Besar's Embrace

"We sat there, waiting on the Korbrean Calvary to come and finish us off. It was just the three of us. Madsen, Jon and I. Three boys from the Riverheath. Three boys from the slums. We never wanted to be fighters, but there we were, weapons in hand, foxhole to our back. Ricky Wardwen was dead at our feet, his blood turned the bottom of our pit to a burgundy mud. Madsen said this was it. Jon agreed. I wasn't stupid enough to argue, and so we promised, we promised each other, that if we made it out, we would stick together, no matter what. Jon died first, less than a year later, in my arms. Arrow through the eye. Madsen made it through the war, but the war never made it through him. He went out to fight the fissures that grew across the land and one day, one of them took him. I was there. I held up our bargain, and now, now I'm alone, and there is no one to protect me, so I found my own protection, and now I am my own protection. I have welcomed the embrace. I have accepted the end. Whenever it may come."