A work in the key of Fatansy
an excerpt

An image of that night passed before my eyes, and I shook it off quickly, my mouth tightened into a sharp line. His eyes…the look on his face, was enough to scare me even to this day whenever I thought of it. I was just a young one then, barely a year into fighting. The next morning I had been one assigned to ride west to aid an ailing village; while it was not to be my first fight, it would be one that would change me. For some reason, the night before, I was extremely restless, and even, though I told myself that this was not true, nervous. Pacing up and down the stone hallways, I had heard this loud cry, and it had stopped me, frozen where I was. This painful sound echoed through the stone hallway, bombarding my ears. It was the sound of utter loss, the sound of losing part of your soul. I do my best to forget what I had heard, but the cry still echoes in my ears. I had bolted, running as fast as my light feet would carry me, to find the source of the sound. Nothing good could come of that, and my mind raced through the possibilities, most of which I shoved away, not wanting to even consider them. Images of blood, carcasses, Gurgakats, their bloody swords, their furry snouts-I brushed those away from my mind. They would not help me at all.
Finally. I had reached the room. Soft sounds, sounds of weeping, of grieving floated from the door in front of me. My breath came in short gasps now. So much for my tough warrior image, my inflated ego was quick to realize that I was prepared for nothing. I had only been in one real battle after all and it had been a rather small one at that. All this pondering was meaningless though, so I flung the wooden door open. It was when I nearly fell over the figure laying prone on the stone ground that I realized that I had yet to even draw my sword. Silently kicking myself, I drew the sword, the hiss sounding for some reason malicious in the room. Looking about with surprise, I realized that I had stumbled upon the general’s little children’s nursery, where his two toddler twins slept. A soft cry caught my ears, and my gaze darted to the man on the floor.
For a minute I just stared at the man, puzzled. Who was this? Bending down carefully, my heart beat slowing down marginally, I gently helped the man to sit up. There were no wounds that I could see on him, and when I caught sight of his tear streaked face, I felt the breath whoosh out of me. It was the general, the tough leader; he was supposed to lead us tomorrow to the village. He was a valiant fighter, and that is all that we saw of him, a good fighter, and a good man with a tough exterior. He lay there then before me, a shell of the war seasoned man that I had trained under. I suppose that I sat there in shock for a good time, before my mind kicked in. A splotch of red caught my eye, and my heart started to race again, as my gaze fell upon blood. The blood seemed to slither before my gaze, and it took a second before I realized what I was looking at.
Gurgakat. My lips curled back in a soundless snarl as I saw the sign, anger flooding through me. Then it hit me, what had happened, and with horrified eyes I looked down at the general.
His twins. His dark olive green eyes looked up, and met mine with a gaze I will never forget. Time has softened the memory, but not enough, not yet. I still see the agonizing grief; I still see the loss that burned from his soul, the emotion bursting through his eyes. His eyes which made him look so vulnerable. So full of soul wrenching pain.