[center][color=silver][h1]The Betrayed[/h1][/color][/center]

I still have nightmares from that day. It always starts the same, without fail. I find myself talking to my brother at our tent, but the conversation is always different. How can that be? I want to ask, I want to know, but then the shouting starts and Hesif runs off. We were unprepared of course, how could anyone be ready for such senseless cruelty? I am forced to watch them burn, the men, women and children. To watch them scream as the fire engulfs them, as it chars their skin and blackens their soul. I am powerless to stop it. No matter how hard I try, I am always too late to save any of them. Including my brother. 

I see him pinned, fighting two of the masked men, if you can even call them that. I see the third one, his bloody knife glistening from the light of the fires. I try to shout, try to scream- but there is silence from me. I watch him die, as the blade slits his throat. He stumbles, and is then kicked into a flaming tent. I am so angry, I want to kill them all. Make them suffer for causing so much pain.

But I stop as I see it. Then everyone stops, our gazes like children viewing something new for the first time. There stands Ghoran, the fearless leader of the Coalition. The one who brought the tribes together in the time of great peril and strife. His face is wrong, always so wrong. Behind him is something I simply cannot wrap my head around. Like the surface of a lake, yet with colors so twisted. 

Ghoran then speaks, but it is not his voice. I hear her voice so clearly, for it is intoxicating, yet sounds so bored. I want to hate that voice, but I can't. 

Then the demons come and my nightmare becomes real. They fight with ferocity, tearing and biting into flesh so easily. I almost break, I want to run away from such creatures but my legs refuse to work properly. I am then attacked by a wolfhead, it's sword a wicked instrument of death. I only had a stone spear in my hands, my knuckles white as I gripped the oak.

It swung and swung and I dodged, taking nicks to arm and my face. The pain is small, simply a reminder that I have been hit. Something else numbs it, an intense feeling of action surges through me in response. I needed to strike quickly before I was overwhelmed. So I went to jab the demon, only to feint my attack at the last second, confusing the creature. I then swept it legs out from under him and finally I screamed as I jabbed my spear into it's heart. 

It gurgled something, I don't know what. Then it died, and I took up it's sword. 

But it was not the horror of the demons that truly shook me, it was the Fire-Spawn. I see her face still, bloody and horrific. Nothing human remaining but flesh that held the madness in. The next thing I know is that she is in front of me, laughing and smiling. I cannot move, I try and try but I cannot. Then she unleashes fire upon me, and I wake up.

It never happened, but it feels so real each time. What she said I still think about. She spoke and people listened, their God had answered them. Where was ours? Where had ours been in our time of need? There was truth in her words, and I don't blame them for joining with them. But to live a life consumed by fire and murder, I hate them. Those Fire-Spawn, curse them all. 

But she had made a mistake. My will to fight did not die that day, no, it only grows stronger as the days pass. Ghoran's coalition failed because we were not prepared. 

My name is Ordun, and no longer shall we be afraid. No longer shall we fear to live! I say this, so our children can have a future free of fear and hate! So they might know peace...Our war, has just begun and no longer shall we be unprepared.