Chapter 2: Warriors' Anthem

Written by Spiritblade

To all men and women alike, there are 2 sides to each and all,

Yet so many in between.

The cloth of one's profession denotes an unspoken code

Of conduct, but how it is taken,

Is up to the wearer.

What is obedience?

What is loyalty?

What is honour?

No one soldier holds one true answer.

From ages old, each had searched for that answer.

None come close, but all came ever closer.

For the Ivory Princess, she who guides the Ship of Angels,

It is to have those who follow you believe

In you and what you stand for.

A flag is an empty thing – it denotes nothing but a piece of land

God had created in the First Age.

A president is another man – he or she is nothing but another man,

Who can die just like any other.

But faith and belief – ah, here is the thing that lasts.

No one can extinguish ideal.

No one can extinguish faith.

Light that fire, and see it blaze.

It may dim, but it will never die.

But even the light can blind, and faith perverted,

And from there, we see the journey we must undertake.

To the Ice Princess, she who stands beside the Ivory Princess,

It is the law.

Great men and women have died to make that flag a reality.

Built upon the sweat of heroes and the toil of giants,

Can a nation be made great.

The word of one's superior is law,

And is spoken by people who have the best interests of others in mind.

But, in time, the Ice Princess learns,

That to place one's own life within the hands of one's superiors,

Is to blind yourself to the sins they are capable of committing.

You are the sword to murderers and fallen angels,

And, thus, thou art no less guilty than they are.

No reasons you give will save you from God's punishing gaze,

Nor will the Adversary accept your excuses that you have done it at another's behest.

'Thou have the arms, the legs, the mind and the heart to say no,' they shall say,

'If I stand in thy way, remove Me from thy sight, and find thy own destiny. I shall watch, and bear witness.'

Is a lesson too late to be learnt?

Is it too late to see that answer when one stands at Death's door?

The Star Eagle, he who defends the Ship of Angels alongside the Defender,

Is a haunted soldier.

Past and present meet in a furious clash.

To him, he sings the same song as any other soldier,

But he sees clearer, sees farther, and hopes for more beyond medals and honour.

Beneath a boyishly playful façade he hides,

Earning the affection of both the Ice Princess and the Ivory Maiden.

He sees, he advises,

He acts, he enforces.

No promise from him comes empty, and perhaps, we learn the weight of when it is given.

What is a soldier?

What makes that man or woman one?

What makes you willing the commit murder and bear the burden of the sin?

Is your nation worth your life?

Is your ideal worth your sacrifice?

If your religion worth anything at all?

Or is it those that you cherish that makes you willing to blacken yourself in God's eyes?

We have defiled every good and noble thing ever since our exile from Eden.

War seems our only redemption.

For in struggle and strife, was Creation brought into being.

For in struggle and strife, can we make wrong aright again.

We pay in blood and tears.

We are taught regret.

We waste the years of our youth.

We blacken our souls in infamy, that before God's Golden Throne, your blackened soul shrivels before His furious gaze.

But, in return, we hold aloft the laurel of victory.

And is that victory worth all that you have sacrificed?

Can you tell the departed that it was for this that they have died?

And can you put them to rest with a promise that the madness that took their lives will not take others?

That is the unspoken request of soldiers living and dead: That the living remember that which took their lives, and that they never permit it to happen again.