AUTHOR’S NOTE: This chapter can be a bit gruesome...it contains some graphic images of what war can do. I have noticed before in the game...the Crystal Wars were often talked about my various players and some NPCs as glorious, great fights...
Something that I hardly believed to be the case.
I don’t own anything that relates to FFXI, so SE please don’t sue me.
Part I (full text)
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/journal2.html?user=385748&mid=1118071855825271130
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Aki X
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=35&mid=1118072613119019026
Chapter XI
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=35&mid=111815056226475773
Aki XII
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=10&mid=1118242413200394994
Read and review please^^;;
No dedications this time either...
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Chapter XIII: Waterfall
***
After two days of traveling, I finally arrived at the outskirts of Northern Gustaberg...
And I was horrified with what I saw.
The ground everywhere was littered with bodies, galka and beastmen. Casting a quick eye around, I saw that there were very few humes whose corpses were starting to be bloated with worms underneath the hot morning sun. The ground was thick with these bodies, and the smell of death and davastation lingered everywhere and over everything...from the broken beastmen signa staffs etched with tattered Ensigna signs to the once proudly waved flags proclaiming the Republic of Bastok upon them.
Numbing myself unwillingly to the carnage, I picked my way through the battlefield, being careful to not step on anyone’s body if I could help it.
War...
Is this the end result of it?
But what I saw before was nothing when I got to where the bridge was supposed to be according to my map for me to be able to cross into Southern Gustaberg.
Or rather, would be if it still existed. Examining the shattered remains of the posts that held the bridges ends up, it quickly became apparent that either beastmen or Bastokian had burned and then destroyed it sometime during the conflict.
It was then that I noticed a fine red mist setting its way down on all over me.
I turned and looked over to my left, and saw the waterfall, easily one of the most beautiful things about Vana’diel...
Running red.
The arc of dark blood and body parts mixing itself into the crystal blue waters that normally flowed, and then forcing itself over the edge and crashed down into the rocks below, the bones making crisp snapping sounds while the blood was thrown up everywhere, including where the bridge I was wanting to cross used to stand.
I fell down to my hands and knees on the ground with my body and soul quaking, my eyes closed.
Why...
Why would anyone ever...
It was then that I opened my eyes slightly, and I saw a half decayed skull of a decapitated galka staring back at me, the maggots enjoying what used to be his eyes, slithering through the dead galka’s mouth and ears. It was easy to see that the galka had died a painful death, his agony prolonged for as long as possible.
Unwilling to stare at it, I knocked the head away carelessly over the cliff’s edge with the back of my hand, and then I began to throw up uncontrollably.
I felt the death in the air infect me, creep into my eyes my ears mouth every opening of my body to tear away at my soul like I was nothing nothing but a horrible child of the goddess who had to be punished HAD to be punished for the crimes of his fellow siblings-
The vomit rushed out of my body and into the river below as I heaved over the cliffside.
Eventually, finally, when my stomach had emptied itself I dragged myself back away from the cliff edge on my elbows away from the red mist...
And I passed out, just one more body among the thousands more here.
-fin Chapter XIII: Waterfall
Edited, Thu Jun 9 09:53:18 2005 by Nightsintdreams
Edited, Thu Jun 9 10:13:53 2005 by Nightsintdreams