Author's Note

I listened to this while writing this chapter:

It seemed fitting.

Cost and Death

War redefines cost. War ensures that there is a price for everything. Every inch of land is bought with blood. Every life saved is exchanged for another. War is merely expenditure and purchase, the buying and selling of souls. Expend a thousand men, and you may buy yourself a country, or you may buy a city. Sometimes you may only purchase an inch of land. The price is never the same, but remains horrifying. War renders the meaning of life to nothingness. What is life worth when everything is bought with such? Blood itself is rendered a mere currency. The death of one is tragic. The death of a million is a statistic, meaningful in its meaninglessness.

Rainbow Dash was only beginning to understand the cost of a war. She had always dreamed of being a hero, of there being conflict. She never considered the consequence. She had always thought that war would be like in the books: there would be fighting, a couple of ponies would be hurt, but the hero would triumph. Evil would be defeated. Everything would be all right in the end. Only now did she realize the naivety of her beliefs. Only now did she begin to understand just what the cost of conflict was. Yet it was not merely costly in terms of blood, was it? No, sanity was another currency continually used to purchase things that have meaning only to those with power.

Hans didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He barely breathed. He merely sat, back against the wall of the bombed out building, staring. It was like the stare of one recently departed: empty, vacant, hopeless, dead. There was nothing beyond it, but there was nothing behind it. Rainbow waved her hoof in front of Hans’s face, trying to make him blink. Nothing. He continued to stare vacantly. Rainbow shuddered. He was beginning to creep her out. Ever since that SS officer, Dieter Heinrich had spoken to him, Hans had quickly grown slack faced and impassive. It had been a few hours already.

In the distance, there was an intensifying of the sounds of battle. Explosions shook the ground as the staccato burst of machine gunfire echoed through the streets. One shell landed particularly near, sending a massive plume of smoke into the air a block away. Hans didn’t stir. Tears beaded the sides of his eyes.

“URA!” Came a scream in the distance, the easily recognizable Soviet battle cry.

A brief hint of madness entered Hans’s eyes, which hardened with both viciousness and a certain predatorial beastliness. His eyes spun in his sockets to regard Rainbow Dash for the first time in six hours. His eyes remained vacant, and yet were not. Rainbow took a step back, swallowing slightly at the madness that roiled within Hans’s eyes.

He laughed, and Rainbow suddenly became aware of how sharp his canines were.

“” he chuckled in his harsh language, “

Rainbow took another step back.

Hans’s voice slowly rose, “”

“Hans?” Rainbow pleaded with her only ally in all of this madness.

“” Hans was almost shouting at this point.

“Hans, please, stop,” Rainbow’s voice was fearful.

Hans suddenly sprang up, fist driving into a wall. His knuckles bled.

“” Now Hans was shouting, tears streaming from his still maddened eyes.

Rainbow struck him, her hoof connecting with his stomach. Hans doubled over slightly. Rainbow resisted the urge to run as he straightened up, wheezing slightly. He regarded her for a moment, and she tensed slightly, awaiting a harsh rebuke for her physical contact with him. He reached out and she closed her eyes, afraid. The dreaded response never came. Rather, she felt the human’s hands slowly running through her mane. She looked up, finding that the madness had abandoned his eyes. She almost sighed with relief.

He drew his hand back and sat back down, grimacing slightly in pain. He closed his eyes, slowly.

“Hans, what’s wrong?” Rainbow asked.

Hans eyes opened again, and his face twisted into a bitter smile that was only a hint off from the expression of total insanity that had wracked his features earlier.

“All of my friends are dead,” He said simply, quietly.

Rainbow’s heart clenched.

“But I’m your friend,” she responded.

Hans’s head jerked up like he had been slapped. Then relaxed and smiled sadly, looking down at his hand, which oozed precious, crimson life.

“I suppose you are, Rainbow Dash. I suppose you are.”

***

The next shell was closer to the SS emplacement. The sentries stared down the road they were aiming their weapons at, even as trails of smoke engulfed them, threatened to smother them. Their eyes widened in horror at the scene before them. A veritable wave of men poured towards the German position. Fire was upon their eyes, death was upon their lips. The Germans opened fire. A hundred Soviets fell, and yet the wave continued. Wicked blades affixed to their guns glinted in the half light.

“URA! Za Rodinu!” screamed the attacking Soviets, even as they died.

Some took rounds through the throat. Others were torn in half by a hail of seven-point-nine-two millimeter rounds. Yet more screamed in agony, slowly dying out as their flesh was torn and mutilated by the merciless and fearful death dealing capabilities of mankind. Some died terrified. Others died defiant. More still died without knowledge that they had. Regardless, they all died, ending their lives in noise, fire and desolation. Fathers, brothers, children, it made no difference. It was the end for them. They ceased to be.

Death, mounted upon his black steed reaped another consignment of souls to pay the debt mankind owed to war.