三番章 - ナエーリアさん

I look at myself in the mirror, contemplating myself in the subconscious fear that I may not be able to do so ever again. I notice my face is rather dirty, hell, I’m quite sure I urgently need a wash, but any water that I could find here would be even dirtier than I am, so I’m just going to have to live with it, and with the battleship-full of unwashed soldiers. It’s not like I even wanted to be here. I can’t understand the volunteers, all full of enthusiasm for “protecting their homeland”. Protecting my ass, this has all the looks of an attack, and nobody even knows why we’re going to war. Well, I know why I’m going to war. It’s printed quite clearly in the tattooed inverse triangle inside a circle on my forehead. Great thing about the Sacred Realm, you get to have your social status scribbled on your face. Mine reads: orphan, houseless, exile, slave. I sweep dark brown hair over it, hiding it from all eyes except the ones of my own mind.

My name is Naeriah. Naeriah, and that’s it, full stop, I didn’t have the luck to be graced with a last name. Orphan, a situation that, in the Sacred Realm, is simply a slightly less beaten slave. Which means that the other slaves hate me out of envy and all the rest despise me because of the little stamp on my forehead. Just great. I had sort of got used, at 16 years of age, to be bought and sold, being put to do all sorts of jobs, all of them hard, unpleasant or both, when all slaves were called to serve the Army as soldiers. Just great. The only worse thing would’ve been sexual slavery, but my rather plain face and near-flat chest seem to keep me safe from that fate. Lucky me. So, they test me, and discover I have some sort of innate knack for piloting. Another brilliant stroke of luck, now my survival rate is even lower. I’m going to have to zoom around in the air trying to kill people I don’t even know and who certainly haven’t done anything to me, while being shot at from all directions.

Just great.