H. Harling

With the dingy toy of her daughters' at hand, a mother whispers a prayer to powers that could be - not to those that are. Whispering the trenches into fields and the grey shrapnel into blossoms, bodies with empty eyes into friends. Whispering reality into a fable, a vision of her daughter dancing against the sunlight that finally peeks from behind the clouds passing like an eluding dream.

But it shall not come to pass, for such is the decree. For such is the decree of Usurbia and its righteous king. A king whose power is told to grow with inflicted pain, his gaunt hand told to rise in a greeting only to suffering, his words told to be those of reaping death alone. For in Usurbia fables were turned into reality, fields into trenches, blossoms into grey shrapnel and friends into bodies with empty eyes.

The Wizard, he dances in robes, he laughs. He neither lives nor dies. He says that he is war. We its practitioners.

And its greatest practitioners we are, for with a strike of lightning he became the power that is and whispered our singing into jaded silence, our dancing into attrition, our friendly smiles into thirsting demon eyes. A storybook of neighborly animals, harnessed for an all-consuming war. Our deeds of glory and shame now light a path to his domain, and with rifle in hand blanket the world in his arcane mystery.

We must get ready and not be late now - the train to the front is almost here.



It makes no difference what you think of war. War endures. No amount of hatred of it will make it go away - neither did it now. Widowed by its touch, the Coyote had no choice but to raise his husband's sword in a society that bears the mark of war and war alone. A society that has no avenues if not for an industrial, bloody decree to be filled.

Her hobbies of cooking and botany a former housewife's memory, her daughter ushered into a military youth camp in stead of her loving arms. Her dress whispered into fatigues, her knitting tools into instruments of pain and her hopeful flame blown into a mere whimpering smolder. A kind mother into a practitioner of war, a bride to the number of her platoon, slave to the whistle that commands the next assault.

Her soul left to a mere smolder indeed, yet her being - her essence, remains. She is a mother at heart not only to her offspring that she so yearns to see, but to everyone forlorn and downtrodden. A mother's love shines even in the darkest hour in the darkest trench, a magical sensation antithetical to their arcane decree. Her den gone yet she still adorns the cold bunkers with decor, her utensils repossessed yet she still cooks warm meals to those with empty bellies.

Her tears have long since dried, yet her soul cries in the dusk - thinking of the Wizard that dances the night away. He says that he is war.





A shovel's strike, and your realm is claimed. That is the Wizard's decree - the decree of the king that simultaneously exists and doesn't. By a shovel's strike the Pioneers whisper fields into trenches, by a cannon's thunder they tear blossoms with grey shrapnel, by the hit of a bullet they turn friendly gazes into empty eyes. The Wizard points to new lands, he wants to dance across them. He says that he is war.

The hounds, the first line, the Pioneers - they feel no hatred for those they usurp, slaves as they are to the king's mystic decree. Grief for the lives they lose, remorse for the lives they take, longing for the families they miss... yet enchanted by the whistle that commands the next assault.

A destination is irrelevant to the path when the goal is too esoteric to grasp, when the road is infinite in both directions. Rather you must learn to walk it. To embrace the painful road of thorns for it is your purpose to walk it. And so war endures, from campaign to the next, from one battle of attrition to the other. The Wizard Pioneers are the best at it, they will forever be - for their fates are sealed within its cold grasp.