It was the same trench. I now had confirmation. It had been a whole month, and the Lunists had changed the trench network to better suit their own tactics, but it was the same trench. For I found it once we retook for the third time.
It was crumpled, and my brother’s head had been ripped off alongside the upper left corner of the picture, but it was there. The picture we took when me and my brother volunteered for the defense of the Motherland.
We were all in front of a Great Market to purchase a few supplies before we went to war, alongside countless other Pilgrims. A collection of tents and temporary buildings built around a long abandoned mansion of the Previous Era, with dragons flying and equistilio milling in the background. And a sea of green uniforms…
My brother was now forever a headless giant, a vanguard of the family huddled together in the frame. We all were hugging each other in the image, my father trying to maintain a mask of stoicism and my mother barely holding back her tears long enough for the picture to be taken. Not my brother. He was almost an arm’s length from us, standing straight at his full incredible height, only holding a reassuring paw around both me and Mother. I struggled to remember what he looked like when we took the picture.
Neutral. Stoic. Strong.
As for me… Sapistia’s Library, was that me? That clean, handsome, excited young man. Was he only nine months younger than I? I looked into a cracked mirror shard for confirmation. I looked at the tired old man staring back. At the tired brown eyes, at the dirty white fur, at his spare underfed frame, at his quivering nose. It is not him. And it never shall be again. He died trying to save a babe from an artillery bombardment.
We’ve been at a deadlock for six months. They push, we push, and now it is an all-out stalemate. Maxim’s invention gave us a temporary reprieve, but it hasn’t taken the Lunists long to capture a machinegun and reverse-engineer it. Whispers say that it was Magisa, the twisted witches using the heathen power of the Dark to make the gunners’ own shadows strangle them. I’d have dismissed such rumors had I not seen it happen myself more than once…
Then, they took it one step further and they developed a lighter magazine fed version of the weapon that can be fired by one man while on the move, which proved devastating when paired with their high mobility tactics. Until Maxim came around with his own light machinegun, air-cooled and with a 47-round pan-shaped top mounted magazine. Apparently, he’d worked on it in parallel to his main machinegun, which was thankfully why it was able to be pressed into service this quickly, but procurement had initially rejected it, citing that such a weapon would be pointless, as suppressive fire is “only efficient from an emplaced position.”
Me and Skad agreed that if we win (Skad says ‘when’), we shall execute the entire fucking procurement office with Lunist LMGs that slaughtered so many of us.
We’ve been here so long, we settled into a sort of routine. First there’s shelling, the man you had coffee and exchanged jokes with covering you in his own entrails as they explode onto you. If he’s lucky, that’s the end of him. If not, then get good at ignoring his pleas and cries as he struggles to crawl with his broken body, and do what you have to. Then, they charge. The lightless bastards adapted to machinegun tactics shockingly fast. They split up into small squads, suppress us back using their LMGs, use smoke shells and flares to cover their advance and descend into the trench exactly where it’s least defended. Every day we push them back, just barely, but every day more of us fall. These are not the Second Army conscripts. These are the Eclipse Empire’s First Army. The tip of their spear. Professional soldiers, not conscripts.
We’ve received fresh troops two months ago. Troops… they’re barely teenagers. Wide-eyed, grinning children who seem to think they’ve arrived on some great game of capture the flag. We’re fighting well-trained, motivated, hardened soldiers, and we receive the gehling school carriage with six weeks of basic training.
Thankfully, they were quickly educated. Their first shelling and subsequent trench raid had shattered any illusion that they would be storybook protagonists. I watched one of them, a short lynx who cut his final year of high school short to join the war, get thrown into the trench wall by a massive dire wolf, the Lunist drawing his Messer dagger with glee. I was pushing a Lunist rifle off my neck and could not help, but turns out I needn’t. Screaming in terror the entire time, the recruit grabbed a rock and uppercutted it inbetween the wretch’s legs. He then descended upon the giant canine, striking the rock into his face. Then again. And again. And again. And again even after all that was left was a mess of bone and raw meat.
He spent the rest of the attack catatonic and we weren’t able to get a word out of him for three days, but I admired him nonetheless.
Oh, but how they admire us. The new ones look upon us like we’re demigods immune to emotions or injuries affecting regular mammals, simply because it takes us a minute longer to become screaming, sobbing messes beneath artillery fire, gas attacks and relentless trench raids.
Out of all the things I thought I’d detest the most in war, waiting was not what I’d thought of. Yet waiting, and its insidious brother, starvation, are two enemies one cannot defend from. A Lunist bayonet can be deflected, a grenade thrown back, even an artillery shell can be hidden from. But waiting has no defense. No response than to take it.
There’s days, weeks, once a whole month between each attack.
The vermin got into our food supply despite liberal application of rat poison. Hardly a bag of hardtack escaped untouched. Thankfully, the vermin make a decent alternative food source. Skad’s father was a butcher, and once you remove the intestines and stomach, carefully clean the carcass and slow roast it over an open fire, it’s actually safe to eat. Safer than the supplies they’ve infected.
We warned the children not to eat the infected rations, but they would not have it. They hadn’t gone a day without three meals, to them hunger was as foreign as knowing how to seal their masks during gas attacks or where to shelter during shelling, and ten times less bearable.
Oh, Light, how they cried. Five of them got sick of dysentery and the doctors refused to waste morphine on them to ease their pain when our next counter-push was scheduled for next week.
Three didn’t make it. They died whimpering and crying in their own filth. The stench of infected waste in our squalid bunker was horrendous.
No one ever dies from disease in the stories. When they fall, they do so with a sword in their hand, bested by skill or number, a heroic and relatively quick death. What will the songs be of our exploits, I wonder, if indeed there will be any left to write songs of us?
“Oh, the brave Warriors of Light fought to the final breath,
They died shitting themselves to death.”
And that’s the nightened waiting.
Then the shelling resumes as you’re betting on cockroach racing. And you realize the gehling waiting wasn’t that bad after all.
They came at us again. Again we repelled. The remaining new boys were far better at staying alive now. We taught them everything they don’t teach you in basic training. How best to hunker down, the slightly different report of a friendly and enemy rifle, how to ‘cook’ the grenades so the enemy has no time to throw them back, and everything else we learned through the death of our fellows. And they applied it in full. We, the ‘old guard’ (none of us are older than 27) looked upon them with the pride of parents watching their children take the first steps.
This time, we chased the bastards back to their trenches and began pouring over them with flamethrowers and grenades. But we discovered that the scheming mongrels had a secondary trench. They retreated back there and were able to pommel us with artillery and sniper fire. A third of us didn’t make it back.
Artillery… that accursed weapon that shakes bones and teeth and marrow. That awful earthquake, the deafening boom, the screams of the dead and dying, the wading through mud, shattered fortifications and entrails when it’s all over…
Some cannot take it anymore. The bravest men and women I have ever met, who got shot without flinching and fought on, who led the charge in hand-to-hand combat, are reduced to incoherent babbling messes by artillery.
None more than Sofii. She was the oldest of us, a reindeer in her mid 30s who volunteered after her husband, son and daughter were all killed in the first month of the war. She never seemed bitter, she caroused with the rest of us as cheerfully, and took part in all our soldierly jokes, chatter and pranks, some of which, I am ashamed to admit, were utterly indecent to share with an older lady.
Nonetheless, she took great care of us. She talked to each of us whenever she saw us staring into nothingness. And it was she who made the horrid deaths of the three dysentery-stricken troopers easier, as she stood by their side, reading stories, humming nursery tunes and holding their hands as they cried in agony.
One artillery barrage was too much for her. One moment she was stalwart, hunkering down in a dugout, then without warning she screamed and ran off into the woods. She was recovered later and charged with desertion: a guaranteed death sentence.
The men could not believe it. Not her. She was the last person to turn traitor. Yet the proof was undeniable. I had to know why.
The night before her execution, I went down to the holding cells. She was sitting on her cot, looking intently at a frayed picture. I didn’t have to look to realize it was her family. There was some sort of smelly slime around her cell which wasn’t regular filth. I realized with awful clarity that some men had decided to chide her for her cowardice by dousing her in the soup that had spoiled the night before.
She looked up and approached the bars.
“Hello, Tyras.” She forced a smile. Her river-green eyes had lost all their spark. They were a mere visual organ now, no longer a messenger of goodwill and happiness. It was as if that shell had ripped her very soul out.
“Sofii…” I replied, not knowing what else to say. I offered her a cigarette. She eyed it dubiously. She said she’d quit years ago for the health of her children. Not that it mattered, it wouldn’t have been tobacco smoke that killed them anyway.
She accepted it and I lit it for her. She smoked quietly for a few minutes before I broke the silence.
“Why, Sofi?” I asked simply. It wasn’t a reprimand. I truly wanted to know.
She inhaled deeply, taking another long drag.
“How did you do it, Tyras?” She asked.
“Do what?”
“Just… held. I… I saw a severed hand hit your face and you hardly flinched.”
Had she? I didn’t even remember that. Had one of my dead comrade’s hands really hit my face as they were atomized and I didn’t pay it as little as an acknowledgment?
“I… I prayed.” I said. I hadn’t. I was too busy maintaining my tenous grip on sanity to give any appeals of safety to Providence.
“You think the gods will save us?” She asked.
“Yes.” I answered with far more conviction.
She finished her cigarette, dumping it in the filth-filled bucket next to her. She looked down at her picture long and hard. When her eyes met mine again, they were filled with tears.
“How I envy you, Tyras Maloko.” She said, gingerly, stroking my hand.
The next morning, while laying barbed wire, I heard four rifles go off at once. Our rifles, not Lunist. We stopped our duties for but a second, looking at each other. Some of us had tears in our eyes. Then we got back to fortifying our defenses. The War waits for no one.
To break the deadlock, High Command decided to send us a squadron of newly trained dragons. They’d been captured around the Glacello region, which was easy to see by their ice-blue scales and mace-like spiked tail. I noticed that they were all females, evident by their bulkier stature, each standing nearly thirty feet tall on hindlegs. The lighter and faster males were reserved for other areas of the front, deemed more important. Most of the men were intimidated by them, a simple low growl being enough to send them scampering into the bunker, but I felt a wave of homely reassurance upon seeing the beasts.
Me and the other Pilgrims were quickly selected to be their riders, as we all have grown up around these great beasts and some of us even know how to ride them. The one I chose was a smaller lass, “only” about seven meters tall and thinner, yet I knew that meant better flying and more agility in ground combat. Her searching gold-colored eyes were encircled in a darker blue and her tail tip was white, making it resemble a speartip. She wasn’t feisty, as they’d all already been broken, but I believe she’d indulged in some childish enjoyment when my first attempts to mount her unfamiliar back ended with me face first and arse up in the mud. In some puerile attempt at payback, I named her Mudstroke. She didn’t seem to mind much.
The riders are given higher pay and extra cigarette and alcohol rations, but I shared them around the new recruits. Light knows they need it to calm their nerves more than I. I was pleased to see that most of the other riders followed my example.
Furthermore, we received the vital gear for dragon riding. Most of it was already familiar to me: full-body coveralls against air drag, harness tied to the saddle with two tethers, heavy leather jacket, goggles and a light padded helmet, meant more to protect against falls than bullets and the all-important anti-nausea pills. The dragons are also all armored. Basic plating to protect the vulnerable underbelly and skull, but the long neck is left ostensibly exposed so as to not limit mobility.
Our weapons were also changed. We traded our long bolt action rifles for a revolver-carbine and a sawn-off pump action shotgun. The former to shoot down Lunist griffins, the latter meant more for trench raids once we dismount.
The training lasted a mere week, as we already knew how to fly, even command attacks. It was more to form a bond between mount and rider. I allowed myself to enjoy these few days away from the front. I was reminded of the days I spent training to ride Borsas with my father, marveling at the shrinking landscape far below us, feeling the wind whipping my face, the woosh of air displaced with each flap of the dragon’s mighty wings…
For a week, there was no war. It was me and Mudstroke and the other riders miles away from the front, flying over the Giradaina Mountains, practicing formations and diving manuevers. We witnessed villages still going about their lives, shepherds herding flocks of ovimi, a remote monastery burning offerings at a massive altar, their ardent prayers for our victory audible a hundred meters into the air. Upon seeing us, some of the monks fell to their knees chanting. We passed over a training field, more youths in fresh, unmuddied uniforms firing brand new rifles at paper targets and traversing obstacle courses. Upon seeing us they stopped what they were doing, cheerfully chanting and gesticulating at us, even ignoring their irate drill sergeants.
“Oh, noble dispensers of Light,
Through the sky, you dispel the Night,
Beautiful beast which the heathens abhor,
Allow me on y’er back and fly me to War!” they sang.
An old soldier’s song about their love for dragons, as ancient as Fakonism itself.
More eager kids… more green soldiers who will be punched full in the face by reality in the first day… and either they’ll be able to pick themselves back up and tense themselves for the next, or be knocked screaming into the chasm.
Alas, but this week was merely the moment between whip lashes. A second to recover one’s wits before the agony resumes.
General Cothelas has planned a counter-offensive to finally break the stalemate against the invaders, one where dragons will play a central role. The elite Band Hydraca will be leading the charge, while we, the scratch air companies, will be taking the flanks. A few of the Holy Golems will also be present to smash through enemy fortifications.
It commences tomorrow. A thunderstorm has been pounding us for the entire day, and it doesn’t seem like it will let up. Many of our bunkers have flooded and some of us are obliged to sleep outside, using whatever scant cover we can find. Me and the other scratch company riders have our shelter already; our dragons, who gladly cover us with their wings as they slumber. The unfortunates who were left out in the open huddled around us. Two of the new children are huddled around me, a deer, his antlers recently snipped off to allow wearing a helmet and gas mask, and a puma, shivering and trying to warm ourselves alongside me as Mudstroke’s wing keeps the worst of the rain off us and she rumbles her inner furnace to life to warm us. Three others are on her other side below her right wing.
A massive, scaly blanket of warmth and safety, protecting six of us at once, occasionally cooing and mewing to comfort us. What wonderful, caring creatures they are… and tomorrow they shall unleash fiery death and destruction upon thousands. The very organ giving us warm comfort from the storm now shall produce white-hot liquid flame that will burn everything to ash, the large paw on my leg will tear apart young men not much different than I…
I shook my head. They are not like me. They came to my country to murder my people, burn our cities to ash and eliminate our faith. We are stopping that. There can be no comparison. No equivalence to the enemy.
No mercy.
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The attack commenced at dawn. The Lunists fight better in the night, and the storm is giving us sufficient cover as is. We went airborne to scout the battlefield and attack on the Lunist flanks as soon as the Band Hydraca begin their assault and the first wave of ground troops commence.
The rain pelted us mercilessly and many of us shivered despite our heavy gear and cloaks, but the dragons felt no such hinderances, flapping their massive wings, each as wide as a city promenade, and staying airborne as easily as in the clearest days of training.
From the air I saw the Ruuc River. The Lunists would use it as a fallback point, where they built small concrete forts and secondary trenches. If all went well for us, it would flow red with blood from both sides by the end of the day. I had once seen it as a child during my Pack’s travels, but it was unrecognizable now. Nearly a year of constant shelling and being retaken countless times have transformed it into an unrecognizable mess of muddy water, the very landscape reformed with dozens of little streams flowing out like blood from an open wound.
It began with shelling of Lunist positions. They naturally responded in kind, and I felt a pang of guilt and unearned privilege that I was not suffering alongside my comrades, soothing the youngsters with manly words and crass jokes about the Lunists’ hygiene and sexuality. From high above, the artillery shells were distant and harmless, like ripples on a lake from a cast stone. With my Forte I saw my comrades advanced under the cover of smoke shells, heavily armored Class IV troopers leading the charge with heavy Maxim guns, other soldiers using them as mobile cover.
The Lunists began firing blindly with rifles and MGs, a few of our soldiers inevitably falling to the sheer deluge of bullets. As they got closer, one of the heavily armored Class IV rhinos was spotted with a lucky flare shell and was instantly lit up from two machineguns. His armor held for a good while as he convulsed and shook in pain, and then he fell to his knees, the fire turning his armored head into a stomped watermelon. Two of the soldiers behind him were also killed in the cone of fire, but the others, a crafty machinegun crew, set up their LMG on the still convulsing dead body, using their own comrade as a sandbag as they fired back. He was still 1000 pounds of fat and muscle encased in steel, so he made excellent cover and protected his comrades even in death.
I had the strange sensation that this is what war gods of old must have seen: From high above, thousands of soldiers getting into each other, smoke obscuring the battlefield like a discarded lit cigar carelessly tossed on the pavement, the soldiers each no more than a tiny ant killing other insignificant tiny ants, the screams hazy and indistinct.
It was horrible. I felt like the worst coward in Osnya. What was I doing here, up in the skies, staying hidden, while my comrades were assaulting the well-fortified Lunist lines and dropping like flies? The answer came the next second, as the Band Hydraca dragons in their splendid armor like plumed feathers, swooped over the main Lunist trench and belched a torrent of liquid hellfire upon the invaders. They had concealed themselves so well, the enemy hadn’t had time to fire a single rifle into them. They screamed as they were consumed by the flames, greasy smoke of wood and searing meat rising high into the sky.
One of the charging friendly soldiers, an unassuming goat, suddenly grew to over ten meters tall, a monster of unnatural bulging muscle and bone which grew over the body to form grotesque armor. The Golem maintained the momentum he’d had when normal sized and charged with a roar, dozens of bullets and grenades being of as little consequence to him as a swarm of flies. He collided with a stone fortification, reducing the stout defense into a pile of formless rubble. The giant picked up one of the still living Lunists in his massive hand and crushed him into a gory pulp as he screamed. Hundreds of men rushed into the gap created by the Golem’s horrific attack, pouring into the Lunist trench.
That was our cue. Our Sergeant sounded the attack whistle. We lowered our goggles and dove headfirst towards the flanks. It was less defended than the front, yet they saw now that we had dragons and were prepared. Some fired their rifles straight at us. We took evasive maneuvers as bullets plinked against the dragons’ armor, when two machineguns aimed upwards began roaring.
One of the dragons was hit in the neck twice and fell down with a gurgling whimper, still managing to breathe out fire over its killers in one final act of valor. The other Lunists surrounded the beast, the rider dragged off his saddle and savagely beaten with rifle butts as the other heathens began chopping away at the dying dragoness with pickaxes and bayonets. Her screams of agony and anguish chilled me to the bone and I trembled with grief and rage. I felt Mudstroke tense up and growl beneath me and I stroked a gloved hand over her head. She was angry. Good.
We built up speed and came in fast, the raindrops whipping my skin and fur wherever it was the slightest bit exposed, my goggles fogging up to the point I could scarcely see a thing. The anti-nausea medication was pushed to its limits and I found myself regretting the onion and half slice of dried bread I had eaten a few hours before. I heard another rider and dragon fall to the unrelenting MG fire and I veered hard right to avoid it.
Then, Mudstroke breathed out her fire. The searing heat was a shocking contrast to the icy storm and I instantly began sweating. The flame lit the trench into perfect clarity and I saw dozens of terrified faces just before they were engulfed in flame. I shall never get used to the screams of those dying of fire. It seems as if our vocal chords reserve the most horrific, soul-vacating shriek only for the eventuality of a fiery death as every single nerve ending in our bodies send signals of agony, in one final grim expression of sheer suffering.
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The Music began again in my head. The horrid shrieks the tenors to the sobbing violins of Nestovik’s Fifth Symphony.
We flew over and made a second pass. As Mudstroke breathed out fire again, I could smell something other than the sulfurous stench of her fire: the smell of burning flesh and searing fat. I willed the screams to cease. Just die already you bastards… But they wouldn’t. An explosion from within a dugout showered us in mud and wooden splinters as the munitions within cooked off. More Lunists ran or crawled out, on fire and screaming, several of them missing limbs.
The brisk pace of the piano was inaudible from the awful deathly cries.
My own ground company arrived and we dismounted. Two Lunists had managed to huddle into a dugout and somehow avoid the flames and they tried to shoot at us, but Mudstroke made short work of them, killing one with her mighty claw and the other by snapping him clean in half with her jaws. They were the lucky ones.
Skad went down in the trench, his mouth slack as he surveyed the sheer destruction. The flames reflected in his ice-grey eyes, his white fur already beginning to be dirtied by the floating soot which fell lazily around like fat grey snowflakes. His eyes would not leave a Lunist that was writhing on the muddy ground, the charred fur and skin exposing his teeth as he screamed for someone named Isabelle. He screamed her name even as the flames reached his throat and his vocal chords were next to go. Skad shot him in the head, his teeth gritted.
“Put the poor bastards out of their misery.” He breathed out.
“Why waste a good bullet on lousy pukes like them?” One of the others scoffed. “Let them burn. Bloody good job, Tyras. Your beasties like their meat well-done, don’t they?” Mudstroke growled at him and Skad looked ready to punch him.
“No one deserves to die like this. They’re already dead.” Lieutenant Phoebus intervened, leveling his revolver at another Lunist who tried to reach for a rifle to shoot himself, but his muscleless burned arms did not allow him. The wolf’s face, which was half skull and half pink-black flesh, smiled in gratitude before a bullet perforated it.
The Fifth Symphony continued, a gaggle of allegro violins and clarinets demanding jolly dances.
“Kill them as you go. That is an order.” The soldiers grumbled, but did as they were told. I grabbed the sawn-off shotgun from my saddle and moved on. The fire had dried and hardened the mud, but only on the surface. As I stepped on it, it cracked under my weight and my boot sunk into the mustard-colored goop below. I hoped our attack had taken out all the Lunists from this area, as I could not imagine fighting in this scorched quagmire.
The men listened to the order, but in their own way. Throats were slit, faces caved in with boots and trench clubs, some that were no longer on fire were strangled. The much-coveted Lunist autopistols and Messers were quickly taken as trophies. Skad bristled besides me, and he took one broad step towards a friendly soldier who was struggling with a dying Lunist over a heart-shaped locket around his neck, and he chopped the invader’s fingers off with a knife before plunging it into his neck. He spat on the scorched body for good measure. I held Skad back.
“It’s not worth it,” I mouthed. For a moment I thought my behemoth of a friend would plough through me regardless and beat our fellow greencoat senseless, yet he relaxed.
I used my Forte to look forward in the trench. There were survivors further away, but they were being engaged by infantry and Band Hidraca. The rest were dead and dying still burning from the dragon attack. Though I couldn’t be completely sure. The meters-thick dirt walls were particularly strenuous to look through, and my head was beginning to feel light, especially since I’d heavily used my Forte during the aerial runs. I asked Skad to come with me to clear the rest of the nearby trench. He seemed grateful for any opportunity to get away from the looters and gleeful killers our comrades had devolved into.
Rounding a corner, there were three Lunists. One unmoving on the ground, one scorched from head to toe but still standing as he leaned against a wall and one walking unhurriedly, the wolf looking around at nothing in particular if he were on some casual stroll around the boulevard. This was in spite the fact that his back was completely on fire, moving in to envelop his shoulders and head. Skad shot him.
I took the lead, pieing a corner with my stubby shotgun next to the dead man standing.
A paw with singed fur and peeled skin grabbed my gun barrel. The dead wolf had come back to life and a crack of lightning illuminated his terrible form. His sharp fangs were visible like pearly white palisades as his lips had burned away. Part of his cheek was torn and was kept together by a single string of sinew like a fleshy cave wall.
He opened his maw and let go of a stuttering, broken growl deep within his ruined throat. Then, mesmerized by this macabre spectacle, by this burnt meat puppet putting on one final display before its strings were severed, I activated by Forte. It had not been my intention.
And I felt everything.
I felt his agony as he’d been burned and he felt his own fat flowing down his face. I felt as if my skin were peeled away with scalpels, then the flesh dug out. I felt his grief as some part of his mind knew there wouldn’t even be enough left of him to ship back home for his elderly mother. I felt his guilt that he’d abandoned her to join the great crusade against the “Fire Savages”. I felt his hatred towards me, as he imagined me burning, I saw his fantasy of myself blazing beneath hellfire, screaming as my head melted into a pink-black mass. I felt-
Too much.
I screamed like I’d never screamed before as I unloaded shell after shell into him, the point-blank range combined with his fragile body literally tearing him apart into a blackened gory heap until the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber.
I do not remember much afterwards.
The violins were broken. The piano was garbled, as if someone was trying to play it with a sledgehammer, the trumpets rusted and screeching.
I came to later, huddled in a muddy shell crater. I was shaking beneath the rainstorm, my head feeling as if it had been pierced by a molten metal bar. I couldn’t get the horror out of my head. I could still feel the pain the Lunist had felt, and the broken music wouldn’t stop.
Briefly I wondered if this is what Gehl truly is: A cold, freezing eternity of being haunted by your sins. Was this it? Was I dead and damned?
No, no… I had panicked, that was all. I just needed some happy thoughts… I searched my scrambled memory for something… anything… and I found it.
It had been a show me and my family had performed in a Great Market long ago. It was of the opera “The Travels of Don Scaletta”, with me playing the central part of the titular Don. My brother played his towering butler, friend and bodyguard, a role his frame was practically tailored for.
During the opening scene, I tripped on my oversized cape and fell. Our parents taught us that when something like this happens, remain in character, then move on with the script. And my brother did just that. He bent down to help his ‘master’ and said “Your royal highness, might you indulge me the utmost gratification of getting off your arse?”
I remember my parents, who were in the front row, gasping in shock, as the audience laughed out loud, some nearly falling out of their seats. I began to laugh too.
Oh, what a scene it had been… Chuckles turned into outright laughter, then I roared in joy. What an uproarious line my brother had improvised! I laughed until my stomach hurt, and I tried gasping for air, but found I could only laugh.
I felt several faces look down at me and saw three of my allies gazing at me with something between concern and pity. I grinned up at them, and one of them took a step back in fright. Oh, I had to tell them as well! How they’d laugh! They needed a good laugh now more than ever!
I tried to regale the story, yet all that came out was more laughter, louder and louder as my entire body convulsed.
“Shit… another one’s lost it.” One of them, a snow leopard, said, shaking his head. The three took one last sorrowful look at my guffawing form and left.
I couldn’t stop. I laughed as the twisted concerto of madness played in my head and the pleasant memories merged with the horrors I had witnessed in a kaleidoscope of lunacy, joy mingling with misery, gaiety mixing with terror. They mixed until at one point, the Lunist’s melted, mangled face was upon my brother’s as he offered to help me up.
I screamed again, so loudly that I heard it over the artillery. A single wail of agony overtaking that horrible rumble that claimed hundreds.
Mudstroke was leaning over me, those eyes like golden dinner plates searching me as she cooed in concern. She didn’t approach straight away, she let me acknowledge her presence as my trip into a twisted wonderland came to a stop and I returned to the madhouse of reality.
I felt bruises and scrapes on my body I didn’t remember receiving and my head hurt so bad, everything around me maintained a strangely dreamlike quality. I felt a strange warmth around my britches, and I realized with a detached sense of shame that I had soiled myself.
The Lunist trenches were blazing behind her, most of the fortifications shattered by artillery or Golem attacks. Not even the deluge filling up my pathetic hiding spot could douse them. A transient relic hastily built of concrete, wood and dirt, now burning with the vengeance of the defenders.
We had won.
A single sob escaped my throat. It was interrupted by a sneeze as the storm had completely soaked through my muddy uniform. I was shaking from the cold and with yet leashed grief. Mudstroke took another massive step towards me and covered me with her wing, water sluicing down the leathery appendage like a waterfall. She flared up her inner furnace, warming me with the same fire that had turned the trench into a carbonized heap and killed hundreds of screaming young men.
I launched myself at her and embraced her bulky torso as much as I could. And I cried. I cried like I hadn’t allowed myself to cry for nine months. The invasion, the chaotic retreats, the ruined cities, the infant I had failed to rescue, the faces I split in two with my trench spade, all I had ignored and tossed aside. Like a good soldier. Only they hadn’t been tossed aside, they’d been bottled up. And the screaming, melting flesh had been what shattered that bottle.
I sobbed into the warm, scaly chest, feeling her massive heart beating against my cheek as she guarded her master from the rain. Did she understand me? Did some part of her feel my grief and wish to comfort me? Or was it merely instinct that told her that I was cold and in distress and I needed warmth and protection?
I reached up and embraced her neck, at which she lowered herself towards me and nuzzled me, cooing.
“Fly me home, girl,” I sobbed. “I want to show you the holy steppes of the Zurafodus Mountains before they’re ash too.”
“Aye. That’s why we fight, isn’t it? To have a home to return to.” A voice nearby said.
I spun around. Lieutenant Phoebus was standing before us, his revolver conspicuously by his side. I felt my heart turn to ice.
As he approached, I acknowledged how much bigger the horse was than I.
I had run away. I had been a coward. And now I would be punished for it. I instinctively leaned back into Mudstroke and she further cocooned me in her wings. She couldn’t have understood the finer implications of me abandoning my duty and now being found by an officer, but she could smell my fear, and she realized the source of it was the Lieutenant. She bared her dagger-like teeth and growled at him.
“Sir!” I got up, trying to stand at attention to salvage what little chance of survival I yet had. The mere motion made me feel bilious and I fell to my knees again, throwing up what little I had eaten the day before onto the sluice.
‘What a stupid waste of food’ I thought distantly.
I felt a paw rubbing my shoulder and was surprised when I realized it had been Phoebus, not Mudstroke, who’d done it.
“Easy, lad, easy…” He soothed. I saw him holster his revolver. I allowed a scant hope to enter my heart.
“Private Skad told me you… went to scout ahead.” His tone of voice told me he didn’t believe one bit of it.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I rushed to say. “I-I’m sorry. P-please give me another ch-“
“Hey, hey, calm down, lad.” He said. I swallowed. I would be a man about this.
“Sir… if you’re here to punish me, pray do it now. I’ll tell Mudstroke to go away. Don’t make my comrades shoot me.”
“No, no, no…” He soothed. I began shaking again. “Private Maloko. I won’t have you killed. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
I looked up at him in shock.
“But… Sofii-“
“It wasn’t up to me. I tried. But there were multiple tattletales who told the captain. I hear they’ll all get their Sergeant stripes soon…” He spat at those words. He helped me up.
“Come on. Let’s get out of the rain. Phase one of the attack was a success. The lightless mongrels are running scared. We’ll press for the rest of the day.”
“I…” I wondered how much I should say. Well, he found me deserting already. How much worse could I make my situation. “I don’t know if I can do it, sir. I thought I could. But… I’m tired, sir. I don’t know what to do.”
To my surprise, he nodded understandingly.
“I saw him too, son. I think I’d have broken myself…” He said compassionately. “I’d recommend you for leave, but, they’ve all been cancelled. It’s all hands on deck for the offensive.”
“I wouldn’t have asked for one anyway, sir.”
“Well… I can’t leave you like this. You’ve done your country proud, soldier. You’ve done more than I or any other commander could have asked of you. You’re Forted, right?”
“Yes, sir.” I replied, more confidently.
“Good. I am too.”
I frowned. I hadn’t known that.
“If I may ask, sir,”
“I don’t forget.” He said simply.
I let this sink in. What would it be like to never forget? To simply look at a map and recall every detail? To recall any moment of your life with perfect clarity? To be able to go back to a conversation you had five years ago and remember a spot of blood on the other person’s sleeve you hadn’t noticed before?
Then again, what would it be like to not be able to forget loved ones dying, not be able to repress trauma, or remember every single detail of this blasted war? What would it be like to never be able to forget that melted face? I shuddered at the thought.
“We Forted may be on the lower end of magic users, but we can still touch the world of the Gods if we want to, and carve out our own little pieces of paradise. Close your eyes…”
I frowned in confusion, but I did so.
“Now… what do you like to do? Before the war, I mean.” He asked.
“I… I like to sing. My Pack, the Iron Troubadours, are a traveling troupe and my parents sent me to university to learn more of the Arts.” I did my utmost to not break down once again. How many of the Pack remained? How many had joined the fight? Would the thousand-year group of warrior poets survive?
Phoebus nodded. “I know. I saw you, twelve years ago, when a group of Stateless played at my town theatre. You were playing the violin. Quite well, if I may say so myself, save for a couple of bad notes near the end. Nevertheless, it affected you. As the crowd dispersed, you began to cry, but your older brother comforted you.”
I was amazed. I remembered that day, just barely.
“Now…” The officer continued. “Thinking about what you love… is it helping?”
“Yes.” I replied. The sounds of battle and the stench of burned flesh was abating as it was replaced with smooth melody and the smell of freshly varnished wood on my violin. It wasn’t like the music in my head I played during battle: this was different. It felt real. I wasn’t just imagining music, I was actually playing it. I felt the chords vibrate, I felt the violin pressed against my cheek, I felt the bow between my fingers.
“Good, good…” I heard Phoebus distantly, like in a dream. “Now… have you ever performed in a proper opera house?”
“No, sir. Only in the open air at Great Markets or smaller venues.”
“Well… then imagine what that would be like. Think of what you thought an opera house looked like when you were a child.”
I did. I thought hard of what a young, carefree Tyras Maloko thought a grand opera house looked like after reading about it in books, seeing grainy pictures and word of mouth from Pack members who’d been fortunate enough to see or even perform in one.
I saw a vast building of gold, ivory and velvet rising out of bare, grassy earth. At its grand mahogany entrance stood guard Sapistia, the graceful dragon goddess of knowledge and justice that I had dedicated my life to, hundreds of scrolls of Knowledge beneath her arm, and opposite her, Arstoros, the imposing half-lion, half-dragon god of war, his spear tipped with the gigantic head of the Serpent Of Espax.
Beyond the exquisite workmanship of the statues, I felt both deities regarding me somehow, even if their stony eyes did not move. I felt both Sapistia’s patient, motherly gaze and Arstoros’s scowl.
I went past them, pushing open the massive wooden gate and walking through hallways of marble, ivory and ebony. Instruments, from the most ancient flutes and war drums to the most splendid modern Travious violins, where individual craftsmanship met the staggering advancements in acoustics of the last century.
On the opposite wall were weapons. Flint spears, spiked clubs, then bronze swords, Gladii and Falxes, shields, siege weapons like Ballista and Trebuchets, then early matchlock and flintlock firearms. All were in perfect condition, despite being centuries or even millennia old. At the end of this display of finely crafted instruments of death were modern weapons. Bolt action rifles, including our very own Maskon Bolt Repeater, automatic pistols and even the Maxim machine gun, the latter barely a few months old, yet nonetheless put on display like some ancient artefact.
I looked above me and saw a fresca of a massive battle. It was impossible to make out which exact battle it was, which nations were fighting, or indeed even what Era this was representing. I saw Third Era hoplite plumes, Fourth Era plate armor and familiar-looking uniforms. I saw ancient spears and modern rifles. And among them were mammals who similarly carried weapons, yet also carried harps, flutes, trumpets and some seemed to simply sing with their voice.
Bloodshed and song, two activities that Bestia Sapiens had perfected and inexorably intertwined.
Countless corridors branched off in every direction in a way which seemed to exceed the building’s size or shape, some making my head hurt just by trying to see the end of them, as they seemed to twist and malform into a non-Euclidian jumble of walls, doors and ladders placed everywhere except where one expected them to be. However, I felt as if I knew the way through this arcane labyrinth and instinctively took turns towards my goal, whatever that was.
Eventually, I entered a doorway which seemed like the right path and I stepped onto a stage. A huge swath of thousands of empty velvet seats and row upon row of gilded balconies regarded me. Despite the vacantness of the premises, I nonetheless felt watched.
This felt like a place constructed from my imagination, yet at the same time, it did not. I felt like I’d built a house in a strange country, one which I did not know the weather, customs or regulations and I was merely figuring things out as I went along.
Awaiting me was a violin and music sheets. The sheets were strangely empty and the violin had an odd, blocky shape to it. As soon as I picked it up however, it changed shape. The neck narrowed under my grip and body formed a slight depression as I put it between chin and shoulder. Even the bow changed shape to accommodate my long, thin fingers.
I thought of what to play, deciding on Nestovik’s Season Of Shelter. Immediately, ink filled the parchment before me to produce the sheets for that very play.
I breathed in and put bow to strings. Sweet melody chirped out of the instrument, even as my lack of practice for so long made it initially whine and screech before I readjusted. I felt the music vibrate through the wood of the violin and straight into me. It permeated my blood and flowed through my entire being, filling my soul with a calm and nirvana I had nearly forgotten since the war had begun.
Throughout my euphoria, I knew this was no dream or figment of my imagination. This was real. My corporeal self was still on the muddy, burned battlefield, I knew that much, yet my soul was in a realm unimaginably far away. The bespoke instrument aided me in rediscovering my talent, and soon, I was playing like I’d never played before. I was amazed. Only when I’d been lucky enough to witness the Grand Masters at their craft in opera houses and concert halls had I heard such wonderous melody.
I could feel it heal my weary, shaken soul like an ointment healing a wound.
After several more minutes, I set the instrument back on its stand and I looked towards the thousands of empty seats, dumbly half expecting applause. Yet, an acknowledgement of my performance came all the same.
“That was beautiful, Tyras.” A warm female voice said. It didn’t come from the stands, or indeed from anywhere I could discern. It was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. A voice as soothing and melodious as the notes I had just played, and infinitely more powerful.
I felt my heart racing and my knees wobble and my breath unable to keep up with my lung’s demands for more oxygen.
With a gasp, I had left that realm. I was back in the real world. I was covered in mud, cold, injured, yet the madness swimming in my bosom and my skull seemed to have been dispelled, at least for now. I felt invigorated like I couldn’t remember feeling before.
Mudstroke and Lieutenant Phoebus were both looking at me. The former looked at me curiously, while the latter was smiling warmly.
“How are you feeling, lad?” The equine officer asked.
“W-wha-“ I grasped for words. “What… was that place?”
“I don’t know.” Phoebus replied. “And I assume it’s as different from mine as the Moon is different from the Sun. But it is somewhere you can return to. Anytime you can simply relax and empty your mind sufficiently. It won’t always work, mind you. Sometimes you’ll find that place… in disarray. Sometimes you won’t be able to get in at all. Sometimes it will appear in your dreams.
But it’s a powerful tool we have whenever we need to think, practice a skill we’ve gotten rusty on, or even just take a load off in our own mind. I use it to store all the things clogging up my memory which I believe hold special importance.”
I nodded, not knowing what to say. I was still shaking, yet it had nothing to do with the horrors I’d seen. I felt as if with my fingertips, I’d touched a magical, divine world, one which I’d partly molded with my own desires.
“Come on, now,” Phoebus said, climbing the rear saddle of Mudstroke, not an easy task given his size.
“Back to the war.”