I've scrapped half of what I had before; only the first sample here remains, though I've made minor edits. I'll see if I can bring it into line from there. Here's what's left of the original stuff I wrote, which wasn't much anyway.
Rebooted Count: 426 wordsSunlight slanted from above, glinting off a thousand empty suits of armour. Dust floated in the air, gathered on cuirass and pauldrons, shield and vambrace. A thousand helmets hung from wooden stands, a thousand shields stood propped against empty greaves. The ghosts of a thousand warriors hung there, enshrined in steel; each suit a life lost, each shield a memorial.
The dust, hung suspended, now stirred as ripples and eddies swirled outward, the serene quiet shattered by the thud of boots. The last of them strode into the stillness, between the ranks of his forebears. From the oldest of them, torn and battle-scarred under their grimy shroud, he passed forward through history. Their aspect changed as the years pass by; marks of battle gave way to signs of decadence, to gilt and polish, epaulets and engravings. The hall's central rows were filled with ceremonial attire.
The survivor paid no heed to the past that surrounded him; he moved on, head high, face forward, toward the present. Around him gilt faded, engravings became less elaborate—ceremony set aside as the twilight years approach. Grey streaked his temples, like the last clinging fragment of a youth long past—the rest of his hair was white as fresh snow.
The final rows were plain, but possessed of a simple elegance in design: these were items of beauty, products of skillful craftsmanship, and needed no baubles. Here the present approached; here he belonged. In the final row before the dais, a space remained for him. There he stopped, and, history behind him, his past at both sides, he knelt. Before him, his life: the dais rose ten steps above the floor of the great hall, ten steps above ghosts and dust. Ten steps above history. Atop it, the throne that had overseen it all, the seat from which wars had been won and nations governed, the seat from which generations of kings had watched the hall fill with ghosts. Ten steps outside of time.
Long minutes passed, the silence setting once more onto the hall. Dust settled from the air onto the old knight's shoulders; his breath was the only sound.
“Tristram is dead.”
He raised his eyes to the source of the words; she sat the throne, cold and grey, her regal bearing unaltered by age. In the great setting of that ancient seat, she seemed lost. “Yes, my Queen.”
Her dark eyes met his for a moment, then passed to the figures that filled the ranks around him. “Then we are all that is left.”
“Yes, my Queen.”
