Story:Kings of Strife/Part 32

Part Thirty-Two
Mist fogged the train windows beyond recognition. All that could be seen beyond the faint outline of water droplets on the glass windows was darkness. The train, speeding by in the dead of night, was nothing of particular importance. It was an Inusian train, both by design, and destination, but it was currently moving through the Shorican hills on its way to the borders of the country. It was the last of the military transport trains, carrying the last remnants of the Shorican federal forces that were assimilated into the Inusian government.

Most of the Shorican federal troops – affectionately referred to as the Feds – had jumped ship and joined the rebellious Fifth Brine faction once Shorekeep fell to massive riots. The final act of the shaky Shorican government, with more than 90% of its livelihood erased off the map at Phenicks, was to order all Feds from the country to march on Shorekeep and go after the migrating survivors that had fled Phenicks. The point of the march was to restore order, secure an important city from chaos, and to eradicate once and for all the Fifth Brine rebellious faction. Lofty goals, to be sure.

In doing so, the Shorican bureaucracy had initiated its military draft for the first time in two hundred and eleven years. Every male from the age of 19 and above was signed onto the Shorcian compulsory service program, and so every male had to attend to the order. Most of the army came from the country, full of rolling hills, expansive forests, and arable land; they were farmer’s children, nothing more, and barely knew how to hold a rifle. The other large portion of the militia had come from the port cities, Shorica’s bread and butter, and were sailor boys with an ambition to be war heroes. They, too, were weak in strength, but this did not matter much. The sheer numbers of the militia was going to be enough to accomplish its relatively miniscule goal.

But, to the astonishment of the entire country, the militia had failed. As most of the voluntold soldiers had come from the extremities of the nation, only a few thousand soldiers were available to march on Shorekeep as needed, and as such they were caught up in the city’s riots and were eventually overtaken. With the defiance of its last, weakest order, the Shorican government effectively collapsed. Fifth Brine won, led by a woman who had emerged from nowhere and claimed to have survived whatever razed Phenicks. She went by Nolstuvainia Sestrum, and every person that saw her described her with the same few words. Breathtaking; beautiful; eloquent; ambitious; royal. This was a woman made from a mold of kings, meant to rule and born for conquest. Many took her sudden success and ascension as proof of these words, and bent their knee to her faction. Others, fed up and frustrated with the dictatorship-in-all-but-name that Shorica’s former government had become, simply found that this newcomer’s rule had to be better than anything they suffered from before. Either way, she gained most of Shorica as an ally, and quite quickly.

The Feds, still marching towards Shorekeep when they heard the news, all reacted differently. Most of the soldiers, including a large majority of the newcomers and draftees, fled their military service and flocked to join Vainia’s faction. Outside of this group there were two categories; those who returned to their homes, ambivalent to the nation’s political environment, and those who stayed a part of the military without leadership in vain hopes of holding up what once was Shorica’s proud traditions. This group was soon taken over, but by who nobody could say.

They all knew who the party in question was, however. Throughout history the Inusian nation had long been at Shorica’s throat, whether it was through actual war or economic rivalries. In the past two hundred years the two countries had never been at formal war with each other, but their struggles to dominate a world market or fruitful coastline were unparalleled. Now that Shorica had effectively collapsed, it would have been preposterous to suggest that any nation took advantage of the situation faster than Inusia. All the soldiers knew this, even the ones who deserted, but none said it, as if it were an illusion or hint of something in one’s peripheral vision that could easily be real or imagined; and if looked at clearly, it would have no choice but to become real, and thus dangerous.

The Feds assimilated by the Inusian nation ceased to become Shorican soldiers, in name and in truth. They were given Inusian uniforms by faceless men in black, had their weapons switched for Inusian rifles, and were shipped methodically onto trains bound for Inusia City. It was there that they would be trained, rebriefed, and likely brainwashed. Many whisperers spoke of the high chance of the last option, although it was never confirmed; these naysayers were silently harvested and never seen from again by their comrades. Nobody else had the courage to say any other suspicions they might have had.

It was on this dark night that the last two Fed soldiers in the last train car of the last soldier shipment sat watching the misty windows next to them. They had long ago smoked their last cigarette between each other. There was little for them to say to each other. One of the passengers was an old man, just aged enough to give him gray hair on his head but not enough that his body weakened and began to break down. The other man, silent and reclusive despite his youth and strength, drifted between sleep and consciousness. In particular, the young man hated the trip and how awkward it was. He had friends who had committed group suicide the instant they realized what was in store for them in the future; he had been too cowardly to join them, too stunned to believe that whatever was in store for him could have been worse than death. Now, he regretted this mistake.

The wind outside the windows began to blow. With the speed of the train, the wind was already whistling past constantly, but now it began to lightly rattle the misted glass.

“Tell me something, son,” stated the old man. “Why is it that you didn’t desert the Feds, when Shorica died?” The speaking of the old one took the young soldier by surprise for a moment, and then he was surprised again when he realized what was asked of him. By his words, this old man made his political views quite clear; when Vainia had sieged Shorekeep and made the country hers, the nation that was once Shorica died. Its heart, nested in the metropolis of Phenicks, had ceased to beat.

“I… I didn’t think it was very sensible.”

“Not sensible?”

“Yeah… Yes sir,” the boy added. He patted at his breast pocket for a cigarette and was disappointed. He grimly clenched his teeth and fist. “Between joining a rebellious group or staying in an established group with like-minded men around me, my choice wasn’t very hard.”

“But what if the rebellious group is all this country had left? What if you knew not running from the military was only building conflict in your country?”

Coming and going like a melody that is forgotten and soon remembered, the wind picked up even more. It completely eluded the attention of the men wrapped up in their spontaneous conversation.

“I… I don’t think Shorica will ever be at such a low level. Not as long as it has people who can think, and see the world around them, and realize what is going wrong. Sir.”

“Yes, I once thought so as well.” The old man looked off into the window, seeing nothing, as if he was watching an especially interesting film. He had a melancholy air about him despite the proud aesthetic his gray hair and pressed attire relinquished him, and the boy wished he could take a picture of the man in this moment, for he wanted to remember it forever, even if he would forget the words being exchanged right then. “But I find that the world is quickly running out of inquisitive minds who doubt that which is going on around them. We are becoming less of an exploring society and more of a people that listens to whatever the rich men in suits and military dress tell us.”

“Do you really believe that, sir?” The question was delivered with impeccable purity from the boy, so much so that it drew the older soldier’s attention from the window and to the boy’s clean-shaven face. The man didn’t know the boy’s name, nor anything about him save their common employment. The man knew nothing about this boy except that, in this moment, he hated him with a passion. The resentment was abstract, random even, but it was there and he was completely positive that it was sincere. But why? Why did he hate this boy? Was it his sweetly ignorant words? The fact that he defied the old man’s philosophies? Or that fact that he spoke with such confidence and in such sureness, but was completely deprived of any experience or logic behind what he believed in?

The man looked at the boy, bewildered and resentful, even as the wind began to violently rattle the train’s windows. And he continued to look, now with growing awe and terror, as the window behind the boy in the navy blue army uniform shattered into a thousand pieces, flying into the air, and a dark blur rushed in from the outside. He was motionless, his body frozen unconsciously now, as the boy’s chest exploded into a shower of blood and flying rib pieces, and a dark hand jutted out of it from behind. The man saw the boy’s eyes widen from the phenomenon before they flashed with pain for but an instant; then, quickly, the boy’s gun-metal gray eyes lost their light. His head became limp, as did the rest of his body, and rested entirely onto the darkness standing behind him.

No scream permeated from the old man’s body, even as he stood up and pushed himself onto the train car’s wall as best he could. The wind, now howling in through the broken window and circulating through the car, did all the screaming for him.

He could see the murder scene quite clearly now. The old soldier blinked, his eyes blurry and his cheeks wet with horrified tears, but he could see more clearly than ever. Behind the boy’s corpse stood a man covered in blood. He sported gray, baggy pants tucked into dirty black boots; on his chest he wore a low-cut grey, sleeveless shirt, and over his waist was tied a black jacket that billowed behind him and danced in the wind. Besides his non-notable clothing, however, the man with his fist in the soldier’s chest had long, spiky black hair and the eyes of a demon. The left iris shone with dark orange light, the same color as the sunset, and together with a right eye of pure darkness, they looked right into the old soldier’s soul. Even as the man slid the corpse off his extended right arm, those eyes stared him down and did not waver.

Acting on sudden, delayed impulse, the old man reached behind him for the pistol kept on the back of his belt. The weapon drawn, he held it in shivering hands and aimed right at the man’s head. At this close range, even with shaking hands, the soldier knew he would not miss. The wind blew past him, jostling his hair around his ears; freezing his tears; and chilling his bones. But nothing chilled him as much as the murderer’s eyes.

Neither of them moved for a moment, until, spontaneously and surprisingly to even himself, the old soldier pulled the trigger to his revolver. The gunpowder in its mechanisms exploded and the shot rang through the car and out the window.

The murderer dodged the bullet. He tilted his head just slightly enough for the bullet to whizz right past him harmlessly and go soaring out the broken window, as if it was child’s play.

The soldier, his mouth wide in awe, dropped the gun and let his hands fall to his sides. There was nothing for him to say. Not anymore. As the murderer righted his head and started slowly walking towards the soldier, the gray-haired man’s mind thought of fighting back; of resisting; screaming, running, anything that would save his life. But he could not move. Not with those eyes looking, staring, and most of all, hating. They held in their distant, cold light more resentment than the man had ever experienced in his long life of Shorican service. As he sat there, watching the harbinger of his death inch ever closer, the old man, like the dead young soldier before him, regretted not leaving the military when he had the chance.

*****

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