Chapter 2: Story #2: Broken Battle

It was over.  The final fight. The last battle. We won. I sat on a piece of rubble broken from the great wall. I rested my sword on the inside of my thigh, making a soft clink against my armor. I took off my helmet, and my chest plate letting the heat escape my body. A light breeze kissed my skin, still glistening with sweat from the fight of a lifetime coming to an end. I stared at the field of fallen foes and comrades. Fires still burned in the distance.

I did not feel the joy of victory. I did not feel the assurance of a better future that I had once fought for. I felt hollow. I felt nothing. As if I was a shell of a man. A ghost of an old memory used as fuel to commit the acts not of man but of monster. I breathed deeply, taking in not only the stench of war, but also the last war this land will ever see. The last war this land will ever hope to see. Like some kind of embrace of the sky, the clouds opened and began to pour rain onto the used battlefield. It washed away what it could but the bodies of friends and enemies remained. They were not made of sugar. They did not melt. But the blessing waters instead washed away the sweat and mud from their faces. Revealing nothing but young boys and men fighting for what they believed was right. And as the rain fell so did the tears from my eyes.

I wept. Tears full of sorrow and regret mixing with the rain to wash away the blood of the fallen warriors around me. Grief for my fallen friends. Grief for my fallen enemies, for there was none left to grieve them.  Needless tears for certainty that I survived in the rescue of the entire land. I looked to the sky at the rolling storm above. I roared to the sky. There was no feeling behind it. It was a shout with no meaning words could describe. Only the experience of war could describe its meaning. And as it echoed across the valley touching but the victors and the fallen, I sat and let the rain wash away the thoughts, and the blood, from my body. becoming a different man than the one I knew when I began this journey.

END OF STORY

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