"A true warrior does not fight because he wishes to, but because he has to. A man who yearns for war, a man who enjoys his killing, he is a brute and a monster. No matter how much glory he wins on the battlefield, that can not erase the fact that he is no better than a rabid wolf who will turn on his friends and family as soon as his foes." Brisingr - Paolini

I had a dream of moving down a highway. The sky was magenta and the road was empty, lined with fields of sand and beyond the fields, trees. They gripped me by the arm and asked me to show them.

I stared at the emptiness for a long time, eyes blazing and silent. Then, with a sweep of my arm, I lay bare the graves; the fields become bloody, churned earth. It was saturated with crimson, and skeletons twisted in unspoken agony from the dirt.

The wind blew, hard and hot, and I picked up a handful of the earth, crushing it in my fist. Wringing the blood from the soil. My bones ached for their loss. I wished to plunge myself into their depths and pull them up from despair, to lift their broken bodies on my shoulders and bear them as my cross home.

What do you know of the eloquency of war? It is not fought on battlefields of dirt and sand. It is not in the mountains, the valleys, the dunes, the seas. It is in the hearts of the people who stand amid it; in the eyes of children, scared and desensitized by the pressure of passing rockets. It's in the lightning and thunder coursing through the veins of infantry, artillery, Queen and King. It's in the reflecting silver of the wedding bands, the poisonous cancer crawling through burned skin.

The faded ink of spattered and scarred tattoos. The tears falling from her battle-torn and hurt eyes as she screams that she doesn't sleep at night.

The craze and lunacy in his eyes as he growls that you know nothing of psychosis - HE, who has traveled hundreds of miles in uniforms stained with the blood of his friends because he could not be issued more. He who peeled the charred remnants of his best and his lovers from steering wheels and dusty windshields. He knows.

It's in the hearts of those who train to replace the broken. It's in the spirit of those who willingly look death and insanity in the face and say

I WILL reach into the pits, and shoulder the lost souls reaching up from the black tar.

I will carry you home.