Though the skies blazed with liquid fire, and our lungs with lead, our hearts slept soundly. We made them bleed for their victory- a phyric one if anything. Warmongers at heart, they would never be satisfied with a mere victory. Cities, people, resources. They wanted it all. To them, we were but ants in their way- a path to a purer world. They called it a cleansing, but no one was fooled by its innocuous name. Night by night they took- common peasant folk snatched from their beds to fuel the enemy’s war machine, silos plundered for their grain, even water was taken with impunity. Rules? They took it by the neck, struck a match and watched it burn. Their so called rules were more like guidelines- even then, they treated them like suggestions. No one seemed capable of stopping them, not even us.
Then came our holy weapon. Fire. Mythical dragons of lore spoke of a fiendish beast that breathed fire and was armoured to be nigh impenetrable. Oh, we weren’t armoured, but our fire burned brighter than the stars, brighter than Sol. And it was with that same fire that we sank the titanic, insurmountable mountain in our way. We were prepared to be martyrs, for our people, our lands and our cause. None of us were lost that night,perhaps for the worse.
Our motto had been simple, “For the Greater Good”. Justification is perhaps the greatest distinction we had from the enemy. They were tyrannical, we argued. Monsters of the highest degree! They killed to oppress. We killed to “liberate”. What a fool I was then, believing in this holy crusade.