Introduction:
Merry christmas and happy holidays ash. This is my christmas present to you. As you know I am using your poem for the basis of this chapter so all credit goes to you. I hope you have a great christmas and a happy and good new year.

Hair billowing in the wind
The curls as red as a scarlet sky
The eyes as blue as a lonely pond
Her bone white feet thread the earth as lightly as the ghost of the past
The ends of her skirt swishes like leaves in the wind
Oh if beauty was personified
If perfection existed
I'd be convinced she was real
The shape of her face
the colour of her skin
Perfectly suited for the burgundy locks behind her head
Oh how speechless I get
When I see the strands that glow like rubies in the dark

~Ash.

Heavy is the armour weighing me down inside of the mud that has turned into the colour of crimson, the colour of suffering, the colour of death. The blackness of the red concerns me as my head gets heavier with every step I try to take, my blue cape drags me back again into the blood of my friends. The scarlet staining my hands and the blue of my flag, the blood staining my ego and my pride. The red flowing from my stomach can no longer be stopped by my hand as the blood slowly turns cold in the merciless wind of the woods. Tugging onto my hair and clothes as to tell me something. I close my eyes and take off the crown that weighs my head down and remember the first time I ever saw a fox, it was stuck in the my father had set for bears. Its desperate squeels were only overshadowed by its agression once I came closer to him in order to free him. My father ordered me to leave the innocent animal there, that night I returned to the spot. I still knew mercy, I still knew humanity. But the Animal was gone, it had gnawed its own leg off, just to free himself of the trap. A fox, a clever beast, but his hunger for survival was bigger. I take a deep breath and unlocks the hinge of my leg armour and take out the bloody leg, The sharp pain is dulled by the fact that I can see a prospect of myself alive in the future. The rush shivers through my body as I try to get a grip on the snow covered ground in front of me. Chew through your bone now, small fox.....

With a muffled exclamation of pain and strife I manage to get myself onto the frozen solid land. Trembling of the cold and unknown I stand up, I can hear the battlecries of my soldiers, my father, my brother, all doomed to die in an ambush like this. As the red fluid escapes my mouth and abdomen I decide to try one last time, my bare feet make no noise in the snow as I stumble forward falling down and staining the snow, infecting it with the awful red of reality.
"I will not abandon you father, I will not forsake you brother." I sigh.
I lean against a tree as I try to keep myself standing, the lake in front of me is stained by blood of both the guilty and innocent. And on the side of that lake A woman is washing her clothes, her dress as blue as a nightsky, her hair as long as a human life, and red as blood and the scarlet sky inflicting our doom, her bare feet white as bone.

"My lady," I stumble as I walk towards her, the pain paralysed by surprise. "You must leave this place at once. You will not get out of this alive."
"I have been waiting for you Cinéad." She says, turning around as I meet her eyes that are as blue and deep as the lonely pond where narcissus fell in love with himself.
"How.... do you know my name?"
"It is your time to follow Cinéad." She says walking into the water, her voice humming as a bird in the spring.
"Follow where? I don't understand, madam, they'll kill you!" I scream but she keeps walking till she is fully submerged into the red lake. I let a tear flow before I jump into the icy water, shocking my body as if I am falling onto hard ground. I open my eyes, I have fallen onto hard ground.

I look up, the grey landscape is nothing like the place we had just been. The snow has melted, there is no lake and there is only grey dust, ashes, and barren trees. The ghostly woman is standing in front of me, looking into the distance as her dress dances on the wind like leaves are supposed to in auttumn. The only way she could possibly be real would be if there would be something like perfection in this world, and regretfully Cínead knows better as he look at the imgaginative wasteland. Flags and old armours are rusting in the moist mud of the world that not is. The soldier and prince tilts his head, choking on his own oxygen.
"Who are you?" He asks as he coughss through his confusion.
"I have no name to you yet." The woman says, her burgundry locks obscuring her porcelain face sculpted out of marble.
"Where am I?"
"The place prompting you too many questions..." She says as she stares into the distance.
"I am dead aren't I.... Is this hell?" He asks his heavy eyelids causing his eyes to revert to looking at the sky as his whole stomach churns in pain and agony.
"You do not deserve hell, little orpheus.... But you haven't made the journey to the paradise yet."

He breathes out and kneels in the muds and slowly puts down his exhausted body. His fingers dig into the fresh mud, expexting the blood of the people he led into their death, his frail body disagreeing with his death as it is still just as exhausted as it was before.
"The sun is waiting for you in paradise, a healthy body is waiting..." She says as she kneels in front of him, her blue lips speaking softly as the wind. She puts her warm hand on his face to wipe away the tear on his face. "Stand up, soldier and fight your last battle.... cross this wasteland, many less experienced warriors have done so before you. Do not let down your honour in your last piece of life."
He looks at her eyes mimicking the movements of the ocean and pushes himself up.
"One wasteland cannot harm me... especially now that my body has left me already."

The wasteland could not described as a wasteland. The way she walks in beauty through the thorns along the road, her feet staining the ground with blood that will cause poppies to grow. he path of thorns slows down Cínead as it reminds him of the time he tried to get one out of his brother's foot when he was young. He feels the sting of the same thorn in his heart as he wonders how to explain to that innocent face that he will never return.
"Hurry up, this path is almost done." she says as she starts to run, her silken hair getting caught in the thorns but not slowing her down.
The breath escaping Cíneads mouth as he cannot keep up with the nymph that seems to be lighter than the air and he falls onto his knees. His breath shaky as the thorns pry into his knees as his eyes release despair and his voice screams for her to slow down.  He looks back and sees as the path lights itself on fire, he pushes himself up and sighs as he numbs his feet till the pain the the possibility of paradise weighs heavier than the reality.

he arrives at the end of the path, there's a cliff, and a tree used as a bridge, the beautiful woman is standing at the other side.
"Come, you'll be able to rest here."
The soldier sighs and steps on the creaking tree, no longer worrying about the possibility of a disaster. Because what would happen? There is nothing that could be worse right now. He steps onto the same land as the woman who wraps him in a blanket as they walk to the river near them. He listens to the trickling of the water and closes his eyes as he leans on her shoulder. 

"I know who you are.... You are Morrigan. Violent death."
"I much prefer death." She says as she stares into space. Her hands folded into her lap.
"You remind me of guinevere.... and you are courageous." He tells her as he looks at his sword.
"You remind me of my brother." Morrigan says as she smiles and stands up. "We need to keep going, otherwise we will be late."

A wasteland, a torture, heat to cold, happiness by the campfire to crying on the ground as he believes he is dying again. The solitude would have made him insane if he hadn't had the loving and kind embrace of morrigan, the beautiful godess has come to enjoy the company of the clueless mortal.

And eventually they step into a world filled with snow, the whiteness smothered by the red blood that has been spilled. This is where his death has started, this is where his death will end. The golden portal opening in front of him.
"Will you come with me Morrigan?" He questions as he looks at the portal, frightened of the next step.
"I can't I am not welcome there Cínead." She says as she looks at the portal.
He turns around, exhausted and in pain from the journey. "Then let me stay here." he says but she touches his forehead with hers and he starts to float towards the golden portal.
"Death must always be merciful...." She whispers as he reaches her hand to the mortal floating away from here, the first mortal that has ever been more than that. The first mortal that has seen her as more than a godess. As more than a guide, as a friend. As someone to get to know, rather than to use. 

"I'll miss you" He screams as he disappears into the golden glow.
"You won't I promise" She answers, her first real tears running down her face.

But it changes nothing, as her heart breaks the world marches on and kills more soldiers. More quickly and effieciently year by year by year nothing is different. These soldiers wanted to fight for their country, or they didn't but they all end up in morrigan's hands. It does not matter what a war is for, it is not something that must be known to humankind. It drives us to the force of creation and back, destruction will always be in our own hands from now on as soon as the first sword swings, the first bullet hits, the first bomb falls. Abandon all hope he who is born.

And because of us Morrigan shall stay in her place. And she will do this hundred times and every time they will miss her, and every time they don't. And hundreds years she sits at the portal, hopeful one will remember her. And hundreds of years a new soldier arrive, newer armour, deadlier weapons, and younger faces.

"Morrigan?" A voice whispers. She looks up and a radiating body steps out of the portals. His golden hair has grown but his face has not changes at all as he wears the white dress.
"Cínead.... you remembered after all those years you remembered."
"If you watch over someone for hundred years you do not have to remember them to know them. I cannot be a coward once more. You are the reason I am here, and I have chosen that I cannot live in a world where you are not welcome too. And so I will stay by your side Cínead." He says as his Godlike form embraces her. Staying there to guide people like him to the end, where they deserve, where they will be whole. But does it change anything about reality......