The Shredded Capital

A Story by midnight reaper

The city was beautiful but yet torn to shreds through violence. You could still see some of the towering skyscrapers and the gold laced government buildings but yet all had gaping holes or riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel from grenades. The battle that left this beautiful and almost sacred place in ruins was one so fierce not even the most insane could survive whole. Days after the battle you could still find men probably MIA wandering the streets murmuring of how their whole squad was set alight with an incendiary artillery shell and how they could still hear the dying screams as his squad mates danced and twitched trying to extinguish the fire on their bodies or some other horrid thing that they had witnessed. Others would just cradle themselves staring into the void not being able to speak at all.

The battle was supposed to be short but we were not prepared at all. With a swift and brutal attack, we began the invasion of the small country on the outskirts of our controlled territories. The country was, of course, a threat to us and so we invaded and with surprising ease, we made it to the capital in months. The country itself was generally just a forest filled with trees and bushes with only a few fields and a few villages once in a while as we marched towards the capital. The capital was where most of the locals lived and was beautiful and well kept. The government buildings would shimmer in the sun and the skyscrapers would overlook everything and peer into the forest beyond the capital. There were also small communities of booths and stalls which the locals would visit to shop and get groceries. Overall it was an interesting sight. At least that's what we thought when we sat on the edge of the capital, hidden in the woods. We also never saw any military personnel so we relaxed and thought it would be a breeze and the already swift war would be over in days once we get the green light from the higher-ups.

What we didn't know was that the military personnel were hidden in the skyscrapers closest to the forest surrounding the capital to act as scouts and alert the generals of any enemy movements and their main force was well hidden and well entrenched in the center of the city.

Once we got the green light we packed up our gear and quietly moved into the capital in the dead of night. To our surprise, not a single soul was to be seen or heard, It was truly eery but it didn't stay that way for long. As the forest began to fade out of our view out of nowhere, gunfire came from all sides. Whoever could ducked into the residential homes that surrounded us and started trying to find out where the fire was coming from. Soon we realized the fire was coming from the skyscrapers. Soon we started taking the capital block by block. Soon we ran into more troubling problems. With the military being entrenched in the center of the capital and almost all the scouts being in skyscrapers they could easily send in mortar rounds on our location. First, it was just high explosive and incendiary rounds but once we got closer to the center it was changed with mustard and chlorine gas. It was extremely effective because the closer we got to the center the more claustrophobic it got and the more we lost. At some point, you could almost see a trail of the dead that we would leave behind as we progressed. After what seemed like an eternity we finally reached The center and to our horrified surprise we found the fortress. It was truly a sight, it was surrounded by machine guns and grey concrete walls about four stories tall. It wasn't that big, maybe two city blocks but there almost seemed to be an infinite amount troops pouring out from it. It took us two weeks to finally siege it and by then only a hundred of us remained of the original two thousand. After months we finally emerged on the other side of the capital. Only fifty of us survived and in all honesty by luck. Though after the siege of the capital it took months to get the country and the capital in order and eliminate any resistance groups.

As we finally emerged victorious the body count was almost in the thousands and those who survived wondered for years, was the blood spilled worth this victory?