Child's Play

The parched and thirsty ground drank
their sweat, their tears, their blood.
Beaten backward, the leftmost flank
allowed the enemy, rank on rank,
to pour about them like a flood.

Crackling in their midst, with a thud,
Warmage Alexos stabbed and smashed.
Wading through the hellish mud,
he made the enemy turn and scud.
His singing blade through them slashed.

To meet him, a fell champion bashed
through the chaff flowing away.
To left, to right, his hammer crashed,
while from his eyes a red light flashed;
from hands, dark powers to rend and flay.

The looming combat held sway
o’er those in safety and in peril -
breathless. The fate of the day -
hanging - who would die, who would slay?
The sun, the clouds, the wind, stood still.

Both demon and mage felt the thrill
of gamblers laying cards all-in.
Experts in war, in the art of the kill,
they fought each other on that hill,
“Alex, come down to the kitchen!”

Alex
quickly
scrambled
dinner-ward.
Tossed about,
the toys lay,
patiently,
to play.

Most of my poems have been built on something like the Old English alliterative style, but I decided with this to follow something like what Robert Frost did in The Road Not Taken and Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening.

Thanks to @geekorner for his comments and critiques.

Thanks to the Isle of Write for a place to talk about writing and improve.

Recent works:

Home for Christmas
Going (?) Mad
Endeavor

art courtesy of @PegasusPhysics

Image Source