Sword of Hadrian

The ground was barren. The air was brisk, cinching the arid land. There were no trees, no bushes; nothing as far as the eye could see. The sun was hidden behind a blanket of clouds. The soil was cracking under the feet of the gritty soldiers. Looking ahead of themselves, unto the horizon, there was little for the eye to gaze upon in this desolate land. As demoralizing as their surroundings may be, they carried on.
The commander searched the landscape for any signs of the enemy – black cloaks would be the most obvious giveaway. For better or worse, there were none. He glanced down at his steed and exhaled, his breath coming out in little clouds. He pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders. He was fatigued and staving off hunger for too many days to remember. He and his men had been traveling for days, and he knew he was not the only one deprived of food, sleep, or water. He willed himself to sit straighter in his saddle, for if a leader showed weakness, what good did he serve in leading his men?
The commander’s lips were chapped, his tongue sandpaper dry. He dared not utter a word, for fear it would split his lips and make him crave a lick of water, which would only send him spiraling further. The commander dreamed of returning home where there were no wars. He imagined sitting on a stool at the table across from his wife, their little boy playing on the floor with wooden blocks. Not a worry to mind, his wife smiling, his son grunting and talking to his wooden blocks. Simply simple times. The commander missed his family. He was envious of those who lived in the countryside, far away from war and bloodshed. The commander smiled whilst remembering his family.
He had been fighting in this war for too long. When he left, his boy was just a few years old, toddling around their modest home. In the commander’s memories, he could see his boy’s golden hair, which greatly resembled his own, reflect a waning sunlight as he bobbed in the dense fields surrounding their home. Of all memories, the commander was tuned to the back of his boy’s head, running away from him under the setting sun. Now as the commander looked at himself and his surroundings, he had greyed and he was in a grey world. His eyes creased with wrinkles and his hair turned off-white – he was hardly the young joyous man when he left his home to fight for his kingdom.
There was no question that the commander aged with every taxing day of warfare. The war, like any other, had been a bloodbath, gruesome with many fateful deaths. The commander lost many of his men, including his younger brother. The Damned shed the most blood, yet did not sacrifice a single life. They pillaged the villages, from the village homes to the women and children. The Damned were the very reason that the commander left his family to lead the army of the Blessed He was fighting for his boy, not only his kingdom.
The commander was jolted from his thoughts at the sound of shouts erupting from the emptiness before the Blessed. The soldiers formed a straight line. At this point, they were used to surprises. When they first walked into the battlefield, however, these soldiers were young and untested. They feared for their lives and cringed at the crunch of a stick in the woods. In only a few months of time fighting on the front, these soldiers had become seasoned – aged and matured as much as, if not more than, the commander. Now, in response to the unexpected shouts in the distance, the soldiers pulled their swords out of their scabbards mechanically, or readied their bows with arrows dipped in poison. As the soldiers readied themselves, the commander’s head snapped in different directions, searching for what he assumed to be an approaching army of the Damned. Nothing could be seen, save for a dense fog that suddenly settled into the ranks of the commander’s soldiers. The commander barked a command and an instant later, the soldiers formed a tighter line, as if the dense line of armor, swords, and shields, could prevent the fog from engulfing the men, one by one. Once tightly knit, the soldiers moved as one, slowly and silently advancing across the landscape. The only thing to be heard was the wind howling through the spaces where the men did not touch each other.
A rain of arrows descended from the sky. A moment’s breath later, soldiers collapsed to the ground. The line kept moving. The standing soldiers consolidated, as if their comrades who fell never existed. The soldiers marched over the fallen ones, leaving them for the few ravenous animals to feast on. The commander continued to bellow orders, but those became lost in the fighting that came next. The soldiers charged forward, the frontline men pointing their swords at the progressing fog. As they ran into the fog, they were swallowed in the dense cloud. Their yells became subtler the deeper they moved into the fog. And once in the fog, they could not hear their fellow mates – the men fought in isolation and none emerged. The commander halted on his steed right before the fog. Something was holding him back from charging in fearlessly like his men did. Perhaps it was the prospect of returning home to his boy and his wife. Perhaps it was the prosect of breathing another breath. Or perhaps it was simply fear. The commander yelled for his men to retreat. Unfortunately, none could hear him. Even if they were not already engulfed in the dense fog that created vacuum, the soldiers were trained to kill the enemy. They had one mission in their new lives: to rid the evil plaguing this kingdom.
Fighting an invisible enemy was horrifying. There was no way to tell whether the Blessed were advancing. And even if they did advance, the Damned did not appear to fall back. They were invincible, which was something the Blessed quickly learned being on this battlefield for so many months now.
Hereafter the air became pungent with the scent of blood, a scent that the commander had become too familiar with. Frustrated and feeling helpless, the commander led his white steed into the fog. Even though all his men had advanced before him, he was surprised to find the fog devoid of the Blessed. Where had they all gone? He was squinting and rubbing his eyes, hoping that would clear his vision and his men would suddenly appear.
The commander felt as if he had charged into the mouth of a beast – a cavernous white mouth. Looking behind, the commander could not see where he had come from or where he was going. It looked as if the beast had closed its mouth around the commander. His horse whinnied and reared backwards, fearful of their surroundings. The commander gave a kick and patted the horse’s neck, urging him onward. As disgruntled as the horse sounded, it marched forward through the fog. The commander prayed that the more they moved onward, the closer they would get to the end of whatever disaster this was.
At some point, the horse stopped kicking dead bodies, the ground felt smoother, and a small opening could be seen on what the commander assumed was the horizon. There was a sliver of hope to exit. The commander did not want to admit that he was a coward, but that last thing he wanted was to be any moment longer inside this fog. He pushed his steed into a full gallop. The horse sprung through a break in the fog and emerged into the same barren land he left behind. The commander took a deep breath, freed from the prison of the ominous cloud.
As the commander glanced around, he was surprised to see that many of his men had crossed the fog and were fighting men in black cloaks. His army was heavily outnumbered, which was none too much of a surprise to the commander. He had known that the moment they fought their first battle, when the ominous Damned continued to appear out of thin air. It felt to be a losing war when the Blessed were so disadvantaged.