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Prologue

“From life there is death”

“From death there is life”

“Thus the circle is complete”

Abandoned to a world of torment and suffering, where death is as common as the shelling of cities and the endless wails of pain, where life is as fleeting as the fuse of a grenade. A world where every crap of food and shelter must be fought for, I lay thee in the dark of the night panting in the battered remains of a centuries old mud brick building. A building that had stood for thousands of years now little more that a bullet and shell marked ruin. Why must men be creatures of such madness, why do we cling to beliefs like religion and ideology that drive us to murder one another.

Between pained groans I checked my ammunition, barely over half a magazine left for my old busted Chinese AK cobbled together with every spare part I could find or craft. It was my only true companion a midst the madness of war. I was out of grenades and the trigger spring of my Tokarev snapped a long while ago, I was fighting a pointless civil war motivated by a religious hatred supplied by foreign greed. It was pitifully laughable, everyone foolishly believed that there side was in the right and that their opposition was evil, but history was written by the victors, or whoever was left standing at the end of the bloodshed and madness. Here I was an orphan of war from the Balkans dying in a meaningless war in the middle east, though my own motivations were nothing more than simple greed.

I cared not for the socialist ideology and freedom of the Kurds, nor did I fight for the religious zealots preaching the glory of Allah, but what God desires their people to suffer. What a pathetic view of the world religion and ideology have wrought upon humanity. At least the expansionism of the Chinese was honest about the nature of their greed, they didn't couch their crimes behind the cause of freedom. I took another look at my beloved Lyudmilla before I picked myself up from the ruined floor, my damaged knee groaning in protest, I was separated from my unit and stuck deep in enemy territory after our position had been mortared by US trained and led insurgents who fought to free themselves from the oppressive yoke of Assad and the Islamic extremists.

I hobbled through a throng of bodies and ruined buildings torn asunder from shell shrapnel, if only my life had taken me away from the fires of war and not dragged me over it's endless smoldering coals from battlefield to battlefield. From ethnic wars in the Balkans to the endless wars of in the middle east I had marched not for glory of foolish idealism but for necessary greed. I spun at a slight clattering of rubble, a boy barely into his teenage years leveled his muzzle at me. I reflexively pulled the trigger, click, my closest companion betrayed me an my time of greatest need. A burst of rounds took my chest, I didn't the searing pain as the rounds tore though my flesh. I collapsed as my breath came in short pained gasps before the turned to sputtering coughs as blood began to fill my lungs. My vision blurred as I looked up at the boy only a few years my younger, his eyes filled with burning rage and hatred bore into me as he screamed defiantly, I was his first kill most likely, what madness we live in where young boys are forced to kill to survive. My hand trembled as I pulled out Lyudmilla's picture one last time, her sad wistful smile brought me peace in my last moments before the blackness took me.

In the swirling darkness a voice whispered to me.

“From life there is death”

“From death there is life”

“Thus the circle is complete”