Have you ever seen a battlefield? I mean after the battle has been fought. The only sound being the wind flowing over the mounds. The blood dried in some areas and still flowing in others. The smell of iron and the beginning of rot. I've sat there among the bodies looking out towards the rising sun, the morning star... The sun warmed the ground and beat down upon the copses. The light then set and the landscape had not changed. No one had come to move the bodies. Despite the war being over land neither side would later come to use the land. Both the land and the battle gave me the sense of uselessness.

The many warriors would waste away leaving behind their bones. Then their weapons and armor rust and brake down, the wind carrying the fine dust away. Through many seasons the bones were covered and buried by dirt, their mark erased from the world. I sat there with my eyes staring out at the field of copses. Then it became the field of metal and bones. After much time the metals were gone and the bones were no longer visible. The field returned to how it was before the war, green and unblemished.

I continued to sit there and admire nature's beauty. I figured I had become like you. Uncaring, unspeaking, and merely an observer. There was never a great change in my scenery. The grass would grow, the wind would blow, the rain would fall, the snow would blanket the land, but people never came. I didn’t keep track of the time. My body had sunk into the land and the plants had grown around it. There was an oak, two men thick, which grew to cover my shoulder and arm. My eyes remained open, never closing, so I still looked out onto the field. The field was no longer there. A forest had overtaken it.

I began wondering how the people had changed. Over time I had grown curious over a world without my influence. So I stood up. The oak tree was ripped out of the grown by my sudden movement. The dirt and roots fell off my body as I walked through the trees. Your lesser creations made no effort to run at the sight of me. They ignored my presence as their instincts told them I was of no danger to them. I walked until I reached the edge of the forest. I stopped at the tree line and looked out away from where I come from. I saw a field almost identical to what the forest had once been. The land was covered in grass and wind blew across moving the blades of grass. With further observation I noticed this field was not empty.

Two vast armies stood facing each other. They each held flags and symbols representing their arbitrary sides on imaginary lines. The commanders of each yelled out their speech to their men and the warriors of each prepared to lay down their lives. The two armies clashed and the fierce battle lasted both the day and night. The morning came and with it came a field of death. The land covered with the bodies of both sides. The world was once again silent and unmoving. The image, the smell, and the sound… Now the two fields had become identical.

Achos fought like a mad man during the attacks on the Prince's city. He stood on the front lines of his army hacking at the enemy. Over the years the men had spread rumors about his abilities. They said that no weapon could damage him and it would take a god just to hold him down. They said he could catch a spear thrown at him and toss it back penetrating 3 men in the process. Achos wasn’t invincible, he was simply that skilled. I had trained him myself so I knew what he was capable of.

The soldiers gathered around the campfire and shared tales about his feats, each reiteration growing more incredible than the last. Some of his tales included him single handily facing 100 opponents at the same time only to ask for another 100 once he finished. Another tale was of him riding his horse under the fall of 1000 arrows. Once his horse fell he ran, thrice his previous speed, chasing the archers furious at the death of his horse. Another was of him beating a rider and his horse to death… with another horse. As in he grabbed one rider's horse and beat another to death with it, just swinging it.

I loved the stories the warriors would tell of Achos. While they were greatly exaggerated they weren't completely wrong. He had defeated 100 enemies without help. When he finished, his armor and weapons were destroyed. He walked over to his men, greatly fatigued, when one of his most loyal followers shouted out.

"BRING HIM ANOTHER 100!!! HE'S NOT SATISFIED YET!!!"

The rest of the men continued the chant bringing it back to the camp when they returned. The horse he rode was killed by their arrows but he didn’t chase them because he was angry. He ran toward them because he was running away from me. He stole my favorite horse and got him killed. Needless to say he bled that day. As for him beating a rider and a horse to death with another horse, he cut off the leg of the ride causing it to fall along with the rider. He then continued to slice off the legs of the war horses that ran past him making them fall into a mound crushing the original pair with their sheer weight.

He would return from battle to our camp covered in the blood and flesh of his enemies. He was never injured by the enemy nor was any of our men killed in battle. So tales of his greatness as both a leader and a warrior spread through the various armies on our side. The bloody battlefield he left behind only served to confirm his legend to the masses. My heart filled with pride when I heard talk of my disciple. As his mother had asked me, I had raised him and trained him. As the years went on the battles became less frequent but they also grew in size. The war was reaching its end as all wars end.

However tragedy then befell both sides of the conflict.

Hi, so the first part contained a period of time in which the Devil just watched. Not people or events but the decay and aftermath of war. In my view certain events causes the Devil to act the way he does. In other words, what has happened in the Devil's past influences his actions later on. That's my reasoning as to why the Devil might or might not take action. This story is not very chronological so you might get an optimistic "good guy" Devil or you might get a jaded "bad guy." I seek to use these different moments and puposely leave out important moments as a way to tell a larger story. A story on the charater of the Devil.

Thank you for reading.