The edge of a sword glints as moonlight shines on its blade, with dexterous movements it dances throgh the air and lodges itself in the neck of a soldier.
A sharp sound and a short scream of pain escape the man before falling down knowing that death is now coming for him, but the culprit cannot rest as two more armored enemies appear from behind the dead man: he deflects a downward swing from the first one before dodging a thrust from the second, while trying to get back into his stance an impact hits him as the man he dodged shoulder bashes him using the momentum from his thrust.
The man, now unbalanced falls to the ground and gives the enemy's sword one last glance before darkness takes his vision, as the body stops moving, the soldier slides the sword out of the corpse and joins his companion in another fight.
All around are similar images: swords clashing together, parrying, deflecting, screaming, shouting, crying, people falling, dying, hundreds upon hundreds of lives getting extinguished, bodies getting maimed as the soil wets itself in their blood and sweat.
Chaos? Madness? No, a war is being fought: two kingdoms are facing each other in this battlefield, but swords and armor are not their only weapon.
"Mages! They're preparing for an attack!"
"Everyone, anti-magic formation, NOW!"
A squadron of soldiers huddles together, prop up their shields and some unarmored people appear in various points of the formation pointing hands or staves in the air and reciting words of unknown meaning. Meanwhile on the opposite side the opposing soldiers open their lines revealing a group of robe wearing men with a strange glowing circle formed by letters with no apparent meaning made by what appears to be light in front of them:
"...□◇▪■■○●●□○■!"
A jumble of sounds escape their mouths and for every sound a new symbol appears on the circle before suddently collapsing in itself and exploding into a ball of fire, flying at the defending party. A similar thing happens there as a number of "magic circles" collapse on themselves before expanding into globes of semi-visible light encapsulating the formation. The two phenomena collide resulting in an even bigger explosion of fire, but the soldiers are undamaged inside the globe and start to once again march forward.
Giving orders to these two fronts are incredibly talented strategists and commanders: while hundreds of people were dying in the battlefield, both managed to contain the casualties, the war was still far from ending and both of them knew that to win this fight they needed to outsmart the enemy only once, only one move was necessary, one move that the other couldn't predict, a move that would throw into disarray all of the enemy plans, one move... That never happened.
Still.
No movements, no sounds, no life: the war was over.
But there was no winner, why?
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Because there were no survivors, nothing was alive anymore, the hundreds of corpses were now thousands upon thousands, the battlefield was now a graveyard, no, a corpse dump, the encampments were full of dead bodies.
Many were maimed or hacked by swords or other tools but others had nothing but a terrified expression or worst of all nothing at all on them anymore: some were ruined to the point of being unable to describe them, skinless bodies where the skin had been flawlessly taken away, human skeletons totally cleaned of any flesh or gore, inside-out corpses... but none of them had any sign of tools or instrument used on them, nor any sing of struggle, every one of these unusual deaths was "clean".
Months passed in this forsaken graveyard and something strange was now happening once again: over the time countless souls passed on, but some stayed, clinging to life, afraid of something.
They encountered each other, sometimes fought out of fear, sometimes allying with another hoping for something, no matter the reason these lost souls got together... And started to lose their forms, they started to fade.
Each passing day their forms became less and less clear and with this phenomenon becoming more and more visible, so too, grew their fears.
Screams, shouts and cries once again filled this cursed, dead battlefield:
"No!" "I don't want to die!" "Please, no, have mercy!"
"Aaaaaaargh!" "I don't want to meet that again!" "HE LIGHT, NOT THE LIGHT, NOT THE LIGHT NOT T"
"It's the end, it's the end..." "No, no, no, no, no, no..."
"Please, I want to live!" "He's waiting for us, he's waiting for us"
"I want to wake up, this is just a nightmare, please, let me wake up, let me wake up, let me wAKE UP, LET ME W"
A beautiful full moon surrounded by millions of stars and a clear sky, that was the scenery that unfolded before his eyes as he woke up.
That, what is that? It's... shining... Shining? What does that mean? What am I saying? What do these words mean? Words? ...Yes, these are called words, why do I know that? Why do I know this? Why do I know what I know?
Questions upon questions were being created inside his mind, what seemed like an eternity passed before he answered what he knew about what he saw, and even longer passed before he decided to stand up... slowly and carefully.
Rotting, decomposing, sometimes limbless or ruined corpses littered the ground, bodies bloated with and filled with maggots, getting devoured by fungi, ravens or liquefying, the muddy soil absorbed so much blood it was now black, a horrifying sight, enough to traumatize even the most seasoned of the veterans.
These... Men... These are called soldiers... Their purpose... Is to fight.
Purpose... A reason, a goal, something to do, achieve, reach...
What is my purpose? Am I a soldier? These soldiers are called "humans", I'm not called "humans"... What is my name?
No, not name... The word is "race", am I a "humans"?
The creature looked at one of the less ruined corpse and looked at its hand: bones, nothing but bones, a bit reddish brown, dirtied from the soil and gore where it woke up, but compared to the still fleshy albeit decomposing human in front of it, it was definetly not human.
No, different, not humans, so not a soldier, what is my purpose then? What do I do?
I know words, but many I do not remember, I know meanings, but many I do not understand, I do not know where I am, I do not know what I am, I... I...
Strange lights similar to small flames lit up in the skeleton's eye sockets as he opened its mouth and a mix of sounds, cold and seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere started talking in unison.
"I want to know"