Shadows of the Future

Demons of Shell Shock⚠️

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the art involved in this story, except for pieces that I asked to be commissioned for said story. All other pieces of art belong to their respective owners and artists. This chapter gets dark for obvious reasons, as the title itself states.

Hurokna Ancestral Den:

  Tedious, tedious would be the word to describe the feeling that was raging through Aleksander's mind at this current time. The man has been in this library for what feels like hours, writing simple letters and words like he was a child in school once more. Despite that, he couldn't bring himself to look away from the books and small progress he has been making. Ursana was more of a guiding mentor than anything else, occasionally looking over his work and correcting him on a few misspellings. Most of this was done in silence as she wanted him to focus on learning the words and the alphabet itself, before taking the steps for him to start talking. She heard his voice when speaking his native tongue, it was indeed commanding and intimidating to a certain extent and the deepness to his voice only made it more pronounced. Aleksander was currently flipping a page on one of the books and almost stopped entirely still at what he saw on the other page, the book was a historical book she had placed down for him. The complete stiffness of his body concerned and confused the Avironian, whom came closer and looked down at the book and realized why he had stopped. A very detailed and well made drawing of the Urntide Massacre was depicted in the book, a time during the war between the Kingdom of Daeresh and the Kingdom of Yarlondor where Yarlondorian soldiers massacred the entire population of the village Urntide along the border. No one was spared in the massacre and it was indeed a dark stain still talked of to this day, but she did not understand why it stopped him so suddenly and made him so stiff. He didn't even look up at her as his fingers smoothed over the page itself, seemingly entranced by it in some horrible way. Looking at the drawing more closely she felt herself even feeling sick at the monumental detail the artist went through, all to depict how horrible it was. Infants on pikes, women and men lay ravaged in the street, body parts of all sorts littering the cobblestone road through the village itself.

   "Gute Soldaten befolgen Befehle." The words sound hollow along with the humorless chuckle that follows, clearly he is not making fun of it but seems nostalgic of it at the same time. Like the man had been there in person, which was impossible as that massacred had occurred when Lacina was a mere pup and Ursana wasn't even a thought yet. The man's hand moved further up the page, fingers ghosting over the six pointed stars depicted in the sky.
    "Sterne, warum scheine ich den Sternen nie zu entkommen?" A chuckle escapes him again before it becomes like that of a choked sob, the man's hand clenching into a fist while his left hand twitches and somewhat jerks. Ursana reached out to touch him, but a voice stopped her.

   "Don't, you touch him and he may lash out... I've seen this many of times my dear." The somber voice of Lacina fills the room, she had decided to check in on his progress alongside her daughter Verela. The other she-wolf looked on with a form of curiosity and concern, as she has never seen something like this before while her mother very much has.
"Step away from him, Ursana. There is not much we can do besides be here for him when it ends." The idea itself was cold, but Lacina truly did not know what else to do. Many times before she's seen both female and male warriors suffer through what was known as the 'Warriors Lament', but physically touching them could erupt a violent rage if not taken lightly.

While they spoke it seemed as though Aleksander has slipped into his own memories while staring at the drawing, every face of a dead or dying civilian giving him flashbacks to when he was in France, Poland and Russia. A face of a small girl, spattered with her own blood and crying out for her mother while a medic desperately tried to save her life, said mother having been bayoneted to death for being a partisan and her father having been strung up from a lamp post. The cries of an old man as he was put against the wall after his wife had suffered the same fate, a fate he had been made to watch. Seeing himself looking down into the lifeless eyes of a 12 year old Russian boy who shot at him with an old hunting rifle, watching the body get dragged away to a burning pile of wood and other corpses. The more he remembered, the more his body shook and his fist trembled and shook. A perfectly placed artillery shell that turned an entire squad to pieces, the only thing he was able to find of an old friend was half his face, torn from the skull by shrapnel. All the while the screams of the dying and wounded pierced into his ears, he moved his left hand up to his ear and began to tug at it or cover it. Like the screams were right there in his ears, the faces of those he killed and saw die floating all around him. A weight of two arms wrapping around his shoulders almost made him leap out of the chair he was in, but they would not relent even as he yelled out and slammed his head against the desk. Whoever was holding him would lift up and drag him off the chair, holding him in their arms and not letting go even as the the voices screeched like demons in his ears. Unknown to him in his current state, Verela had rushed forward and was the one currently holding him as tightly against her body as she could without hurting him. The man thrashed and yelled in her arms, lost in the throes of a waking nightmare. Something that the users of such dark magic knew all too well, even though he was looking at her it was clear he was not seeing her at all. Her mother hadn't been able to stop her at rushing towards him, the sheer pain and anguish wrecking his mind and body had been too much for her to watch. The yells, by the gods the yells he gave were like that of a man fighting for his very soul, which tore at her and everyone in the room. Lacina had her eyes closed in silent resignation as there was no magic that could fix such torn souls, such trauma from war. The matriarch knew this better than anyone, as she saw her own father driven to madness before taking his own life in front of her and her mother, the cries for forgiveness of his actions still rang in her ears. A strangled cry escaped Aleksander, who still struggled in Verela's embrace.