Remnant: Stage of the Apocalypse

by DLI-VUH

The men of Vale's 14th Line Infantry Regiment were just students when the war began. With the world in ruins and the kingdoms of Remnant scrambling for power, even these schoolchildren were swept into a conflict that covered the globe and shaped a generation. This is the story of the Great War from the men and women who fought in the bloodiest conflict in Remnant's history.

1. Prologue

Remnant: The Stage of the Apocalypse

Prologue

It was good, I think: this life I've had. Looking back, it almost seemed as though I'd never survive what I did. And yet here: in this hospital room overlooking the port, all the struggle and toil; the death and birth of loved ones, even nations, seemed entirely a tiny price to pay to bring back some semblance of peace and normality into our once shattered lives. I've sure paid a price. So did the nation. And the world. Not the deepest oceans or the highest peaks were unaffected by the conflagration that was the "Great" War. Even this building had to pay a price, clawing back the normalcy of a daily life from the disaster of war in its own struggle. As its doors closed as a school and it sent its last children off to a distant and already-forgotten battlefield, it reopened last year as a hospital for the dying and the not-quite-alive. Men like me.

It's almost been half a century that we'd gathered in the plaza right below my window to take roll and march off to the east. Half a century since Portsmouth Academy closed its doors as her final students sang her graduation song and picked up their standard-issue swords. Half a century since I'd known Vale as my home. And yet amid the endless carnage and chronic cruelty of that war, rays of hope emerged. I should know, there was one climbing on me right now.

"You were named after your great-grandfather, did you know that, little one?" I asked, watching my grandson struggle to gain a foothold on my bed. A hospital bed wasn't home, per se, but that word had lost meaning so many years ago. Now, at the end of my life, the least of pleasures I could appreciate were the family that was left. I followed him with my eyes as he climbed next to me and put his body around mine; as his fingers grasped at whatever anchor point they could find; as his eyes met mine, he reminded me so much of my wife, now long gone. Reaching out to pet his head, even his hair resembled hers, curly and bright yellow, like the light of the golden sun, glistening off a majestic sword on a dusty and windswept desert far to the west – the final shining light to banish the darkness of that time.

"Where is he?" my grandson asked, nuzzling his face into the blanket.

"He's been gone for a long while now. Since the war. But you certainly have his spark, I'll tell you that," I said, laughing.

"You fight in the war, too? Right grandpa?"

"That's right. So did my friends. We all did, on both sides."

My grandson cocked his head, not quite understanding. "You fought your friends?" he asked me, as if I'd committed some sort of sin.

"Well, they weren't my friends at the time, but yes."

"I couldn't fight my friends at school," he said. "You must've been in a big, big, big argument, huh?"

"Yeah. You could say that."

I looked away to cough and toward the sunset over the Sea of Storms. The sun gently said goodbye to Vale, sinking below the horizon as its glow faded into twilight. From the way the world below my window carried on, I could tell there was a tranquility to this city, so far removed in time and space from the worries of conflict and Grimm that even the fishermen, venturing outward into the Manifold Abyss, couldn't begin to comprehend how precious this moment was. So elusive were times like these that, even in the years since the war, I'd felt as if I'd never escape. I'm glad to be proven wrong – to see the world my father wished for.

Only my grandson's hand grabbing at my face and a knock at the door interrupted me.

"Enter," I said. Rasping, really – even after so many years, raw dust exposure took its toll.

Rather than my son, a nurse slipped in carrying a clipboard, surveying my body and face and taking notes. She herself was younger than my son, probably a girl no older than 20, I'd say: part of a no-nonsense generation that damn near starved itself working to correct the mistakes of the past and forge an unstained future. Whether or not they're succeeding is up for debate. Even so, to see her here – to see her smile, so disarming and so warm – was a testament to what we'd fought for. She reached out to touch my forehead, continuing to take notes before her eyes caught mine. She stopped writing then, looking between my grandson and me. I think she knew as much as I did that, were it not for him, I'd have given up on breathing long ago and be at peace with the dust hardening in my lungs. She set aside her notes and took a knee, eyeing him like an expectant mother eyes a newborn – waiting for her own.

"You have a very handsome grandson, Mr. Xiao Long," she said, tenderly brushing his hair. "What's his name?"

I took her hand in mine, resting together on my grandson's head as his eyes traveled between us, speaking their own language of love and appreciation. A language known only by those who would never again see the remnants of the Great War.

"His name is Taiyang."