by Eric Dulin
The Javalonians had waited in the darkness around the colony, urging their seemingly victorious enemies closer and closer to the colony; in the center of their main army. Once they reached the colony, the Javalonians washed across the field in a lightning wave, clashing with the Algonians from all sides. Kichner was torn from Shaisha and Althea as the ranks broke, and Kichner found herself facing her pitch black foe, nearly invisible under the night sky. It lunged in a lightning strike at Kichner, who dodged blow after blow when her foe was suddenly charged by an Algonian soldier. The soldier cried for help as Kichner snapped from her trance, unsteadily helping the soldier decapitate her foe with a quick snap.
Kichner trembled as she stumbled back, the soldier being attacked by another. She lost balance and collapsed in a pile of lifeless corpses. Or so she thought. One clenched her leg in an iron grip, and Kichner cried out as she tried to escape. The grip tightened. It started to hurt. Kichner was screaming, and she suddenly turned upon her attacker, savagely beating again and again until the grip vanished. Mortified by the blood coating her body, Kichner leapt away, crashing into an agglomeration of struggling bodies as she fought for her life.
The battle had ended by the time the sun rose. A thousand ghosts were all that remained of the twenty thousand strong force that had left Hollow, and they solemnly made their way back to the colony. Kichner was one of the thousand. Althea had survived as well, while Shaisha was missing. They both knew that Shaisha was with Yalak, no longer amongst them. The group was silent on the long march back to the colony. They crossed the grassy plains as the weak beams of sunlight uncovered the devastation of the field: hundreds of thousands of bodies and limbs atop a colony, more dead than alive. A glorious war.
When they reached the colony, they were greeted by cheers and shouts along with jokes of the enemy. The ghosts were silent. The crowds fed and nurtured them to health, fulfilling any desire they asked. The ghosts were silent. The young asked about the battle while the High Priests of Yalak gave their blessings. The ghosts were silent. The Hall of Warriors sang many great ballads for them and recitations for the fallen. The ghosts were silent. The news that Lavica had been executed for being a prophet of deception reached the ranks of the ghosts. The ghosts knew she was no fool. Then Songrad asked of Shaisha in the sleeping chamber the night of the battle. “It’s great to see you, I was so…where is Shaisha?”
The ghosts were silent. “Where is she?”
The ghosts were silent. “No…she is with Yalak, isn’t she?
The ghosts nodded. Songrad trembled with the words as she fled to her corner, shutting herself away from the others as she wept. The ghosts looked at each other before moving over to Songrad, nurturing the old worker as she wept for her great friend. The ghosts said nothing.
Even after a week, the ghosts had only begun crawling out of their shells. The war, however, was not going as planned. In what had been the largest battle of the war, Big Ones had intervened, sparing nothing as they laid waste to both forces, leaving both sides without an army. But while the war wavered, greater events occurred elsewhere. The western winds, which had so long been silent, erupted in an unstoppable storm.
Kichner was in the abyss again on the night of a crescent moon. Ever since the battle, she always thought of the same thing. But this time, it was different. Everything was white. She was alone in this world of white, but the moment she moved, a sudden black smudge grew on the ground below her. The swelling darkness soon erupted, branching endlessly in all directions as Kichner fled, finding her movements sped up the reaction as there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. All that remained was a small beam of light at the end of the tunnel. Then the darkness engulfed everything.
Kichner recognized the signal in the air before she could react, the same signal she had reacted to with eagerness only a few weeks ago. The threat of danger, of battle. Instead of eagerness, a great dread entrenched itself in her heart, commanding her to dig into the ground and hide, to never come out until it was over. The screams and yells of the dying reverberated in her mind in a thousand voices; the ghosts of the past haunting her still. “Quick Kichner, the colony is under attack!” Althea called out at the end of the chamber.
“What? How did the Javalonians get here?”
“The Javalonians aren’t attacking. They come from the West.”
“Impossible, why would they attack?”
“We don’t have time Kichner, we must fight or Hollow is lost!”
“Yes, go on. We must fight.” Kichner’s limbs trembled at the words.
Althea, Kichner, and Songrad followed the other workers of the chamber out of the colony, but the screams and stench of battle that shattered the serenity of the night found Kichner long before they came across their foe. Thousands of soldiers from the Western colonies had come to invade Hollow; the six Queens of the West long plotting to overtake the East, weakened by the costs of war while their army was expended fighting the Javalonians. Kichner could already tell they were fighting a losing battle, their numbers had not replenished since their devastating losses of their last battle. Kichner spoke to Althea, more in fear of battle than the fact that they had already lost, “We must flee to another colony; Hollow is lost.”
Althea came to the same conclusion. “Yes, Songrad, come quickly!”
“By Yalak…Yalak will not allow this. He cannot allow this. Yalak will intervene.”
Songrad was trembling as her sisters were cut down around her in droves, Althea and Kichner’s cries unable to breach her broken mind. Kichner scrambled towards her as Songrad had went astray, but several paces before she could reach her, Songrad was suddenly snatched up by a soldier of the West. Songrad scrambled in the iron grip of the soldier as she yelled, “Yalak, help me! Yalak! Ya-“
Her scream was cut off as she was cut in half in a fountain of blood, her twitching body left on the ground. Kichner’s jaw dropped for a second as the soldier moved forward. Kichner broke out of her stance, her small body allowing her more speed as she outran the soldier and joined Althea, frozen in place by what she saw. An enemy soldier moved for Althea from behind, but Kichner charged the attacker, flipping the soldier on her side as she clawed the soldier to death. The soldier tore a gouge from Kichner as she yelled in agony, not stopping her assault as Althea helped pummel the attacker. Under their combined efforts, the soldier finally went limp as Kichner rolled to the side, fluids pouring from the deep gouge in her side. Althea hefted Kichner up as she fled the scene once the fate of the colony passed through the fighters; the invaders had killed the Queens of Hollow.
Kichner rasped as Althea took her away from battle, away from fighting, away from death. Why Songrad? Why her? Why did she just stand there…why? Where was Yalak? Why did He do nothing? The questions raced through Kichner’s mind as fast as her ragged breaths from her shriveled body, and Althea did not stop until they were far from the colony with several other survivors. By the time they escaped the battle, Yalak became another corpse on the field. Althea stopped and let Kichner down gently against the cool base of a rock as she struggled to breath. Kichner found herself immobile as she attempted to move; her body collapsing on the icy stone. Dark clouds swept over the night sky as a lone star and the crescent of the moon were the last sources of light; marking the path in which all things followed. Kichner’s limbs trembled from the seeping cold in the now gentle breeze of the west, her body fighting against the inevitable. “Oh Althea…Why must it end so? Songrad, Shaisha, Hollow…”
“End? Kichner, it has only begun! The Eastern colonies will come to our aid, they shall not allow such barbarism!”
“Yes…only begun. For you it has only begun.” A cloud covered the final star and crescent of light emitted by the moon; leaving a sky void of light.
“Kichner? Kichner? Oh…oh Kichner…”
Kichner lay still against the rock, embracing the dark side of the moon as Althea wept over her crumpled body. She no longer felt or heard the world around her. She had entered a world where no cr
eature that breathed life could ever truly embrace, a world where the strong didn’t eat nor the weak starve, a world which for Kichner had only begun. A world of peace.