To Champion Legacy
Flash Fiction
A submission for Iron Age Media’s Prompt: The Outfit
Not another step backwards, into that harrowing admission of defeat.
Not another man lost to despair, as final as that illusive crone called Death could be.
None of us claimed to be the best that were born underneath our flag. Frankly, the best died a very long time ago.
We are survivors who made it to the next fight with enough food and weapons to keep fighting withal, out of interest of self-esteem, what else should we be while the Princes and Princesses that we hold so dear are still being born? If not survivors, husks?
Fighting is the name of our entropic yet necessary destiny.
Outsiders and deserters fearmonger, often citing that at some point the music will stop for the very last time.
What they fail to realize is that our anthem is their heartbeat.
My boots mold the foundation for their future homes, skyscrapers even.
And one day when we put our weapons down, and award those who make it back to tell every gritty detail, those outsiders and deserters will guide us back to lives of civility.
They won’t have a choice, for until the smog of war - that wretched fever of blood and boom - is finally laid to rest, we will always be men born from unstable thunderstorms, not still soil, and well fed homes.
Pathogens get it. They understand the step by step process of our tactics, and why we fight. They use it all the time whenever they infiltrate our bodies and devour us from the inside out.
My only hope for when the rapidity of battle dies down and this war is finally over remains as one:
That it will not be the Princes and Princesses who consider our uncivility in war permanent, for that would mean we’ve become pathogens against our very own legacy, and as a result must be exterminated.