Outcast - Short Story (Part 11)

This war lasted longer than those promised seven years of army service. Even one day was too long, and it lasted for twenty years. Twenty years of suffering for the people of this neighboring Kingdom who killed the successor of our Emperor. All this, as it turned out later, because of the jealousy of their King. That act brought their people on the brink of extermination, the burying of the territory overthrown and abandoned. Now they belonged to the Empire.

I remember those dreams, youth dreams about the treatment of the sick and diseases, and helping the society and all people out there in world. I remember them this dreams, with sorrow in my soul, and with pain. Not for the reason that I never succeeded in the way I had planed, but because I have done just the opposite over the past twenty years. Death and suffering. All this is because I was given the opportunity to kill, because by the will of someone else I became what I am now. The killer for me, and hero for someone else. At the same time in me, there were conflicting feelings. I knew that the paths of my life were paved only by human sacrifices. I became a co-operative machine to kill, and my weapons skills were at least scary. I knew all this, and knew that I belong to this world of the torture of the human soul. And I knew that there was no such number of people that I could save from illness, to compensate for all the misery that I had inflicted on others. It seems to me that every death, every move by means of spear or sword, split my soul into a thousand pieces. And every day, these parts of my soul were farther away from each other. At first I could not accept that I was so effective and cold-blooded to take away human life, especially since before military recruitment I lived to save these human lives. We were fighting in the most incredible conditions, in the rain and snow. In storms and droughts, we have endured. Many of my original company were killed, then new soldiers came. And all this again and again. They were replaced by others, unknown faces one by one. Although we were a conquering army, the horrors of war did not bypass us. The war is just like that, it does not bring good to anyone and hurts all parties involved in the conflict.

Trouble and injuries did not even circumvent me. I was wounded more than ten times, of which twice was deadly. But always, as a rule, I would return to the front lines of our army. Several times I was offered an improvement, an officer rank one after the other and I would probably have reached the Captain until now, but I was not interested. My superiors knew this, and after a few first times, they stop trying to get me officer rank. I was a pillar around which a great part of our army was resting. Everyone in me saw the hero, and I did not. I still saw that young, innocent boy. A boy's uncrowned soul, with faith in a better world. I saw that picture clearly in my head, and I knew it deep inside myself, that it was all deceiving. The fights of fate have changed me to unrecognizability. I was not sure I could ever again be the same man again.

At those moments, when I traveled and dreamed of knowledge, I was Outcast by my people. Now I was Outcast of myself.

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