Demud

… and working your way through this space is enough to kill you without those trying to do so anyway. That is paradise in those trees, some future stone gate, making shadows over these fields to tell everyone what you did here, in this mud and blood and rain and sun. This is nothing; now is not a trouble, no illness, no pain, no metal rain or strange perspectives as the planes use this road as target practice. The bowmen will not come again, those rattling saviours from earlier and still wasted battles; they are dead many years ago, trampled into the mud and rotted away to stains and leather; no more able to help you than help themselves. And away in the future again, this rout will be our greatest victory, the making of this country as it is, a failure brought to mind for children centuries from now. Those abed would wish themselves here? Give me seconds with them now and I will have them up and in this ditch for a minute; see if they still regret missing this.

There is a howl from the sky, a sound that would make one question the concept of hell, something invented for the very reason is makes you think like this, to turn rational men to superstitious hulks, just waiting for the end to come at the end of a fuse unwinding. Some man calmly sat down and drew pictures of the scoop on this plane, a little add-on of his own to add fear to injury, the first of a line of horrific escalations that will lead us all to permanent peace in the mud and blood.