Eight kilometers... Eight kilometers. Less than a walk across the capital, but here—between two armies—the fate of empires is decided. The earth is soaked in blood and that special silence that precedes a storm.
We stand like old trees rooted in the stony soil of war. They opposite—a mirror reflection of our waiting. Two weary armies study the board for the single move. We wait for their mistake. They for ours. Time is frozen in the amber of war, and we are insects in transparent resin of eternity.
Progress doesn't sleep, even when the world goes mad. Mines have appeared—a child of magic and human ingenuity. You take a Mana-stone, this tear of the earth, pour power into it to the brim, and seal it with a spell. Step on it—and a deadly flower blooms from pure magic. Beautiful and merciless.
Every two days, someone can't stand the torment. The exchange of courtesies begins: ours rush to defuse the hellish gardens, in response—magic arrows and catapult projectiles with power spheres. Once catapults hurled honest stones. Now, having stolen technology from the dwarves, they fling magic bombs that patiently wait to land.
The earth here remembers the roar, holds old mines—seeds of destruction waiting to sprout in explosion.
Kazaria's economy is weaker than Kriver's. Money is the nerves of war, and their nerves tremble. In two years, if the stars favor us, we'll reach Kichirin—a trading city that now seems like a mirage in the desert of hopes.
The enemy holds twenty-four kilometers of front, we—eight. Flanking is impossible: mountains rise impregnable behind, ahead—the sea under Kazaria's control. Nature itself created this fortress.
Against us—an empire and ten kingdoms—an impressive coalition against Kriver. Forty thousand of us against eighty—one to two. Experience is worth more than gold. We don't just survive—we refuse to lose. Stubbornness elevated to philosophy. — Soldiers' thoughts, they don't know yet.
I sit by the trench and think: isn't all this absurd? The knights of Monaria are now fighting for Kriver... Thousands kill each other over imaginary lines on maps, over the ambition of those who never held a sword with trembling hands. We are pawns in the game of gods, not knowing the rules of heavenly chess.
There's beauty in the absurdity. The beauty of persistence in the face of meaninglessness. The beauty of camaraderie when death breathes down your neck. The beauty of silence between magic volleys, when a lark sings over the battlefield, unaware of the mines beneath its wings.