5
" It was the mist which made everything strange, spread across the land, a seven-foot-thick blanket, stretched almost uniformly over the flat bottom of the valley, and the gentle slopes leading down into it. As silent as the mist, Codrin’s army moved out of the forest. An observer high above the ground would see rows of floating heads, arranged in a matrix, the distance between them almost regular. Having helmets of many different colors, the heads offered a striking contrast to the white-gray monotony of the mist. An army of floating heads. Unaware of their weird appearance from above, the heads continued their journey down, toward Lenard’s army.
To an observer on the ground, nothing could be seen until it was too late. Lenard’s sleeping soldiers woke up when the ground trembled to the rhythm of more than a thousand horses trampling everything in their way. They woke up, and they died. Some of them died while they slept. When the last cry died away, and the fog finally lifted, the surviving men surrendered. At the end of the clash, which became known as the Battle of the Mist, Codrin found that he had lost only fifteen men. Lenard had lost half of his army, his son and his life. "
― Florian Armas , Respectant (Chronicle of the Seer 4)
7
" When the fight ends you can afford to relax. That’s the worst part. Winner or loser you have again eyes to see around you. Blood, butchered bodies, bodies pierced by arrows. You stir inside, your heart tightens, the feeling of loss wells up. The sense of smell is the next thing to revive, adding a new dimension of pain. I closed the eyes of the last cadet, blue eyes, unseeing, his body, so small, almost a child, the youngest cadets were all gone, their faces surprised in death. Cold lips never able again to kiss a girl. It’s then that the emptiness swallows you and you mourn inside. Damn you, Scharon. No! Damn you, Travellers. "
― Florian Armas , Io Deceneus: Journal of a Time Traveler
