City Of Blood

In a world built by warriors, hunters, and marauders, a young clansman finds himself wondering about the meaning behind the violence, perpetrated by his kind during the ages.

They always told me there was purity in war. Purity in violence, like a glimmer sleeping within a flame. And yet, of my brutal works, I feel just disdain. Disgust, to something that my instincts learned to love. Everything started in this alley. I could still smell it. The rot and the iron. Those invaded my nostrils like maggots with abandoned preys. Their bodies were now gone, eaten away by the mechanical Cleaners. Carrion devourers, voracious for my trophies: the remains of my enemies. But even a child could have smelled the dry blood and the wasted marrow. I could still hear the bloody beats of my heart digging through my eardrums, loud like tanks. It could have ended in a million different ways, for the Charnel Crows clan. But they had to challenge us. They had to conquer half of the streets of our district, of the Bloodshot clan, my clan. They should have expected some kind of retorsion. I think, deep down, they wanted it. After all, what kind of respect can a warrior give to an apathetic adversary? What kind of citizen doesn't bathe in the battle fluids? Well, I ain't the best warrior in the city, but I'm a good law-abiding citizen. I didn't forget my creed and my vows. No: Neil of the Bloodshot hasn't forgotten his mission. The mission of every man, woman, and infant who decide to come into this world and survive to it. It's the first rule, since the dawn of times: "from the cradle to the grave, this world will always try to devour you, to mangle you". These words are meaningless to me now, but the old humans had always had proof of their verity. Since the moment men crawled out from their dens, they had to fight against the flora and the fauna of this world. The Horned Wolves relished upon our children. The Toothed Birch Trees poisoned our air and grew fat, flourishing in our graveyards. The Thundering Crows blinded us and forced the survivors underground, where the Wandering Amanitas and the Worm Moles harrowed the remaining humans with nightly kidnappings, bone-chilling screams, and ambushes. Even the preys of the world hunted us down, while the Primate Warthogs squatted our villages and posts on the surface. And in the end, we became the last ring of the food chain. The last ring in a world that despised us. An unwanted birth from a drunken mother. It was in that moment that our forefathers had an epiphany, the second rule of our city: "if you want to destroy the chain of the world, you just need to break one ring". And so we studied the volcanic fires, the effects of plants, mushrooms and poisons. The black blood of the depths became fire in our hands, while the metals and the rocks became miracles of explosives and metallurgy. Our arrows changed into lead and our bows into rifles. With our new weapons, we hunted down the Amanitas and the Worms, feasting upon their corpses, using the ancient roads to reach the surface. One by one we killed them. From the preys to the predators. Every single species that destroyed the lives of our brothers soon fell under our bullets, decorating the walls of our hunting halls and the plates of our armours. But we left some survivors, so that starvation would never be something aching the mind of our brothers, while our technology grew, modified, discovering the power of bacterias, genetics and radiation. And soon, the cities and the wasteland decorated our world, with the clans at the top of the food chain, gazing upon the itizens from their skyscrapers. And when there were no more enemies, we created them among us, starting wars among our kind. The causes were always the same: territories, water, hunting grounds, monopolies and patents, even for TV channels. The reasons behind the wars weren't important. It was the latter that mattered. The strife, the battles, those became our entertainment, and the entertainment of those unable to fight. Clansmen became celebrities, acting as wandering vigilantes on our streets and as warriors on the battlefield. We weren't like the lords of nature who subjugated us. No, the beasts never killed members of their species. They had preys. We became such good killers that even without enemies we could not rest. How can you rest in a place like this? Even my battle against the Crows has no reason to exist, if not for the battle itself. It has lasted for at least two-hundred years, only in one district of the city. Nobody even remembers for what it started. To my forefathers fighting was all that they needed. All that I needed. Since I was born, pushed into this world. Surviving through my brothers, bred from gunpowder and blood, grown by hunting. I... we were nothing more than warriors, ready to die without a cause but war. This was the third lesson: "Fight for the city, provide for the city, belong to the city". We used to fight in the wastelands, hunting the beasts. Those belonged to the warlords, while the mutagens and the substances belonged to science, pumped through our veins by our own fathers and mothers. The transfusions made us stronger, annihilating fear and spreading pleasure every time red was shed. And soon, an overwhelming sensation of omnipotence descended upon me on the battlefield. An almost nostalgic feeling. In the battle, I felt at home, mighty among ruins. This strength, this fire, I thought it couldn't fade away. And still, all it needed was a voice to be hushed. A simple series of words was all it needed to die. To think their invasion felt so sweet. It felt good knowing that the Charnel Crows wanted to challenge us. They took our homes, cast away our brothers from their streets and reprogrammed the machines of the city to fight for them. Only a coward would use an Iron-child to shed blood, I thought at the time. And so I hunted them, like a rabid hyena, guided by the warlords, overlooking over us from their glorious towers. Guided by Father. They didn't judge my actions, they didn't take a stance: they just nourished our fires. The city's channels transmitted the battles of the Bloodshots. They watched me burning the houses, the shops and the bases of the Charnel Crows. They watched me murdering them on the streets, with gun and axe. In the end, the name Neil "Fiery blade" was on every tongue, news channel, ad and heart of the city. Only few could reach such honors. There was pride in the eyes of every member of the Bloodshot clan. But everything changed the last day, when I captured a group of fugitive Crows, right in this alley. A family: father, mother and son. They chose to run away, to become cowards, the worst crime of our city. Killing them was their clan's duty, not ours. But showing to be a better citizens than the Crows was an occasion we couldn't let go. And so we tracked them, me and my second in command, Jess "Crow-eater". we saw them, All three, hiding like Acid Rabbits. The father, emaciated and trembling like a leaf under the rain, was kneeling in front of a pale skinned woman, with unmoving eyes and grayed hairs, hugging his rifle and his son, the latter was still a pup, with the same eyes of the mother. The plan was taking them from both sides of the alley, Jess from one and I from the other. It should have been easy. Very easy. But I wasn't expecting them like this. I wasn't expecting the father crying a river of tears for his wife, killed by hunger and infections, renegade of her own clan. The father turned towards me, with frozen eyes of fear, as my rifle was pointed at them. But he wasn't scared of me, of dying. Not at all. But for his son. He begged me to let his son go, to take him and ignore the boy. He was begging me. I never met someone begging for his life before. I never met someone crying for the death of a companion or a lover neither. I was angry at first. With the same anger you feel when seeing an animal give up, desiring to watch the beast react. However, my finger couldn't press the trigger. It couldn't, stiffened by his gaze. Why he was crying for his wife? Why he was ready to sacrifice himself for his son? Why he didn't try to fight back? And in that moment, my heart stopped, my flame was extinguished. They were Crows, but in my depths I knew the right thing to do was letting them go. Unfortunately, Jess didn't think in the same way. She didn't see what I saw, and she ended them for their cowardice. I felt no joy in their deaths. There was no honor in murder. There was no euphory in the blood. Only the horrible awareness of having stopped the life of a man, of a father, willing to become a coward to protect his loved ones. To protect his son and what remained of his wife, he was ready to cast away the creed of every man, woman and child of the city. After their death, Jess asked me why I didn't shoot or why I was so silent. I said I wanted to test her loyalty to the Bloodshot clan. She smiled for my words, but I could still see their faces, every time I closed my eyes. He just wanted to save his son, for god's sake. He just wanted to survive, why we had to kill him? He wasn't dangerous. Why he deserved to die? Why every person gutted by my hands deserved to die? They were like me, they just wanted to win and survive. I was happy of their deaths. I wanted to be remembered by the city, by my companions, by father. But most of all, I wanted to survive, the greatest honor of every human. There was no joy in what I did. My actions... I couldn't accept them without thinking of having done something terrible. And so I pushed myself again in this alley. Under the night sky, looking for their corpses, as if I had to give them some form of consolation and dignity. But the city already took them. Their machines, the Cleaners, had left only blood stains. I didn't think I could feel something like this. This emptiness, so unfathomable by the city that birthed me. To think I have to kill the entire clan. It's not going to end well for me, but maybe it's better this way. My actions must be punished, in one way or another. But at the same time, I can't let my clan die. I can make a truce, an alliance, between the clans. Maybe I could also find a cure to death and a way to fly off this planet, since I'm planning to make miracles come true. There will be blood, as always. The only thing it's left for me is looking at the sky, still ruminating on the meaning behind those lights. I once thought the stars observed the glory of my actions and those of my forefathers. That they watched joyfully. Now I think they fear us and they are scared to land down. They fear the blood we shedded, terrorized by our wars. Maybe this is why they disappear, when the city lights shine. I'm just praying that someone or something, more feral and stronger than any warriors of the planet, emerges from the stars and burns the city of blood underneath.