So, I Transmigrated Into The Heavenly Realm

6. No Prosecco For Me, I'm Too Busy Brooding

6

Despite his conspicuous absence during the offerings, he had actually been there. Every year, as many members of the War Department who could be spared attended the event. No matter how packed his schedule was, the God of War was always one of them. The Memorial Ceremony for the Battle of Wind Blown Tears wasn't something he was going to miss.

He was also the first to leave. Once the whisky hit the feet of Dythos' statue, the God of War was already turning to make his departure. The ceremony was important but there was no need to stay for cucumber sandwiches, prosecco with tiny slices of strawberry and endless questions about how he was feeling.

Prying questions, from people who only feigned interest in how he was doing on days like this yet never talked to him on any normal day of the year. They grinned, showing perfect pearly white teeth as their jolly inquiry's reawakened his veteran's horror. He didn't want to answer any of them.

The horror of it all wasn't real to them and it was blatantly obvious to anyone that he wasn't feeling great.

"What was it like when you stabbed Bulmor?" Some bright eyed Love Goddess asked, holding a delicate glass in her right hand filled with a disturbingly blue liquid.

He hadn't even seen her, so focussed he was on getting to the doors. Bulmor was a name that could still derail him from that though, as his feet planted themselves into the decorative paving despite himself. The muscles in his jaw tightened.

Her left hand patted him on the arm, it had less of a reassuring impression than she had probably intended, as it drew his attention to the gilt flowers which ran along the edges of his pauldron. Flowers he wanted to bring with him even on a day like this. They shone in the bright afternoon sunlight streaming into the ornamental garden.

Another reminder of what had been lost.

He really should have had the red enamel added to them like Dythos had suggested. It would have been...

It would have been.

Would have been.

The God of War gently removed her hand from his shoulder and let it flop like a dead fish, to lay against her side before continuing his escape of the cocktail hour. Her smile similarly fell leaving a frown in it's place. Not that he really cared. Getting out of here, without getting pulled into further conversations was taking every ounce of his attention, as he squeezed through the crowd.

Every year the raw agony that accompanied his personal memories of the Battle of Wind Blown Tears grew just a little duller as it faded almost entirely from the collective memory. There were so few familiar faces standing here now.

Every year, the number of Deities that remembered The Battle of Wind Blown Tears dwindled. Those who had actually been there, that had fought in it, who had seen the destruction of life and nature it had left in it's wake, well they were basically an endangered species now.

The whole ceremony was slowly changing from the solemn tear filled gathering of veterans from both realms created in the aftermath of the war to more of a 'celebration of life'.

That couldn't be helped, ceremonies shift in meaning slowly over time even among the Gods. What he couldn't stand was how it was slowly erasing the other people who had died in that campaign. The Battle of Wind Blown Tears was just the last battle in a war that had killed a lot of Deities on both sides.

There was a reason the War Department had it's own memorial.

In the early days, there had at least been the comfort of those he had fought alongside during this event. Either comrades whom he had trusted with his life, or the people who had once been on the opposite side and knew as well as he did the pain of loss. The Deities of Death had held the inconsolable in arms that promised the dead were not lost, for so many had died.