xp_logs | Angelo's Askani dream

Angelo, aware that he'd probably have trouble sleeping that night, had taken some of the soothing tea he had left from the supply Amanda had given him, and gone to bed anyway. Better to try and sleep than brood over the fight, and his own failure to keep things together in the face of Manuel's provocation.

The tea did its work, and he was asleep surprisingly quickly - although his sleep was not to be undisturbed.

He found himself in an unfamiliar desert, lying in the sand. Looking around, he realized with a shock - somehow underlaid with resignation - that he was among a scattering of bodies, some of them not much more than children, but all in matching armor. There was not another living soul in sight.

He sat up painfully, then winced and put a hand to his head, which came away bloody. It was obvious that whoever had done this - Canaanites, whispered an internal voice that wasn't his own - had thought they'd killed everyone present and left them to rot, which was all that had saved "his" life.

The young man whose eyes were currently his stood up shakily, and quickly seemed to recover, moving among the bodies, checking for signs of life. Finding none, he set about building a pyre, to do his fallen comrades honor in the only way he could.

When this task was done to the best of his ability, and the fire was blazing hot enough not to go out for many hours, he simply stood beside it, singing what seemed to be a mourning song for the brave dead. When he'd finished, he started to walk.

Angelo, seeing the young soldier's memories and aware that he was the sole survivor of his unit, knew that his first instinct would have been to look for the Canaanites who'd done this and die trying to make them pay. Guilt and shame for things he hadn't done, failures for which he was not responsible, flooded through him, and he tried to turn, forgetting that the body was not his to command, to follow the Canaanite tracks.

The young soldier, however, steadfastly continued the way he was going, and his true emotions bore no trace of guilt or shame. He'd fought to the best of his ability, Angelo realized, and he knew he could have done no better. What good would his death now do anyone?

The soldier had a different aim in mind - to find another camp of his people and tell them what had happened. To ensure that his fallen brothers would be remembered, and then to continue to fight in ways that would achieve real good.

As he - or they - continued to walk through the desert, Angelo woke with a start. Frowning in confusion in the darkness, he burrowed his head back into the pillow, trying to understand.