Blow Us All Away

Tomorrow there'll be more of us

Death is a strange thing, a feeling that cannot be easily described. As someone that has experienced it first hand, I can say with absolute certainty that it isn't, say, as exciting as it's presumed to be. Whether you die in battle or in your sleep, it more or less stays the same. The only difference is the awareness of time you have left, down to the very second of it.

The afterlife is a different story. It's like the verses of a poem that changes every time it's copied. Some manage to reach the heavens, ascending towards the infinite blue sky. I've seen it time and time again. Souls heading towards God knows where, while I couldn't seem to fly.

I remember how the bullet pierced through my abdomen. The first shot of an unexpected massacre. I can still feel the impact of my shoulder on the ground as I fell from my horse. In came air riddled with dust, out came blood, projected through violent coughs. I was the first blood.

I may not live to see our glory...

Chaos unfolded around me as I laid on my back, my men in a panicked frenzy. The kingsmen waged a rain of metal rain, the air reeking of smoke and blood. They had ambushed us from all sides.

But I will gladly join the fight...

Gunshots could be heard, reigning the area. I kept on fighting, trying to get up, but my body didn't allow it. Every breath grew heavier; I didn't want to accept my fate. Only one thought crossed my mind: not yet. I wasn't done.

And when our children tell our story...

It was hard to stay awake, but I didn't want to go. There was still work to be done, and I had so much to lose. I had friends, I had a family, I had a daughter. I had to be there, I had to come back to her.

They'll tell the story of tonight...

Suddenly, there was quiet. I couldn't see anything around me, just the clear blue sky that marked such a perfect day. It had all come to this, this very moment. I couldn't run away from it. There was no more fighting to do, at that point I realized how useless the struggle was. I was only making the clock tick faster.

One last thought came to my mind: Alexander. He had told me about the hurricane, how there was a brief silence in the middle of it. When they were in the eye, it seemed as if the storm had calmed down. As if the world stopped spinning and time had halted.

It felt exactly like that. I was just waiting for the storm to continue its course. One last prayer, hoping that I could live, that the chaos would resume and that I'd be snapped back into reality.

Tomorrow there'll be more of us...

But the storm never came back.

This was apparently what glory meant. Dying in a fight for your country. But was it really a fight when you never fired a shot?

The world was enveloped in darkness as I took my last breath.