Earth's End

The palace was a magnificent display of architecture, like the grandest tree house a child could ever dream. Stone and wooden buildings were connected by arched walkways suspended at every level. It was as if someone had hollowed out the palace in the south and exposed its innards on the outside, a spider’s web of narrow footways and tunnels. The trees were so old and tall that some had been fossilized, or magically turned to stone, others had been carved into and hollowed out to make living spaces.

The castle grew denser as it moved upward and inward. The highest center point had a long, single catwalk extending from it, an access point that had only walkways leading into it. Connected to the access point were other rooms and buildings. Vhalla had no doubt that the Chieftains made their bed in the highest point.

But it was not the architecture that gave her pause. Nor was it the seemingly impossible construction. What made Vhalla stop in her tracks were the people.

“Vhalla, what is it?” Aldrik repeated into the silence.

Vhalla continued to ignore him as the scene settled on her. Northern men and women of every shape and size had built hovels within the inner wall, a tent city that mirrored the surrounding Imperial army’s. The palace seemed to be housing more than just the people who had lived and worked there previously. A great number of refugees had set up camp, fleeing from the encroaching Southern army. There were too many people, even for such a massive space, so everyone seemed to be on top of someone else.

Their quiet and somber faces imprinted themselves on her memories. Life continued. People went about their daily tasks. Children played, women tended to livestock, men cooked and mended things that needed mending. But all the shoulders sagged with the heavy weight of truth.

It hit her at once. It was an earth-shattering and humbling revelation. It made the anger and bloodlust vanish in the wake of shame. It made every night she’d spent wishing the Northerners dead for Sareem, for Larel, seem less meaningful.

These people were not mindless killers.

They were not a faceless enemy that was half wild and half mad. They were not less than human. They were not different from her just because they came from somewhere else, spoke differently, dressed differently, or looked different.

They were just like her. They were people who had lost their homes, their possessions, and likely their families as they fled to the last safe place they had, the last sacred place that was still their home before the Southern Empire swallowed it up and took their names and history and consumed them, turning them into “the North”.

Everything Vhalla had heard and learned about the war had been from the mouths of the Empire. It was the collective tongue that wagged on behalf of the Emperor. It had been watered down through excuses and explanations to seem logical. But there was nothing logical about this. This was not for faith, or peace, these people died for greed.

“Vhalla, say something,” Aldrik demanded.

She had thought she knew what war was, but as their empty eyes and too-thin bodies etched themselves onto her soul, Vhalla realized she knew nothing at all. They were all boys and girls playing at war, writing their own songs the bards would sing. But the bards never sang about this.

Suddenly the faces of the people she had killed came back to her.

We are monsters.

Vhalla was frozen in time. Those people, it had seemed so justified, so logical at the time. She realized she was the one who had invaded their home. She rode with the people who were destroying their way of life. Now she came to help deliver the final blow. Shaldan had not been a war-torn state until the Empire had made it that way.

“Vhalla, you are not a monster,” Aldrik said firmly. His voice was louder and she felt a strange warmth wash over her cheeks. “What do you see?”

She knew he was away from his papers by the proximity of his voice, by his hands on her face. He asked for her sake, not for him or the war.

They’re huddled in mass. There are so many people, but most don’t look like they are warriors. She began to walk through the tent camp. There are children, Aldrik.

“Inside the walls?” he asked.

Yes, with their families, or perhaps not. I don’t know ... They’re so thin. Vhalla saw the way the clothes hung off some of them.

“The siege has gone on for more than eight months now,” he explained. “But we pressed upon them more than a year ago. Their stocks must be low. Can you find out where they keep their food stores?”

There are children! Vhalla exclaimed, horrified. She watched two boys play, somehow oblivious to the adults around them whose eyes were empty from staring so long at bodies that would too soon be corpses.

“That doesn’t matter.”

Vhalla knew he was forcing himself to be stoic and strong, to be the prince that had to make a decision when there were no right answers. She heard the emotion under his words, the pain at having to say them. But she suddenly felt so angry at the fact that he could say them at all.

It does matter! I won’t murder children, she exclaimed. “You don’t have a choice.”

Vhalla tried to regain her composure. She fought and struggled with the scene before her, to justify it with the reasons the Empire had fed her all her life. The Empire fought for peace, but all Vhalla saw were desperate civilians clinging to weapons they’d never been trained to use. The Empire fought for prosperity—and children starved. The Empire fought for justice—and broke the laws it touted in the process.