Looking up at the sky, one could almost have forgotten the actions that had taken place earlier that day. The clear blue skies, and warm spring wind, deceived the senses so effectively, that you almost couldn’t smell the death in the air. But oh… were you to look down at the ground for just a moment, the sharp iron smell of blood would seize your mind until you were sure that the very ground you walked upon had become saturated with it. The sad truth of the situation was, that the ground had become saturated with it

            You might mistake the soft squishing of the ground under your feet, as the heavy dew of the previous night, which had been just as beautiful as the present day. You might close your eyes and imagine that you were simply taking a relaxing walk through the freshly rained upon soil. Or you might hear the screams echoing across the fields, and you just might remember that it was blood you strode upon.

            Hearing these screams, a more sanguine man, might be reminded of childhood classrooms, of children crying out as they played happily with one another or perhaps of the screaming of fans at a recent show. If however a man were to err on the more realistic side of life, he may find that the screams that permeated the cool morning air, were not no innocent. And he may find that the cold iron blade resting in his hand, was to blame for his fallen brothers laying now before him.

            This was precisely the state I found myself that morning, stumbling, dazedly across a battlefield, broken and strewn bodies, lying in various states of death, along my path. None had foreseen this. It was not meant to have happened, but what lay before us all now, were our own families. Brothers fought brothers, sons fought fathers, and none of it… had affected the outcome of this war. The commanders of the armies held no pity, no sympathy, no remorse, for what had taken place here.

            But someone had to pay! Someone had to care! How could these men; my brothers, my compatriots, my friends; how could they die, and how could no man pay for it? This was not to be.       

            As I slid my sword quickly and without hesitation, through my own body, I watched my own blood flow, likening it to the dozens of similar wounds I had caused just hours earlier, and I asked whatever deity existed, for forgiveness. Each second I lay dying, I recalled one more face, and begged each silently, to forgive me, until finally, the red faded, and black took it’s place.