The Shards of My Soul

Though The First Will Not Be The Last

There was blood everywhere.

The earth was bathed in it.

The air smelled of blood, not air.

The most amount of what she could see was a vivid red — bright, ostentatious maroon like the shade of a red rose, glowing under the stark sunlight and reflecting on the metal armor and weapons lay forgotten on the ground. Every time she drew breath, the coppery smell of it nauseated her. It lacked the subtle fragrance of honey that all Higher Ones' blood carried, as it did the sulfuric scent of the beasts' sál and, by that fact alone, along with the color, she knew the thousands of bodies laid in blood ahead of her belonged to Children of Clay.

An army.

Dead. Murdered.

Slaughtered.

Her eyes tracked the land before her.

She'd seen blood before, as any child born around the time of her birth. The sight of the blood itself wasn't what disturbed her. She was old enough to have seen battlegrounds before — just like any sentient being would in their long existence —, and she was no fool to think for a second that such a place would not reek of blood after the battle had ended.

No.

She knew war quite well. The worlds, for too advanced they might be, lived and breathed in conflict. Such quarrels drew the path of any civilization she'd ever known or been told about, for it was in any being's nature to fight for something, whether it was striving for a better life and the hopes of a more honorable living or simply selfishly destroying the possessions of another. What struck her about this sight, in particular, was the deeply indented knowledge that came from it.

What it meant.

Blood. Corpses. Death. Suffering.

It was a massacre.

No eyes were needed to see what'd happened here. No ears to hear the screams and the crunching of metal. No heart to feel the agony and blood spilled upon these grounds. She hadn't seen any of it, but just as she stood there, at the top of the hill overlooking the lands underneath, it all became incredibly clear to her.

For what she needed no eyes to see, she'd already seen a thousand times before.

The steel-clad army of Children of Clay had walked out of the city, knowing not in their minds but in their hearts that they'd never see it again. Their own king, a man of great and honorable wisdom, had lost his life in this battle, seeking to protect his people and safeguard Midgard from the beasts that plagued it. If she closed her eyes, she could see his face as he'd been before his head had been severed from his body, tall, fair-haired, and with iridescent blue eyes identical to all those of his lineage. He'd known all along the fate that awaited him and his army. And no lie had he told to his men, either, for he had always said their goal was fraught with a danger that would certainly only gain their death. Still, despite knowing their odds, none showed weakness, marching head-long into death's arms, dripping blood onto the ground before the first edge of a blade had even been drawn.

Come the next morning, not a soul returned, but neither did the beasts.

In its stead, now, lays a garden.

A garden of rusted and beat metal. A warriors' garden. The last stand of an entire kingdom.

They may have died, but they did not lose the war for she was here to bear witness to their glory. It was nothing if not a soldiers' graveyard. The last resting place of thousands of men who gave their lives to protect their kingdom and their world.

And with their sacrifice, the world was safe, for years to come.

"Such destruction here..." Her voice died out, fading out like a cough in a dying person. "Gods, I never hoped for it to come to this." The woman's glinting dark eyes deviated to the battlefield, where bodies lay on the ground as if flowers over gravestones. She moved her hands to the side and the soft rustling of moving, tall blades of grass graced her ears. "The world will never know what happened here. No one bore witness to what happened here and this secret shall die unknown to all those except the perished." She took in a breath, her heart squeezing at the destruction before her. One of her trembling hands reached her chest, closing over the pumping organ beating through her skin. "Such a tragedy... the loss of thousands of lives."