Valor

We had known it would come, that Day when we would fight, that Day when Men would prove their words, that Day when we, as a people, would be struck from the annals of history, that Day when we would die. Few remembered why our enemies had promised to come. It mattered little, for still our demons came. We prepared. We taught our children to face their fears for what they were, and nothing more. We taught them of the Day when Death and Terror would rain from the sky like fire and all the world would groan in agony for the pain that would come. We waited for the end of our people.

Then the Day.

The Day that our grandfathers had spoken about; the Day that would live in the legends of even our enemies; the Day that the clouds would flee in terror; the Day came.

On that Day the sky wept great gouts of blood. Crimson streaks tore across the sky like tears from the eyes of its Creator. Agony squeezed life from creation itself in great washes of rain. Ships came from the clouds by the millions. One squatted in front of the city, crushing the few homes that weren’t swept away. It opened up, and then they came. Swarms of them poured from every opening as the craft belched out spores of incarnate death. They were not unlike us in appearance, but that mattered very little. We died the same; and oh, how we died. We fought, not as animals clawing for life, but as Men fighting for nothing more than an honorable and glorious end. We fought not to survive, for that was not possible; rather we fought to make them value our home as much as we did. They would value it with their lives, the lives with which they bought it from us, and the cost was high. They could not value it with the lives of their children and wives. They did not love that land; they lost none of their family on that Day. They came with the putrid stench of greed and domination. They defiled the land that guarded the memory of our ancestors. There was no price high enough for our land, for our home. Since they could not buy that land from us, we made them pay as dearly as we could. We fought for the life that was stolen from us on that Day. On that Day we refused to be forgotten. We remembered something that others overlooked all too easily. On that Day they saw something the world had forgotten. On that Day they saw Valor.

Inspired by the battle for the Alamo and Mars: Bringer of War, by Holst
Dedicated to those who have forgotten true valor.