Chapter 5 : The Core (Bruce)

War.

They have declared WAR.

Standing on the face of the cliff , looking at the buffer zone below me , I had a surge of adrenaline thinking of the coming battle. From my experience and from what people have said to me , I know but one thing for sure.

I WAS AFRAID OF NOTHING!!

Minutes later I am racing towards the core on Tornado,my black stallion. I had found Tornado in the Savannas outside of the Core Zone. She was a mere foal when I adopted her as my own. Anyhow, it was only yesterday when a few villagers had come in panic. They spoke of the daughter of Colonel Savez , who had the same bravery and anger that her father contained before I had finished him . But one of them later came and told me that she at first, proposed a peaceful discussion and attacked only after Brady (one of the idiot drunkards) called her mother inappropriate words. 


Anyhow, I had better work to do than sort out these petty fights involving little girls with shotguns. I was on my way from the Buffer Zone to the Core to meet the elders. There were three landmarks that came in the forests which would hint that one was getting close to the core. One of them was the bridge of Mist. 

For obvious reasons, the bridge of mist was used as a tactical attacks . It is funny how the bravest of soldiers believe in attacking their target from hiding , or from a distance without going from the forward. If people were really brave , they wouldn't invent guns to kill.


Then again , if people were really brave, they wouldn't be shameless enough to raise armies of child soldiers.


Anyhow, I crossed the bridge of Mist and galloped at full speed. The mist cleared and I started feeling a slight tug on my back. We were going uphill. To the next landmark.


The Ruins of Azbrack.

Azbrack was once the castle that was used by the Elders of Servia to hold their "important" meetings . One thing I have learned from my experiences of living in Servia is that Nothing ever comes out of meetings except useless decisions to hold further meetings. Those who really want to do something take action without consulting a dozen other people, who will , because of human nature, criticize the action. Anyhow, this castle was demolished in the first battle before the division of Servia into the Core and Buffer.

As I crossed and rode further ,I came to the final landmark. The rainbow path . Since the mountains at the back of Servia are always receiving heavy rainfall throughout the year which makes a big rainbow fall right through the core.

Finally, I've entered the village. The elders of Servia await me. Although I have already decided what the next strategy is .

Chapter 4 : Buffer Zone (Shanice)

I disliked violence.

That quality I learned from my mother.

Getting up that morning to smell the fresh fragrance of warm home baked bread was a completely different feeling. As I looked out of the window, it was raining . Normally the smell of fresh bread piercing through the air made any person run to the kitchen, but being raised in a family where every male was a killer, I pretty much knew what the smell of bread meant.



My mother was very sad.

Baking goodies for me was her way of spending time when she was sad.I went straight down to the kitchen ready to comfort her. As expected , there she was , sitting silently next to the warm loaf of bread , just staring  into space . I went up to her and put my hand on her shoulder. She was silent for a minute and then , in a plain and straightforward voice she said ," Your Uncle is planning to attack tonight."

My uncle Leopol was a tyrant as compared to my father. My father used to kill people and fight wars to colonize lands to his country, while my uncle did it for sheer power and money.

His latest idea was to carry out a straightforward attack on Servia. No questions asked.

My mother had many a time tried to talk him out of it. A peaceful village like Servia should at least have been given a war declaration or a proposal of voluntary colonization before just running into it with guns and bombs. But my father's death had just triggered his anger even more. He decided to give them a declaration of war.

I stood looking at my mother's sad face when suddenly a loud noise of glass breaking  .We ran outside to see five or six people holding flaming torches shouting ,"GET OUT OF OUR VILLAGE YOU FOREIGNERS!" They were pelting stones at our house.

I told my mother to take cover immediately, then quickly removed my white handkerchief and waved it in the air , trying to imply that we could sort this out the peaceful way, without throwing stones. But they kept throwing stones at the house. I shouted ,"WE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS WAR. WE ARE  NEW TO THIS PLACE! PLEASE DON'T HURT US!."

In return , one of the men shouted out a really foul term that all women detest,referring to my mother (I won't say it now). That was the last thing I heard patiently.  I ran into the house and returned minutes later, with tears in my eyes and anger on my face....

and a shotgun in my hand.

BANG!

Straight on the arm with which he was holding the torch.


BANG!

Next one on his right leg. This time I made sure I had made him scream loud enough to make the others run away. I had also ensured not to kill him.



I don't think they know that I am the adopted daughter of Colonel Francis Savez, a girl whom he was kind  enough to pick from the war stricken areas of  Kwaha ,not because he was a very sympathetic man,
because I was an awesome fighter .Trained my entire childhood with arms and weaponry by idiots who thought that children soldiers are a good idea. They finally lost and were colonized by this man, who made me his daughter and the bodyguard of his wife, whom I referred to as my mother.

As I saw the man crawling away in pain , I heard him shouting ,"You people wait for Bruce, JUST WAIT FOR HIM TO KNOW OF THIS ATTACK AND THE ATTACK ON SERVIA!!"

I disliked violence.


That quality I learned from my mother.

I disliked insult even more, and wouldn't mind settling it with violence.

That quality I learned from my life.

Chapter 3 :Servia

Servia is in the exact center of the continent Kwaha. A very ancient village, it doesn't look like a village though. It looks like a great kingdom. All of the houses on it are atop a hill, with water flowing right between the hills, making transportation and trade easier with other countries.

A few hundred years ago when colonization broke out on earth, the most powerful kings started fighting and ruling the countries they wished to. At that moment the village elders decided that a village as valuable as Servia is too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands. Thus, Servia was divided into two parts. The inner part was called the "core" . The Core is the part of the village which is inaccessible by the outside world. It has been deep embedded in the dense forests , in the midst of a big canyon. It is here that the major mining , lumbering, farming etc. takes place . It is rich in gems and diamonds, which makes it the most valuable place on earth . That is why it became such an unsafe place.

 
 The outer zone , which the rest of the world PRESUMED to be the real and whole of Servia was actually the "buffer zone" , which had hardly some mines and farms , but nevertheless , was very important for two reasons:

1.) To the world, it was the key to the lush forests as Servia bordered the dense forests, and disallowed any access to strangers.

2.)To the villagers, anyone who had destroyed the Buffer zone would get easy access to the Core, which would ultimately break all other balances ,and anarchy would rule.

When sudden Colonization broke out, the village elders sent out their best of warriors , but it was too late.  Servians had spent so much of manpower and wealth in building the core and the buffer zone that they hadn't invested any time and money in war and weapons of combat.

The elders then decided upon a plan . They sent out the handful of inexperienced soldiers to defend. The buffer zone had another handful.

The only job expected from these was to put up resistance until the core had committed the biggest ethical mistake they ever could.

Create an army of children soldiers.

Rather than giving them an education , they gave them arms training , combat skill training, cavalry ,infantry and stealth training. These children, who were too young to be independent thinkers , trusted the elders and did as they were told. Most of them , by the time they had reached their adolescence , had become great fighting machines, but all of them were just plain robots. They had no thinking skills,hardly any feelings,the merciless training had made them just lifeless killing machines.




But one of them was different. One of them was more brilliant than the entire village put together, more agile than his entire army ,  and more ferocious than the foreigners themselves. A combination of this made him the most dangerous 17 year old in the whole of Kwaha.

Bruce.

Chapter 2: Shanice

As the train let out a very loud sound, it startled me. I was dreaming about the home I had just left behind . It is a marvel of life, how we spend years in a place, without as much as noticing the slightest of objects that make big differences in our lives , but when we leave the place, the people, each and every little object keeps hitting the memory back and fading aways , like a pendulum the mind keeps going back and forth through the past.

Such was my state when the train pulled into the platform at this remote village called Servia. My fathers and forefathers, who have been the masters of colonization all their life, much to my distaste, have their eyes on this piece of land.


I had always kept a special dislike for the way the massacre of people was thought to be essential to extend dominance over a certain piece of land. My mother disliked it too, along with the fact that man had always differentiated into caste, class, and race. She beleived in one god and his billion followers. But then, she tried to convince me into not despising my father's actions by explaining to me the various examples of nature wherein one species has to dominate the other and lives have to be sacrificed in order to do this. This was never understood by me.

When I entered the village, I saw my uncle Leopol standing outside the platform .He was my father's colleague and companion. He appeared very sad.

As my mother came to him, he whispered something in her ear . Her expression's gave away the news. The news which mother was, in a way , aware of , but convincing herself all these days that the otherwise had occured. But no person has power over god.

My father had died.

To be more specific , he had been killed by one of the natives of Serpia who , like him, beleived that bloodshed was the ultimate solution.



And that evening we went to his graveyard as I laid flowers on his tombstone that read "In Loving memory of Colonel Francis Savez."

Chapter 1 :Bruce

This day today, as I stand where I am standing , looking at the deep blue sky and the emptiness within it , only one thought crosses my mind.

Colonel Savez.

As I hold my dagger and hide in the marsh I see dust in the horizon. His vehicle approaches, loaded with a state-of-the-art heavy machine gun. His latest plan is to kill and shoot a couple of rebels who decided to go against him. They come from the village Servia .

That is my village. They are my people.

Savez is only a few feet away from me now. I give out a shout (since I do not like stealth killing) and plunge towards the jeep. It is then that I realize the amazing power of human emotions. In the fraction of a second, the Colonel showed signs of alarm, then fear , then anger and then overconfidence over the dominance of his weaponry in the field of development.

He has a Fixed machine gun. 5 feet long, 1500 rounds. 20,000 bullets. 20,000 people dead.

I have a Dagger, three quarters of a foot long, no ammo, one sharp blade. 1 person dead.

I have agility.

He doesnt.

Within a few seconds he is lying on the floor . I plunged my dagger into his heart. It was surprising that people like him actually HAD a heart. 

I didn't care. I had done my job. I returned to my village.Washed my face. Went to sleep.

My name is Bruce.That's it. I was found in a dumpster in the village and raised by the villagers as their own .

Now the foreigners had captured and ruled over many villages except mine. So my village was their next target. As soon as the villagers realized this they did ONE wrong thing. they started training children as soldiers. I was one of the children.

And this is my Story.