Nothing Civil About War (Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There)

[AntXHuman333]

In a village barely mentioned outside of its walls, my father lay, dying and sick. A young woman and her mother stood at his bedside, sustaining him on herbs and weak spells, even that putting them above any mage leagues from their town.


This is not their story. It never could be, because their lives were cut short. I survived that day. Didn't I? The JSDF fought there. I can scarcely remember what caused it all to happen. A misunderstanding, active hostility, something beyond that, perhaps. But it doesn't matter. It never did. All that matters is they died on the ground, right there. As did the rest of the village, save for me.


I heard no more from them after the detonations of the machine rifles. They may be with Hardy now. Suffering, perhaps, for what I did after that day. She will find me soon. I cannot stand with cowardice and regret when I face my people.


This is my story, which I wish to tell before it is lost.


May the gods bless those slain under war.

- Memoir of Centurion Typhon, c. 2072​

---

The chimes of Sisa's house ring in the wind, the hair on my head barely blown back as I stare from her porch. I cannot rest as I am. My heart is torn apart by that curse on my father, that only grow worse with time. I should be grown, very soon. My sixteenth year will come in just a few fortnights. But I have no one but him and Sisa. I cannot bear weight on my friend alone, much less her mother.


"Are you alright, Marcus?"


I look to my back. It is Sisa, leaning upon her stave; but I cannot bear to look her in the eye. She is beautiful, yet naught but a friend to me. I feel a desire for more, but I owe too much to her already. I just shake my head. A heavy enough burden already lies on the healers of this remote village.


"No," I state. "I only feel nervous…"


She sighed. "Oh, stop it! That's not 'alright'!" I try to interject, but she continues. "Come, mother has found some new herbs. She hopes it'll calm your father's humors."


For once, I feel my eyes widen. I've heard it many times, that the cure will be the snakeweed, or the apolywort, and every time, nothing occurs. But I cannot help it; the chance for my father's life to be saved is the only thing my heart can bear to hear. We run quickly, the sun high above us, barely casting a shadow. And though my heart is cold, the light warms me, Sisa's hand on mine.


Our home is far from the rest of the town. It is fortunate that it is; the other men and women are too scared to approach him, lest his miasma catch onto them. I hear Sisa's mother's chants from the doorway, and I quickly enter. My father croaks something weakly, but I fail to hear it. My footsteps grew louder as I rush to his framed bedside, and he coughs loudly.


"Father!"


"Shh," a motherly voice whispers, "he is is pain."


I shut my mouth with haste. My father murmurs more, and I hear him faintly. "Child", "alright", "good health". I know he tries to comfort me. I had always loved him for that. He is strong, stronger than I could ever be. I will try to become as he is, but I fear that day may never come.


"Mother!" Sisa loudly cries, "Sorry! I was just getting Marcus! Please for-"


"Silence, child!"


The room went quiet shortly after, save for my father's wheezes.


"…sorry, mother," my dear friend whispers again."Should I cast the Lesser Healing?"


The old woman gives pause.


"…no. Not yet, That may interfere with the medicine. If you could, pass me-"


Thunder roared in the distance.


I was confused. Was it rain? The skies were clear, and there was no great flash from the doorway. So it must be something greater. A beast, if we were to be in great misfortune. My legs tense on their own, ready to fight. Not flee, I am no coward, not when my father may need me. I will fight, alongside the guards of the Empire who give their lives to protect us.


But the thunder rolls on, almost never-ending.


"…Sisa dear, tend to him. Give a pinch of powder under Mr. Typhon's tongue in a short while. Understand?"


Sisa nodded, before her mother hobbled into the sunlight.


There was silence for a moment. We were fearful. Death was not uncommon, but a threat to the whole village was. Sisa glanced at me with nervous eyes, as did I to her. But the thunder ends abruptly. There is calm within the storm.


I let out a sigh of relief. Sisa does as well, before moving the herb powder from the mortar to a thin sheet. My father murmurs again, and I hear him.


"Troubled…troubled times…"


A voice shouts outside. It is loud, barking, and authoritarian. The senior guard of this village, who always grumbled that he was relegated to the middle of nowhere with naught but two incompetent subordinates.


There is another shout, in a foreign tongue, like the babbling of a madman. It is followed by a shaky declaration by a different voice, almost resembling the language of the Empire. I cannot make it out.


There is one more word from the senior guard. I hear his blade whistle through the air with immaculate technique, readied for battle. My legs tense once more, shaking.


And then, there is thunder.


Loud, roaring blasts, like the strike of thunder over and over again, as if spewed from the maw of a dragon. There is screaming, both fearful and angry, and the thunder grows louder. My legs do not obey my heart. They freeze, and only Sisa moves her head. She is stronger than me. But I no feel jealousy, nor resentment towards that. Not at this moment.


As of now, I am filled with fear.


Sisa moves with the wind, her flesh pale around the grip of her stave. She shouts for her mother, and begins a chant for a Circle of Protection.


The thunder strikes closer, and her voice is no more.


I fall to my knees. They will not move; with all the strength I have left, I crawl under the bedframe. My father wheezes loudly, and I know he would have said something. He would have grabbed his spear and shield, and gone to defeat the menace at our doorstep. But now, he is sickly. And even then, I hide behind him, because he is all I know I have.


The steps of heavy boots enters our home.


I stall my breathing. Rather, I could not breathe. Breath is death, I think. They storm through, a magic lantern's white light illuminating the world behind me. I crumple closely together, as if my body could shield me from the world. The light fades in an instant, and I cannot move.


I did not realize the sound had stopped. How long it had been, I do not know. I feel the tears on my face, the sweat on my back, and the cold urine soaking through my pants. There is no light anymore. I try my best not to fall asleep. To sleep is to die, I think. I do not remember if I had fallen asleep or not. I could not have, for I saw morning night from the corner of my eye. The bed above me smells of excrement and rot. I still do not move.


When I am forced to move by my stomach and bowels, I crawls slowly. My eyes are shaking, going from side-to-side. I see bodies everywhere. I do not remember seeing Sisa's face. I do not want to remember. Along the village walls, blood is splattered. Holes are torn through the logs, the guards lie dead, and the silence is deafening.


I do not fall to my knees. I can only stand now. My legs do not sink down, because even now, stillness is death. There are no tears left to be shed. There is no mourning, no funeral for my father, my world. It is only gone.


I glance towards an odd patch of green near the fields. Strange blotches blend into the grass, but my eyes still perceive it. I run towards it, away from what I had seen before. Anything is better. I turn the green over, and meet eyes with a corpse, blood dried around its neck. I look for anything. A sign from the gods, an answer, anything, even the small cloth tag on the other side of the strange man's body. It is covered in strange ruins. Four are next to each other, They mean something, they have to. I have to have something, please, I have to.


A curved rune, J. One winding like a river, S. One like a bowl flipped to the side, D. And a forked and bent path. F.


JSDF.


I cannot move. Where is my father? My friend? My village? My world?


It is not here, a voice whispers in my mind. It is gone, and you will be too.


My legs tense, and I begin to run. To where, I do not know. But only death awaits me here. I am sorry, father. I am sorry, Sisa. I am sorry, godmother. But the fear in my legs stops me from burying you. I am a coward, with no one left to give him strength. I will not survive this. I murmur to myself, just as father did.


"There is no way to survive."


So I may not survive.


Then I will keep moving. I will move, until I learn who did this. What JSDF is. I will keep moving, until I die. I cannot stop. I cannot.

---

A/N: Thank you for reading. Don't expect frequent updates, but I look forward to writing this in the future.

 

[AntXHuman333]

There is a saying from Earth: "Hell is other people." I understand that well enough now. I was both the tormenting devil and the burning sinner, after all. But at the time I fled to the forests, I would have begged to disagree with that.


There is a certain cruelty to nature humans can only imitate. Whereas we take pride or joy or catharsis in our atrocities, nature cares not. She merely does, and it is done. She is the perfect soldier, the ideal commander, and the most vile civilian. It is a wonder that I now look back on the forests of Falmart fondly, even after my tribulations. Perhaps it is because I thought opposite of what I did in my worst years: "Hell is the absence of other people."

- Memoir of Centurion Typhon, c. 2072​

---

I cannot tell whether the wetness on my arms is from sweat or from blood drawn by thorns. In the time I had begun to run, even the then-rising moon had begun to fall towards the west. In the light of dawn, only now do I stop to rest. For a moment, I thought I had made a mistake.


To stop is to die.


The words do not sting as harshly as they did just one day ago. But the message remains; if I stop moving, the thunder will catch up. They will kill me, but my body is aching with pain. One rest could not hurt. There is a river in the distance; I must wash myself. I need to rest, but I cannot sleep, and remain unconscious and prone.


With a hesitation in my steps, almost dragging my feet as I sneaked towards the river, I made it to the water. It was cool, and stung my arms, but it was still a relief to feel. With that coolness and release of my tension, I realized how thirsty I had really been, and in between gulps of river water, my stomach began to growl as well. It burned.


Oh gods, it burned with hunger.


How did I not realize? My legs are weak, my arms hurt so badly, my feet felt as if they were cut to shreds. I need food. I need healing. I need to go back.


Remember.


But there is nothing to go back to.


There is thunder and lightning, light in the dark and blood on the grass.


I must think of it no longer, no matter what tears my eyes protest with. Of sprinkling dirt over my father's corpse, so that his body would not go to the dogs. Of Sisa's blood drained into the earth. Of the strongest men I knew torn to shreds, by piercing holes in their armor.


"No!"


No, no, I will not think of it.


I will not think of how I am in over my head. That I am stranded in the wilderness, that beasts could maul me, or I could be killed by bandits, or punctured by the thunder.


What good would that do me? What good!? Why am I thinking of something that does me no good!?


My stomach growls again. I will listen, because I cannot listen to myself, so I will listen to my hunger. With a sharpened stick, born from my efforts from sunrise to high noon, I wade through the river, searching for fish. My father once told me he was forced to do this in an Imperial campaign, stranded from his legion. Thus, it makes sense my spear remains bloodless, even as the sun sets.


Like glimmers of light, fish will come and go in an instant. The moment anything moves, a tilt of the head, a twitch of the foot, and the glimmer will disappear, and jet into the distance. They are braver than I am; if an Imperial soldier towered over me to piece me with a spear, I would freeze in place.


I pause at that memory.


By the time I return to the present, a fish is pierced upon my stick, a large one, at that, blood and guts flowing from its center. Quickly I raise it up, tossing it to the silty shore with glee. Food, it is right in front of me, and I am so close to eating it. Although, before I can, I remember that it should be cooked. Dried in salt, not possible, or charred on fires, possible, but tedious. My stomach growls louder, and the burning weakness enters me again.


Raw, it is.


It is edible food, if I ignore the taste and texture. When I caught this animal, there was a fleeting moment where I felt as though I had succeeded. That memory is tainted with each bite of raw and bony flesh. Even then, it is sustenance. It does not fills me, not as godmother had.


I mutter to myself. "Gods, gods, please…"


My voice is silenced by a lantern light further beyond the river.


I duck and hide. I have heard of bandits before, prowling covertly through the trees to find their next targets. My father knew a centurion who was killed this way, and if one of them could defeat a member of the Imperial Army, then I stand no chance.


My breathing stalls again. Breath is death. My body is aching with exhaustion, but I dare not move. I look at the water, and see my reflection in it, a pale tan under the sunset. I weigh between backing away to hide my reflection or to stay still. Noise may be death, but this may also be death. I cannot decide, again. How could Sisa have more courage than me? I cannot understand how anyone could withstand this pressure, this choice of uncertain death.


Just as I make my decision, the light, in its staggered approach, falls with the thump of a heavy body.


I pause. There was no whistle of an arrow, no cry, no thunder at all. As if the person holding the light just collapsed, succumbing to something. The lamp hasn't spilled, for there is no burning or smoke. But it still may burn, oil burns for quite a long time.


I fear for my life. If I assume the holder of the lamp is unarmed, and I approach, they could kill me, easily with a blade. But if they truly are dead, there is a fire for the taking, oil for burning, and something to take.


Movement is death.


I shrink back. I decide to avoid them, until morning arrives. My eyes begin to flutter shut. Sleep is death. I open them wide, and am met with a stinging ash and scent. Had I slept? Even if I had, the sun is not yet risen. There is light, but not sunlight.


The fumes of grass and oil rise in the distance.


The lamp-bearer must be dead. They must be. I will take, I must. I want my life back, I want cooked fish, I want bread and shelter and hearth and home, I want medicine, I want godmother, I want Sisa, I want father.


For once, my legs move on their own.


I rush with a thick branch, its dry side having stuck out from the silt, to collect the flame. Beyond the river, there is a burning lantern. Next to it, a legionnaire's corpse. A man my father would have respected, and the flame I may take from him begins to lick at his left side. A shameful affront to the gods, I think. Forgive me, Hardy.


As I approach, his right comes into view, arm covered in blood and holes. It reeks of disease and rot, but holds a paper. It may be a map, or orders, or something about the thunder. I take it quickly. Robbing a man's grave, and I feel guilt. Yet, I do it still. But I have not time to ponder this. The thick branch in my hand catches the flame and a bit of oil, and I run back to my place across the river. I have plenty of sticks, I will sustain this flame, and I will have real food. Gods bless me, and what I have left. My flame, the clothes and my back, and…ah, the scroll.


I open the rolled parchment, part of it soaked with blood, and it reveals a message. What I hope to be a message, at least. My tired eyes trace its lines as the flame flickers through the night.

"Informant…leagues East
Deliver updates…Alnus Hill
Sign…
…turion Legare."​

In dried blood, there is one more line scribbled hastily at the bottom.

"J S D F"​