When the dust settled, there
was nothing to rally behind of, nothing to support us another day, not a rock
or a person. There was nothing. When they blew it up, they destroyed everything
we had believed in for so long. It was a strike deep in our hearts, resonating
thousand of kilometers in every direction, where many others would also feel
that hope had died and darkness had descended upon us to stay. We were in such
disbelief, that they took advantage of our pain to come and destroy us.
Those men and women were not the
kind to take prisoners or to torture. They just killed every single person that
tried anything against them and they had the best memory to ensure they would
never forget how someone had wronged them. And that was what we had done. They
had been the predominant power in the universe and we had tried to take them
down, we had tried to stop them from making us penetrate into the abyss they
wanted everyone to be in and they didn’t like us doing that.
For a time, before all of this
happened, we lived a life of relative peace and quiet. It would be a lie to day
we all lived in harmony, because we didn’t. We just didn’t find interesting to
disrupt someone else’s existence, unless it threatened our own. Our existence
was not an easy one but we tried to make ends meet by using our wit and ability
to cope with every single human thing that tried to tie our hands and prevents
us from going forward. Maybe that’s how it started.
At first, they were only a
handful of people, but it started to grow exponentially when they made it into
the media, into the information channels that every single intelligent creature
used. You have to grant it to them: they used that in their best advantage and
soon enough they rallied hundreds, then thousand of people in order to do what
they wanted. It was one of those things you ignore at first but then they
become so overwhelming and obvious, that you cannot just turn your head away.
They started with fights and then
with proper skirmishes. Now, we battle every so often with heavy artillery and
our uniforms on, trying to change the tide one-way or the other. It has to be
confessed that it doesn’t really seem to be working in anyone’s favor. We
seemed to have stalled and it doesn’t seem like any of the sides knows where to
look for the next step. However, with the destruction of our most sacred site,
things will change in a new way, one that we haven’t yet seen and it’s very
scary. Maybe they knew what to do all along and we were just pieces of a game.
Being a prisoner is bad, of
course, but we would prefer that option against the real one, the only one they
give us: death. Facing that is not easy for all of us. Some have already
decided they want to embrace it but others are too young or too afraid to
actually walk into a battlefield and decide to die. So, when we were caught off
guard by the destruction of our temple, they killed a big bunch of us but
others ran towards the granite hills and hid there, moving through caves,
trying to live another day.
They eventually left, feeling
there was no use in finding every single one of us to be killed. It’s obvious
they realized that, without food, we wouldn’t be able to survive for long. And
even if we did, such a small group of people had no power to overthrow the
power hungry machine they had become. They were virtually unstoppable now and
every other living being knew what they had to do in order to survive, and no
other person could say anything about it, because we all wanted to keep living.
The caves became our home and, as
time passed, we were able to go outside and harvest foods we had never eaten
before but we had to learn to enjoy them, for our sake. Many people had learned
to grow other foods there and they also found water. In time, we had a small
community that seemed to go unnoticed by the rest of existence. For a time,
again, we were happy and we thought everything had gone back to what it was. We
thought that, maybe, we had been given another chance.
However, that was not the case.
We were awaken one morning by the sounds of heavy artillery and then came the
bombs. Our population was still small so two or three bombs easily killed most
of our people. Those who weren’t killed, we tried to push them off for a while,
in order to let others escape or maybe we thought someone was coming to the
rescue, which didn’t make any sense at all. In time, they came through and the
rest of our little group was almost completely destroyed.
The only person that remained was
I. Their leader in person came down to meet me and force me to bend the knee
and sweat loyalty to him. He knew, very well, that it had been me who had
started this whole thing; it had been my fault that so many brave men and women
were now dead. It was my fault that our world had sunken into a deep darkness
that would never go away. He knew how bad I felt about it all and he had come
to make me say it out loud, not only to him but also to every other soldier on
his side to hear. Because they had been on my side once.
I did. I confessed my crimes and
tried hard to redeem myself by asking forgiveness. But I didn’t ask him to
forgive me; I did not ask that to his soldiers either. I was telling that to my
people, to the ones that had been beside me for a long time and now they had
paid with their lives. They had entrusted me with their faith and their lives
and I hadn’t been able to correspond in any way, I had just grabbed their lives
and used them as cards one uses in a cheap and lousy game of chance.
As I cried, the man that had
become the leader of the new world came to me, gave me his hand and carried me
into his vessel. Inside, I was put on chains and treated like an animal, even
worse. I was done and I wanted death to be forced upon me, but it seemed like
he had finally realized that just death is not punishment enough. He wanted me
to really need death, he wanted me to beg for it every single day of my life
and he would be able to deny me that privilege.
In time, I became something you
cannot call a human anymore. I was much less than that. I was a shadow of
everything mankind had ever amounted to. I just sat on my corner, in a dark
cell, and thought about every single thing that had ever happened before my
very eyes. There were happy moments but mostly fear and dread. I was haunted by
the remains of the people I had failed to and the ones I had lead to their
deaths. They blamed me and I could never disagree with them.
I became increasingly weak and
feeble, even to the point my mind started to go a little bit. The leader would
come sometimes and watch me, ask me questions or just stare, as a disgusted
costumer looks at a circus freak. He knew I wanted death and he would still
deny it. There was something inside of him, something that remained from the
past and seemed to be buried deep within him, some kind of grudge or maybe it
was something completely different. I never really knew.
Our vessel was destroyed one day,
by armies that had been hiding and resisting the darkness that had befallen on
the world. They had rallied, in silence, and their moment to attack had come in
the exact moment I had been finally granted my death.
I died anyway, but it was a
different thing altogether. It was better. After all, it was them that needed
to take revenge on me, after I had almost destroyed everything that they had
tried to build. I had been the killer of their families and friends. So it was
fair, in the end of the day, for them to kill me.
