Page 2 of The Last War We Ever Fought

She laughed again, a little more cruelly this time. Not even deigning a response to who had almost appeared to be someone she was close to.

Elijah didn’t know why he followed after her towards the camp. It had seemed like the longest walk he’d ever been on. Rowan had stumbled, ached, and bled all the way to her tent set on the far corner of the camp, somewhat distanced from the rest.

He’d stood there, outside of her space, unmoving. Hearing her quick breaths and muffled whimpers as she’d cleaned herself up and all of her wounds.

Such a stark contrast even to his ancient senses.

The cheers from close by and the out of tune sound of string instruments seemed a faraway world from the one inside the tent.

Steps coming from behind made Elijah turn.

The boy from before, Daniel, startled at his sight, wide eyed and scrambling away from him while blindly reaching for weapons he did not have on him. He stopped once he got a glimpse at the sword Elijah was carrying on his back. There was awe and horror on his face as he studied the blade. “It cannot be.”

The steel Elijah carried was not like most. The colour was a strange shade of silver that took many colours in reflection when light hit it, the hilt was engraved with poppies and ruby diamonds made of blood spilled from godly veins—his own godly veins. He liked to remind himself sometimes that he could still bleed.

He carried the sword that was forged at the dawn of time by fates to be gifted to the King of Gods. Gifted to him. Dawnbringer.

“Humans always have such ways of coping with what they fear. Wishing it away isn’t the greatest one,” Elijah said, his gaze returning to the woman who’d just come out of her tent and headed to join the celebrations despite what he’d seen and heard merely minutes ago.

“It would mean—”

He watched Rowan avoid all praise and greetings, taking a seat by one of the generals around the massive campfire. “The end.”

“B-but it can’t be the end.”

“This one won’t go away, Daniel. Don’t waste your wishing.”

A slow smile pulled over his face, one full of cruel realisation. “Will this mean we win the war?”

“I’m not fate. Only a God.”

Wide eyed and exhilarated, Daniel backed away towards the celebrations, watching Elijah over his shoulders from time to time as if to make sure he’d not hallucinated the interaction.

Elijah watched the boy animatedly shout and gesture towards him until the celebrations went quiet and every attention went in his direction.

He could feel a pair of soulless eyes looking at him. Her gaze was like a heavy burden somehow. Like a wound festering. Something he should feel guilty about but could never know why. The more she looked at him, the more he noticed something that entranced him entirely. A spark. Heatless. Cold. Dead. But it was a spark, nonetheless. Something made entirely out of…hate.

At that realisation, Elijah couldn’t help but smile. No one hated war. Not really. They feared it. They wished it away. But they didn’t hate it. Because deep down, humanity knew of its own faults, of its own desires that had made Elijah one of the most powerful gods.

She hated him.

And it was entirely too fascinating to him.

The look of hate turned into contemplation, agitation was obvious in the way her fingers drummed against her thigh or the way her chest rose fast enough to call upon a storm.

Elijah was curious about what she would do. Would she act on her hate like she was wanting to?

Just when she was about to take a step towards him, an older soldier stepped before her, blocking her from his sight.

“Our general,” Daniel said, running to him with a cup of something that resembled piss. “Adam and Felix deal with training, she is the strategist.”

“The strategist?” War asked, throwing the drink to the ground.

He nodded, frowning at the spilled drink that also smelled like piss to Elijah. “She levels the playing fields. Sabotage of a sort. She studies the enemy’s weakness, from their food to the clothes they wear. Once she made us block a town’s path all night long with rocks we rolled from the hills because she figured out the land under the battlefield we’d meet their army was loess land and it had been raining hard for a couple weeks. They’d been forced to evade the blocked road by taking the straight path up the hill. Half of their soldiers were stuck in the mud while the other half had already given up the climb, too tired to even fight. We took that town in less than a day, raising less swords than during crowning celebrations.”

The human was cheating him.

She was cheating war.