A warning stands for gruesome imagery.
In Her Head
Battlefields are always stark. Terrain lends no difference to the feeling of a land littered with bodies and broken war machines. A jungle is no different from a desert when blood soaks the ground. Corpses lay where they fall, left to rot and wither while still the armor moves on. Battle lines are presented one after another, only to fall apart as the great hulking Magitek machinery slowly trudges across the land.
Rebellions form in cities the army invades, only to be quelled by more bloodshed.
Still the Empire marches on unmoved by the death toll. With every passing battle, her kill count rises, only an estimate achieved rather than an exact number.
Her designation is Terra. She feels nothing.
Bodies, both living and dead, fall before her cannons; first ice, then fire and then brute force. The feel of the great metal 'feet' of her armor crushing a body without remorse is lost on her. The battles are just missions, orders given by a God-Emperor in his reach for conquest.
There is no sense or meaning of time as the battle lines continue to rise, eventually giving way to almost constant retreats, resulting in little skirmishes left and right. And still she fells them, her hands working the controls as though the machine were part of her body. Another town falls with a whimper, the survivors creeping through the streets to gather their dead. A woman sobs brokenly as she gathers the remnants of her husband's weaponry, the design on the metal being her only clue as to its owner.
The warrior stares, unable to understand the woman's response. The man had been a soldier; a pawn in a war. Pawns were expendable, they are meant to die. Why would one weep for a foot soldier? She watches them grieve, heads hanging as they slump over their lost loved ones, willing themselves to die as well.
She does not know misery. She does not know tears. She is empty.
They stand in the streets, crying out in rage and hurt, flinging stones and hating her more and more with every step forward of her armor. She passes by them as the squadron advances, cannons bringing down buildings that might serve to harbor resistance fighters. They scream that her orders are evil, that the Empire is corrupt and that she is a demon. She is called murderer and child slayer in every settlement the Magitek brings down. The villages and cities that succumb to the rule of the Empire merely glare with weeping eyes, silently damning her for her actions.
It means nothing.
In the capitol, they tighten the slave crown further, the metal tugging at her ears and bruising her temples as it constricts further, pressing harder into the ports grafted into the sides of her head. She does not blink when the doctors yank her hair aside to study the vertebrae in her neck, counting; calculating.
Another click of the tightening ratchet and somewhere within she knows that with a click of that tool she could be free.
A hand forces her head forward none to gently, her chin tucking against her collar bone as fingers entwine in her hair, yanking her head forward with enough force to realign her neck and rip out thick clumps of hair. The needle presses easily into the port at the back of her crown where it wraps about the base of her skull. There is a shock through her body as the needle is forced into her spine, tapping into the sensitive nerves and pathways of her mind. The needle injects its poison into her brain; the feeling of fire in her neck and the scraping of broken glass along the inside of her skull commanding her. It is only during this repeating procedure that she can feel. She screams and thrashes as the fluid works its way into her mind. The doctors try to restrain her, only to be thrown aside by her unmatched strength. She arches her back and roars, until her throat is raw, her screams shrill enough to force the doctors to cover their ears.
In her head, she can hurt as her brain tries to fight the drug that works in tandem with her slave crown. This pain, this true agony gives her clarity for the briefest time and she can see that it's wrong. The war is suddenly vile and disgusting; her Empire a cesspool of villainy and lies. She can mourn the dead and hate herself for the endless murder she commits in the name of her Emperor's conquest.
Her nose and tear ducts bleed as the fluid begins to dull her mind, taking away her thoughts once more. She falls back into the chair at last as her face is cleaned, her limbs numb and useless. But in her head, she can hear the screaming. She can feel the heat from the flames…smell the smoke…and recall the recoil of her armor as it releases an endless stream of cannon fire. She can hear the order to turn her fire against the God-Emperor's own soldiers; fifty falling away in a single blast of searing light from behind. They do not scream. They do not know that death is coming, or that they have even died.
And then all is still once again and her brain does nothing but compute.
Her armor rumbles beneath her like a beast as she moves out with the squadron once again. Children scream when they see her. Men surrender and women beg to die. They know her now; her face, her form. She is death to them; devil on earth and catastrophe incarnate. Soldiers throw down their weapons before her and are subsequently slain by order, their surrender not accepted.
The army poisons fields to cause famine. They burn pasture and commandeer livestock. Boys are pulled from their family's embrace and forced into a uniform bearing the insignia of their conqueror's Empire. They are sent to poison wells and rivers they have drawn water from all their lives. They feed poison to their friends and families by order, else they must watch them torn apart by loyal soldiers. They hate and they suicide, desperate for release from the God-Emperor's cruelty.
But in her head…
In her head she can still hear them. Their screaming is constant in her ears, coloring every order she follows, every step she takes. But, she is an engine of war, following her emperor's bidding, silent and obedient as a trained animal. She eats, but she does not taste. She touches but she does not feel…it is empty. She can see, but she cannot react. When the battlefield is abandoned, she is tucked away, placed in a stark cell with food and water. They drug her to make her sleep for untold amounts of time.
She can claim no sense of time. Day and night pass by unnoticed, the differences meaning nothing.
Hot and cold go ignored, exposure to the elements repaired but not recognized.
She is consumed by war. It is the only thought her brain can support beneath the weight of the crown and the drug. It is all that she knows; all that she is allowed to know. There is no resentment of the battlefield where there should be a visceral reaction after the things she has seen and done. She sits alone in her cell, staring at the wall and feeling nothing, her limbs useless until she is retrieved and given a command. She is silent and cold, a statue of stone amidst the heat of war or the empty, silent streets of the capitol.
But in her head…
In her head they are still screaming.
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