Forgotten Dreams of Eternity: Lost Odyssey: Thousand Years of Dreams
+This is the last short story to Kaim's forgotten dreams+
+All 33 Science Fiction/Short Stories were written by Kiyoshi Shigematsu+
+Copyright © 2011 by Sky_Knight+
(Short Story -XXXIII.)
*An Old Soldier's Legacy*
Kaim spent the entire summer surrounded by a fence that towered over him.
He was trapped in a prisoner of war camp.
It was a terrible mistake -not his but the dimwitted, cowardly commander's. Kaim was a mercenary attached to the man's regiment. They were invading the enemy's main port city when the officer miscalculated at the end and the unit's line of retreat was cut off. While the troops were prepared for an all-or-nothing charge, the commander almost casually opted for surrender.
"Don't worry," he had said to his men before they were locked up.
"Whatever happens now, the ultimate victory in this war will be ours. Instead of making a stand and dying for nothing, we'll be much better off if we just quietly let them take us as prisoners of war. We'll be liberated right away in any case."
This made perfect sense.
But the officer completely misread the feelings of an enemy on the brink of defeat.
Having survived hundreds of battles, Kaim knew better than anyone how people felt towards prisoners of war after the hated enemy had taken the lives of their friends and loved ones and torched their hometowns.
To the members of his platoon at least, as they were preparing to enter the camp, he whispered,
"You'd better forget about any rosy pictures. This could be worse than the battlefield."
His words proved all too accurate.
Life in the POW camp was bitterly harsh. Day after day, the men were forced to do backbreaking labor on a diet of scraps. The sick and injured went untreated and were not even allowed to rest. To collapse on the job was to die. Indeed, several of the prisoners died not by collapsing on the job but from brutal beatings for minor infractions.
Everyone with access to the camp -both the soldiers assigned to guard duty and ordinary citizens with business there -looked upon the prisoners with hatred in their eyes. Some guards would wave swords at them and boast, "I can kill you bastards any time I like," and certain officers slaughtered one prisoner after another, disguising the killings as accidents.
Even as they tormented the prisoners, such men were suffering the deaths of their families and friends in the war, and spending their days in fear of the coming invasion. The camp was a place ruled by hatred and revenge, but also a place shrouded in uncertainty and fear of the day when the captives would become their captors. This tense, complicated atmosphere ate away at the spirits of all, friend and foe alike.
The horror of war lay not only in the mutual killing of enemies clashing on the battlefield but even more so in places such as this that were far from the front lines.
Kaim knew this with every bone in his body.
A month passed after the platoon entered the POW camp.
The enemy troops were thoroughly exhausted. THe fall of the capital was said to be imminent.
In spite or because of that, life in the camp was worse than ever.
The tasks assigned the prisoners were even crueler than before, and their diet, which was meager enough to begin with, fell below the level needed to sustain life.
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Forgotten Dreams of Eternity: Lost Odyssey: Thousand Years of Dreams
Science FictionA science fiction novel with 33 short stories foretelling the forgotten dreams of Kaim, A immortal who has lived over more than a thousand years. This novel is based on the hit video game Lost Odyssey. Short Story XV, Short Story -XXI, and Short Sto...
