IMPERMANENCE

chapter two - the war

His hands were coated in grey dust and warm blood. Ronan's blood.

Did he do this?

No . . . impossible.

There was no way this was his doing. He slumped down to his knees, shaking and refusing to look away from his hands. His face pulsed due to his swelling eye inflicted by an opposing soldier where he had been slashed brutally. Had the soldier cut a few inches upwards, his eyeball would have been taken out. He was concussed, no doubt. The generals warned them of the shock and stress that comes with battle. Dagger took this all into consideration as he tried to make sense of what he had just witnessed.

But what had just happened, that wasn't created by imagination or shock. He didn't dare look past the tent that shielded him from the rest of the battlefield. He could only focus on where his brother's body had been, and the pile of ashes that now lay before him.

Something inside of him pushed him off of his throbbing knees and told him to look beyond the safety of the medic tent. He didn't have enough strength to stand yet, so all he could do was crawl over to the edge of the tent and force his head to look back out at the field. His head hammered with extreme intensity, and his ears rang with a high pitched growl. His vision broke apart in pieces as he took in the new surroundings and ignored his body's pleas for help.

Piles of ashes, identical to what was left of his brother, were scattered throughout the camp and stretched as far as the opposing army's side of the field.

Bile filled Dagger's throat upon the sight. The sight of the ashes mixed with the coppery tang of blood, the muddy water, and bits and pieces of ashes, human remains, that he was breathing in caused him to vomit uncontrollably. Food hadn't entered his mouth in days, which made him vomit up practically nothing. The only source of nutrition he had gotten being the raindrops that had fallen onto his lips and slipped into his mouth.

The clouds of ashes and downpouring rain began to slightly settle. Dagger was able to see blurry figures in red in the distance. The opposing army. They stood utterly still, maybe they had been in just as much shock as he had. There wasn't a soul left on the Guntheran side to be seen. Unless, they weren't showing themselves, like himself.

All that remained were the frozen figures in red. Unrighteous silence.

Until they erupted into a roar of applause and cheering.

The rest of the ashes began to fade away, the wind settled down to almost nothing, and the polluted night sky cleared revealing a cluster of stars from up above. Soldiers were jumping into each other's arms, throwing their silver and red armor off and onto the ground. Others knelt to their knees and began kissing the ground, praising the heavens above.

Dagger blinked hard to make sure he wasn't seeing things. First with fists rubbing his eyes, then a hard smack to the side of his head. He did anything to tell himself that this was a delusion.

His vision became blurry once again, the roaring army slowly faded into the probing scream in his ear. The world rotated, and Dagger collapsed onto the coarse grass. His final moments consisted of hearing the loud smack of mud as his head collided with the ground. Then, he floated into a dreamless sleep.

This was it, right?

He would wake up to Ronan shaking him, telling him to get his lazy ass up and continue training for the upcoming battle. They'd spar outside their war camp of the night with large twigs, hopefully, one day working up to iron swords, larger than his own body.

This was a nightmare. A hypothetical scenario his weak mind created preparing him for the worst possible outcome of the war.

He repeated the sentence over and over again as he sank back into reality once again.