“YOU’RE JOKING, RIGHT?” I SAY WRINKLING MY NOSE.

HE SHAKES HIS HEAD. I MAKE A FACE. The campfire casts an orangish glow on Zak’s face. He chuckles. I set my plate on the ground. Zak studies me.

“Why don’t you tell us your story, princess? What are you doing here?”

I drop my smile. All eyes are on me. Recollections hurtle through my mind, but I force them aside. What can I tell them? Unquestionably not the truth. Why am I now a soldier in one of the mightiest armies in the country throughout the midst of a war? Fighting alongside my former enemies? My mouth remains shut.

“Excuse me,” I eventually say, standing up.

I hurry away, brushing a tear from my cheek. Don’t cry, I tell myself, No one needs to know what happened. You can just forget it. I know it’s not true. I cannot neglect my past, no matter how much I want to. I can hear footfalls behind me. I walk briskly, but Zak’s hand turns me around.

“Darsal, I’m sorry. I—I know how it is to have a hard past,” he whispers.

He seems nice enough, but I’m not looking for sympathy. I wish I had never gone to dinner. The topic itself seemed innocent enough, but my Before perpetually seems to end up putting me in a tight spot. It’s no one’s business about my Before or anything before entering the army.

I look back at Zak. He is standing in the camouflage of darkness, looking at me with an expression I hope I’m only imagining—knowing.

No, it’s impossible. He can’t possibly know. Not about—not about the Guardians, right? I must imagine everything. He’s just attempting to help a friend. Or does he know...

I brush it off. He’s trying to help, but it’s not working. I wipe another tear before he can see it. I can scarcely see his face in the gloom. I turn away from him.

“Not half as hard as you think it can be,” I snap.

“Darsal,” he says pleadingly.

I stop walking and turn. I’ve lost the bite in my voice.

“Zak, do you know what it is to have everything you once believed in, broken in a matter of moments? To not be able to believe in anything anymore for the fear of the world turning on you?” I pause for a moment.

He says nothing.

“Good night, Zak,” I finally whisper, before walking into the girl’s tent.

The moment I step inside, I can’t stop myself. I know he’s still outside, but I can’t hold back the tears any longer. They stain my face as I haul myself up onto my bunk. I remove a folded-up sketch from under my shirt. I unfold it.

In it are three people. The tallest is a woman in leather battle gear. She has long straight, dark hair, pulled up into a ponytail. She has an attractive face, lightened up by a smile.

An arm is around a pretty young girl with light-coloured hair. The girl appears to be four or five years old. She wears a simple white dress, tied at the waist with a piece of fabric. The third is a woman who looks very much like the other two. She seems to be in her mid-teens. She has long, straight hair, a lightish colour, pulled back from her face. She's dressed in the same thing as the young girl, a knife strapped to her arm. A smile illuminates her face. She appears happy and confident. The girl that everyone gravitates to. Her happiness is contagious.

All three seem to be truly happy, arms around each other. I wipe the last traces of any tears. I smirk, eyes lingering on the picture of my little sister Carrie. It fades when I see the oldest woman, my mother. She seems so content as if it hadn’t crossed her mind that she’d disappear, deserting her children and making them orphans. The third one, well, that’s me — me before my life was about to change forever. Me before I forgot how it felt to be genuinely happy. Me when I was a content and innocent woman. Before I had seen traumatizing things. The former me. The forgotten one. I’d lost her forever.

I nearly scream when a head shows above the bunk bed rail. I put the sketch away before anyone can see it. The face staring back at me is one I’ve never seen before; a young woman. She has straight blond hair and blue eyes and a scar running across her neck. She gives me a shy smile. She appears much younger than anyone else in the army, approximately my age.

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“Are you okay?” she murmurs, even though there isn’t anyone here.

“Yeah, just, uh, some old memories. I’m fine,” I say.

She looks at me quizzically for a moment.

“Are you new?” I ask.

Sarah, a woman in her thirties, recently passed away in battle. They must have found someone else. The girl nods before asking me a random question.

“Where are you from?” she mumbles.

“Nowhere important. Just a small town. You? North?”

She shakes her head. I hesitate. If she isn’t from the North, where is she from? North is where 99% of our soldiers, the Scriptios, originate from. East is miles upon miles of desert, and the West is nothing but trees going on forever.

After I ran away from home, I lived in the Western Forests for six months. Every night, I would change where I slept. After a while, I got to know the forest well. I would have known if there was an unknown village. The only other direction is South, and to my knowledge, I am the only one in the army who has lived there.

The Guardians. I was born and raised there before I ran away. We’re at war with the Guardians. From what I’ve been told, the Guardians and Scriptios have been at war for the past 15 years. Our general claims they trespassed the Scriptios, taking their wives and children. After my mother embarked on her clandestine mission for the Guardians, out in the East, I left too, in the opposite direction.

“I’m Kyla. I’m guessing you’re Darsal,” she says with a small smile.

***

The days pass on slowly. Zak has vanished without a trace. There are rumours of where he’s gone, but I don’t seem to believe in any of them.

The Guardians have been doing well; many of the Scriptios have fallen. I cannot grasp whether that’s good. I know one thing for sure: I can’t seem to kill any of them. Sure they’re good, but that’s not what I mean. I just can’t bring myself to do it.

***

I’m submerged in the sound of metal colliding with metal. All I can discern is the black leather battle gear of the Scriptios and the leather of the Guardians. I smack my adversary on the temple. He collapses on the grass, unconscious.

I head to the edge of the battlefield. I can hear my team getting called to return to camp, a new one coming to replace us. I try to dodge a man surging towards me. He isn’t wearing a helmet so I can see the familiar face. It's Black, the butcher.

Back with the Guardians, Black is the town butcher, and one of my mother’s old friends—well, before. Before I messed everything up even more. But everything in my Before seemed to have gone wrong.

When I was young, Black was like the father I never had. He would stop in frequently and give me a hand with anything I was doing while my mother was on the battlefield. Black would encourage me with school, cooking, and would sometimes generously slip extra meat, even though my mother would often advise him otherwise. Give him anything heavy and he can knock you out. I remember skipping through the Guardian homes. I’d pick up my mother’s order, and he’d reward me with sausage.

“Darsal?” he asks as I realize I lost my helmet, “I thought you were dead.”

I stand stock-still in shock for a moment before I make myself catch up.

“I am,” is all I can say.

“Darsal, why did you leave?” he says, hitting me with the flat of his blade.

His voice echoes concern. I attempt to block it out. No, they’re the bad guys. Bad, bad, bad attempting to convince myself more than anyone.

“Stop saying my name like that,” I say, trying to evade the question before giving in, “They sent Ma on a suicide mission. They wanted her dead. They want me dead,”

“No, kiddo, listen. When she failed to return, they sent searching parties. They searched for weeks! Darsal, they did everything they could,” Black says.

I know he’s going easy on me. I know he’s only trying to get a point across.

I clench my jaw, refusing to reply to Black.

“The Guardians know you’re here. If they wanted you dead, they’d have simply told your commander. They want you back, Darsal. What about Carrie?”

“Do not dare speak her name in front of me. Don’t you know I wanted to bring her with me? I love Carrie more than anyone in the world. More than all the Guardians put together. If she dies, I do too. You want me alive, you keep her alive,” I say between breaths.

Black has stopped swinging his sword at me. We have our weapons sheathed and we simply stand there in the middle of the battlefield. I hear it before I see it. A throwing knife. I see a Scriptio’s knife fly towards Black. Scriptios are bad with throwing knives, I know by experience, but it hits him square in the gut.

“NO!” I yell as loud as my voice allows. It echoes across the battlefield.

People stop and stare. My vision is tinted red, my throw knife has gone before I know what I’ve done. It hit the man who’d thrown it. I see it sink into him, leaving only the handle. Dead by Darsal.