I remember my service at the garrison in Durham about forty years ago, during the Tresian Wars. Our commander, the one day, ordered us to patrol the Barton Woods, which was just about some five hundred yards out towards the west. We were supposedly finding some Tresian scouts. I was quite nervous for leaving the safe grounds behind the fortress walls. Mind you, I first served when I was sixteen. It was not long before we were ambushed by the suspected enemy with them being fewer in number, about twelve to twenty. I faced one of the Tresian soldiers with an axe, loosely in his sheath. I knew that only one of us was going to leave alive, so I had to act fast. I, with my sword in hand, lunged my blade into the chest of this man, pinning him to the ground. Blood spurted both from his gaping wound and his mouth, and he was dead.

I felt ashamed for killing this man. I had no intent of ending this man’s life that day as this was the first time I had killed another human being. When I looked at the Tresian I just killed, he appeared my age, maybe a little older or a little younger. His eyes would filled with so much fear, and he seemed malnourished when I saw him. I was mortified about what I did, but others were so prideful and bragged. I ‘member one of my comrades remarking his slaying of the captain of the band and another saying he beheaded one.

I wonder, if things were different, what it would have been like. I would have like to shake this man’s hand, possibly speak to him, and have a laugh. We could have been good friends. I imagine he had a family, waiting at home for him to return just as I. He might have been a farmer, an artisan, or a shop owner- likely a farmer-, a good man to his community, just as I as well. Nothing is really different between us except for the uniform we wore, the language we spoke, the nationality we had, the orders we listen to, and the country we served.

I had nothing against this man, nothing personal, but he simply was put in the wrong place at the wrong time. I woke later in the night, drenched in sweat, screaming and crying, as I could see clearly the face of that Tresian in my sleep. I tried thinking of them as those simple straw targets we use’t practice on. I knew that wasn’t true. I continued to remember that Tresian during the time of my service for the next six years of the war, and even today.

As here I am still. An old war veteran that walked across Hell on earth just to be reminded of it on a daily basis. The horrid terrors that reaped on the streets of Galindon and the massacre on the Plains of Yvenich and the dark days of the Cepron Siege of Prexes Tal. I do regret all of the terrible things I done in the war and some after. I know I can’t escape it, yet I now came to wonder. To wonder if the spirits of all those men I have slain in cold blood still remain, trying to fend off the shadows of our reminders till they die once more. All three-hundred and fifty-two of them.