Mortal Nations

Mortal Nations: One

Screams clashed with wailing sirens and the crackle of flames. Feet pounded in front of my face, my eyes watering from the smoke. A burning pain seized up inside me and I writhed on the floor, twisting in agony and screaming for help. No one came to save me as my country fell into ruins. No one cared that they were causing me this pain.

Alfred shot up, panting. Cold sweat stuck his hair to his forehead and his arms trembled. He looked around at the inside of the tent, lit in a warm golden light. A continuous thrumming on the canvas roof told him it was raining, and the pile of blankets moving slowly up and down beside him told him that his brother was still asleep.

He lay back down and wrapped the animal-skin blankets back around him. It was mid autumn, not sure which month as they really stopped counting the time long ago. He thought back to the dream that had woken him. It had happened around five hundred years ago; nearly half his lifetime had passed since the event.

As the world ran out of natural resources, a permanent riot went up for years until there weren't enough people left to fight. The survivors set up a new society, living hidden away in forests and mountains, fending for themselves. Five hundred years later, no one knew of the nations that were the only ones who remembered the past. All that was left was fireside stories and the ruined cities from the riots long ago.

Alfred and Matthew had left their continent and moved to Europe on one of the last remaining planes to keep in contact with the other Nations, and were currently staying in a small camp set up in northern France along with the Italians, Germans, Spain and obviously the host country. The Nordics had another camp near Denmark and the Baltics and Poland another one nearby. They couldn't live too far apart because of the limited transportation; in this camp there were only two rideable horses.

Alfred sighed, rolling over again. Judging from the dim light seeping through the canvas it was early morning; he only had a few hours to sleep off the nightmare. The others got them too, but he pretended not to so that they wouldn't worry. Although unbeknownst to him they all knew that he had too much on his mind.

After a few more minutes of lying around he realised he wasn't going to get back to sleep any time soon, and if he did he would just oversleep. He sat up groggily, shunting the many blankets off him and standing up. He had slept in the under-layer of his usual outfit, just a reddy brown pair of leggings and sleeves of a similar colour. It wasn't too cold yet, despite the rain and he didn't bother to put anything over the top as he peeked out through the canvas door.

There were four small tents in the clearing including his own, hazy in the mist brought from the morning rain. The circle was surrounded by a combination of roughly cut logs and a thicket of brambles. A few smaller trees held up a makeshift wooden shelter for the horses at night.

A thud and a twang caught his attention, and he looked over to where a soggy-looking Italian was sitting on a log throwing daggers at one of the trees. The daggers were Lovino's prized possession and favourite weapon. They were made out of carefully cut crystals, the handles made out of animal bones. Antonio had made them for him a long time ago and he kept them with him at all times.

"Sup dude!" America grinned, squelching his way across the muddy bark and pine needles that coated the floor. Lovino scowled, turning his last dagger in his hand. The other four were bunched up together, embedded in a painted circle on the tree trunk.

"Put some clothes on, bastard." He said shortly. "If you want to talk, at least make yourself look presentable. He threw the dagger with a careful flick of his wrist and it joined the others on the target.

Alfred shrugged, turning back into the tent. As he looked around for the clothes he had stripped off the night before, Matthew to wake up. Alfred pulled a beige tunic over his head and swung his cloak over his shoulders. Some of the fabric in the patchwork material was from his old bomber jacket.

He stuck his head back out the door. "Better?" He asked the Italian. Lovino grumbled a bit, halfway through yanking the daggers out from where they were embedded in the tree bark. Despite his good aim, he had always been a bit feeble when it came to physical strength. Alfred would have gone over to help, but he would probably end up with the shards of  crystal embedded in his head too.

"You tired, dude?" He asked instead, walking over and sitting down on a log. "I can take over the rest if night watch if you want to catch up on some sleep."

"No thanks," Lovino's replied, pulling out the last dagger and strapping it carefully to his belt. "It's nearly morning anyway, the others will be waking up."

Alfred sighed as, as if to prove Lovino right, Matthew pushed open the tent flap with a yawn. "Oh, hey you two!" He said brightly, smiling as he stretched upwards. He, like Alfred when he first woke up, was only clad in burgundy leggings and matching sleeves. You could see the irritation growing in Lovino's eyes.

Matthew looked around pleasantly, swinging his arms back and forth. "Weather's a bit miserable, isn't it?" He said after a  while in a poor attempt to make conversation. The only sound was the rain pattering down through the treetops in a continuous rushing noise and the groaning of the trunks as the wind rustled their boughs.

Eventually Lovino went back into the tent that he shared with his brother, presumably to dry off his sodden shoulder-length mop of hair. Some angry muttering in Italian commenced and Alfred could see the shapes of the two figures moving around in the sillouhette of a small brazier.

After a moment of silence, Alfred's mind started to wander, and his feet began itching to do the same. "Matt, I'm gonna go take a walk." He said to his brother who was lingering around the tent entrance. "Tell the others if they're looking for me, I'll only be a little while."

He turned on his heel and strode out of the entrance to the camp. The muddy soil and pine needles curled underneath his bare feet, chilling his toes. Every now and then a root would jut out from the ground and they were slimy and slippery. The fuzzy red underlay of the tree's bark was hanging limply from scars in the wood, from the practice sword fights or from rutting deer scratching their antlers. As the rain went on, the fresh scent of pine needles rent the air and he breathed in the somehow homely air.

About a hundred metres away he came across a small stream that wound its way down from a small mossy knoll overshadowing the camp. He followed the darkly gurgling trail upstream until he reached the small waterfall tumbling off a slate ledge that marked the start of the course. He scrambled up the steep hillside until he was out of reach of the trees.

At the top of the hill, the rain hit him at full force but the cold water droplets sent a strangely soothing feeling through him. He looked out across the blurry haze of green forest stretching out for miles to the west. To the east, a purple shadow marked the Alps and the border between two former countries. He couldn't see very clearly, as he lost his glasses many years ago.

He liked to come up here when he was thinking. It was a little outlook, a tear in his shadowy forest world. He could see for miles but no one could see him. It was a sense of freedom that he never felt in the cooped up world beneath the canopy. He wanted to fly again, be high up where he could see the world for what it was.

And with that freedom came loneliness. As the years went on he disappeared from the people's memories along with the remains of the first world. When out hunting, he would come across the desolate and overgrown towns and cities, crumbling to ruins. Everything had changed, even the nation's around him. The testing times had twisted them with age and madness, and although it was not visible on the surface, he knew there were monsters lurking in their hearts, ready to leap out and bite.

He was afraid of them, somehow. It was not like his irrational fear of the dark or tight spaces, more like he was afraid that they would go to far and never come back. And the worst part was, there would never be someone there to protect him. That presence that was always there, guiding him through swearing and insults.

A salty raindrop rolled down his face as he thought of Arthur. He could barely remember his face anymore.