White Dragon Stories

All these lives

Did they know how many lives they had destroyed until now? Did they know that they were destroying lives? Or did they think they were saving everyone? That they were the good guys? Probably or else they wouldn't be so proud of their doing, right? Or were they just clueless? No, not all of them could be unknowing. They worked together with the witch, despite knowing what she had done and what she was doing. They accepted her dirty methods to conquer others and oppressed the people of the other countries. Why were they fine with sacrificing so many innocent people? Was it because those people were not citizen of the Kou Empire and therefore weren't worth of living a peaceful life? Why did they force children into slavery? Did they really think there was a way to make slavery acceptable? He couldn't understand it all. His brothers had praised them so much in the past, but would his brothers still praise them now? Probably not. It was beyond him why they followed the witch without thinking on their own. They throw the lives of others away for their own personal goal and excused it with the greater good. What greater good? What was so great about the strength of Al-Thamen growing? So many had died for nothing. How could they say, they wanted peace, when all they did was creating war?
So many questions and no answers. It was frustrating. He could not understand how people were fine with murdering others, although he himself was ready to fight his own mother. But she was a monster, had murder her husband and two of her own children. However, those who died in war, were no monsters, they were normal humans, who tried to protect themselves and their dear ones against the attackers. No, his people were not attacked and therefore hadn't had to defend themselves. They were the attackers. They were the ones, who wanted to kill people, who had done nothing wrong. This was beyond him. Was it maybe the fear of being attacked? So instead of waiting until someone came for them, they made the first move, because they thought this would give them an advantage? When he was born a great war between his home country and the two neighborhood countries was going on. His father, the emperor back then, and his two older brothers had fought the soldiers of the opposing countries many times. Many of their own soldiers had died in that war and even more of the other two countries. Of course, he had been too young to understand what was going on. All he knew was that his brothers and his father fought to protect their home from the attackers. When the war ended the two other countries had lost and became a part of the Kou Empire. Finally peace had been brought to the three empires. However, it was just a short peace. Shortly after the war ended the emperor was assassinated. His two older sons followed him a few weeks later, when they died in a fire incident. To hide the truth the public was told the culprits were from the two defeated countries. Distrust had been sown into the citizen. It was a good excuse to let more soldiers patrol the streets, a good excuse to enslave people from defeated countries, a reasonable statement to hide the true culprit. As child he had been naïve enough to believe that people would see through this scheme, but his naivety soon disappeared, when he saw that all these lies bore fruits. His mind couldn't understand it, so he started thinking that maybe people knew that those words were a lie, but said nothing against it, because it suited them right. Why opposing the murder of the royal family, when one could profit from it? Humans were selfish, he was selfish. Justice was a fragile concept and only important when it was about oneself. He was no different. Long ago he had stopped caring about other people, since they never cared about him. Too often had his heart been broken, because he felt sorry for those who had to endure all the unjust. But now he did not care anymore. Unjust had been done to him and he had to fix that, because no one would do so for him neither would anyone help him fixing it. He was not one of the good guys and he couldn't care less about this fact. Yet it would be great if his family would also accept that they were not the good guys. Honestly it was quite exhausting and annoying to hear their lies and delusional preaching. It was disgusting. Because of them so many innocent people had to suffer and all they had to say was that it was for the so called greater good, which did not exist in his opinion. But since when did his opinion matter? Never had it mattered and never would it matter. A sad truth.