The Tragedy of Brightfield

3rd pov——

"I caught one square in the chest. I watched him fly backward, hit the asphalt, then get right back up again as if nothing has happened. When they get back up..."

A soldier in the meeting halls of Athens recounts 'The Tragedy of Brightfield', as the commoners called it. 5000 mercenaries in service of Athens was hired by a healer of great fame to go in search of 'The City of Eternal Sleep'.

——

"I did my best to control my fire, and my sword and shield. 'Just go for the head,' I kept telling myself. 'Keep it together, just go for the head."

Another soldier tells the story of how his brother had changed into a savage beast.

——

"We could have stopped them, we should have, one guy with a spear, that's all you need, right? Professional soldiers, trained archers...how could they get through? They still ask that, politicians and simpleton's who weren't there. You think it's that simple? You think that after being 'trained' to aim for the center mass your whole military career you can suddenly make an expect head thrust or decapitation every time? You think it's easy to line up in formation when thousands of your friends trample and horde over armed men?

You think that all of the wonders of modern warfare , the marching and discipline, fall flat to their savage asses, and watching everything you knew as reality be eaten alive by an enemy that wasn't even supposed to exist that you're gonna keep a cool head and a steady head?"

——

"Tell us how it happened."

Almorus, a councilman asks one of the surviving soldiers.

"In the beginning, only a few had started to act differently.

"What do you mean differently?"

"They had began to sweat, ALOT. Mutters and holding their injuries."

"Continue."

"that's what should have made us worry right then and there. "Iron tipped rain" hit each and every single one of them, shredded their insides; organs and flesh were scattered all over the damn place, dropping from their bodies as they came toward us…

We had learned quickly that injuries to the head…you're trying to destroy the brain, not the body, and as long as they got a working thinker and some mobility…some were still walking, others too thrashed to stand were crawling. Yeah, we should have worried, but there wasn't time.

Alot of them completely buck bare. You could see their wounds, the dried marks on their bodies, the gouges that made you shiver even inside that sweltering gear. They just…..didnt care…about anything.

Even when their bodies were broken from our shields…they just kept coming. The stream was now like a river, a flood of bodies, slouching, moaning, stepping over their mangled brothers in arms as they rolled slowly and steadily toward us like a slow wave.

We had to use the fires to burn them in mass.

'Nothing can survive this', I was thinking, and for a little while, it looked like I was right…until the fire started to die."

"Started to die? What do you mean?" Another councilman asked.

"Petering out, withering…"

For a second he is silent, and then, angrily, his eyes refocus, eventually turning into tear filled eyes.

Sobbing by now he continues, "The fire was dying, those….savages were still coming…and the fear…everyone was feeling it, in the orders from the squad leaders, in the actions of the men around me…That little voice in the back of your head that just keeps squeaking "Oh shit, oh shit."

….They came by the thousands, spilling out over the shield wall, down onto the front men, around the tents, through them…so many of them, their moans so loud they echoed right through our helmets.

We..r-ran, we had no hope, on the run away we encountered Lord Aches and told him of what happened. He believed us because he had seen what one of them was capable of."

Councilmen in the room all look towards each other.

"We need to speak with the Hegemony and raise a great army of Greece." One of them says.

"We will wipe out these, sleeping men. For Athens!" Another exclaims.

"For Athens!"

"For Athens!"

"For Athens!"

"For Athens!"

Councilmen resound with pride in their words.

The last councilmen responded with, "For Athens!-"

And after the meeting was ended, and all except the last councilmen had exited the room, he finished with-

"-hehehehe, Groovy"