Nujel'm Campaign: day 8, personal log entry.

[Marcus Kobra]

"I offer my life to the Avatar, I pray that He accepts it.
I offer my strength to the Avatar, I pray that He redresses it.
I offer my blood to the Avatar, I pray that it quenches His wrath.
I offer my body on the altar of the battlefield, I pray He grants me a noble death.
I pray for His protection, as I offer all that I am.
Aumen."

The men cheer in victory, the wounded nurse their wounds and quaff their beers, and here I am, walking the streets of Nujel'm inspecting bodies, the pile before the gates of the palace alone was horrendous. The streets are scorched and littered with the detritus of combat. The bodies in the streets are silent, unmoving. Only the wind howls into the twilight of sunset, dust scratching at the cobbles. A raven cries in the distance. I stare into alleys now smeared with blood, broken glass and snapped quarrels all about. It is a grim sight, and most will never stop to see it. The Watchman and his pair of recruits handle our dead, loading them on stretchers and ferrying them to the docks to be bivouacked and identified before returning to Cove for honors and burial.

I can only sigh and mutter curses as I work, hanging tags about men's bodies for inspection, making inventories of possessions in the log to be compared later, these men and women deserve to have their things returned to their families. Small compensation on their sacrifice. We ship them out to a dusty blazing island, and send back only tears. Mosts actions will not be properly remembered, only the living get to share their exploits. . . yet many mothers will clutch Covian banners to their breasts, a shallow memory of the child they cherished. Some deeds are plain to see in their gory leavings, a single Covian surrounded by a trio of Vesperians, the lone soldier, his shield bristling with quarrels despite its now sundered hulk beside him.

The silence howls at me, the blood that trickles between the cobble is the same blood that stains my gauntlets; there is no one left out here to save. The war has been too efficient, the blades and bolts too cruel, the fires too consuming. I shake my head knowing I shall forever be haunted by the sights I see tonight, sights far too bright as the moon only just enters its wanning gibbous. Darkness will not hide these horrors that men wrought, the Avatar demands we be held accountable, and I ask myself, "Will I be able to hold my head high at The reckoning, or will I cower in shame as I lay only ashes before him."

I bend and close the eyes of the man laid beside me. Eyes that accuse me as much as plead with me. They accuse me of letting him die, of forwarding the very cause of what got him killed, yet they beg for the second chance to do it all again. I once loved Nujel'm for its beauty, its sandstone and cobbled streets gentle reminders of my home in Magencia, that lovely villa on the North coast were Rose and I had stayed a week, I wanted so badly to bring Piper, just us before the war; now perhaps that will be never. Not that the outcome matters. . . Nujel'm is ruined for me. If I never come back to this place, I will die with a modicum of peace in my soul, though all their eyes stare back at me from within.

"Benevolent Avatar, hear my prayer
In honor I have served You, willing and without thought
I have fought in the blood and the mud of a hundred battles
In Your name, have I smote the enemies that would stand against Your omnipresent will
Please benevolent Avatar, hear my prayer
Thy enemies now stand at the gate
The tides of darkness have come to destroy the bastion of the faithful
Their words are lies, filled with death and contagion
Their masses seethe before our mighty walls
Their numbers are without end
I am but one small guttering candle flame standing before the gathering storm of the dark
I will not be able to hold
Most holy and benevolent Avatar, answer my prayer
I have fallen before the all-consuming darkness
I fought until I heard Death's clarion call
My life they took, my body they broke
But my spirit has remained true
I have faced the final test and passed
Their blasphemous words have fallen upon the deaf ears of one of the faithful
Please mighty Avatar, open the gates that I might enter
Open the gates so that one more fallen soldier might come home
Please, O Avatar, heed my call!"

~Excerpt from the Canonization of Sanct Keldor