Chapter 1 – The Invasion
I opened my eyes. It was the dead of night. I couldn’t sleep. Anticipation of tomorrow’s invasion kept my mind awake and my ability to sleep at bay. I sat up and opened the front of our tent. The sun wasn’t even peeking over the hills yet. I flopped back down onto my pallet and tried closing my eyes again… nope. Sleeping is definitely not going to happen. I turned over to Levi, my brother, who was asleep, snoring like a bear next to me.
“Levi.” I whispered quietly. He didn’t respond. “Levi, are you still awake?”
I leaned over and poked him in the back. His snoring stopped and he shifted his arm a little. I poked him in the back some more. Levi snapped his arm back and grabbed my wrist.
“Carth,” he said, obviously annoyed, “go back to sleep. You won’t be able to fight tomorrow if you’re exaughsted.”
“But I can’t sleep, Levi. I’m too excited about the invasion. Plus, you know… the other thing.”
Levi didn’t say anything back. Did he fall asleep again?
“Levi, do you think we’ll get a higher kill count this time?” I asked.
Last time we invaded another village’s territory to expand our own we didn’t kill everyone like we were supposed to. See, the reason we invade and take over is because our race, the Anthraxian race, is growing too large. So we find other places suitable to our needs of farming, hunting and training. We just take what we want and last time a few of them got away and alerted nearby village’s leaders. Long story short, now they know Levi and I are coming tomorrow so their defenses will be much higher and they will have a plan for our defeat, which is stupid because there’s no way in hell they’d be us. But that’s a good thing because that means more of a challenge for me. I laid back and thought about past invasions I’d been a part in. I’ve killed easily over 500 people in the past 3 years; men, but never women and children. I couldn’t even fathom having to handle that guilt of taking a child’s life, let alone their mother. Some of us love it, but I kill by a code I put together after seeing one of my counterparts take the life of a mother in front of her child. Unless the person I’m supposed to kill has nothing to live for, nothing left in their lives to make their existence purposeful, then and only then will I kill a woman. Children are different though. I will never harm a child.
I could feel my eyes starting to get heavy. It looks like that excitement is finally wearing off. I allowed my eyes to shut and drift off into much needed sleep.
Hot… It was very hot. My body was hot and I could feel a pool of sweat forming underneath me. I shifted my blanket off of my legs to cool them off. Just as I did that something felt like it bit me. I yanked my foot back and threw my blanket off to strike what had attacked me. I reached behind me and grabbed my sword and swung it down in front of me. The thing was still biting my foot. It wouldn’t stop. I tried opening my eyes to see what was trying to desperately to turn my foot into a midnight snack but couldn’t open my eyes. My eye lids wouldn’t budge. I dropped my sword and rubbed my eyes to coax them open; nothing. I tried peeling back my lids and got them open just enough to see a bright haze of orange. What is that? I pried my eyes open and they finally got working again and I saw what was biting my foot. It wasn’t an animal or creature, it was fire. My foot was on fire; Nothing else, just my foot. I stomped the ground to put out the flames on my foot but the more I stamped the ground, the more the fire spread. I grabbed my blanket and swatted at the orange menace. That spread it further. Wait, I thought, Levi! I looked over to where Levi lay. He was covered in flames, screaming, writhing, rolling, yelling… dying.
