Story of Azladoria

Chapter 16: War is Hell

The most bloody battle was about to commence. At sunrise, right before Icup's troops had begun waking up, Natalia had ordered her cavalry to ride out to the enemies' trenches and draw them out of their bunker.

It was an obvious tactic to lure them into battle, but Natalia knew that the ambitious Metarkons, with a thirst for victory and exhausted by the encirclement, would bite. After being cut off from their supply lines, defeat of Natalia's army was the only option they had left.

As the cavalry retreated back to their bunkers, the perturbed Metarkon soldiers would follow, and would be met with a vicious onslaught in which they were far outnumbered.

Her plan had worked flawlessly, as expected. A chorus of angered yells echoed through the distance as the Metarkons attempted to give chase to the enemy cavalry.

As soon as Natalia's cavalry reappeared over the horizon, the beginnings of Icup's army not far behind, with a wave of her sword she screamed her order at the top of her lungs.

"CHARGE!"

Like a rushing tidal wave, fifty-thousand soldiers rushed toward the shocked Metarkons and pummeled into their weak center. Natalia's plan had been executed flawlessly, as the surprise attack had left the unprepared Metarkons little time to form a sorry excuse of a line that would be easily broken.

The grassy meadows of the plains became splattered by bloodshed as the Natalia's army cut through their enemies' weak defenses, entrapping them in the right, left, and center.

The enemy troops were unable to escape from behind as an entourage of new Metarkons arrived in an attempt to save their comrades. Their efforts were futile, however, like lambs to a slaughter they came as the battlefield became stained with the wounds of the dead.

Natalia rushed toward the center and plunged her sword into the neck of a soldier as her senses became overwhelmed by the metallic smell of blood. But this, this was her purpose. Like her mother before her, this is what she was born to do.

Natalia was not disconcerted by men's screams of terror as her army continued in their vicious onslaught. The cries from those that were not yet dead sounded through the air, their chorus of agony forming the familiar song she had grown to know so well.

"GOD! WHERE IS GOD!?"

"I want my mother! I want my mother.."

"Mercy! Mercy!"

"Help me, brother, help me! We're all men here.."

"Please! I don't want to die! I DON'T WANT TO DIE!"

An experienced soldier would do well do drown out the screams of once lively men. A good soldier should not think about the children of the man he has killed. A reliable soldier should spare not a glance towards a fallen enemy, to whom he owes nothing.

The best soldier should not allow the cries of the dying to haunt her guilty conscience. Nor should she allow the too-familiar sounds of the battlefield to rattle through her mind even when she was not there.

Natalia could never confront the burdens of the things she had experienced during her time, her life, as a warrior. That was not the way she was taught and it was not the way things were for people like her.

War is all she knew. She had fought in her first battle at age thirteen and was trained her entire life to be the strongest warrior that had ever lived. It was the thing she was best at and the way through which she served her country and her people.

She could never leave, and even if she dared to, with her dreams plagued with the sounds and sights of the things she had witnessed it would be as if she never had. There was no way out. War is everything.

So she pretended. Pretended to revel in the death and the pain and the murder. She pretended she loved being known as the brutal and bloodthirsty warrior everyone knew her as.

As her army continued their slaughter, she allowed only one thought to echo through her mind. The same three words that pounded through her head since the very first battle she had ever fought.

War is Hell.