Another war story? Oh, no. It's a half rant/half explanation of Zash's past in a fairly better way than what I originally put down. Please note that this is Zash's perspective and opinions and they don't necessarily reflect my own.

Enjoy another side of him, the rant-y angry, bitter side. Mild cursing.




War has since lost its old romance. The romance you read about in the history books, the one where men ride forth of their valiant steeds to meet a death they may or may not conquer. The one where men clad themselves in armor, brandishing a bow or a sword that seems to fit them perfectly.

Yes, that old romance is gone.

Gone with the metallic blade, gone with even the crossbow, the axe, and the arrow. They even went so far as to pull the steed out from under them, to have them stabled; hobbled, waiting for the breath of war they will never see again.

The open battlefield of day is replaced with the relentless battering of day and night, with no place to hide, no place to run. Burrowed in the ground, waiting to be flushed out like a fox.

Waiting for the hunting hounds to come.

That was the game he was thrown into, whether he realized it or not. Deep down somewhere, he did. It was an underlying knowledge, a whispering thought hiding between the lines. Yet, like everything, he didn’t want to believe.

And why should he? War was glorious. Beautiful. Something that every young man wanted to be a part of simply to prove themselves. Who cared about all the little details? It didn’t matter when the glory of fighting for your country became such a grand thing, to rid the world of the evil that harmed it and its people.

They failed to mention the rats the size of small cats, the trenches, and the bombings well into the night. They failed to mention the chlorine gas that wandered the trenches and no man’s land, probing about the earth like some blind creature. They failed to mention the aircraft, easy to detect but hard to avoid. The bullets that killed so much swifter than an arrow strike, the tanks that lumbered over anything and everything in their paths.

They failed to add in the screams of the dying.

The horror of the living.

The tears of a broken man.

Somewhere the romance of war lost its potency, becoming the glare of horrific wounds and shattered promises. He didn’t understand this until it was too late.

He didn’t understand until he was there, hiding in the trenches, surrounded by refuse and corpses of the men he had only just come to know. Hiding with bombs falling down around them, praying that one wouldn’t actually strike its target.

Bombs, by the end, he was deaf to, just as he was blind to the romance of war the posters claimed was there. Maybe, when you cleaned up the blood, gore and death that ran through the battle field, maybe then there was romance.

Maybe it was an after the fact type of thing, something you looked back on and laughed about when you were safe at home.

Or, it wasn’t there at all.

It was a lie, a masquerade.

A pathetic attempt to make one think that the centuries meant nothing. That War would be the same no matter what changed.

In the old stories, War wasn’t fought with a misbegotten cloud of fog that wandered through the trenches. It wasn’t fought with weapons that could turn a man into cheese within a few seconds; it wasn’t fought with explosives falling from aircraft.

It couldn’t even keep up with its own story.

Or it simply accepted the lie.

He assumed both. He very much assumed both. War had lost its glory by now, worn away by the traces of dried blood from petty wounds, the dirt and grime that clung to his flesh like a virus. His body was tired from the cold, the illness that took a man just as easily as enemy could take ones head if he wasn’t careful. He was tired of being rattled by the bombs that were dropped each day, sometimes night.

Tired of making friends fast enough to watch them die crying out for their loved ones.

The cry of gas caught his attention, causing him to turn away from the trench wall he had been leaning against to watch men race down the tunnel, the white tendrils of death slowly stalking forward. The poor sap who discovered it was still alive, staggering and hacking up blood, but alive.

He grimaced, his brain going on autopilot as his legs carried him through the trench, mindlessly searching for the group of men huddled around the gas masks.

Riley, Riley get back here! Don’t do that! Do you have a death wish, Soldier? He stopped short as shouts rose up in front of him, watching a man, lunge up the side of the trench, clawing his way out.

It took his war beaten mind to realize who it was. Riley, the one who enlisted with him.

The kid from down the block.

The kid who had been his friend since they were seven.

Wordlessly he took off after him, feeling anger pulse through his veins.

Conner you idiot! Get over here and get your gas mask on! Don’t make me haul you over here, boy!

He didn’t respond other than to push himself over the trench, staring down Riley as he ran haphazardly over no man’s land.

Bombs were still showering down. He could see the explosions freckle the earth, but he felt no fear. Only betrayal. Riley was going to get out of this. He was going to go down without him.

Well that wasn’t going to happen.

Conner! The boy kicked the hand that grabbed at his boot, hoisting himself up to where he was running after Riley’s form. He was only vaguely aware of the wire tugging at his legs, threatening to trip him, of the bombs singing their warcry as they fell.

Riley disappeared more than once, tripping up on the uneven ground, hiding behind a veil of dirt that sprung up in his wake. It didn’t really help that he was running blind.

Conner’s legs tripped up on a strand of wire, the thing holding him hostage by the ankle as Riley got farther away. He could only watch, trying to shake off the barbed wire as his long time friend found himself crossing the invisible line, being gunned down by enemy fire. Connor could only watch the lifeless body settle on the earth.

Did he really think he could get away? Honestly?

The ground sprung up beside Conner, leaping like a trapped pheasant and sending his body flying as if he weighed nothing at all, which wouldn’t be too far from the truth with what little rations he could force down his throat. His last thoughts were to Riley, the only one he could think about before everything disappeared.

I’m getting out too, you selfish bastard.

That was before he woke up with the smell of evergreens, of leaves, of the perfume of flowers.

That was before; when he still believed in coming home a conqueror.

When he still believed in the romance of War.