Tempest Fury

       Everything was falling apart. Friends betrayed each other, loved ones were lost in the fight, and nothing had been solved. Nobody was certain of the future of the vast nation. Buildings crumbled, becoming rubble under the survivor’s feet.

    By this point, any form of compromise was unlikely. Corpses of immeasurable numbers were strewn across the ground. The many bodies were once those of people with their own families and friends. Those who now lay down across the land had lived a life with a story that nobody else could tell. 

    There is no such thing as a hero. There is no such thing as good or evil, because each side thinks that what they are doing is right. Black or white is nonexistent, because everyone is a muddled gray. Two sides were in every heroic tale.

    And those two sides now stood face to face, with blood pooled between them. This red river was not natural to the area, but these opposing forces had created a new landmark of rusted, iron stones. Everyone was drenched in a scarlet sweat. Was it their own or someone else’s? So much of the liquid had mixed that it would be impossible to tell one bright pool of red from another. The stench of death and metal was inescapable as the air captured a pink-tinted mist. A life that had lived with a story that nobody else could tell. Had they all died for nothing?

    With their weapons in hand, slowly the groups no longer pointed them at each other. The destruction they had created was something beyond themselves. In the heat of the fight, they had lost who they were at core. The ties to other life forms and the beauty of this world had escaped them temporarily. 

    As they stared at the crowd on the other side, even for just a moment, they remembered who they were. The friendships they had built over so many years, the family they had found among each other, the happiness shared within the communities. In truth, they had never actually forgotten; rather, they pushed these thoughts to the back of their minds as they battled.

    Though the groups knew they could never reunite, they looked into each other’s eyes from across the vermillion river. The tempest was far from finished, its fury a destructive massacre. Though the fight would last much longer between the opponents, and the way of which they viewed the world couldn’t be any more different, for a split second, the three simple words crossed their minds: We are one.