At the very least, it could’ve had the decency to rain, I thought with grim humor as I lay on my back on the warm ground, staring up at the hazy azure sky. Puny patches of white cloud drifted lazily across the vast expanse of blue. The sun was almost directly overhead, searing through the air in pulsing waves of heat and lighting the forest grove to an almost unbearable radiance. Distantly I could make out the sounds of the wildlife around me; birds chirping, insects whirring, mammals scampering.

None of it was right. Rain would have been more befitting to the moment. A heavy, oppressing rain with a howling wind that destroyed everything in its path and left nothing in its wake. The sky shouldn’t have been so bright and blue. Black clouds should have blanketed the heavens, casting everything into darkness. A darkness so deep and intense that it weakened the very soul to witness it. And the forest shouldn’t have been so blissfully unaware. There should have been utter, consuming silence. The forest should have stood in deference. There should have been nothing short of muted horror.

Yes. Silent mourning for the lives shattered that day.

There should have been some outward sign of the upheaval. How could so many lives have been destroyed on such a day? How could there be no mark of it? How could everything around me go on as if nothing had happened? Nature itself should have manifested the agony. The only thing that signified the disturbance was the scent born on air. The coppery smell of blood that burned my nostrils and churned my stomach.

It wasn’t right.

It wasn’t fair.

Lying there on the blood-soaked earth, staring at the infuriatingly perfect sky, the numbness in my mind began to fade. I began to comprehend my own insignificance. My very life was ending and still the world spun, the wheel turned, and life beyond my own experience went on. The horrors I had witnessed and the suffering I had endured did not impact the rest of the world. Death was just another spoke in the wheel. The wheel would turn and life would continue.

Humankind, I found myself thinking bitterly, is merely a pawn in the eternal game. And any experienced player knows that pawns are always the first ones sacrificed. There is not a flinch, not even the bat of an eye when a pawn is taken; there are too many of them for that. Pawns are clearly inferior to the important pieces. The castles, the bishops, the knights, the queens, the kings; they are the game’s vitality. They are the pieces most jealously guarded. The pawn’s only use is to protect the important pieces. Its only purpose is to set the game in motion. The experienced player has no qualms about sacrificing the pawns in order to achieve the ultimate end. Their only purpose is to be sacrificed.

It wasn’t fair.

Until then my mind had been relatively inactive. I couldn’t focus on any one thing for very long. My thoughts wandered to the birds, then to the grass, then to the sun, then to the earth at my back. The panic I knew I should have been feeling was suppressed, pushed back into some distant crevice of my mind until the shock wore off.

Sadly, that shock was fading at a rapid pace. I felt trickles of fear like liquid ice in the pit of my belly; slowly its clammy fingers crept up my arms, up my spine, to settle in my chest. It gripped my heart in its fist and squeezed.

I started drawing air in heavy pants. I felt smothered. I couldn’t catch my breath. It hurt. My wounds throbbed and screamed so loudly that it was nearly audible. I tried to lift my head to assess the damage, but as soon as it left the ground my vision blurred. It suddenly felt as if the ground was moving underneath me, spinning madly in a wide arc. I dropped my head back to the solid earth in the hopes that the spinning would stop. It didn’t. If anything it only got worse.

I’m dying, I thought wildly as the fear squeezing my heart intensified at the very idea. Pressure built upon pressure until the weight became unbearable. Tears began leaking out of my eyes, running down the sides of my skull, mixing with the blood caked to my skin.

I’m dying. I’m dying. No one is here to help me. I’m dying, and no one will ever know.

"Mama," I whispered, my voice cracking halfway through the word. My throat was as parched and dry as the desert sands. When I coughed, I felt the tangy taste of copper at the back of my mouth.

How long did I lie there? Hours? Days? Even now I can’t say. Time seemed to pass quickly and yet nothing changed. Even the sun seemed frozen in the sky, never moving and always shining its blinding rays directly over my body. Who can say how quickly the sands of time shift through the hourglass? Perhaps it was only a few hours. Perhaps it was a few days. I was aware of nothing beyond myself. I was dying and there was nothing to be done. I had already witnessed more death and bloodshed that day than any person should have to see in a lifetime, and still this simple truth paralyzed me with fear.

I was dying. Alone and afraid, I would die there and no one would know. No one would be there to mourn my passing. Likely no one would even bother to bury the body. I’d be left to the crows and the beasts. And when my flesh was gone, no one would be left to remember me. All who knew me had passed before me. Now I had to follow.

To this day I can’t explain what happened next. I was afraid, yet the thought of following my family brought me comfort. They had trod the path before me. All I had to do was follow and I could be with them again. I could leave this place behind me and rest the soul that was so worn beyond its years.

A sense of calm overcame me then. It was curiously sudden, almost instant. It was a sensation I had never before felt. The blind panic gripping my heart eased away until I was left feeling pleasantly numb and content. My eyelids drooped and closed. The breath escaped my lungs in a sigh and as it did I felt my limbs relax. My wounds still throbbed, but the feeling dulled, faded, until it became nothing more than a distant sense of discomfort.

The only way I can describe it is this: it was very similar to the sensation one feels when they are on the threshold of oblivion. When you are lying in bed after a tiring day and the warmth of your blankets surround you, impossibly relaxing your entire body as your mind slowly enters the world of sleep. The sense of peace and comfort that pervades such moments overtook me then. I cannot account for its suddenness. For a time I thought perhaps it was the excessive blood loss finally taking its toll. But now I am quite certain it was something else. Something unexplainable.

Just as I was about to step through oblivion’s threshold, my ears caught the faint sounds of something I could not at first identify. It was a human voice.

"Sweet Arvel!" the voice rung in my head, its echoes threatening to disrupt the fog of peace. I remember feeling vaguely amused that the voice had invoked the name of the Spirit Guide; the goddess who protected wandering spirits and led them to their final resting-place.

The only thing I can recall with any clarity after that was the feeling of being lifted into the air. And as this happened, a thought shone through the haze surrounding my mind, a bright beacon that brought everything into focus for one final moment before darkness fell.

I would make him pay for what he had done.

I refused to be a pawn.

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A/N - Seems somewhat morbid, I know. It’ll get better. Also, keep in mind that this is not meant to be long. It is only the prologue.

The original idea that eventually mutated into this story was very interesting to me. It occurred to me once that in almost every anime (nerd alert), the dramatic scenes of death and destruction are always against a backdrop of darkness. The surroundings nearly always match the situation. If a village is massacred, there are clouds in the sky and lightning in the distance. Sometimes rain and thunder will make an appearance. I have never seen an anime where something traumatic occurred on a perfectly radiant day. This led me to wonder what it would feel like if your entire life was brought to ruins and your surroundings were completely untouched. How strange would it feel?

(I can be very abstract)

Updates for this will vary. I intend to finish one of my other stories before I pick up anything else (luckily the story of which I speak only has two chapters to go).

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