"Are you bleeding?"

Hireia freezes at the familiar voice behind her. She turns around slowly, pressing a palm to the wound running the length of her arm, revealed through the ragged rip in her bloodstained, dirt-mottled tunic.

"I'm fine." She tries for a reassuring tone, raisin her hands palms-forward as though warding off the concern of the woman speaking from her. "It's not my blood. Mostly." The woman now facing her purses her lips and walks towards Hireia.

"Yes, of course you are, and of course it isn't," she mutters. "What was it this time, Hira? Rogue Vashkan mercenaries? A camp of Woodtwisted?" She reaches for Hireia’s arm, trying to pry her fingers away from the wound.

"It was Woodtwisted mercenaries, actually," Hireia corrects, jerking away from the touch of her future commander. "Daiia, I’m alright, truly, you needn’t—"

"I am your future commander and a better healer than anyone in this sorry excuse for an army camp, I know what you need," Daiia snaps, interrupting. Then, softer, she adds: "Keep pressure on the wound. Follow me."

She takes Hireia by the hand and leads her to a nearby tent with one flap propped open with a broken spear, its point dug into the ground. With one hand, Daiia pushes Hireia down gently onto the cot nearest to the entrance, reaching with her other hand for a small box of medical supplies nearby. She replaces Hireia’s clenched hold around the wound with her own hands, cutting away what scraps remain of Hireia’s tunic sleeve with a pocket blade.

"Daiia, I am alright, truly—"

"You are not alright, the blade that gave you this could have been poisoned. Have you already forgotten what happened to Airye not a fortnight ago?” That makes Hireia go quiet, remembering the young soldier’s screams piercing the silky calm of the night as the last healer left to them laboured through the night to draw the poison from the wound in his abdomen. Hireia bows her head, remembering how Airye had not felt the sting of the poison in his system before it was too late. Daiia’s gaze flickers upwards to meet Hireia’s downcast one.

“I’m sorry,” she says, quieter than before. “I know you trained with him. But please, sit still and let me work so that the same will not happen to you.”

Hireia rolls her eyes, trying to shake off the memories. It is always like this between them—Daiia making seemingly insensitive comments about soldiers she knew only from afar, hardly even by name, training with the other future commanders. But to Hireia and the other soldiers-to-be, they were comrades in arms. But as always, Hireia knew she had not meant it. How could she, leading the life of the daughter of one of the most decorated generals in the Dasaari army?

"It was only a graze, you know,” Hireia tries, after some moments of silence, as lightly as she can. “If anything, this theoretical poison would cause but a feverish night and some sluggishness in the morning.” She grins, though it does not reach her eyes. “Should not the better healer than anyone in this sorry excuse for an army camp know that?”

Daiia pauses amid her work of salving and binding, sighing up at Hireia, but a small smile graces her set lips. "Hireia, please be quiet."

Hireia obeys.

Daiia’s hands work swiftly at Hireia’s arm, cleaning the wound with deft movements many times repeated. She spreads a thin coat of medicine over it with the pads of the fingers of her left hand while her right reaches for a roll of bandage.

"Dreii, that stings," Hireia hisses. "Can you not be gentler?"

Daiia scoffs. "Hear ye all,” her voice drips sarcasm, smooth from her smiling lips. “The famed Dasaari warrior Hireia, daughter of Hyrye, who has fought the fearsome Woodtwisted and land-lusting Riverdain and evil Vashkans—cannot even take a bit of salve."

Hireia pouts at this, stifling her smile. "You have no right to speak to me that way, can you not see I have been gravely wounded?"

"But I thought it was only a graze?” Daiia asks with false innocence, looking up at Hireia once more, grinning in that familiar, devilish way for the first time in what might be weeks. Hireia laughs, if only at the joy of seeing Daiia smile again.

"Ai, hush now, you. It didn’t hurt that much at first."

Soft smiles linger on both of their lips as Daiia finishes binding the wound. When it is done, Hireia lifts her newly healed arm and appraises it half-mockingly, half truly impressed at Daiia’s work.

“Not bad for the daughter of Daiye the Glorious, the Golden General of the Threefold Wars,” she declares. “Perhaps you should be a healer instead of a commander.”

She says it in jest, grinning, but the smile falls suddenly from Daiia’s lips at the remark, eyes shadowed once more. Hireia drops her arm onto her knee and takes the other woman’s hand.

“Dai, come now, I didn’t mean it like that. Of course, we will all follow you into battle, you know we trust you with our lives.”

Hireia’s urging gaze forces Daiia to lift her eyes. She sighs. “I know, Hireia, it is not that that troubles me.” Hireia waits unspeaking, knowing it is better to let Daiia monologue through it when she is like this. After a beat, Daiia speaks again:

“It is only—” Another pause. Then, another sigh, taking Hireia’s other hand in her own. “Hira, they have given orders to all the ordained commanders, myself included, that all who are fatally or even possibly fatally injured in the coming battle are to be left on the field. Left to rot with the corpses amid the hills of the Vashkan border.” Hireia is silent, taking this in. “There is a shortage of healers, as we are all aware,” Daiia continues, “and we have been ordered not to overburden them with those who will take too long to be saved, with only a small chance of their survival in any case, and whose recovery will be too long-winded.”

“What does that mean?” Hireia asks uselessly, though she well knows what it means, the realization nearing her like a great wave cresting the shore. Daiia shifts uncomfortably, turning Hireia’s hands in hers so that the palms are facing up, tracing the lines there with her fingertips.

“It means,” she begins, quietly, “that if you or anyone else in this army dear to my heart is badly injured on the battlefield, I will be forced to leave them. I would be forced to leave them. To leave you, no matter what, even if you could be saved through much pain and effort.”

Crash. The wave froths against the shore, soaking Hireia with the horror of it. How many more will be lost for it, for this order? What if she…. The thought trails off unfinished.

Suddenly, Hireia drops Daiia’s hands, edging just the slightest bit away. Something like pain flashes across the other woman’s features. “No,” she says, firm. “No.”

Daiia shakes her head helplessly, wringing her hands. “Hira, you know if they give me an order, I must obey, I—”

“No,” Hireia interrupts her. She slides down from the cot onto the grass floor of the tent, only half covered with threadbare rugs, careful of her bound arm, drawing Daiia down with her. By instinct, their legs cross as they sit opposing each other, as though they are sitting on the floor of a stone temple, praying to the gods, and not in a straggling tent in a makeshift Dasaari army camp. Indeed, Hireia speaks as though praying, as though invoking the names of the Dreii to witness this moment.

“No, Daiia,” she says, taking the hands of her future commander once more. “Remember what we promised each other? We always come out together. Broken, bent over clutching our wounds, half-dead, but together.”

Daiia says nothing, still troubled, but Hireia continues, gaze unfaltering. "If I am injured in the battle.” Her mouth sets in a firm line, a mirror of Daiia. "If I am bleeding and broken and on Death's door, you must not leave me. If I have done my proper duty, if I have fought as I am trained to now, promise me that you will take me home. Carry me if you must. Swear it."

A moment of silence, of trepidation. If they give me an order, I must obey, Daiia had said, not two minutes earlier. Some medals, some decorations will be withheld from her if she swears to this, Daiia knows. But does love not mean more than gold?

At last, Daiia gathers both of Hireia’s hands into both of hers, bringing them almost to her lips, a breath away from kissing the fingertips. Her eyes are earnest.

"I swear it,” she says, in a voice like iron. “I will not leave you."

Hireia nods, placing a hand on the back of Daiia’s head, bringing their brows together. “Thank you,” she whispers, like a secret. There is nothing more to say. “Commander.”

Daiia mirrors her nod, and they rise in almost perfect unison. Daiia moves to gather the medical supplies she had used back into their box, while Hireia moves towards the tent’s half-open entrance, fiddling with the bandages tied around her arm. Daiia’s gaze flickers to her.

“Don’t mess with those,” she chastises Hireia absently. “You should rest.”

“I would rather eat,” Hireia answers easily, as though the oath just sworn had been a dream, a mirage in the haze of this army camp. “I’ll be alright, Daiia.”

She moves once more towards the tent’s exit-entrance, but Daiia’s voice stops her in her tracks.

“Hireia.” She turns, one hand on one of the tent’s support beams near the entrance. Daiia’s face is inscrutable. “Truly I have promised you this, so promise me something in return.”

Hireia’s hand drops from the support beam. “Anything,” she says, trying for an easy gait. Daiia half-smiles, but there is worry in her eyes.

“Try not to get mortally injured, Hireia. This is an oath I do not wish to have to act on.”

Hireia grins, tilting her head to one side. “Don’t worry, Dai. I am the famed Dasaari warrior Hireia, daughter of Hyrye, who has fought the fearsome Woodtwisted and land-lusting Riverdain and evil Vashkans—I can take a bit of battle.”

With that, she slips from the tent, leaving Daiia shaking her head and smiling softly still within. The worry, however, does not leave her eyes.

This is a prequel to my other work posted on here a while ago, Swear It, though that has since been reworked and I don't know how much sense it will make in proportion to this one, and vice versa. For anyone reading the both of them, know that Datha and Daiia are the same person, I changed the name for reasons that would take too long to explain.

Skira wakes dreaming of bees.

Bees and blood, bees and cages, bees and honey, suffocating her, drowning her. The same woman, every time, facing away from her. Skira does not know her, does not know her name, but she knows she must get to her, she must. She touches the woman’s shoulder, and she turns. Her face is a cage, the bars adorned with strings of gore and honey and the last surviving threads of chestnut hair. Bees mill around within it, buzzing, stopping suddenly and seeming to look Skira straight in the eye the moment she meets the space where the woman’s eyes would be. Skira blinks. Always, she is surprised in the dream, though she has seen this metal-sweet tableau a hundred times before. The next moment, she is within the cage. The next, she is a bee, and she cannot get out. The next, she is drowning in honey, tasting blood, weighed down by metal chains. Always, there is one thought clear through the sickly sweetness of it all: I was too late.

Skira has begun to hate bees.

Queen of the heart Who stole thy tart? And into a rage sent thee

None would hear His single tear His hearing was at three

Mad as a hatter Clothes in a tatter No longer will he drink tea

Sent into the aether Long will he hate her For he stole the Queen's treat And she stole the Knave's heart

The fourth deadly sin, of course, is Envy.

She is often overlooked, seen as a crash of Desire and Greed, unnoticed until she is all-consuming.

Envy is poison. Poison like apples and potions and the minds of rotting men. Envy is green. Bright, roiling green like acid and sealing wax on cursed love letters. Envy is hunger. Not hunger for more, always more, like Greed. Not the rapturous, bodily hunger of Desire or the bloody, red-edged lust of Wrath. Envy is hunger for something always just out of reach. Something sweet, something that comes so easily to others.

Something to be taken.

At her core, Envy is want. Need. The need to take what someone else has, what you want so utterly, the desire so deep it is like a bleeding gash in your chest.

It goes unnoticed, for Envy bleeds everyday, and her blood is green acid that hisses when it hits the ground. It takes on a mind of its own and seeps into the thoughts of broken men.

Envy is depicted often as a woman, for women are most often objects of Envy. She has hair and eyes dark like the Void from which she spawned, black like desert snakes one moment, and like softest silk the next.

Envy is beautiful and she is terrible. Her skin is creased with every desirous thought of men, her features sharp like the tang of powder in a spiked glass.

There are many names for those who are most drawn to Envy's reaching fingers. Her objects, victims, prey. Her subjects, servants, paupers. Her kings, gods, masters.

But the most common is the simplest.

Humans.

The Sun dipped down below my feet The Moon tipping over my head They nip forever at each other’s heels But they will never catch

The Sun, the Moon, can never see The dark of night, the light of day The Moon waits always for her Sun But when he comes she fades away

The National Art Museum had an entire exhibit dedicated to the paintings of Yvonne DeLac.

Three interconnected rooms bustling with visitors standing before tableaus of ruins and rivers, bloodied swords and rusted armor, rendition after rendition of human faces twisted with emotion. Soaring happiness, crushing grief, stony resignation and deepest desperation—Yvonne DeLac's paintings explored every thread of the fluctuating tapestry of human emotion. The only common factor throughout all her work was the raw realness of the subjects' expressions, marking Yvonne's paintings, fantastical as they might have been, as almost disturbingly human.

Those paintings fascinated Vivian Sanders to no end.

The castles, the battles, the ethereal women with fire for hair... They seemed as pages torn straight from every unfinished manuscript, every rough first draft that littered Vivian's desk. She knew nothing more of the painter than anyone else, but Yvonne DeLac was just as interesting to Vivian as the paintings—how did this unknown woman's brain work so similarly to hers? Whatever well their inspiration poured from, it was made of the same stone.

Such were Vivian's thoughts as she examined the newest addition to the exhibit: a painting of cobbled square, vaguely Medieval, surrounded by shops and stands of every kind. In the center of the square stood a stone cage, and within it a woman of almost divine beauty. Her legs were folded beneath her, the pleats of her dress concealing all but her ankles. Her chin was lifted regally, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, but her eyes... Her eyes were empty. Dull.

Those eyes were not, however, the focal point of the painting, Vivian noticed. The edges of the woman's dress, and what little of her legs could be seen below it, were made of the same stone as the cage that contained her.

Somehow, Vivian knew that this was not intentional. That the woman was not a statue or a wax figure. No, the stone was a disease, like mold or rust. Slowly, it would consume her, immobilizing the woman forever in her cage, the centerpiece of the town square.

Vivian's pen flew over the pages of the notebook she always had on hand, jotting down loose thoughts on the story behind the painting in an indecipherable scrawl. She did not look up from her inspection of the tableau as she wrote, absorbed in the depths of those dull, resigned eyes...

"It's my favorite, too."

Vivian jumped at the sudden voice, almost dropping her pen. She turned to find a tall woman at her side, arms crossed and head cocked slightly to one side as her eyes roved over the painting of the caged beauty. The woman smiled slightly at Vivian, nodding at the notebook she held.

"I see it's inspired you," she remarked, amused. Vivian noticed the stranger's voice held the undertones of a French accent.

"I guess so," Vivian replied, fidgeting with her pen. "I'll take inspiration wherever I can get it, nowadays. But there are so many possibilities with this one. Possibilities for a story."

"You see a story in this painting? Are you a writer?" the woman asked, quirking an eyebrow in a way that Vivian found undeniably attractive. She nodded lamely.

"I guess you could say that. Though with the amount of writer's block I'm facing right now, that might not be the right term." To this, the woman said nothing, so Vivian turned back to the painting to recount the contents of her jumbled notes.

"The caged woman," began Vivian, "is a a princess. The most beautiful in the land. In the world, even. Her father, the king, had her placed in a cage so the people of the kingdom could walk past her everyday, admiring her beauty, but they could ever touch her.

"His kingdom became the most prosperous in the land, lords and ladies from foreign lands traveling far wide to see the caged woman of legend. The king would allow no one to marry her, since that would take away his most valuable financial asset. But they left offerings: gold and jewels and wine brought to the castle in the princess's name. They worshipped her like a goddess."

Vivian didn't know where the words had come from, the story now much more elaborate than the messy notes she had penned. She and the woman beside her stood in silence a moment.

"And the stone?" the woman asked quietly at last. This seemed the easiest part to Vivian.

"She's been caged for so long, spoken to the same way an icon is spoken to in a church that... Well, she becomes an icon herself. She was treated like a statue, so she turns into one."

Vivian turned to find the woman smiling in a satisfied sort of way.

"That's exactly it," she said. "That's exactly how I meant it to be."

Vivian frowned. "What do you mean, exactly how you meant it to be...?"

She trailed off, realization seeping into her words.

"You're the artist," Vivian answered her own question. "Yvonne DeLac?"

It seemed wrong, somehow. Vivian had always pictured the artist of these paintings as someone middle-aged, someone who had seen enough in this life to be able to paint emotion so clearly. But this Yvonne was young, mid-twenties at most, with clear, dark eyes and complimenting brown hair pulled back in a claw clip. She was pretty. Beautiful, even.

The woman—Yvonne—smiled at Vivian's dazed expression. She flipped over the laminated image hanging on the lanyard around her neck. Yvonne DeLac, visiting artist, it proclaimed.

"That would be me," she said. "Tell me, do you often decipher the stories behind my paintings in your free time, or did you just start today?"

Vivian laughed. "It's my biggest hobby, actually."

Yvonne's eyes shone. She beckoned Vivian towards another painting, on the other side of the room. This one showed a kneeling woman in bloodied armor, head pulled back by the hand of an unseen figure, the sharp edge of a sword pressed against her exposed neck. The woman's hands, soaked in bright red blood up to the wrists, were outstretched in a gesture of supplication. A pool of blood had formed beneath her hands, a clear sign of how badly they were shaking. Tears streamed from her eyes, upturned to a hidden figure who stood before her. The woman's expression was one of pleading, but pleading half-heartedly, as though she knew she would be shown no mercy, and was resigned to the fact.

Very little of the person she looked up to, from whom she sought salvation, was visible. Only the tips of the armored feet, the edge of a ceremonial sword hanging from a sheath at their waist. What most fascinated Vivian was that the figure's face was not in the least visible. Were they stoic to the woman's begging? Sympathetic? Was the twist of their lips cruel, resigned, disgusted, grief-stricken? All this was left to the audience, but Vivian had long since decided on the story behind this painting.

When Yvonne asked her that very question in her smooth accent, the words came easily.

"The woman is a soldier," Vivian began confidently. "One of the most gifted in the entire army, trained to fight since she could walk."

"But..." Yvonne prompted, smiling.

"But she's insane. Her ancestor once badly offended a god, and one of his descendants was cursed to go mad and turn their sword against the wrong side. She," Vivian gestured to the kneeling woman in the center of the painting, "was just unlucky enough to be that descendant.

"The madness took her in the midst of battle, and she slaughtered everyone in her division, doing the enemy's job for them. The person to whom she looks up, who she begs for mercy, is her commander. Her commander who led her into every battle, who trained her for years, now must give the order for death, ending the curse of her line."

Vivian shifted her gaze from the painting to Yvonne. "Is that right?" she asked.

"There is no right or wrong in art," the woman mused, "as all art is subjective. But if you mean to ask if that's the interpretation I intended when I painted this, the answer would be yes and no."

Vivian frowned slightly. She had not expected this.

"You're close, though," Yvonne added. "You're only off by one thing. May I?"

She gestured to the notebook and pen still in Vivian's hands. Vivian handed them over readily, watching as the taller woman flipped to the back of the page full to the brim with half-finished stories about the paintings in the room.

After a few seconds, Yvonne handed the notebook back. Presumably, she had transcribed the true meaning behind the painting, that small that detail Vivian had missed.

Before Vivian could say anything in response, one of the Gallery's security guards entered the room and called Yvonne's name. She nodded to the guard and smiled that ridiculously attractive smile a final time as she stepped away from Vivian.

"Lovely talking to you," she said, by way of farewell. "I hope you beat your writer's block, if my paintings are the only thing that help you through it."

Vivian waved lamely as Yvonne disappeared through the room's arched doorway, following in the security guard's wake.

After that encounter, Vivian found herself completely having lost the ability to focus on the paintings. She stayed only a few minutes after Yvonne's departure before heading out to brave the January snow, taking the fastest route back to her apartment.

That evening, she wrote for hours, head stuffed full of stone princesses and bloody curses and selfish kings and ethereal women and every other element of Yvonne DeLac's paintings.

At last, after a full ten thousand words about every DeLac painting she could think of, Vivian reached the one she'd tactfully saved for last: the begging soldier, the ancestral curse.

She reached for the notebook where Yvonne had written the secret of the painting.

When she found the page at last, there was only this:

The commander is a woman The soldier and the commander were lovers 226-763-9980 Call me -Y

Vivian Sanders smiled up at her ceiling.

Held, beheld, beloved Hestia, hearth of the gods General, generous, genese Gave up her seat for a man she knew not Forget, beget, forgotten Hestia, the lost Olympian Victim to the curse of selflessness

The people of Four Stands didn't like it when Elder Renka Alderan told war stories.

With others, it was an anticipated event. The whole community gathered around a flickering fire, leaning in close to the storyteller with shining eyes and smiling through his tales of epic charges and brave deeds and glorious victory.

But not Elder Renka.

With others, it was immersive in a way that brought sighs of almost-reminiscence to the lips of the listeners. They could almost hear the pounding of the horses' hooves against the wilted grass, the battle cries of the commanders as they rushed forward to meet their foes, the clash of swords and the clang of armor.

The Battle of Four Stands, from which the city got its name, was indeed something worthy of story and song. It had been the final fight in the War of the Age, ending the struggle against the Enemy once and for all. Twelve days and twelve nights it had lasted, and each hour they had barely eked by.

There had been four stands in the battle, starting only with four thousand brave men against triple that, joined by another four, then three, then, in the fourth and final stand, only a thousand additional men joined those who remained of the original eleven thousand.

The other Elders spun sugary tales of glory and virtue out of a loom of blood and deathblows. They glossed over the screams and the gore, the losses. They did not say that only a sixth of that twelve thousand strong army had survived. They did not say that each shout of victorious charge was multiplied a thousandfold by echoing screams of the fallen.

Elder Renka Alderan, with her too-harsh gaze and her unsmiling mouth, told it how it was.

She glossed over nothing. She leeched the sugar from the bloody fruit of the battle, throwing the bitter skin of the story at her grimacing listeners. She began each retelling with the same phrase, echoed over and over again.

"Our fate was sealed and we could do nothing to change it."

The other Elders had been part of the third stand, or the fourth, when victory had seemed more sure, and hope had begun to sing beneath the clash of fatal blows on either side. Elder Renka, however, was one of the few survivors of the first stand.

"It was a suicide mission," were her words, "We had been sent to our death and we knew it. The purpose of those in the first stand was to die, to cleave deeply enough through the throngs of the Enemy that the second stand would have some greater chance of survival. Only the third and fourth were meant to survive, to become storytellers and legends in their time, keep the tale of the battle alive. We, we who began it all, we who ensured the survival of all the rest, were just... Pawns. Given up for the grander scheme of the game."

"And some found glory in it, this ensured death. Some even welcomed it. But I saw the horror in their eyes when we saw the mutilated faces of those who we were meant to face, the faces that morphed and flickered into the images of those we knew and loved. I saw the tears streaming down their cheeks as they cleaved those bloody heads from their shoulders."

No one ever knew what to say when Elder Renka got to this part of the story. Those who had made it this far were always grim-faced and shifting uncomfortably in their places as they struggled to imagine it. The Twisted, as they had been called, the greater forces of the Enemy, had long since died out. But the thought of creatures who could make themselves look familiar to those meant to kill them, who would then take advantage of those moments of hesitation as a soldier looked into the face of a mother, or a sister, or a lover... So many dead, so little remorse and even less memory.

Few realized how lucky they were to even have Elder Renka's retellings. Many survivors refused to speak of the War or the Battle at all. Out of those who could, many were like the other Elders, painting over the gory tableau of the tale with a brush of virtue and bravery that they had not truly felt.

"Once we were past those twisted things," Elder Renka would continue, "We had not a moment of rest before the second act was revealed. Men and women like us, fighting for a cause no different than ours, they way they saw it. They regarded us in the same way we did them. The words their commanders used to ease them into the thrush of battle were no different than those ours used. It was like fighting estranged relatives, trying to think of the things they'd done and the people they'd killed, and not compare our thoughts to theirs."

"Once they killed someone, they'd throw themselves down on the body and feast with morbid relish on the corpse's innards."

Cringes from the audience, mutters of disgust. But Elder Renka always remained stoic.

"They would charge forward with renewed energy, refreshed by the stilling blood of their kill. We would stab them in the gut, if we could, and it was both their blood and the enemy blood they'd ingested that would spurt from their flesh and spray onto our armor like living rust. It was both the blood of our enemies and our comrades that would coat our swords after each slash."

Elder Renka's stories kept the children away, but attracted the youths who grew tired of hearing the same glorified words from the other tale-spinners. Sometimes one of the other Elders would linger on with them, listening to Renka tell of the things they had long since tried to forget. No one mentioned the tears that slid down the cheeks of those wrinkled men and battle-hardened women when they heard her speak.

Elder Renka told of the Mages, the eloigned Enemy, who had swathed their prey in a black mist so cold that the bones of their kills would crack and bend backwards on themselves, and they would fall screaming through frozen lips. When afterwards they had found corpses blue from cold with elbows bent outwards and finger joints snapped like ladder rungs in opposing directions, they had known who had killed them.

Elder Renka's voice would break when she came to the most painful part of the story: the end. She would whisper of how they had left the bodies to rot on the blood-stained grass for the entirety of the next month, because they could not dig deep enough in the harsh soil of the field to bury them, and there were too many dead to carry into the city.

Now the Four Stands Field was a flourishing garden, the ground nourished by the flesh of those who had died there, and some whose spirits lingered on. Though they fervently denied it, many who heard Elder Renka tell of the Battle avoided the Field as much as possible afterwards, the way they viewed it forever tainted by half-seen images of broken bodies and panting soldiers looking down at fallen comrades.

Elder Renka always ended her retelling with the same words.

"Ten thousand dead, out of the twelve thousand who fought. Their fate was sealed and they could do nothing to change it. Our fate, as the survivors, is also sealed. We are left to rot in what remains of the world, the same way the bodies of the fallen were left in the Field. Only it is more painful for us, those still standing. The rotting is slower, excruciating in its sloth."

"I look now to the Afterlife, and my brothers and sisters in arms who wait for me there."

The ground was uneven beneath Theina’s feet, the product of both rocky terrain and rotting corpses. It was a strange combination, she thought, somewhere in the back of her mind, somehow corpses conjured images of smooth ground.

“What happened here?” she asked Garith beside her. He sighed, regarding the field and the bodies with hooded eyes.

“An epic battle was fought here, 300 years ago. This side lost, and their bodies were cursed by the enemy mages. They will rot for eternity on this field, a never-dying memory of that battle, their spirits suspended between this world and the next.”

You never asked but… The blood on the floor wasn’t mine.

You never asked but… The reason I wore black so much wasn’t because I liked how it looked.

You never asked but… I wasn’t doing what you thought that Friday night.

You never asked but… The lock of hair in my desk wasn’t my mother’s.

You never asked but… There’s a reason I always came home so late.

You never asked but… There’s a reason everyone you hate went mysteriously missing.

You never asked but… You always thought.

You never asked but… You were right.

But you know too much. I’m sorry about this—