Slaughter reigned all around Terence now. He sat in the middle of the enemy's bloodbath where heads were being heaved off with metal shells while screams petrified all that listened to this iniquitous massacre.

"Retreat men! Fall back!" the last commands were uttered.

Terence poised on his knees while the rest of the regiment fled. Why run if there isn't anywhere to go? Time had finally caught up to him as he could no longer breathe.

To his left, a village folk held an infant in his arms. The filth and tears that disguised the man's appearance gave Terence a disturbing quiver as the man bellowed into the heavens above. The infant couldn't have been older than three months and had a swollen gash through his chest with shards of wood hanging out. All life had abandoned the child through his pale eyes.

Terence absorbed the reality as does a sponge with water. Paralyzed at the moment, his focus transfixed at the black and white film that continued to roll. He went deaf in his trance; no justification was served as the adversary's men charged before him. This masquerade was no different then any of the balls back home. People wore guises like masks and parade around with alcohol and a silver pieces by their side. They laugh at the humility of others while their family and friends are obliterated by flames.

It took the detonation of a bomb to awaken Terence from his hallucinations. He was now aware of the vociferous blast that vibrated the Earth, but couldn't even discern his own shrieks from others. Damn the devils that caroused about, for Terence couldn't stand properly. The demons caricatured his aspiration to live as 


they appeared and disappeared at whim around him. Imps fledged their wings as they lunged towards Terence. The mirage of brutes encircled him. Together, their wicked grins waltzed with one-another and jabbed at his rib cage.

Terence could no longer take it; to foster the art of war without a second's qualms was foreign—no, it was beyond that. Terence was palsied transiently by the nefarious spirits of hell, yet somehow managed to scamper away. That is, until he slipped and felt darkness embody him while plummeting into a pit. He was impaled by the jitters of the pit and was accosted by two figures: one with a reflective shine in his skin and the other with sores and gashes along his arms and legs. Terence reached out for the shiny one, but the shiny one rejected his offer and Terence found himself in the grasp of the bleeding death. He immediately passed through the ingress of the dark, unknown void that is death.

Terence awoke. His anamnesis haunted him as it would continue to do so forever. He looked down to where his decapitated limbs below his waist once were. The demons still feasted on his flesh and toasted against Terence's flask occasionally. The fiends saluted Terence for his chivalrous prestige and by the moonlight, they together waltzed eternity.