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Short Story S:1 P:10 - Everything She Never Wanted

     It was everything she never wanted. 
     Rain pounded down upon the land, muddying the fields and sucking the fallen bodies into temporary graves. Blood continued to stain the sea-foam grass to rust as weapons crashed--flesh tore and bones shattered. There were cries echoing around the cacophony of Battle that chilled your spine like Widowers picking souls free from their corpses.
     Her breath billowed like smoke, her chest rising and falling in rapid succession under her soiled gown. Her hands trembled. Her eyes watered. Her knees quaked. 
     This was the weight of the Crown
     The dying and the orphaned. 
     The wasted homelands.
     The stained soils.
     The Broken.
     She had promised them freedom--vowed to protect them at all cost.
     And they had repaid with their lives.
     She huddled in tents, ushered away by her guards, forming strategies and replenishing resources as quickly as they dwindled. She fed the starving, attended to the sick, the injured and the emotionally fragile. She stood among them like she was an equal.
     But she was not.
     She was their Queen.
     And they were her dying Kingdom.

     Oh what battle hymn could a glory soul sing when death was the only victor among the flowing streams?

     The soil ran red with the rain, the cries rose in pitch, the mourners ached along the sidelines...
     And she Raged
     Her blood boiled, her eyes darkened and her soul split from empathy for anyone but her own people. Her grip tightened on the blade in hand and she snarled at the approaching enemy like a rabid dog.
     It was everything she never wanted.
     But it was all she had to give.
    
     For who wouldn't lay slain upon the pages of time if it meant the loves left behind saw the dawning of tomorrow?

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