(no subject)
Title: War
Characters: Holy Roman Empire
Notes: War is moral; things that happen in war are not.
The sword hangs loosely at my side as I wander the field, nudging bodies over to identify their faces with my mud-stained boot. All of them are faceless in my memory, just soldiers doing what they had been ordered to do, nothing more. I gaze coolly over the remains of what once had been a pretty little hamlet, known for its freshly grown crops and the people’s cheerfulness even in the worst of times. There was no cheer now, as even the villagers had been slaughtered in this rather pointless massacre. It had been the orders given however, to kill every enemy in this village and the traitors who hide them willingly in their homes and barns. I turn my head away as I walk by a child; her doll was torn apart past recognition and her owner just alike.
“War is nothing but a cleansing,” my brother had told me once as he sliced a man in half for a crime he hadn’t even committed, “a way to rid the world of the disgustingly evil. That’s why God gives us his blessing to do what we do.”
God was a sadist, if he thought this deserved a blessing of his at all. Those who were lucky enough to escape were tracked down by our dogs and brought back with bruises and wounds that weren’t treated at all. The traitors could die for all the country cared, but some did not think this way. Some thought like I had, when I was a boy: That those who escaped were worthy to live because they had something to live for and thus should be allowed to live. So they let them escape, or they helped them survive by tending to the wounds the dogs, as mad as they are, gave them.
But I don’t think like that anymore. It was childish innocence that led me to believe such a silly ideal, and my brother had proved this to me after my first battle. I had stood shocked over the body of a boy just younger than I, being expected to kill someone so young. The boy had shook and cried for his mother, long dead with a sword stabbed pierced through her stomach a couple feet from him. I had allowed him to escape, saying nothing of him to my brother or any of the friends I had made within the camp. The boy came back with an army of men to crush us, and my second battle was a failure.
It had been a few years and hundreds of battles since then, though the memory of that battle will forever haunt me in my sleep. Every night I dream of it, of the men and women I killed, of those who did not deserve to die but did, just because they were in enemy territory. Their restless ghosts follow me and shackle me when I least expect it, when I need my arms to lift and kill the person in front of me, be it man, woman, child, soldier, animal, sister, cousin, even brother or father. War was, after all, a cleansing of the disgustingly evil.
And anyone could be evil.
Characters: Holy Roman Empire
Notes: War is moral; things that happen in war are not.
The sword hangs loosely at my side as I wander the field, nudging bodies over to identify their faces with my mud-stained boot. All of them are faceless in my memory, just soldiers doing what they had been ordered to do, nothing more. I gaze coolly over the remains of what once had been a pretty little hamlet, known for its freshly grown crops and the people’s cheerfulness even in the worst of times. There was no cheer now, as even the villagers had been slaughtered in this rather pointless massacre. It had been the orders given however, to kill every enemy in this village and the traitors who hide them willingly in their homes and barns. I turn my head away as I walk by a child; her doll was torn apart past recognition and her owner just alike.
“War is nothing but a cleansing,” my brother had told me once as he sliced a man in half for a crime he hadn’t even committed, “a way to rid the world of the disgustingly evil. That’s why God gives us his blessing to do what we do.”
God was a sadist, if he thought this deserved a blessing of his at all. Those who were lucky enough to escape were tracked down by our dogs and brought back with bruises and wounds that weren’t treated at all. The traitors could die for all the country cared, but some did not think this way. Some thought like I had, when I was a boy: That those who escaped were worthy to live because they had something to live for and thus should be allowed to live. So they let them escape, or they helped them survive by tending to the wounds the dogs, as mad as they are, gave them.
But I don’t think like that anymore. It was childish innocence that led me to believe such a silly ideal, and my brother had proved this to me after my first battle. I had stood shocked over the body of a boy just younger than I, being expected to kill someone so young. The boy had shook and cried for his mother, long dead with a sword stabbed pierced through her stomach a couple feet from him. I had allowed him to escape, saying nothing of him to my brother or any of the friends I had made within the camp. The boy came back with an army of men to crush us, and my second battle was a failure.
It had been a few years and hundreds of battles since then, though the memory of that battle will forever haunt me in my sleep. Every night I dream of it, of the men and women I killed, of those who did not deserve to die but did, just because they were in enemy territory. Their restless ghosts follow me and shackle me when I least expect it, when I need my arms to lift and kill the person in front of me, be it man, woman, child, soldier, animal, sister, cousin, even brother or father. War was, after all, a cleansing of the disgustingly evil.
And anyone could be evil.