The Fog of War

[Gildarts]

Day One-Hundred and Fifty-Seven

Agony. It blazed powerfully in her mind. Leaking from the strong sense of self that had kept her sane for so long. After so many days, so many utterly purposeless hours full of torture, pain, and of course, the most rueful regret. One hundred and fifty seven worthless fucking days and she had inevitably been coerced into playing their game by their completely vile yet highly efficient bullshit.

They had started their effective "convincing" crusade with the subtle threat of killing innocent people, then, they had done it, slashed their throats like it was nothing right before her eyes. Blood spilled and their bodies rolled lifelessly to the ground. Christa was slowly driven mad while the body count at her feet only grew larger.

Training didn't exactly prepare a soldier for these prisoner of war situations, not ones of this caliber. Her home world could not have readied her for this hell. The basic routines hadn't told her what to do if she couldn't escape. Not from this wicked sense of a broken life.

The many blood-curdling screams that had filled that hellish room would never leave her. And because of this, she damned them all to hell. Every last slimy fucker. The Empire. She blamed them for it. The Empire. Malice seethed through her bloodied teeth, hatred blinded her, shivers of terror and self-loathing haunted her in the half-sleep that had become her now so distant life.

Finally, she had fallen to her knees and begged them to stop when they brought in a girl that resembled her sister and placed the child before her. So simply, they had held a freshly sharpened knife pressed against the silken pale skin of the child.

A pearling bead of blood was produced, trickling the etched lines of her neck and staining the collar of her pristinely white shirt. "Her name is Clare. Age eight. Another lost life, and for what?" He knew it hurt Christa more if she knew the girl's name. Katia... And like venom, the words of freshly sharpened daggers stung.

A weak shudder from the essence of her being and the weakened soldier who had fallen to a bow could only whisper her plea, "Please... Please... No more."

The soldier had known death in battle. Even been a reaper of it. And never had it seemed once as senseless - so utterly purposeless - as this.

A triumphant pose from the proud brown-eyed man held up by a false sense of dignity in his vacant suit. "You fought well. But, can't tell me you actually thought you would win against us?"

Her lips dipped into a sighing frown as she drowned in the eternity that was and would always be the consuming deadened loss of shame.

Agony. It burned from her insides like an inferno fueled by the ever-engulfing flames of her dishonor. Once upon a time, she would have rather died than admit defeat. But death was only a fairy tale.

Today was the precipice of her life and forlorn death. After enduring so much, she was now a hollowed shell of her previous self. Her thirst for revenge had since evolved into a monster that was consumed only with feeding the eventual malevolence that would slowly destroy her soul.

She didn't bother to take a breath, it would only feed the agonized fire of her scorched lungs. Singed by the screaming, wilted by the pain, and deflated by defeat that had once meant so much. Now it meant nothing. As far as the soldier was concerned, she had signed her name on fate's tempting dotted line. One proposed by the brown eyed devil. She would kill him. And harbored this purpose above all else.

And as far as she was concerned, she was already dead inside. She had nothing else to sell, and no one else to lose.