Sagas usually talk about great men. Men who have shown a force and a spirit far superior to the average man. Men who didn’t wait on the shore of life, men who brave and win against insurmountable odds.

Those stories are supposed to give inspiration to people to do something more with their life.

I said suppose because that was not their effect, listening to them I felt miserable. I was thirty and I still haven’t done anything with my life. One might have launched a sleeping spell at me when I was eighteen, wake up at thirty and nothing different would have happened.

I passed my days doing… nothing worthwhile really. The thrill of beating a hard boss quickly fade away and I was again looking at the next achievement, the next game, the next collectables. Sometimes I had the sensation of wasting my days. Of being very distracted and unable to focus. Sometimes anxiety and despair left the labyrinthine of the unconscious and rose to consciousness. Those were truly horrible moments, one moment I was healthy and happy the next I was dying, questioning life meaning.

But those were only moments and like my achievements that felt so important and grandiose in the moment. Those to faded quickly away, amounting to nothing.

I wish this was a story full of heroism and courage. Of a person that despite everything didn’t back down and stood up against tyranny. Of a person that despite everything helped others and made the world a better place. Oh no, far from it, I have bent over, lick tyranny shoes and cause harm to my own kin. If I saw an unburied body I didn’t dig a grave for it. I picked everything that the corpse had, cut it into pieces and, if need to, eat it, more on that later.

So why I am telling such you all of those things? Because I want once and for all cancel the false idea that those who survived were heroes. We weren’t heroes, we were survivours, nothing more, nothing less. We did what the circumstances called for, closed ethical and moral standard in a closet, and survived.

So how to begin? Usually, books of this type start at the genesis of events. But, as it’s much often the case, big historical events become a footnote on biographies. I had a sense of how things started and scale up years after the facts. So let’s begin at my start.

It was night, there was no wind, no moon, no stars, just clouds upon clouds. The atmosphere was of an unnatural stillness. Like a mage had cast a frozen spell on everything.

The town was silent, no one exited their homes, no light in the homes could be seen. The only lights were those from the street pump that miraculously still worked.

A massive explosion was heard, followed by another and another. The large industrial tower that stood high and proud was being bombarded without mercy. Still, the tower didn’t cede, it didn’t even flinch. This tower was built to last for ages, it was built much more a military bunker than a common building.

Someone in the militia crowd standing outside charged at the massive gate at the front accompanied by a massive wolf. He charged his attack, focus his energy, attacks the gate and… nothing. The thing appeared indestructible. Not even the time to look at the effect of his attack that he was cut down by a rifleman.

They were playing with us. I suspect that even without garrison there we wouldn’t have been able to access the building. It was a blood bath. And I wasn’t even sure how I ended up there or why.

You enter a shop, encounter a new group of friends, talk for a bit and before you have even memorized their full names you are listening to discourses about how this is “something bigger than us” and “the freedom that every human has right to.” Given a rifle, some training (in that order) and send to fight some world superpower, whom you barely know anything about.

The man who was beside me stood up to throw a grenade. He was shoot, his skull was fractured, his brain, for all I knew, exploded, and part of it ended up on my face, near my lip, so I could just taste it. For the next few minutes, I was immobile, my brain terrorized and trying to understand what was happening. I wouldn’t have moved from there even if the battle was over. Even if a grenade ended up near me. I was immobile, paralyse, terrorized, I couldn’t speak or walk even if I wanted to.

The ground began to tremble, a massive titan in full armour was marching towards the gate. That might be one of the few beautiful things that I saw in all the war. Bullets and explosive didn’t penetrate his armour, with a strength of a thousand men he opened the door and free the way for the militia.

We storm the building, searched everywhere, made a wreck of the administrative and industrial sections. We were raiders and pillagers. We found the elevator and took it. Many were excited, this could be the first major victory of the war, this could be our Stalingrad, our landing in Normandy. Others just hoped to return home again. I was in the second group.

We approached the massive crystal, ready to destroy it and everything that it stood for.

But the titan that opened the gate now was there, immobile. He looked at us, he looked ready to fight.

Only then we realize the error that we had made. Only then the fatal question came to mind:

Who was that titan? Who owned it?

We looked at each other in frantic desperation, hoping that someone owned it, hoping that our gaze would meet secure eyes that said: “I command the titan.”

But we didn’t found them.

One came forth, it attacked the titan neck only to immediately change direction and aim at the crystal. The titan was surely too far from him. Not even a leopard could have reached him. Yet the titan like teleported behind him and smashed him. Making of his bones and flesh a pond.

Another one was shot by a rifleman. Only then another fatal question arose:

Where was the garrison gone?

The answer? In that room, over a secure platform. Far from our reach and we within theirs.

Everyone who did as much as move afoot was shoot, everyone who rushed toward the crystal was smashed to pieces by the titan, everyone who tried to escape was cut down by a wall of machines guns.

After a few minutes, everyone was perfectly immobile. A speaker said to drop our weapons and put our hands up, we did so. A team of soldier three times our number came to put handcuffed us. A commander who looked a lot like a priest spoke to us.

“I don’t wish for you to die. I wish for you to live and see your families again, I wish for you to live a happy and prosperous life. I wish for you to be free from the bounds of your mind.”

The discourse continued but this is what I remembered.

After that my memories are very confused, I was drugged or hypnotize or something of that kind. I only remember that when I regain lucidity I was in a room, an open room, with eleven other people like me. All watching two plates on the floor.

There were two texts on the floor, just above the plates. Both described some kind of contract. Both made no sense.

“The user that thereby press this plate, with much wardlying and ingenuity, agree his other users to be the fruits and apples of justice and worship. Therefor exiting the room and being freed.”

The right one said

“The user that, for his thoughts, actions, will or moral, press this plate, is entitle to much laud. Agreeing tho the above terms, under just ruleship and justice, make so the users of the room be objects of study and analysis. Therefor exiting the room and being freed.”

The left one said.

Some of us exited the room and looked around the empty chamber. The only things that we found were: a very small room with all the basic things to keep a place clean, no bleach though, and a ladder that went up, blocked by a steel trap door.

After a few minutes, a speaker spoke

“We have to inform you, because too many prisoners have died in the last few minutes, that one of the plates kills everyone except the one that pressed it and the other let everyone in the room free.”

At hearing that news I became very happy. Soon I could return home and forget all this stuff, once we managed to decipher the texts. But that was no problem, there were far smarter people in the team than me that would have decrypted it in no time. I just needed to stand back and watch them talk over the meaning of “fruits and apples” and “analysis.”

If this thinking seems absurd to you, well it’s because it is. When we are afraid we rally on habits, unfortunately for me I had very bad habits. I lived all my life in that passive way, and now, when push came to shove, I stood there silently watching other talk and discuss.

But that didn’t happen.

A long time passed, some sounds were heard in the distance, though we didn’t understand if they were from the speakers or other rooms. Sometimes a countdown like sound would start, making every one of us panicked, reach near the end and stop.

We were still at the beginning point, no one was sure if “apples” referred to juridical apples, what is gained from a court case. Or in some other sense. No one was even sure what all that talk about thought and action meant. Those plates were made to confuse us. They didn’t make any sense what so ever!

A ticking sound started, it didn’t stop like the others. This one was different, this one was our countdown. At the end of it, they would kill all of us. I had to do something, enough talk! The plates equally didn’t make sense, we could have flipped a coin and it would have been the same!

A person tried to rush and press one of the plates, they stopped him. Everyone was looking at him. I rush, there was no one to catch me, and pressed the right plate.

A click was heard.