The General by lost_marble

the general

I have seen the others

And I have discovered

That this fight is not worth fighting.

No.

And I've seen their mothers

And I will no others

To follow me where I'm going...

So, I am cold.

Not physically, ingrate. No. But all else about me is cold--so say those that survive their first meeting with me.

I have no desire correct their perceptions. Why should I wish to reverse an image that took decades to complete?

Listen.

I had a family once, a home that was more than a house.

A house, be it as large as my palace, can never be as rich nor as coveted as the smallest home where love flows like a waterfall, cleansing its inhabitants of all impurities.

Yes, I had that once.

Once, I was pure.

No more. With the shattering of the home came the shattering of my innocence. My father was not the omnipotent god that I had thought him to be.

He could not even keep my mother with us.

I remember the day--it burns still in my memory, a hot coal that fuels me: my strength, my violence. My anger.

She had been in the South, acting as peaceable ambassador to the Southern lands while my father watched over the troops, holding the truce until her return. It was a true mark of trust and good will that a Lord such as my father would send his own mate to the accords.

That trust was not reciprocated.

On en route to the palace of the Southern lord, she was waylaid by assassins, hired by advisers to the king who believed that they were attacking my father. Instead they found a much better prize: a way to inflict lasting hurt on him.

My father told me that her body was never found, but I found out otherwise.

They had raped my mother and beat her, stripping her and cutting off her tail, gouging out her eyes before finally one of them took "mercy" and cut off her head as well.

The soldier that told me was later executed.

And frost began to obscure the cracks forming in my soul.

Three years later, a blink in the like of youkai such as we, he married a human wench.

Izayoi.

My father and I never spoke again, but I believe that he hoped for reconciliation, even to the very end: he did not disinherit me, and left me the Tesseiga, in hopes that I would learn mercy and forgiveness to temper my desire for vengeance.

In vain.

So perhaps I have anger in my soul, and am repressing it, or some nonsense.

Or perhaps the surge of adrenaline that courses through my veins during a fight is addictive.

But I think not.

I fight so that, at least for a while, I can be exactly what the one under my claws sees me as.

Unfeeling.

Perhaps this fight is not worth fighting--

But it's all that I have left.

...You are young and you must be living--

Go now, you are forgiven.