GRAVESKIES

(memories of the beast)

(of memories)

The explosions are unlike anything you've ever seen. Since you and your comrades have been aborted in Belvarre for months, you've forgotten the true glamour of war, but now Storyteller has called you. You're still just as good at taking orders—her orders. You'll burn Belvarre at the stake and smother its arsenal. You're part of her grand plan. You're doing so little.

Soldiers are always written to be superhuman, but it doesn't feel difficult now. You're bleeding, but it's easy. You can't even really tell what you're doing, but by voicing that thought alone you confuse yourself too much.

It's all blurry.

blurry!!!

blurry

it's infuriating, or perhaps exhilarating,

the earth around you ripples and burns, and you're a force of nature. Did you just hit something? There are no more enemy troops around, but through some mystique, your sword is dripping red. People flee their homes. Stand in line. You don't know their names.

You follow orders and it grows within you. This settling, this satisfaction, this... good. You'd do it forever if it meant you were good. Is this even really killing?

Will God ever let you heal?

*

(of nightmares)

The cannons have begun to sound like a song.

The Lost Divisions' establishment in Rakia is unlike any other place in the world. It is currently the only place that is doomed to immediate destruction.

Explosions in staccato litter the city line. Trees burst into flame like matches. You spread out your fingers and touch ash, shard it under merciless fingertips, your fingertips, I'm accusing you. Do your best to feel like a god in your final moments.

Rakia is ruthless. This town exists on their everchanging map, it's called Savirr. Your lonely group conquered it three weeks ago. Tall pine trees surround it like old men in a park, sitting at a cracked, spray-painted chess table. An impractical college of arts amasses part of the central area. Two small rivers cross before Town Hall. The Rakian military will destroy this town, blow it to smithereens, only to know you dead. It is strange to think it. This was never what you wanted.

Though it had been unreasonable to go into war wishing for relief.

You want to want to kill. You want to receive things in your hands and you want to kill them. Society has been convincing you that you're a monster your entire life, so give them what they asked for. You want to be what Storyteller is convincing you to become. Is she doing a good enough job?

You put your trust in your Colonel's catapults and shooters, but they fail. You put your trust in a greater plan, but it fails. You put your trust in yourself, and even if you will be the last to fall, you'll fail like you were born to do it. Is this really what your body was made for? Do you really have an inclination for slaughter? It didn't feel that way as a child, which was the last time you were ever given a choice.

When Storyteller gives up on you, you know it. Because you can finally see.

This is hell.

In the distance appears a rumble. Rakia brought more cannons, you say to the nearest corpse. Bombs. Rakia is ending us. The corpse does not reply, for it has already forgotten your language.

It builds, it builds, you're shivering, your friends are shivering too. You were stupid to ever think that the enemy is human. It's great, what's coming. You sense the thunder of its steps in your marrow. Overcharged momentum heaps and swells under terrestrial surface, sizzles with electricity for an endless, time-warping intake of breath. And then. And then. The final string snaps. A nameless monument fulminates through the lithosphere like a titan.

Ever so briefly, you think you're the first man to ever see a monster.

Then you can think no more.