Character Bio: The Brue

Character Bios:

The Brue

The big bad. The one who holds your dreams. He who unslumbers the dead and controls the magic of the mud they slept in. Harbinger of the end of Life. Remover of the spark. Thief of land and hope  

The Empire was not fairing well. The English, some Sardinians, and the godforsaken French were outmanned but winning - helping the Ottoman’s hold their line. Sevastopol had fallen after a year of bitter starvation. Balaclava was a crushing disaster for both sides though Russia lost men and land. Food is scarce. Thousands of dead lay in the muck, foul and rotting. Horses torn apart by machine gun fire, men exploded by incoming shells, both just meat for the war. The devastation only people can bring. A new type of war with the same type of end: death. 

So much death. Crimea was reduced to rubble. The soldiers reduced to less.

A soldier, his beard riddled with lice, climbs through the trenches, moving lumber while looking for food. His cheeks are sunken and his eyes dull. This world has taken everything from him. When a shell lands near him, he doesn't hear the whiz as it moves the air in front of it, only the thud of it landing. It takes two breathes for him to realize it didn't detonate. His only thoughts are to survive, to live through another night. His eyes don't open and he starts counting in his head. He gets to three before it explodes. Dirt and rock hit him as a thousand punches made one as he's knocked back. 

But, when he opens his eyes, he doesn't see a bombed out landscape. The Black Sea isn't sitting darkly below him. There is no rolling desolation.

There is a forest.

A forest so green that it's black in places. Lush with the life that was drained from around him. Vibrant. Alive. Safe. Without a thought, he picks up his shashka and walks into the deep smell of the forest. The last thing he hears from our world is the whiz of another mortar shell and then, he is gone.