Twenty Years Ago …

Kogar forced one eye open. It was hard to see through the blood, smoke and dust. He tried to rise, but his body was having none of it – one leg was shattered, probably several ribs too. His armor was half-disintegrated and what remained was cracked and scorched.

What had been the last sound he heard? Mota … it was Mota, screaming … rage and grief pouring  out of him as he soared toward … and then the blinding explosion. Win or lose, it was going to be the endo everything. What else could it be?

There had been a village here. Fruit trees, a river, green everywhere you looked … now everything had been blasted away. Nothing but rock and sand left. Anyone who hadn’t fled far enough away from the battle was part of the dust swirling around in the hot breeze now.

Kogar dragged himself over to a piece of rubble. He grasped it and hauled his protesting body up so he could get a better view. There weren’t any sounds, but that didn’t mean everyone else was dead. Maybe they just had nothing to say …

He spotted Namil first, the veteran, the first to join the team years back. He barely got along with anyone, but had saved all their lives more than once. Now he was lying in a crater, one arm blown off, not moving. Kogar was too far away to tell if he was breathing,

Tasin wasn’t far away. He was alive, but maybe wished he wasn’t. He had a spear of rock six inches thick through his throat. It had pinned him to the ground and he was squirming like an insect in someone’s collection, in too much pain to use his powers and free himself.

And Shona? She was everywhere. Jagged pieces of vine littered the new plain, all that was left after she had been shredded in mid-air and allowed to rain down on the ground.

The enemy lay in the middle of the field, stretched out, dead, his blood now the only irrigation for this ground. His still, giant form blotted out the setting sun. The air already stank of him, the smell of burnt flesh mingling with that of long-deserved death.

And Mota lay next to him. His armor was almost intact – he had always said nothing could destroy it – but what was left of the young warrior was oozing out through the cracks. Flesh, blood and brains reduced to jelly.

Another victory. Hooray.

Kogar spotted a crowd approaching, shock on their faces. Some he recognized from the farms on the far outskirts, some from the city. They moved as one and stopped as one, as if afraid the battle might suddenly start up again. Then one, and another, and another stepped forward, until they were all rushing forward to help.

                                                                                ***

By the time they held Mota’s funeral, the physical wounds had mostly healed. Shona had reconstituted herself, though probably too quickly. Namil was learning to function with one arm. Tasin had lost the power of speech, but it was hard to tell if it bothered him or not. He had always been more comfortable in silence.

Kogar had been lucky. He could have been permanently crippled by his injuries, but somehow he had come through. He would be able to fight again someday, the healers had told him, even if they didn’t seem very happy about it.

They had tried to keep the news from all of them, maybe as a mercy, but enough people were talking that Kogar couldn’t help but pick up snatches. Over 700 people dead. An entire region destroyed. It might be decades before anything could grow there again. Certainly no one would be rebuilding the village.

And then came the questions. Why fight the enemy in a populated area? For that matter, why fight him at all? Maybe if they had given him some, or all, of what he wanted, he would have left everyone in peace… for a while at least. Was it true they killed their foe in cold blood, then murdered Mota when he threatened to tell? And why was he the last one still fighting? Had he been hiding the whole battle?

They asked, but no one was going to listen to the answers, Kogar knew. They already wanted to believe what they wanted to believe and facts would just get in the way. It almost didn’t bother him.

No, what plagued him was the look in their eyes. It wasn’t gratitude for saving the planet, or awe at the devastation that had resulted, or even worry about what might happen next week or next year. When they looked at Kogar or any of the others, their eyes were filled with just one thing:

Fear.