Kasar had wanted to see the world; in its place he witnessed a land of death. Once he and his mentor Vorza had made it past Breaker’s Gate, and east into Warvale, a battlefield of corpses presented itself at every turn. Mounds of stinking dead, for miles, an unhealthy musk in the air, and sodden marsh beneath their feet. Vorza, ever the trooper, grumbled only under his breath about the perilous curiosity of the youth at the expense of the wiser folk. Kasar grew ever mortified, and silent as they trudged through the land.
“Nothing but corpses,” said Kasar, on their third day of travel. They had found hard rock to lay their heads on; the surface was comparably better than the moggy mush that was the ground. Not to mention, a sense of morbid moistness that permeated around the dead land. The corpses made them wary of carnivorous monsters, prowling about. While the scavengers might flee, the predators would attack regardless of their state of mortality.
“All there is,” grunted Vorza, stoking the flames.
“Why?”
“Valks, that’s why.”
“Why are they doing this?” asked Kasar. “I know Sipha said her nation was at war, but…” He looked around. “This is something else. This is just slaughter.” He’d seen war in the desert against Morod and it’d been the worst thing he’d ever suffered. However, it’d been contained. Targeted, and confined to the city. The countryside of Warvale showed pure carnage for miles upon miles. For the first time Kasar realized just how many people lived in the world.
Tragic that he had to learn from the corpses.
Vorza shrugged. “Wars are fought for many reasons, you’ll soon learn: and none of them truly befit the carnage.”
“I see as many Valks as I see Warvaleans.” The young warrior pointed at the nearest mounds high enough to even with the distance, the peak rose high enough to spot. Scattered skirmishers and stragglers lay strewn about away from the main battle sight.
“Pitched battles,” said Vorza. “The longer they fight, the more they lose. Even if they win. However, Green makes the soldier live to fight another day,” said Vorza.
Kasar listened intently to the rare moments Vorza did explain his thoughts on the Chroma: Red, Blue, and Green. Red for hurting your enemy, Blue for hating your enemy, and Green for healing your hurts. Or so the fighters in the pits used to say. Any mage could cast any or all of those Chromas. And anyone could be a mage given enough time and energy. A fair bit of luck too.
Vorza deemed the Chromas evil, albeit one the world had grown dependent on. A necessary evil. Forsaking The Chromas would be like forsaking barley and wheat. Or even beer.
“And with every day the soldier fights,” continued Vorza, eyes distant under his large, furrowed brows, riddled with a motley of scars. “He is wounded. And every wound he gets, a mage heals. And every wound that is healed, the process hurts as bad as the wound that now lays stitched up. Only to repeat the process. Longer and longer.”
“Because it elongates the lifespan,” said Kasar, showing that he remembered what Vorza had told him about extended uses of Green.
“The greatest joke of all. Longer life for more hurting.” He scoffed. “The Fates are cruel as they are poetic.”
Kasar nodded. Fates were indeed cruel. Fates took his parents, but found him Vorza. Fates put in him the pits, but he found his guts (while keeping them inside), and challenged the shackles that bound him. Fates led him onto a wanderlusting journey, his mentor in tow. Why Vorza had decided to come along was beyond Kasar. Vorza said he had nothing better to do, but Kasar liked to think it was because his mentor liked his company, and wanted to continue his training the Devil’s Path, the way of life the two of them followed.
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“I’m sorry for bringing us here,” said Kasar.
“I agreed. It was my choice to join you.”
“I just wanted to see.”
“And have you seen enough?”
Kasar glanced around at the warzone. “I thought I knew death.”
“You did, and you caused it. Grimblade they cried when you slew that champion. But this is war, and it’s beyond monikers and titles. You fought a war between city staates. Now behold a conquest with scope beyond your understanding. It’s tactical, clinical, sorrowful, and blunt. It happens because powerful men want more power, and patriots think they want to die for soil. Patriots water their country with their blood everyday.”
“Is that wrong?”
“You’re aksing a Vrodian whether it’s good to spill blood for soil.” He chuckled. “I’d say only for a country like mine.”
Kasar gave him a pointed look.
Vorza laughed and shook his head. “Who am I to say? It just is the way it is. My country is full of patriots, but we would never conquer. Only defend. That is why I am willing to sacrifice my life. That is why I have many times in the past.” He paused, and the firelight danced in his somber eyes as they drifted to darker ages past. “But the Valks? They die for a tyrant who sold them an idea that doesn’t exist.”
“Why go through this? Why suffer and make suffer for some war god you only see past death? And why sell this idea in the first place?”
“Did you understand why the slave-masters chained us? Made us fight?”
“Money, glory, and power.”
“You answered it yourself, then”
Kasar knew he sounded foolish for saying these things. He just wanted to voice them out and have Vorza voice the answers back. He liked the bluntness with which Vorza spoke, and the gravity behind each of his words. After seeing the horrors in the pits and the sadistic justifications of the god-kings in rule, he wished for some normalcy.
Rather, he wished normalcy was what he thought it to be. Family, friends, food, and a path. It didn’t have to even be safe. The wilds remained untamed and dangerous, and he didn’t wish to contest it, only survive it.
“But why is this happening?” asked Kasar again. “Specifically.”
“All I caught was that Lord Torvic believes in the war gods, as do the Warvaleans. Not he god-kings, mind you. However, Torvic wishes to specifically catch the attention and respect of Damien Warmonger, Self Proclaimed Arc of War.”
All these words meant little to Kasar, but he too had heard of them in the pits with the other fighters from all over the world. Part of his curiosity, and eagerness to soak in as much information he could of the world, came from the various cultures he saw fight before him, and die before him. They each had a story, even if the end was the same for all in the pits. Until they fought alongside Kasar to free themselves and those around them.
“And all this carnage is for that?” asked Kasar.
Vorza glared grimly into the little fire that now dwindled with each passing moment. “Malion the Conqueror and his grandson, Damien changed the world for the worse. Began an ideology that infests the world as horribly as Dire.”
Kasar decided to find out what he could about these people and these faiths. For now, he would sit on these names, these titles, and mull over them so the information could sink in. A yawn rippled through his body and he stretched.
“Same, lad,” said Vorza. “We’ll ask the next locals we find for a way out. If there’s any left alive.” He clicked his tongue. “If all else fails, we’ll head back the way we came. I’m sure we can make into Silterra and then onto Mahar. Never seen border security so tight before, but we’ll manage.”
Kasar nodded, wishing there was something he could do. What could he do, even if he tried?
Every copper counts, rang his father’s voice in his head. A memory from seemingly a lifetime ago. Before he entered the pits as a slave and a fighter. Before his parents found themselves cornered by those they fled from, with their son in tow. Before the slaver killed his parents and sold him off where he’d eventually meet Vorza, and the fighters would coin him: Grimblade.
Sleep came swiftly, and night passed just as so. When Kasar awoke, rested as well as one could be in a stenching warzone, the mentor and student made their way further east, following a path that careened northward.
