

“Something is wrong…” Snow White grasped Septimus by his collar. The short squat dwarven man brushed her hand away with his own grizzled paw.

“Yey, tis. The signs bode ill of our chances. The hills sing of betrayal. Though from who, I canna say.” His voice was like the rasp of a bagpipe, wizened, powerful, and occasionally even melodic. “Changes nothin’.”

“How can you say that? If the battle is already lost we need to away! Call back the battle weapons and the ogres. Tell the fae and the gnomes to hide! The mountain may not be a place we can sally to hence, but there are other places, other chances…” Snow White pleaded.

The Dark Queen and the Snow Queen’s forces were here in mass. The dwarven mountain hold would fall today, or it would break the back of the Briar Matrons’ forces. Jabberwocks bleated from across the foggy moor, men and horses had campfires and sung songs, the vampires and shades bobbed and floated in the dark, the Snow Queen’s magic had called a storm so terrible that even during the daylight the creatures of shadow would be able to approach.

“Who da ya think will be our downfall?” Septimus, leader of the Dwarven guild and the man who had organized most of the forces before them, took out his great pick. It had sat next to his desk for decades while he pushed paper, before that it had broken rocks for centuries, while he mined, and now it split skulls as easily as rocks. “Reckon the witches?”

“No… Yaga would never.” Snow White said softly, thinking about Yaga and the proud but few witches left after the purge. They were waiting in the swamps for a counter sortie.

“The goblins, mayhaps.” Snorted Septimus, taking a few moments to shout orders to some dwarven troops that were clearly too scared to be falling into line.

“They’ve lost even more than most, they have to know what this means…” Twisted, and often evil and mischievous, the goblins had still been purged, and were treated poorly in the few places they were allowed to stay.

“The gnomes then, can’t trust a short man.” Said Septimus, spitting into the swirling fog that twisted into gnarled terrifying shapes. As if telling the story of the battle to come.

“You’re short.” Snow White had to fight back the laugh even in this dark moment.

“And ya should not trust me, princess.” He said firmly, “The giants…” Septimus said, looking to the hills. “The hills would know the giants…”

“No, the Huntsman, I know him. He is a good and noble man, and he says--” She had the letter from him in her hand. The Huntsman that had refused to kill her when the Dark Queen had ordered it. The letter that told her how he was going to rally the Cloud Giants to join the battle and how it would turn the tide.

Her voice caught in her pale white throat, trapped like a rusty toy. The shadows that loomed along the Briar Maiden’s forces’ lines grew larger. “What is it, the Huntsman says?” Septimus asked, even as he knew what a giant looked like. Storm Giants, lining up against his forces.

“...that the giants will decide this battle.” Her voice was colder, and more broken than the freshly driven sleet.

“He is most probably right. Been some time since I’ve slain a giant.” He turned from Snow White and turned to his troops. His speech was shorter than he was. “WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?! DO YA ALL EXPECT A HAPPILY EVER AFTER?! WELL YA GOTTA DIE FOR THAT!” With that, Septimus charged into the fog.

Snow White saw the dwarven troops rushing the enemy line. The roar was almost enough to lift her spirits.

The first blow from the giants was enough to turn her blood to ice. The Huntsman had betrayed them, had betrayed her. If Septimus was right, and this was the final chance, the last chance, then…

Snow White charged into the fog after her mentor. The din of battle engulfed them all.

It would come to be known as the Battle of Broken Stone. The last stand of the First Rebellion, and the day that Septimus died.

---

“Nononono, we can find deeper caves where the muck won’t stick to us.”

“My back is broken.”

“We could hide on the ocean floor, below the octopus and the squid.”

“My bones shattered to pieces.”

“The fae woods, even with the witches routed we could- we must-”

“I am crushed and burned, by giant club and giant magick. I took his eye, though. He shall remember I took his eye.”

Septimus’ eyes did not shut, he was on his knees in the fog and the rain, but she could tell that he was gone. The blood pooling in the mud around him.

“We could escape into the sky. On the back of a flying turtle. My mother once told me of such things I…” She knew he could not hear her. She didn’t know why she gripped his pickaxe or what she was planning to do with it.

Then she heard the voices of the Snow Queen and the Dark Queen floating out of the corpses like a song.

“Oh, ho ho. Seems we have won.”

“We’ve broken the back of this rabble. What a bore that was.” 

“What shall we do next?”

“Whatever we want, sister.”

Covered in coated mud, her body stained with viscera, her clothes soaked in blood. Not a drop of her snow white skin was visible as she went screaming into the fog.

“Oh, another one!” The voice of the taller one with white skin, beautiful like broken glass, the Snow Queen.

“Let’s do one last curse, just for fun, shall we? Something big!” said the other one.

Snow White knew her. Dark and terrible, vain. The woman who had kicked her out of her home. Before the pick’s blade could get near either of their horrible faces, magic of blinding dark and freezing cold hit her.

“Little waif of a thing, probably some dwarven trollop.” The Dark Queen said, not even bothering to gaze at her work as she and her sister left the battlefield, still gossiping like marketplace hagglers.

--

The curse was simple, a final memorial to the battle. The charging woman had been trapped in a glass coffin. Neither alive or dead, gripping Septimus’s pick. Her face frozen in rage.

Those that survived the battle would come once a year and lay roses down in front of her magically sealed coffin. Yet no weapon, spell, or charm seemed able to open it.