A Prophecy Worth Dying For

“Calm waters, darling,” My mom whispered. “Keep your voice steady, and the waters calm.” 

“No, don’t do this. I’m not ready. Wake up, please, please, wake up.” I begged her. My mother, my hero, was lying in the bed with almost no chance of making it, but I was praying she would despite all that. 

She gives me a soft smile and closes her eyes, “You’re up, Lyra.” She said as the life fades from her. I wipe the tears from my face and stand up. The time for grieving was later. There was a battle to be fought, and I was the only one in our family left. 

Allow me to explain the situation, because so far nothing makes sense. There’s been a war going on for years. Between my family’s village and the one nearby. Why, you might ask, has there been a war going on? Well, no one knows, and that’s the problem. Basically, there was a prophecy that the leading families from each kingdom will send someone in to be the “savior” and “bring peace and unite the nations” but so far, everyone has died before they’ve won. On both sides. The worst part is, in this land, when there’s a prophecy, you have to follow it until it’s fulfilled. It’s not a good system, but these things are out of our control. So we’re stuck. Stuck fighting the same battle, for no reason, and killing our neighbors, for no reason, because we have no choice.

We’ve tried to resist before. I don’t remember that time, but my brother did. Oh, and surprise, he’s dead now too. Six years ago, when I was fourteen, I remember asking my brother why we didn’t just stop fighting each other, and the sadness in his eyes when he told me that wasn’t an option. He told me about the last time they tried that, how the tide started rising, how the winds blew stronger, how there was a storm that would never pass. It doesn’t matter what we do, people are going to be dying. We can just hope one of us wins. 

And now we’re here, with my dead mother lying beside me. You might be asking why I’m so insensitive about this, why I’m being so sarcastic, but can you really blame me? This has happened to everyone in my family. I’m numb to it at this point. Even better, I’ve gotten pretty good at shoving all my feelings down so they don’t cloud my judgment. Like I said, grieving is for later. This is the time for fighting, vengeance, and hopefully, an ending.

“Get ready.” I heard someone tell me. I get up from my mother’s bedside and walk toward the armory. Because of the absolutely lovely prophecy, everyone trains for this when they turn seventeen. It’s like being drafted into the military, except no one pretends you’ll survive. 

Anyway, the armory. I grab a longsword, because that’s what I’ve trained with. As I was putting on the armor, the fear really started to wash over me. 

“Keep your voice steady-” I whispered to myself while I put my helmet on “-and the waters calm.” I walked out of the base and looked around. There was smoke in the sky, the grass was long dead, and the unmistakable scent of blood was heavy around us. 

To be completely honest, I’m not ready to die. Considering I spent my entire life knowing that it would come like this, I should be, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Technically, if I allowed myself to be killed by the other side, the prophecy would be fulfilled, but I didn’t want to do that. Call me selfish all you want. I don’t want to die, so if that means I have to kill the other village’s savior, so be it. 

Okay, that sounds insensitive, but I already told you that I’m pretty much numb to the death around me. I think. At this point, I almost hope I am.

“Ready to go in?” One of the others asked me. I look at them, and see it’s my sparring partner, Aria. We’ve had… issues dealing with each other in the past, but I know her well. 

“Yes.” I reply, trying to sound strong. 

“Liar.” 

“So what? I’m going to have to do it anyway, does it matter if I’m ready?” I shoot back. 

“Not to be rude, but do you really want some of the last words out of your mouth to be a lie?” She asks. “That’s all.” 

I roll my eyes. “Jesus, what’s up with you today?” 

She glares at me. “Forgive me if I don’t want you to just go out there and die immediately.” She bends down to stick a dagger in her boot.

“Thanks Aria. Nice to see you care.” 

She shoots up and folds her arms. “Yeah. I do care. But not about you. I just want this all to end, and that’s your job now. So go out there, and do it.” 

“I can’t end this!” I shout.

“You have no choice, Lyra!” She yells, trying to push me forward. “You’re the savior!” We speed up our pace towards the battlefield.

“What if I don’t want to be?” I say back. “I never signed up for this! I can’t just go and fight in some war I had nothing to do with in the first place.” 

“That never mattered.” God, I wish she was wrong. And before we even realized it, we were on the battlefield. Looking out ahead of me, I can see there’s no way I can run. There’s a hundred men charging towards us and I have to fight. There is no way in hell all of us are making it out alive, but we charge in regardless. 

Right off the bat I can see that while they outnumber us two to one, we have more skill on our side. People are falling around, more of them than us. I can see Aria taking on people who are twice her size and winning, and as much as I hate to admit it, she’s one of our best assets. I start fighting as well, and I know I’ve killed at least one of them. 

I don’t like how easy it comes to me. A man falls down next to me, and I don’t think he’ll survive the stab wounds. Aria takes down a woman who is for sure dead before she hits the ground, and another man on my side knocks a guy out with the hilt of his sword. I keep hearing everyone telling me that we’re meant for this, but I can’t see what good this does. 

About a dozen feet away, I see the “savior” on the other side. I know it’s him the moment I lay eyes on him because he has the same look in his eyes that I had when I looked in the mirror. That, and he has a circle of people around him. He doesn’t look like he’s much of a fighter. He’s about my age from what I can tell, and we’ve probably been through the same thing. 

“Lyra!” I hear Aria call, and for the first time, I hear fear in her voice. I jumped out of whatever daze I was in and took down a guy who was advancing towards me. I look back at Aria and she is trying to fend off three men. 

She’ll be fine, keep going. I think to myself. She’s always fine. I keep fighting, and I’m starting to get closer to the other side. 

People keep falling. Some of ours, some of theirs. The circle around the other boy is getting thinner, and he’s starting to look more scared. Aria looks at me and I nod. She goes in and starts fighting the soldiers surrounding the other boy and she looks like she could win. 

And she almost does. Almost. What she doesn’t realize is that the boy had his sword drawn, and was waiting for her to turn her back to him. So he stabs her, right in the back and through the ribs. He pulls it out and looks at the blood painting it. Aria falls, and she’s trying to stop the bleeding with her hands but it’s futile. It’s too late. 

You know, whenever we sparred, she would always beat me whenever I wasn’t paying attention to a small detail. It would please her for hours. And when we would argue I would always love when I got to tell her “I told you so.” We would always fight to be better than the other and it was almost fun. We got to do it every day, and if one of us lost we could just come back tomorrow. 

Well. I guess the universe just loves irony, doesn’t it? 

I look towards the boy and he still hasn’t moved. He’s just staring at his blade with despair in his eyes. I raise my sword higher and march towards him. He finally sees me and doesn’t even back away. 

His hand opens around the hilt of the sword and it falls to the ground. Slowly, he raises his arms and drops to his knees. I continue towards him, not even thinking about how remorseful he looks.

“Just do it.” He begs quietly. I pause my movements and wait for him to say more. “Please. Kill me.” Tears start to roll down his face.

“Wh- what?” I ask, lowering my sword. 

“I can’t live this way. I can’t do this. Please, just do it.” He whispers. I kneel down in front of him. The fighting around us stops for a second.

“I can’t just kill you like this,” I reply. “How can you just give yourself up?” 

“Dying is the easy part,” he says, “I just want this to end.” 

I look down at my sword. There’s already plenty of blood on it. “But-” 

“Please.”

He says this with so much regret and pain behind his voice.

I squeeze my eyes shut and plunge my sword into his stomach, right below the ribs. “I’m sorry.” 

“Thank you.” 

Some men come to take his body away, and eventually Aria’s and everyone else’s too. Someone puts their hand on my shoulder and tells me it’s time to go home. I don’t remember responding, but they eventually leave. The sun sets, and I’m alone in the field. It’s just a field now. Just a sky free of smoke. No one’s up late coming up with a strategy, no one is wondering if they’ll be next. It’s over, just like that. There’s nothing else. No one knows why we won, or if it even matters. 

“So that’s it? You don’t have anything else?” I say to the sky. “You’re just going to leave it like this?” 

No response. Well, I’m talking to no one, so go figure.

“What was the point of that?” I’m starting to shout now. “You just had us kill each other for no reason! People died, people with families died, because you just felt like it! Did it even have meaning? Or did you just like watching us die?!” 

I may never get to learn that boy’s name. I might never know if I took him away from someone. If I took any of the people I killed away from someone. Their blood will forever be on my hands and I don’t even have a good reason for it. I drop my bloody sword on the ground, knowing that I’ll also be leaving a piece of myself on that field too. 

Inhale, hold, exhale. Breathe in, breathe out. Keep your hands steady, keep your thoughts calm, keep your composure. Look out before you, but don’t let the thoughts in. You’ve seen some horrors, but that doesn’t mean you can let yourself go. 

Calm waters. 

Pretend it’s fine. If you pretend it’s all okay, they’ll believe you. As long as you don’t show any signs of the battles raging within you, they don’t need to know. They don’t need to know what you’ve seen. It isn’t your place to subject them to that. Even if it tears you up, you can’t ask for help. 

Deep thoughts. 

A soft smile, a light laugh. Contribute to the conversation, but not too much that it seems like you’re covering something up. Act like yourself before, because if they see who you are now you might break them. This mask is the only thing protecting them. 

Calm waters. 

The screams. The blood. The constant fear coursing through your veins combined with that voice in your head screaming at you to stay alive. Sharp pains help you remember the point of all this, but the death surrounding you makes it so much easier to hide. 

Deep thoughts. 

Clench your fist so they can’t see your hand shake. Laugh because it’s the only thing keeping you from crying. Your eyes aren’t red from lack of sleep, you just have allergies. You’re just a little tired, that’s all. 

Calm waters. 

Control your emotions. Don’t break. Don’t open the blinds, don’t let them see. Keep your voice steady, and the waters calm.