Alex felt warmth he wasn’t familiar with, a soft haze of dust and smoke obscured his vision. He heard the muffled shouts of people around him and the rise of bile in his throat. He looked around in a daze, everything seemed muted, sand at his back as he lay in what looked like a shallow ditch. He sat up only to be greeted with the sounds of screaming and the crack of a bullet as it traced by his head. He was confused, and terrified of what he saw. Men piling up in the gully near a jungle tree line, sand and ocean behind him tainted red with the blood of those dying.

He looked around not sure what to make of it, then got the rough shaking as a voice started to come into focus, yelling at him from his side, a rough shake to him as if to try to bring him back to reality.

“God damnit Sergeant Byrne, wake the fuck up! We’ve been ambushed!” Alex turned to the voice, seeing his captain kneeling next to him and shaking him. Then another crack of air as another bullet passed nearby. He saw the big man finch reflexively and then the limp body of another soldier fall into the gully behind him like a puppet with its strings cut.

Alex shook his head as it all came back to him. He knew where he was, this was the war of Fanubris, where he cut his teeth on the gristle and bone in the name of the Empress. This is where everything came apart, when he stopped being human and became a monster. If by reflex alone he grabbed the captain’s vest and drug him into the sand as a mortar went off close to their position.

“Captain Olen!” Alex shouted over the cacophony of gunfire and screams. “Where are my men? We can get around that mortar team and pinch them off” The captain looked relieved that his Sergeant came back to the real world and pointed up the gully to a small group of three men perched on the side of a ditch, using it to give themselves cover and fight out of. “Lay down some cover and I’ll get to my boys, we’ll get it handled, Empress willing” With that Alex was on the move, staying low in the ditch and working his way along the patch to his team.

Alex stooped down low and picked up an automatic rifle dropped by some poor soul who would never see home again. He was soon at his team as explosions sprayed sand, water, and blood everywhere. One of the three looked up at him and beamed a smile, a stark contrast to what was surrounding them.

“Hey, Sarge! We figured you wanted a wake up call so we arranged this one!” The man joked at him and turned back to the line firing off shot after shot at the aggressors bearing down on them.

“Shut up Mills, we ain’t got time for your jokes.” One of the other two bit back at him, turning for a moment to look at Alex. “What’s the skinny boss? We gonna go at these guys or just sit here all day?”

Alex looked at the three of them somberly he knew what was coming next. He regretted every moment of it; this was something he relived so many times before. “Yeah, Avery get that big gun and let’s get a move on, we got a mortar team to get rid of.”

Avery, the man who had yet to speak, grunted at Alex and shimmied along the inside of the ditch to grab a Light Machine gun and its respective belts off another dead soldier near them. “Sanders, you need to take defensive and stick to my ass, we’re going around in the woods here.” Alex said to the man who asked his plan.

The four men soon were moving along the trench line and into the jungle, then everything became a haze, life coming back into focus as Alex sat on his knees with his head hung low. Three bodies lying dead in front of him, lying in all too familiar uniforms. The first cracks shining in the haze of the afternoon light. Jagged and torn he felt it start to crumble. The footsteps of his captain came up behind him. “They were brave men Byrne; they did the best they could. It was a damn shake better than anyone could have asked for.”

Tears welled up in Alex’s eye as he choked back what he could. He watched these men die, and they did so because he ordered them to. It was his fault; nothing he could say or do would change that. “Hey Captain Olen, can I ask you something?” Alex turned and looked at the absolute mammoth of a man.

“Yeah, Byrne, what is it?” The man looked down at Alex with a profound sadness that they both knew all too well.

“Why are we even fighting here anymore? Do we even know the reasons for this worthless war anymore?” The war of Fanubris had been raging for 30 years at this point. Alex didn’t even know what started the war just that it happened before he was even born.

The captain frowned and knelt next to the bodies of the three men; he pulled from his pocket three silver coins and placed one in the front chest pocket of each soldier. It was custom for the captain to do that, as a way to pay the ferryman. “We are here because the Empress’ generals demand it Byrne. I wish I could give you a better answer than that. But that’s all we are, weapons to take to war.”

Everything faded away, inky blackness swallowed everything he knew. Alex felt as if he was suffocating, like all of existence just faded to dust. He snapped up bolting upright on that ratty couch in his office, coughing and sputtering. He shook his head and looked around getting his bearings. “Another dream…”

Alex turned himself on the couch and planted his feet on the floor, he rubbed his face as if in an attempt to wake up fully only to find the thin sheet of sweat covering his forehead. He stood up and went into his bathroom to clean up. He came out of the bathroom and got dressed, still feeling out of place. He headed out of his office and made his way to Salvadore’s

The morning air was brisk and sharp biting into him as he walked along the street. The previous night’s rain had made the morning colder than usual. Alex took in a deep breath of the cooler air hoping it would knock the cobwebs out and bring him a bit of balance. Life was returning to the streets this early morning as people emerged from the relative safety of their homes into the sun.

Alex pushed open the door of the diner and made his way to the bar top, Salvadore looked up at him with tired eyes and smiled. “Morning Sarge I was worried you wouldn’t make it up here before I closed up.” He looked Alex over and looked concerned “You look like garbage Alex what happened?”

Alex looked at Salvadore and gave him a weak smile. “Yeah, I’m fine, just had a rough sleep is all. I’ll take a coffee if you don’t mind.” He was grateful Sal cared enough to ask, but he really didn’t want to go into it.

Salvadore, however, did not care. “Come on Alex what happened? Did your memories come back to haunt you again?” There was a look of real worry and as Alex went to protest Salvadore cut him off. “Look Alex, I won’t claim to know the things that go on in your head, and I respect that you have problems talking about it. But I know that look better than you’d know. Every ship has its anchor; you gotta learn when to raise yours to help make things easier.”

Alex sighed; he knew Sal wouldn’t let up if he didn’t talk about it. He really did appreciate it, but felt out of place talking about it. Finally though, he relented and spoke to the burly man. “I had a dream about my experiences during the war. We had assaulted the Mallin Islands and established a foot hold, everything went fine for the first few days, and then just as the bulk of the forces pushed inland we got ambushed.” Salvadore brought him his drink and settled down to listen to him.

“I went ahead with my three guys to circle around a mortar team that was firing on the main camp, they were expecting the flank and ended up gunning the three down, I got out of it only barely and I don’t know why I was so lucky.” There was a real bit of venom when he said that. “My men died like dogs, and they went there on my orders. Sal, it’s my fault they never got to come home.”

Salvadore looked thoughtful for a moment; he reached down behind the bar and pulled up a small box with a gold emblazoned sigil of the church on the front. “Alex I’ve been meaning to show you this one day, I think today is probably they best time to do it.” He slid the box over to Alex, who looked at it quizzically.

He opened up the box to see two golden sigils of the church and a wreath of ivy medal inside. Alex looked at Salvadore and closed the box gingerly. “..I had no idea Sal” the response was almost meek.

Salvadore smiled at Alex. “I know, not many people do know, I was part of the imperial inquisition, nothing as dangerous as what you did. But I was a medic in the early days of the war. The previous Empress even wanted me knighted for saving one of her brats on the field in Artoulle. I turned her down though, said I had a place to call home and nobility didn’t suit someone like me.”

Alex raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Sal, you turned down being knighted?” There was a fair amount of shock there considering what it would have done for him.

“Well, I mean, the nobles didn’t like it. Hell with them though, I wasn’t doing it for the status, I wanted to help my country. Besides can you picture me running around in all those posh clothes looking down my nose at people?” Sal laughed. “I’d have never fit in.”

Alex conceded that thought and took a drink from his coffee. “Why tell me this now though Sal? I don’t get it.”

Salvadore looked thoughtful for a moment. “Think of it as me telling you I know what you’ve been through, and you aren’t alone Alex. You’ve been coming here for the last ten years and in that whole time you’ve gone to shoulder the burdens of everyone around here that you could. I’d call you a saint but I know you’d start back talking me. You gotta learn to ease your burden every once and so often otherwise you’ll break your damn back. You know you got people who want to help”

Salvadore shrugged lightly “I know you ain’t gonna listen, but its there, Empress willing you’ll get it through that thick skull of yours.” Salvadore took the box and placed it back under the bar. Alex took all this information in somberly. With this sudden revelation placed on him he felt more at ease, it must have been visible as he heard the chuckle of Salvadore. “Look Alex, I know you got work to do for that nice lady that came in here last night, so I won’t hold you. You know my doors are open though.“ He smiled at Alex. “Now get the hell out so I can go home and sleep.”

Alex relaxed a bit and picked up his coffee, and for the first time in a long time he smiled an actual genuine smile. “I’ll swing by tonight, you old bastard.” With that Alex turned and made his way out of the diner feeling lifted from the conversation. It was then that he turned eastward and started making the walk to the noble’s district. Sal was right; he had a lot of work to do.