• I wake my head pounds against my skull as though it is trying to escape from it‘s prison built of bone. My face feels dirty with the grime of war. Dirt, blood, sweat, and tears. ‘What happened?’ I think to myself as I carefully stand up. I can feel every breath I take warm on my face as it bounces off my helmet. The warm air making it harder for me to breath. I can feel my heavy armor weighing me down. Everything working against me as I try to walk I let out a heavy sigh as I start to remove my armor. First my helmet falls to the floor with a loud clinging noise. I take my first breath of the cool air around me. It chills my feverish skin. As I drop more of my armor. My breast plate being the last thing I remove, it loudly thunders as it hits ground.

    I walk around my fallen comrades but walk on my fallen enemies they deserved as much respect in death as they did in life. My eyes start to burn even though the cool air rushes over them. The breeze carrying the stench of death and decay. As I stand at the door to the streets of my once great city I feel a pang of anger and pain. So great I swear if I wasn’t already dead inside I would have died. I let my flowing hair down glancing around at the numerous fallen. People I knew. People who had families. People who gave their life to defend their home and protect their way of life. People who had trusted me with their lives. ’Why am I still alive?’

    ‘Why did you selfishly leave me to walk though the ruined streets that are filled to the brim with my fallen?’

    I am walking over the ruins of my buildings. Hearing the broken pieces of them crunch and crack under my feet turning to nothing more then dust. In the end that is all that is going to be left of my once great civilization. Dust and bones. A new flag flutters proudly from the building I used to call home. If a building could commit the crime of treachery this would be the worst form of it. I reluctantly pull my gaze away from my vile treacherous home and just keep climbing up the hill. I’ve got no idea what I’m climbing towards or what will meet my eyes when I get there. My heart has been fed to the dogs and they chewed it up and spit it out as though it were nothing more then a rancid piece of meat. My body feels worn and tired as though I should be in the grave like the rest of my comrades. My soul feels as though it has been ripped from me piece by piece. I used to ask the scholars how someone could be so heartless but now I understand. They weren’t heartless they just had their soul ripped away from them. Stolen.

    I can see just over the horizon from were I stand. “ Why did you leave me to fester and brood in my hate?” I yelled out to no one and everyone all at once. I fall weakly to my knees feeling the wound on my head started bleeding again. My body falls to the ground but I am numb pain is nothing to someone who lost everything. I lay for and extended amount of time somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness. The only things keeping me company are my thoughts and memories playing through my head as though they were a well written play that keeps playing over and over again. While I think ‘what did I do to deserve this?’ I start to feel cold over whelming hope feels my heart closely fallowed by a fear of what comes next for me. Death is coming for me finally no longer will I be the last person standing. No longer will I have to endure knowing that I survived a horrible slaughter. No longer will I have to look at my once beautiful city and know that the red of the ground is the blood of my fallen.

    I wait for the boney hands of death to pick me up but it doesn’t come. I feel warm hands lifting me off the ground and words that don’t seem to make any sense to me. I open my eyes slowly I see a blood spattered male with black hair and the most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen. “She’s alive our leader is alive.” I hear hopeful joy in his voice as my eyes close again and I fall into the blackness once again. The only thing to keep me company are my thoughts. How can he be so hopeful? How can he be so full of joy? Does he not see the destruction around us? Does he not realize how many were lost at the gain of nothing? I think furiously as I start slipping into the deeper dark where I am all alone. Nothing to keep me company. Floating between life and death and struggling to reach my final end. Should it be so hard to die? Especially when that’s what you want to happen?

    To my surprise I hear a noise. Something annoying something I used to know. What is it? What is that noise? A chime? No! No, it’s a bell. A bell to warn that there is attack coming. I must wake. I must fight. I can’t allow another slaughter to take place. Now I’m fighting against the darkness that I have come to know so well. The darkness that I had wished would take me to my death. Now I am fighting to live fighting to reclaim my body. Fighting so that I can help reclaim my land. It can be rebuilt we can live like we used to and tell stories of the brave soldiers that gave their lives to preserve our way of life. I must live so they can live forever in our tales. I start to hear the voices of those around me. “Something’s wrong with her she’s been mumbling and she wont stop flailing.” A sweet voice I seem to recognize says worriedly. I try to remember where I had heard the voice before and as I do I seem to glide closer and closer to the light. Towards the real world. Towards the people that need my help.

    I start being able to hear and comprehend what is going on around me. I struggle to breath as someone forces their air down my throat. I start to breath on my own as though all that happened was I had forgotten to breath. My lungs fill with warm pleasant smelling air. I start regaining control of my body. First wiggling my toes then my fingers then my hands and feet and so on. Till no part of me is left unmoving. The movements are controlled nothing like the flailing I had been suffering before. My muscles feel stiff as though I hadn’t used them in years. Finally I open my eyes to a sun filled room. I automatically raise my hand to shield my eyes from the onslaught of light that floods into them. I breath in a sigh of relief that I am still alive.

    It’s a bright new day in a bright new era and I intend to make the most of it. No petty battles. No loses. The men around me stare at my peaceful face and wait for my words. My orders. Like a flock of sheep they wish to be guided they wish to fallow. I open my mouth and speak the three words I never thought I would say together. “ Sound the Retreat.” I say as I sit up. My words come with looks of shock from my sheep. “ But then all the ones lost will have been for nothing!” One of the elder men say anger lacing his words. “ Don’t you see you fool. They’d not have been lost if we hadn’t have gone to battle knowing we’d lose.” He look sourly at me “ There is nothing we can do about your regret my Queen but we can avenge them..” He said testing how far he could push this idea into my head before I broke down and let him do as he wish or before he was beheaded for not fallowing like the rest. “ I will not deny that I do regret losing some of the best men I’d ever known…” I said pausing to evaluate his face and expression. It was full of hope and smug. He thought I was agreeing with him. I sighed as I continued “ But who will tell their story if we keep making the same mistake over and over till there is nothing left of us and our home?” I asked in an inquiring voice.

    The male who had been so edger to head to war a few moments ago looked dumb struck back at me at though he was trying to turn this back in his favor but did not know how. “ If we give in now we can rebuild. We can live the way we want to. No more fighting about our petty differences but living together peacefully and telling the tales of the proud men the died defending their way of life. All that will really change is the flag we live under.” I say. I couldn’t even believe it was me talking neither could the men gathered around me. The stared at me with their mouths a gape like they had just seen me grow up before their very eyes. I was no longer the child leader of a civilization. I was the woman leader of a group of people that would live like life was the most precious thing to them. I barely heard the eldest man sound the retreat. My eyes welled lightly as I watched the men proudly. These were my people. My friends. My neighbors. My family.