The Great War

The Scribe walks through a thicket of trees, rubbing his hands to keep warm by an unnatural pink flame. He sits down on a fallen log, glancing upwards, at you. "Oh. Hello there. It's that time of year again, I see. The Witching Hour once again approaches." The setting sun casts elongated shadows across the ground, and tinges everything pink. "I suppose another story is in order. Another story stricken with the black of fear, that punches through the vulnerable heart to deliver raw emotion. Another story of ghosts. Of the past." The Scribe polishes his goggles. They gleam in the refiner's fire. "I will tell this story, yes. It is one I am very familiar with. And you, hopefully, will listen."

The Scribe sits back, telling a tale. "This is the story of the Great War."

Now, last Witching Hour, as you may remember, I told a similar story. One of the prelude to the Great War. Those days were dark for Minecraftia. For all worlds, across the infinite universe. For you see, every world was experiencing a microcosm of these events. Though players are given control over their own worlds by the Gods of Mojang, select events influence those worlds' history, and are repeated across every possible timeline. The Great War, as documented by metachronistic scholars in decades since, is one of them.

In my world - the prime world, I have reason to believe - the Great War was, quite simply, hell. And there are many good reasons for that. To tell you, you need to understand from the perspective of someone who was there. I shall give you that needed perspective. As you may remember, the Great War was the direct result of a schism between Minecraftia's dominant races. The Testificates and the Humans. The Testificates' shining port city of Kyoto had been terrorized by Human influence for too long, and when a Fool under the influence destroyed the entire city, doing so through some of the most occult means imaginable, it proved a necessary spark to incite complete bloodshed.

Governments flung accusations. Politicans raised hands and shouted. Troops were marched across borders, weapons, mobilized. The Great War was, quite simply and plainly, one of the most important event in Minecraftian history. It, truly, was the event that divided history into two time periods - Beta, and Official. The world would never be the same. The weapons and tactics used would send both races into stone ages. But enough purple prose. Let us get into the details.

The weapons used were not the sticks and stones you might think, trust me. Minecraftia was in a golden age. Cities, metropolises, were built from the ground up over the course of centuries. Testificates had forged palaces and temples from ancient designs, creating massive trading outposts - of which Kyoto was one. Humans had made the tallest of cities, urban jungles powered solely through redstone, that devilish force manipulating source code bit by byte. And when these two immovable objects trudged ahead at unstoppable forces, the result was mayhem.

I know, because I was stuck right in the middle of it.

I was at Kyoto, once. While anti-human resentments were boiling. Everyone gave me evil looks when they thought I couldn't see. Shadows jumped from alleyways. Lights flickered in wind that wasn't there. A cursed wind howled out towards the sea, then came rushing back, spraying some unholy brine in your face. I left as quickly as I'd came, and I left in chains. I was arrested for conspiring against the government of the city. My intentions in Kyoto were merely to gain information. I suppose I touched the wrong nerves that day. I was thrown in prison, where I sat and stewed for weeks. Escape came in the form of the Fool's Massacre. The Officials of the Humans rushed to get all prisoners of their kind out from the region as quickly as possible, for fear that more blood would be shed.

The Great War started in the city of Haggstrom. It was a peaceful city. It had done nothing to deserve its fate. But that was exactly why the Testificates chose it as its target. War hadn't even been officially declared when the troops hit. There was no way any Human army could get there in time. The Testificates had battalions of curses, of magic and thaumaturgy. They laid waste to the city, toppling buildings, executing the innocent. Smoke clouds trailed into the atmosphere. Embers washed through the streets. The Testificates stacked the dead in the center of the city, for the zombies to enjoy. Perhaps the Fool's Massacre still addled their minds.

This act, in itself, was the true declaration of war. Not long afterwards, the drafts started hitting. And they hit hard. Hundreds of Humans were pulled from their cities to fight in the war. To learn how to swing swords and hoist up shields, to nock and fire arrows. To set up redstone wires in the heat of battle and man automated dispensers and pressure plates. To steer ahead on horseback, on miniature tanks, and even, to learn a little bit of magic. The dividing force between Humans and Testificates was technology and magic, on a broader scale. Testificates were older. They were more in tune to the pull of the red sea. Humans saw the brighter horizon, one built from metal and electricity. But with each force having its own strengths, there was no clear winner.

And because there was no clear winner, that meant both sides faced heavy losses, continually. Battle after battle, siege after siege, ended with another downed city. Another legacy lost. Another history, hung. City after city fell. Chris. Stockholm. Sixside. Equinoxe. Clark. Omicron. All fallen. A cloud of darkness had transposed itself above Minecraftia. And the worst part of all was that the gods had gone silent. Mojang, in their Temple of the Gods, had refused to help either side when the world had needed it the most. Humanity and Testificacy were utterly alone in the world, with only desperate solutions to turn to.

The war entered a new phase when the Humans resolved to split. Their army constituted itself now of two fleets. The Dry Hands and the Wet Hands. The Dry Hands would safeguard major Human cities, trails, and outposts. They would be the defense, readying lines of weaponry to fell any Testificate attacks. The Wet Hands would go out into the world to silence any Testificate opposition, and to kill where they lived. They were to mine any natural resources they found, to investigate ways to tip the war in their favor. Humanity was more and more recognizing the power of magic. It was unpredictable in a way technology and their rigid metal was not. It had chance, and probability. They thought it would help. But it sure as hell wasn't helping the Testificates.

As it turned out, the Testificates had a similar plan. Sections of armies retreated into impassable natural barriers. They hid in the crevices of mesas. They hid under the sandstone chasms of deserts. Some even retreated into the ocean. And I know for a fact that the main hiding spot was the forest. That was where the Mansions were built. Woodland Mansions, designed as strongholds to safeguard remnants of Testificate knowledge, and to be beacons of magical energy for the purpose of sending signals to troops. It would alert them to attack. Because of these magical properties, the Mansions were hot spots of thaumaturgical energy. Spirits of evil, and monsters of the undead and shadow, congregated around those Mansions. Not even torches would prevent them from manifesting.

Testificates began to listen to these shadows' whispers. Some feared them and fought back. But they were pulled deep into the woods by murky hands of darkness. They reappeared on horseback, missing their heads, their bodies dangling from the saddle. Horror stories carried themselves over the treetops. The headless horsemen were rogue, stirring up chaos and plotting conflict by besieging both sides. And those Testificates that dared to respond to the whispers - those that would agree with them - would become unfathomably corrupted. Their skin would pale, and crack. They would sharpen their weapons in the dark. They would hang themselves and, an inch from death, research how to cheat it. They stuffed their souls in totems, consulted with translucent blue spectres, and readied their axes.

Testificates such as these were shunned from villages and cities. Their curse was passed down from generation to generation, like an unholy mutation of the classical zombie plague. They had become Jestificates - or, by another name, Illagers. These Illagers struck absolute fear into the hearts of their living comrades. Unrest and malady spread through the Testificate ranks like wildfire. Over time, and by degrees, the Humans had secured the edge they'd sought by their enemy's own incompetence. Woodland mansions, and the forests they were a part of, were burned from the root, leaving arid wastelands. The research inside, gained through the incalculable tongues of festering demons, was forgotten - never to be retrieved. The Testificates were forced to regroup.

The Humans had pushed the Testificates back across the cube comprising the world, their goal being to drive them to a singular spot: the Testificate capital of Aria Math. Once all the Testificate armies had been locked into their own home, and were all packed together, the Humans would exterminate them, wiping out the Testificates' greatest achievements in one fell swoop. They would win the war, and rule the world, able to do whatever they wished. There were a few problems with their plan, however. They were unaware of what superweapon they would use. They did not know how long the tactics of the Wet Hands would work for. They were terrified of the unpredictability of the Testificates' magic. And, to make matters worse, both sides were beginning to steal from each other.

The greatest amount of collected goods was found in the ravines. Things fell down them all the time. It was only natural. Either battles were fought inside of them - in which case, as you might expect, surprise appearances by legions of monsters were all too common - or they were fought around them, and if the latter was an outcome, then the earth would shiver and splinter, as the ravine widened into a chasm. Troops, horses, chests with items, machinery - all were sucked into the maw of the ground, to be reclaimed by the dirt that had borne the universe. The Testificates were beginning to make highly advanced machines from these plans. Cannons, catapults, legitimate bombs. Some had even made planes. And in the meantime, the Humans were experimenting with persisting after death. Totems of Undying either worked, or turned the user into a zombie. There were still some kinks to work out.

But the war continued. Natural regions were desecrated, and city by city was torn to ash. The Humans' plan was working. Through thick and thin, they'd managed to begin pushing the Testificates back. The greatest casualties were found in the swamps. The thick marshland seemed to pull soldiers in, and the eerie winds of the waters had a tendency to turn Testificates into Witches. The Humans had been trained to adapt to any changes long ago. They were ready for whatever could be thrown at them. And the gods had not even acted. If there was a Player embarking on a Quest, they had not seen the War's horror.  Either that, or they had ignored it.

One thing was clear to the Humans. Barring superficial interaction from the supernatural, this war would be ended by cubic hands. Their experimentation with magic - which is so obtuse and bizzare that it could fill a whole history book in and of itself, lest we forget the horror stories within - provided powerful amplifiers for their technology. Their weaponry grew stronger. They'd mobilized moving cannons, and dropships. They'd weaponized golems, forging them from obsidian, quartz, and, dare I say it, bedrock. The Humans were advancing, steadily, across the world, pushing the Testificates backwards, inching ever closer to Aria Math. But the Testificates had a new plan.

The Testificates were to assemble an elite task force of about twelve warriors, a group small enough to not be noticed in the grand scheme of things, and powerful enough to wreak havoc upon reaching their final destination. They were dubbed the Pontificates. All twelve were of royal and religious blood. Highly devout in the teachings of Notch, they only used the finest of enchantments on their weapons, casted spells they knew would be perfect, and thought themselves as superior in every way. Their stated mission was, much like the Humans', to infiltrate the Human capital. Taswell. But they would not force the entire army into the city. They would instead sneak in, attract as little attention as possible, and shut down the complex redstone machine keeping the entire city, and the Human race, in check. Without a constant supply of metal and technology, and with hundreds of thousands of homes without power, the Human army would be helpless. It would be, they hoped, a crippling blow.

I'll spoil something for you. It wasn't. Or at least, it was. But not without sacrifice.

The War's latter stages consisted of four horribly decisive battles. The War had waged for so long, and at such a scale, that there honestly wasn't much land left to fight on. Vast stretches of land had been obliterated, their ores and natural resources either destroyed by the fight or extracted for parts. Nature had been tarnished and demolished in a twisted biome fest. Yet there were still important roadblocks on both parties' ways to the capitals of their enemies - the remaining strongholds of both races. The attacking armies were so fast-paced, there was no way the defense could keep up. It was offense on both fronts, coupled with some offensive groups leaving to fight defense, when the time arose. This is all semantical strategy talking, I know. But it's important to understand the circumstances.

The first major battle was on Melancholy Hill. The skies were overcast. The rain came down in thick sheets. The battleground was a city built on an ever-winding mountainous hill. It has become a location to remember the dead, and times of sorrow. The fight overturned countless graves, the explosions knocking over places of worship and creating disturbing floating trees. The wind howled over the course of the assault. The dead were speaking, and more were flowing in to join the choir invisible. By nightfall, armies of mobs, led by the culmination of the Illagers' efforts, entered the fray. Countless were turned towards the undead's ire in that time, but it was the Human army that walked out of the Hill alive. They entered it clothed in diamond. They left sparkling with the enchantments of the deceased, and with a flaming cemetary behind them.

The Testificates viewed this as an assault on a caliber comparable to the Fool's Massacre. They were furious, the fires in their hearts burning like never before. So they decided to play their final hand early, in the hopes of tipping victory. The Humans marched onwards, stalking towards one of the largest ravines in the world, a jagged gash carved straight through topsoil and jutting, what it seemed, all the way down to bedrock. Otherworldly glows of seething magma could be seen in the depths. The hissing and sputtering sounds of monsters and water provided a symphony. It was here that the Testificate army was piloted from zeppelin, revealing their secret.

Before the Human army could react, a hulking leviathan of a sarcophagus was airdropped from the zeppelin, unlocked by deft warriors. The Human army had paused, curious to see what would happen. The rest of the Testificate army dropped down, just stating through the Humans with their piercing eyes that seemed cold and dead. The Humans realized, after several agonizing seconds, that they WERE cold and dead. Every single Testificate on the field was a corpse. And a fresh one, too. The colors of their red and tints of their flesh flowed through the air, giving life to the thing in the sarcophagus. Then, the Testificates were pierced by sunbeams and wrapped in feathery wings, their totems reviving them, only for them to expire once more.

By the time the Humans recognized this infinite cycle of death and empowerment, and they rushed forward to stop it, the thing burst out of the sarcophagus. It was a gigantic Zombie - the tallest ever recorded to modern Minecraftian science. It was an artificial Giant, stitched together from the flesh of what seemed like a surplus of fallen Testificate soldiers, and powered by souls. It was the Testificates' ultimate weapon. Long had scientists and thaumaturges dreamed of sealing souls inside living beings. Now, the culmination of their work was at hand. Giants were mythical creatures spoken of only in lore - and here one was, in the flesh. The Human army was stupefied. How could they win this battle against an unfathomable enemy? The answer - they couldn't. The Battle of the Scar was quick, but not merciful. Every Human soldier was cooked alive by the Giant's flaming breath and flung deep into the ravine. Their totems activated mid-fall, and they died upon contact with bedrock.

The Testificate government made bold claims during that time. Terrible claims. Accurate claims. That they had an army of Giants. That they were ready to raze the final Human stronghold before Taswell, and remove a bastion of Humanity as a last stop until the capital. The Human public was terrified, of course. Chaos and lawlessness reigned in the streets. People cursed at the gods, or were otherwise ambivalent towards their faith. And the draft was enforced more than ever. Yet the Human government saw this as an opportunity. While the Testificates were busy arranging for their Giants, the Human special ops forces could travel on an alternate path, preparing their superweapon.

Much discourse was developed over which weapon would be used. Some argued a Curse, to metaphysically block out any mention of the Testificates from history. It was shot down for being too complicated. A majority argued for the Dreiton, a weapon used to help vanquish Him back when He wages wars directly. It could backfire, though - and it was difficult to restart, as it had already been decommissioned. The solution, it was eventually decided, was the logical progression from a Golem - a  Mech. And so, over the course of the Giants' March, a gigantic Mech was developed. All other projects ceased. None mattered. This was what would win he war, they said. They hoped.

The penultimate battle was fought in the dead of winter. The snow was heavy, and it twisted through the wind. Redstone torches sputtered in the cold air, providing no heat, only light. And then there were the sounds. The booming sounds, the thuds, of some horrible creature striking the earth. Heading through the mountains were that was left of two armies. The Testificates rode in one direction, seven amalgamate Giants rivaling the mountaintops. They were flanked by horseback Pontificates and machines carrying flanks of dead bodies for fuel. The Humans rode in the opposite direction. They had tanks, they had blimps, they were a meticulous war machine. And they had a Mech. Both sides had come through these mountains because they believed the other side wouldn't, and because they were effective routes to the capitals.

It has been said that once the two sides realized they were marching directly towards each other, they just stopped, and starred. The Giants tensed, muscles rippling and wailing as they smelled new blood. The Human war machine flexed its metallic muscles. And without hesitation not even official command, both sides charged across the snow.

The fight ended nine hours later, with the white snow stained crimson as far as the eye could see. It was colored like Netherrack, that eternal fuel. And that was how the battle got its name. It was the Siege of Fire. The battle was intense, and bloody. The Testificates continued their loop of death, warping the boundaries of humanity as the Giants raged ahead, toppling sheets of rock and breathing the elements.  But the Humans had adapted from just one encounter. The Mech had been built with Giants in mind. It fought like one, and it could sure as hell fight one. Armed with the most intricate of redstone circuitry and weaponry, including a new processed form of the mineral called hyper light, the Mech seemed unstoppable.

It tore the limbs off of a Giant in a single blow, its hyper light propelling it across dimensions, warping through time and space. The Mech was a killing machine, powered by Humans manipulating its limbs. Superlasers and missiles streamed out of the Mech, levelling the landscape and simultaneously engaging all the Giants in combat. That just left the soldiers to attack each other. The Humans trained all their cannon fire on the tanks and shelters containing the Testificate corpses, lighting them on fire and charring the cadavers to crisps, so they couldn't be used. Generals barked commands, creating order out of chaos. The Pontificates blessed their every strike with the word of Notch, columns of sun skewering Human combatants. But even they could not withstand the oiled Human war machine for long.

The Pontificates' numbers were cut from twelve to five. Those that survived had the decency to flee. Their horses, already burning away into undead skeletons, blended into the wintery winds, and towards the Human capital. The Human armies paid no attention, focused as they were on felling the Giants. The struggles between the terrors and the automaton blazed a jagged hole down into bedrock. Cave systems collapsed on themselves. Lava and water boiled into steam. The snow poured through the open wounds of the earth, as mountains crumbled. The infinite fires died out after the nine hours had passed. When the Human soldiers that remained felt it safe to investigate, they found seven festering Giant corpses, and a downed Mech, leaking pink flame and reduced to scrap metal. The Humans took what they could, scaling the hole in a monumental expedition. They set up a camp in the mountains and called for reinforcements, as they were badly wounded. Every soldier involved in the fight succumbed to their frostbitten wounds, despite the aid of doctors.

And so, the final battle was set in stone. The Humans camped in the mountains of the North, poised to attack Aria Math. With a keen shortcut, they would bypass the Testificate stronghold entirely. And likewise, the remaining Pontificates had bottled the Giants' magical energies for their own use, and had even snagged hyper light, which they were already beginning to apply to their weaponry. It burned with cursed fire. The Pontificates, soon enough, stood in the fields surrounding Taswell. A twofold finale was in order. The simultaneous events that would end the war were dubbed by historians as the Coalescence. It was a time when all the pieces fell into place.

It was, truly, the inevitable end. The Human army, though badly damaged, had salvaged enough of the Mech to make powerful weapons. All it took was a singular shot with an arm cannon to obliterate the walls of Aria Math, the ornate acacia wood and precious metals forming the gate disintegrating into vapor. Human soldiers marched through the city. There were no soldiers left to stop them, only the defenseless city folk. The Humans erected flags in the streets, their cruel spirits torching the settlements of the poor. They marched all the way to the capital, a gleaming pantheon of quartz in which the Testificate government convened, and regulated the army. The Humans knocked down the front door via battering ram, and what they saw has gone down in the annals of history as legendary. As iconic.

It was an event that has struck discord and unrest into the hearts of even the most devout towards Notch, and the faith of Mojang. Scientists and thaumaturges alike have regarded the notion of a god as a suggestion at worst, and an empirical fact at best. There's just disagreement as to who that god is. Some say the Endermen. Some, Mojang. Others, the Sandfallers. And others still, something far worse. All I can say with honesty, is that the thing those soldiers saw in the hall of the Testificates was not Mojang. It was not Notch. It wasn't even hell, either.

Testimonies varied. Eyewitness accounts were divided. But the most detailed description of what had been seen was merely the Testificate council of sixteen, all hanging in nooses that had descended from the ceiling, lurking in shadow. Their eyes were bleached white, with tints of sickly yellow. The head councilman seemed to be fully conscious in his noose, his eyes as yellow as the midday sun. He smiled a toothless grin, an itching, strident, voice pouring from his lips that writhed and spasmed across the room. He said something to the effect of, "WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG, LEAKING PEN?" Ink had splattered across the hall. Negative space lurked in the shadows. Crystals lay splintered at the dangling pendulums the Testificates were, sights and sounds reflecting from them. Their weapons laid battered and bare, their deaths, absolute, and chilled, like the howling wind. Yet sunbeams rained onto their faces, placing them in a majestic light, against the cubic backdrop of the coalesced council hall.

And on the other side of the world, the Pontificates had finally ended their year-long journey. They had made it to the gates of Taswell, the steel city that stood as a conclave of officials to the Human race. Downing their witch's brew of potions and drifting through the ether, they passed through the borders of humanity undetected. They found a bleak and grim sight. Skyscrapers, abandoned. City streets where the only sounds were wind. Even the sun seemed fainter and duller in the sky. The Pontificates made it to the building of the Officials, the Human government. They knocked on the door, and assassinated the guards. They used their corpses as puppets to gain entrance into the building proper. They lit humanity's census records on fire, they obliterated terraces and verandas. They laid waste to the excess and splendor the race had enjoyed prior to the war. And when they entered the meeting hall of the government, the Pontificates did not draw a single blade.

They took off their hats, bowed to the government, and merely informed them that in their inventory was an Ender Crystal that would, if disturbed, annihilate the government building, and the complex redstone refiners that laid below it, powering humanity. The Officials stood there, unbelieving. Their thoughts were clouded in a haze. But when the Pontificates assembled their inventories into one large chest and opened it, there, wrapped in a matrix of unholy geometry, was a spinning pink crystal carved with runes in a dead language. It disobeyed the stagnant pull of gravity, and spat out murmurs and mutters to those who craned an ear. It was an artifical Ender Crystal. The most powerful explosive ever created by a sentient race in Minecraftia.

The Officials panicked. They told the Pontificates that they would do anything, anything at all, to appease them. Humanity, too, had played their last card. The Mech had been their final shot. They had sent spies to find the Pontificates, and all searches had turned up empty-handed. Their existence was a secret guarded within the seams of the world itself. The Officials eyed each other uneasily, staring death in the eyes. The Pontificates just cackled, telling the Officials that their hold on Minecraftia had been officially concluded, and that they were to abandon Taswell immediately. The Pontificates burned down the Human flags within the council hall, taking the Ender Crystal with them. They had done it. They had conquered Taswell.

Accounts of the true end of the war, beyond the two council halls, were few and far between. But those that existed were unanimous in their sight. The head councilman of the Testificates, the one swaying from his noose, spoke in that otherworldly tone, telling the Humans that remained that the War was about to end in a Testificate victory. But, if one of the Humans was to shake the Testificate's hand, then the Humans would never have to worry about Minecraftia again. They would be freed. The Human armada was stupefied. They had gone through extensive training, that had nearly obliterated their bodies and seemingly reforged them in obsidian. And here they were, discussing the end of a decades-long conflict with a dead body.

But what else could they do? They had seen far too much magic and superstition to ignore the word of the dead. The lead general approached, and shook the hand of the corpse. Their hands were wrapped in a flame that gave off no heat. The corpse's hand grew clammy and sick, their eyes shuddering to a close. Every corpse blinked red, and faded into smoke. The nooses grew limp.

There was a massive rumbling. The Humans regained their senses, running from the Testificate capital and watching as its government building, and the adjacent buildings surrounding it, imploded, crumbling into a cavernous abyss. Laughter was heard from the other side. Army after army of skeletons crawled out of the abyss; those Testificates that had died, and were not used as meat for the Giants. There was a surplus of them, stitched together and chaining themselves into calcium terrors. The Human soldiers fought valiantly, in their final battle. They contemplated defeat. They contemplated leaving. But they stood their ground, determined, fighting on enemy territory. They even self-destructed the parts of the Mech they'd carried this far, sealing the abyss with welded metal, the dirt and cobblestone of the earth, and charred bone. The Humans had claimed Aria math. And now, it was time for them to leave it. Whispers rang in the Humans' ears as they departed.

The Pontificates fought through the remaining Human forces as they descended the capitol's steps. They slew machine after machine, every explosion and magical assault digging a hole deeper into the earth, through which more Humans poured through, in a furious rush to attack for the final time. Without competent generals to lead them, the Human armada was stumbling blindly. The Pontificates just cackled as they placed the Ender Crystal deep in the rotting heart of the earth, struck it with a seething hyper light sword, and teleported out of Taswell.

The lucky ones were those who did not see the explosion. It was a terrifying maelstrom of multicolored, immortal, energy. It left permanent scars in the earth that did not heal. It metastasized, annihilating the redstone circuitry of humanity, overloading its electrical impulses and making mincemeat out of the industrial machine they'd built over centuries. Taswell folded in on itself. Smoke rose from its corpse. The Pontificates strolled out of Taswell with utter confidence. They'd done the unthinkable. They'd won.

Three Officials survived the explosion. They were soon met by the army that had invaded Aria Math, and shook the hand of the living dead. Humanity announced, to what was left of the world, that they were surrendering to the Testificates. They were leaving the world behind, and fleeing to uncharted territory, to start again. They were tearing down their cities, and their work, leaving but ruins. They took their advanced weaponry, their fusions of magic and technology, and their rich history. They took it all, and left behind mere scraps. Ruins. Reminders of what had been forgotten. The Testificates had won, yes. But their victory ran hollow. There was nothing for them to conquer. No resources to plunder. Their own cities and governments were on the brink of collapse.

The Testificate government dissolved following the war. The race split apart into many factions that scoured the world, attempting to start anew. They built, from the ground up, villages. Some grew into cities, given years, and decades. Nature had time to heal from what had been burned. The world had time to heal. But the process took an immense period of time. Longer than the war itself.

And as for the Humans? History knows not what happened to them. There are mutterings, of a land beyond the clouds. Of a reverse Moog City, built upright, standing amongst the sky. Perhaps even past the Far Lands. Humans, some of them, still roam the earth. They mingle with Testificates. Resentments against them are bitter, and persist even to this day. And the plague of zombification still continues. Some things never change. Yes, the wounds of the Great War are healing. Some of them. But some wounds cut deeper than skin.

The final question. The one I know you are all asking. I claimed to be there. To be involved in the war. How?

I am old. Very old. Centuries, possibly. I don't look it - I've researched how to live a long live, I have the materials - but I was alive for the entirety of the Great War. When humanity packed up and left, I stayed behind. To wander the cube, looking for secrets, and answers. My search for knowledge, and truth, presented itself to me, during the War itself.

I had been selected by the draft to officially fight when the War was wrapping up. I fought several battles. The last was in Old Sodermalm. It was that battle that forced me to leave the army. To move, far away, and to never talk to another soul. I lost a great deal in that battle. Friends. Memories. ...Eyes. But what I gained was far more beautiful than anything I'd left behind.

I had been knocked to the ground by a stray gunpowder explosive. I'd flung through the air, my eyes searing in pain. My vision was beginning to deteriorate, and fast. In my near-blindness, I fell through a small chasm, and into a deep cave. I landed on the ground and broke my left arm. It felt like it practically snapped in half. I've had to wear bandages over it since. But the most important thing I found was a still-smoking corpse, clutching something to dear life. It was brown, and rectangular. From what I could see of the corpse's eye, a jagged gash was cut through it. I still don't know why I did it. It was, perhaps, an impulse. A spontaneous thought, devoid of pattern or reason. But I'm sure my decision was the same across all timelines. All worlds. A constant, like the Great War.

I took the Journal, and lay in wait. Rounding up, to the inevitable end.