Choices

War stands behind her lord, old, the scaled mail replaced now by formal plated armor. Also in greens and grey. Her eyes unfocused. Her mind lost in the past. The dark haired boy who pushed her into the fountain, who grew with her and learned to hunt by her side in their home village. The last moment they meant before she went off to find her calling. The farewell they shared at the entrance to their town, the gift of sword she still kept in her today. Her eyes now framed by face that middle aged, and worn. The battlefield is a harsh place, and it spares no one its worn touch. Small wrinkles frame her eyes, and the scars under her armor where it's fore runners had saved her life. All signs of the struggles she had survived and the battles won and lost. With a sigh, she focuses again, as her lord and his retainers plot and plan, and come up with their paper war, which she will inevitably have to scrap and replan. Armchair generals have a tendency to get people killed. With a soft smile she focuses. This is her king and as a loyal vassal and his commanding general, she couldn't be prouder. Even if the coming battle would tear her people apart. How can family stand before righteous duty?

*Flash*

Blood. Darkness. She can't see. thoughts are slow and pain radiates through her body, her arms twisted at an awkward almost painful angle that pulls her shoulders back. "Where?" Ah! The ambush! Her guards scattered and falling, her own horse struck and sliding, breaking her leg in its fall. A crash and then nothing. Her vision clears slowly, or maybe she just gets used to the dark, she isn't sure. A shiver and she notices now the cold, the stones pressing through the thin cloth of her tunic and her legs cramping as she lays on her side, ankles and wrists bound tight. A cracked laugh. "Sorry War." I'm so... A sob breaks the words, a spark and a soft gasp as her eyes are blinded again, this time due to the sudden brightness of light. A small stone room. A heavy aged door. And a man.

*Flash*

It's been...Days? Months? She isn't sure anymore. The days blend and fade. And the nights.. The nights are gone. She stares at the metal ring on the wall, and memorizes each facet, each edge and valley, the shape, the contours of the aged face. Each spot of rust. As the stares, the rhythm Eric thumping and shuddering that sometimes jars her vision eventually stops. She hasn't been burned or cut, but she did bleed. The first night at least. She cried at first, and begged. But Death listens to no mortal. As he said. He cries too. Sometimes. In whispered tones and shuddering wracking laughs. "Each one of them, pass through me." "It's too much.. They are too much!" "Leave me alone!" "I just want to go home!" "WE ALL WANT TO GO HOME!" He screams at times, tormented and twisted by dreams and demons only he can see. Just as he became the demon that tormented her.

*Flash*

Time is fickle. She doesn't remember much. But her body is heavy and her stomach swollen now. The nights have stopped but still she stares at the metal ring. It's the only thing left. The faint trance of life she feels inside her brings her both rage, and sorrow, and joy. A feeling she thought was lost to her. No news of the outside world has reached her. No light but that which is cast from a small lantern hung above the door, and no visitors but Death. Her world is this room. A small bag stuffed with straw, and a bucket in one corner, she can barely reach. She's never even been able to touch the door. The ring in the wall, as much her savior, is also her shackle. 27 links in the chain that connects the collar on her throat to the ring. Twenty seven. She knows them all.

*Flash*

Screams now reach her. She isn't sure from where, or how close they have to be for her to hear them. Her mind slow to react, to long in chains. To long spent mesmerized by the metal ring in the wall. But her body now heavy and and swollen. She knows now the new life is taken in her. And its time is soon. Only for that reason does she begin to think and try to plan, though all her plans haven't gone in endless loops in her mind. Fruitless. But the screams she hears. Those are new. A new time to plan. To strive! For something! ANYTHING! In rising and falling waves, the screams and now clashing metal as if moving nearer and farther at the same time. She screams now. Hoping. Praying. Begging for anyone to hear her.

The heavy door shudders. Silence for minutes that stretch and seem like hours. The door has moved, and no one has responded to her now hoarse cries. Something is seeping under the door. It's black. No. It's red. The door opens and a body tumbles into the room on the floor, Deaths eyes staring at her again this time, unmoving and unseeing.

A noise.

She looks up. Peering into the room from the door way. Horror and disgust etched into their faces. Men, she thinks. Dressed in Greens and Greys.

*Flash*

She stands supported by two boys. They can't be men, even covered is ash and blood and the refuse of battle. They are too young to be more than boys. She stands. Facing her, the king. Her King. Staring at her as if at a stranger. The lose blanket draped across her and around her, shuffles as she sways, hardly able to stand even with the help. "Is it over?"

A pause.

"The war?, Yes. It's done, Death and his people are finished, all of them." A brief pause as he glances away. She understands. A fallen general now with child. Much as might have cherished her loyal service. She was now a problem. Looking back at her. "Magic and Demi human races have done too much damage to the realm of men." Anger now suffuses both his face and voice. His volume growing as he stands and begins to pace. "In the name of the Primal Race Death raised his banner to lay claim to lands for his people and for the other Demis. Foul ungrateful creatures that they are. They joined him and over the last nine months we have fought a war so bloody it would shake the foundations of civilization!" "But," And now his tone softens and his pacing becomes still, "You are the here now. A key to peace at last. Thank you for your sacrifice War. Thank you for being the bridge to peace. You and that... Thing" He glances down at her bulging belly. She doesn't fully understand and can't, or doesn't want to understand. We won. Humanity won. And now we must enter a new era. One of peace. One of control. Where we stand above those who are no better than vicious dogs. A waive of despair crosses through her. This man, this thing. Is not the kind lord she followed. He is twisted and bitter and cold. She knows now this is not the moment of her saving. But the last step before hell.

With a nod to the boys supporting her, the king turns and sits on a blanked burned throne. "Do it."

The youths twist her arms and ignore her feeble struggles, one slamming his leg into the back of her knees. Bringing her to the ground on her back with her arms held tightly. No matter how hard she kicks she can't break free. Months of abuse and lack of food. She isn't War anymore, she is barely alive. But for herself and for the child. Still she struggles. Two old men appear above her, slowly entering her view, as they step gingerly to avoid her thrashing form. "By blood of a prime and the last Alpha Race members to walk this plane" "We stand and bind to the the world and to humanity the powers of the universe!" With a rasping hoarse cry they lift an object into view. A multifaceted rock. A gem. So dark it appears black. Their hands release it and in a moment of fear she flinches expecting it to fall upon her. It floats. Steady and unmoved above her head, in the center of her gauge. She hears noise now of doors opening. Muffled cries and whimpers. She knows those sounds. She made them once. She can't look. She won't look. Staring straight at the gem above her, a noise like a shredding cloth repeats over and over, and each time the whimpers and cries and struggles get quieter. She knows. Her family. Her people.

The two old men appear above her again, her struggles gone still, her eyes focused on the hovering gem. It's brighter now. And she know they wont let her off. "Please." "The Child."She can't look at them, but still she hopes. A brief pause.

Fire.

Like nothing she had ever felt before. Ripping into her bones and how she screamed. Louder and longer than she ever had. Her thrashing resumed and the two young soldier bucked and squeezed at their arms to pin her still. The old men quickly began their chant and prayer, and with a wrenching force someone plunged something into her belly. Jerking it up and down, before wrenching it free, blood arcing up across her face, the floating gem and the old priests. "By the last blood be bound!" A short swift motion this time, a long silvery blade. Plunging down. Down. And then finally. Darkness.

Finally the end.

*sigh* My poor daughter. My dear War. A short life for one of our kind. So long lived. And one filled with much struggle and pain. I hold her marble in my hand rolling it slowly long my palm. Her spirit stares blankly ahead. A tear slowly falling, trailing down one side of her now much younger face. Her soul reliving each moment at the same time. You deserve rest my dear. I am sorry to have watched this. My hand moves, slowly, about to place her marble into its earned place among the resting sounds of the other Alphas.

Mmh

A soft sound. My hand freezes.

I look up to see her soul staring straight at me. Impossible..

"Please." "The child"

Slowly, almost painfully. She lifts one arm, her very being, the quintessential things that make her War fading from existence. I reach out my own hand in stupefied silence. *click* As she fades from existence a marble falls from her hand into mine. "Please" A mournful cry. A final cry from a being that had and should have continued to exist as part of the universe. I look down and I feel him. The child. Born of the flesh of War, from the madness of Death. So be it my daughter. As one thing ends. So to must another begin.

My desk shifts, the contours of wood pulling apart to reveal a void of pinpricks of light and the void of space, I slowly tilt my hand. You have no blessing of fate Alpha. But may the skills of War reach you and may your fathers madness shield you.

Silently the marble falls. Through the plane and into the the universe again.

With a sigh and more than one pause to consider if what I had just done was going to become an even worse tragedy then the story that spawn it. I reach out and look up at my next visitor. My son. Death. Shaking my head, "poor boy." You were never meant to become flesh. Just as I live every life that stands before me, you live every death and the meanings behind them. Your madness... your choices.. I can not protect you from them. I reach for his marble, lifting it from the never ending bowl that always seems to have a tumble of marbles in it. Go then. To your place. may the suffering you will face next be commensurate for the crimes you have faced. My saddened gaze drifts off as his marble leaves my hand to fall silently into a small bowl on the other side of the desk. He drifts slowly away from the line, headed to whatever is next for those who's choices would damn them.

A soft whisper. A voice. A scared crying little boy.

I am sorry grand mother. Tell her that. I remember what I did. Tell her.

He fades from view. My shocked gaze on the spot his soul was. All things must end. All things must come to pass. Change is inevitable. Even here it seems. Where the voiceless speak and those whose final choices have been made, seem to now be making another.

With a loud cackle that is half filled with joy and terror, I go back to my duty. Sort the souls as they arrive. A never ending line. Forgetting after awhile, the stories of my own children and the tragedies they brought to bear upon themselves and each other. My greatest mistake and my greatest success, that child. His mothers gift. And His fathers sorrow.