Visions of War

A tribal villager sits upon a large rock in a small clearing atop a lightly forested hill. Around him he can hear, and find peace in the soft sounds of the creatures of the night. Overhead countless stars can be seen in the clear mid-night sky. He had come to this place every moon cycle, at the full moon, since he was six summers old. This was his sacred place; he came here to find reprieve from the demands of day-to-day life, to bask in the raw beauty of the world around him and find those fleeting moments of real internal harmony and clarity. Here he had first beheld and truly come to grasp the magnificence of the world around him.

He was led here by a small furry animal one evening as the sun was setting in the sky. He had wanted to see where it was going to sleep and had been following it from a distance since midday. Along the way he picked some of the small delicious red fruits his father had shown him as a snack; he observed the animal stopping to climb the same kind of short, but dense bushes he had been eating from, pausing to smell and then eat a fruit before scampering along on its way to wherever it was going. This fascinated him and he thought maybe they would be friends. Eventually they reached the clearing, and the animal disappeared under a large rock. He looked around but didn't see where it had gone, and listened carefully but couldn't hear it either. Sighing, he wondered to himself if he would ever see his friend again.

Feeling a little disappointed and tired, he looked around for somewhere to rest for a while. He noticed that the rock, while at least half-again as tall as him did have a couple of good footholds that he could use to climb atop it. He planted his right foot on one that was the height of his waist and could hold most of the length of his toes, then pushed himself off, getting his right arm up to its elbow hooked over. He brought his left arm up, hooked it over as well and heaved himself up. He sprawled on his back across the rock, staring blankly for some moments as he was still deep in thought, before his mind's eye was drawn back to the world around him. The sky was streaks of blue and a deep red; the moon was in the eastern sky, still faint this early in the evening and stained red by a thin cloud that had partially occulted it. He looked around him, allowing his gaze to take in the landscape; the narrow river which ran along the eastern base of the hill and to the horizon in either direction. He could hear the sound of flowing water, and he listened further to hear the birds singing and other animals moving around him, also going about their daily lives and suddenly realized that it didn't really matter if he saw that particular animal again; he was surrounded by a world full of new things to explore, of new friends to meet and things to learn about it all.

Since that day this place had been special to him, and although he was often exploring new hills, new forests and fields, finding more rivers and mountains, he always came back here because here his eyes were first opened. Here he could feel that peace he sought more strongly than any other place. Here he contemplated his existence, escaped into the realms of his imagination; here he found connection with the world around him and could bask freely in the experiences offered by the conscious mind. There were no pressing concerns, nothing he needed to deal with immediately and so was free to to think about whatever problems might be facing him, or the community he and his people had lived in since he was a child.

And though he had been coming here regularly, this night was already special to him. This time, as he reached the clearing he was taken aback by how the sky looked exactly as it did that evening so many summers ago. The sky again was streaked with blue and red; as he had climbed atop his rock to allow him vision over the trees, he again saw Luna hanging in the sky, turned crimson as it was then. He could hear the birds singing, hear the river flowing and listened for the other animals around him. As he did he heard some small animals scampering toward the base of the rock, under which they disappeared. The experience struck him so suddenly that tears began flowing freely from his eyes as waves of emotion swept over him. There he sat for hours, allowing his mind to wander freely, basking in the beauty of the world around him and finding peace in it.

As the moon hung at its highest point in the sky, he looked around at the stars was shown that this would not be all that would happen on this night. In the eastern sky a thousand thousand bright lights flashed into existence, brighter than any of the other stars in the clear night sky. In moments they all they disappeared, leaving the sky as it was. Suddenly the ground began to tremble as a wave of violence swept over it; screeches of animals could be heard, some could be seen running frantically about. Birds once sleeping took to flight as their nests toppled from the trees. Eventually things calmed down, animals went back to sleep and the world went on as it had before.

Hours passed, as he sat there contemplating what it could have meant. His people had lived in harmony with the world around them for at least a thousand generations. Never before had he seen such violence that could shake the very ground beneath his feat. He had never felt fear, or seen the world around him so consumed by it as he had then, and it disturbed him greatly.

Then he again saw lights in the eastern sky, again in numbers beyond counting. They flashed for a moment and disappeared. Moments later the ground shook, even more violently than last time; he was nearly thrown from the rock and would have been had he not caught himself. Eventually as before it died down. He and the creatures around him sat in silence; he wondered whether it was over, and what was happening. A short time later he saw many more flashes in the sky, streaked between the moon in the western sky, and others in the east. It seemed as though each flash was brighter than the next, bright enough to create a strange, unnatural daylight. The ground began shaking again, this time more violently than ever. He could hear trees snapping, animals crying out in pain. He was thrown nearly five feet clear of the rock with a massive jolt, landing with a loud and painful thud. He laid there, paralyzed by fear as the world continued to shake, as the bright flashes increased in intensity and frequency.

Trying to stand, he was thrown once more, the world around him going black as he crashed into the ground. He looked around him, though he seemed to lack a physical body. There was a great ball of fire in one direction, its light dominating that entire perspective. In another he could see a large round object, its colours primarily being blue, white and green. His gaze then caught great flashes of light off to one side of it. As he circled round the object he was struck dumb as Luna appeared in view, with the flashes occurring mostly between it and... home. Each moment brought countless brilliant flashes of light which quickly faded only to be replaced by ones even greater still. Moving closer he began to see that the flashes were between smaller objects of varying sizes, and that some of them occurred from within these as some broke apart, or as parts of them were consumed in violent bursts of energy. Wave after wave of these great mechanical monstrosities collided into one another; shooting destructive bursts of light, great balls of fire and slabs of some type of stone fired at incredible speeds as they in their untold thousands were torn apart by shots from other directions.

In the centre of the chaos was most of the smaller of these skyships. They chased after one another, as others chased after and tried to destroy them. Further out on the sides closest to and farthest away from the ships got progressively larger, but all throughout smaller ones swarmed about, wreaking destruction before being consumed by great bursts of light themselves.
Then he saw the bodies. Bodies beyond counting; more bodies than all the stars he could see in the sky. There were trails of red mist which he knew to be blood trailing out of the wounds of many of them. Some had eyes that burst, and he could see swelling under their flesh, bruising of much of their bodies. Others were maimed with limbs missing, missing an entire half of their body or their heads. Sometimes there were just charred hands, feet or fingers floating through the void. Some bodies were ejected whole or in part from the smallest destroyed ships which seemed to be made for one only person. Others were launched from the larger ships en-masse, spraying into space from these monstrous ships which seemed to hold people in their thousands and perhaps more even more. As these great beasts were torn asunder he looked on in horror as the occupants in their hundreds, cast into the great void, fitfully struggled for what seemed like an eternity before the life finally fled their bodies. He had seen the dead before, but this was something else entirely; nothing could even begin to compare to the previously-unimaginable and still incomprehensible scale of what was happening before him.

Eventually the few remaining ships near mother Luna had stopped firing, and all that remained of those other massive ships opposing them was as the torn arms and legs, toes and hands of the people that he had seen; the remnants of the swarm paused for some moments before what was left was it trailed back toward the moon, disappearing inside the larger ships as these sent out other smaller which moved amongst the remains, attaching themselves to some, leaving others, and even collection some large portions of once-whole ships. After what seemed like at least several hours, this too appeared to be done as these ships went back to rejoin the others. Moments later, with a few last great bursts of violent light, these few survivors among the untold millions that must have died, disappeared into the greater void from whence they came, toward destinations unknown, the day's madness left behind them seemingly without reflection on what had occurred. The torn bodies of both of ships and people in their numbers he dare not try and count remained as a testament to what madness occurred here.

He awoke then to find that peace had again returned to the world. The ground had ceased to shake, and the afternoon sun was high in the sky. Many trees that once stood had fallen, but the surviving creatures of the land went about their lives, trying to recover what hadn't been destroyed.

All those years ago he had come here and found peace. Now, he had found something else – something which appalled him and instilled in him a terror felt to the very core of his being.