War.

You never expect it when it comes knocking at your door.

That was the really curious thing about it – you heard the word spoken numerous times, you learned about it in your school with the statistics of the dead and the facts drilled into your mind – yet somehow, everyone overlooked it. To them, to me, it was an event that happened eons ago, something that wouldn't return with tooth and claw and would catch us unawares.

War.

War was furious. War was vicious, and violent, and relentless when it came to killing. In my mind, I imagined War as the spoilt little kid who whined and complained when he didn't get his way. He was the child at the playground who always wanted more, more, more, and who took greedily when he got impatient of waiting. War would take what he thought was his with blood and fire, cackling with glee as soldiers fell on the battlefield and innocent bystanders were caught unexpectedly in the crossfire. War did not care whose soul he took, whose heart he stopped from beating – even mine, Atlanta al Thea's.

Strangely, however, I did not care about whether or not I would perish on the plains of Craorag, but only about the gentle smile and the sparkling grey-blue eyes of Aria Gracen next to me. The both of us tailed behind Guardians Cyprus and Tigaern with dried leaves and twigs crunching underneath out feet as we walked. The remaining magi had been split up into groups – some with Tig and Cyprus to stop the battle by any means possible, and some with Guardians Elswyth and Miyu to somehow assassinate the infamous Ammet. I had breathed a silent breath of a relief when Aria and I were chosen to follow Cyprus and Tig to stop the impending battle. Both tasks were dangerous, but at least we were together. At least I had her by my side.

War.

It may seem odd to the common stranger that after all the death and bloodshed that I had witnessed so far during the Trials that I would be bothered by more. Perhaps it was just the fact that Halyin, despite its political and magical tensions, had never been really, truly at war for a millennium. Before we left the beaches, Aria had whispered in my ear that everything would be all right, that we would make it through this war. That when all this was behind us she would allow me to take her back to Aavayoh and build her a mansion there. I had almost wanted to chuckle and tell her to stop dreaming, but then I realized with a start that our dreams were what made us ourselves, and that without them, we were nothing but shells without hearts.

Despite the fact that we had not spoken a word since leaving the rest of our scraggly group of magi, I could feel her skin brushing against mine as we walked, side by side. Felt the warmth that her body radiated, heard how her breathing hitched when we broke out from forest to clearing, four pairs of eyes connecting with the silhouettes of soldiers in the distance on the horizon. The sky was a beautiful blend of pinks, yellows and oranges, with the crest of the blood-red sun ever so slowly rising.

Suddenly anxious and afraid, I blurted out, "The obliquity of the ecliptic."

"What?" Aria was looking at me with a bewildered expression on her face, with obviously no idea at what I just said, and why I said it. In all honesty, I wasn't even sure why I had stated the astronomical term as well, and I watched out of the corner of my eye as Tigaern stepped forward and bellowed out at the armies of Halyin gathering on the crest of a hill. Cyprus motioned to us to stay behind them as he, too, stepped forward beside his fellow Guardian, signing extremely fast at the Vasileio army, an expression of desperation etched on his face.

"The obliquity of the ecliptic," I found myself explaining, my tongue now beyond my control, "is the angle between an object's rotational axis and its orbital axis, or, equivalently, the angle between its equatorial plane and orbital plane." I paused to take a breath, then glanced at Aria's face and realized with a joint what I had just said. "I-I-I'm sorry, Aria. I d-don't know wh-why I said that. Nerves, I guess? I mean-"

"It's fine," she placed an arm on mine and smiled up at me, eyes gleaming in the mild sunlight. Her pigeon blue irises, however, quickly lost their joyful look as Aria leaned her head against my shoulder, and it was then that I could feel her body trembling and shaking, ever so slightly. Almost as if she was shivering from cold.

"I'm scared, Atlanta," she whispered, eyes darting to the Guardians and to the awaiting armies not far away. "I'm scared that we'll lose. I'm scared-" she paused to shallow, and I used this time to run a reassuring hand through her mass of tangle red hair that she hadn't bothered to brush, leaning down and kissing her head softly. "I'm scared that we'll die."

At that moment in time I had no words of comfort to say, no cheesy pickup lines from romance novels that I could use. So I did the first thing that came into my mind – engulfed Aria's thin frame into my arms, resting my chin gently on her shoulder, not caring about what others thought of us, not ashamed at all. Then, the horn sounded, and everything went crashing down.

War.

You never know when it'll come knocking at your door.

One day, everything could be peaceful and serene, and the next, flames are licking at your house and the terrible screams and moans and pleads are piercing the night. You want to run, but you cannot, especially if you are in the front lines, like I was that day.

I remember jerking apart as the armies charged towards us, a wave of metal threatening to crush as all. Cyprus and Tigaern held their ground, and Tigaern yelled at us both to help them fight off the army with our magic. Perhaps we did, and perhaps we didn't, but in the midst of the chaos I had not realized that Aria had collapsed beside me with a sword impaled in her heart. It was only when her weakened hand tugged on the helm of my dress did I look down, and dropped onto my knees when I saw her lying there, shuddering, blood pooling around her body. I recall screaming, "No, no, not again! This can't be happening again!", tearing at my hair and I felt my body convulse as I somehow emitted a blast of hydrothermal energy that sent soldiers tumbling to the ground around me.

This time, when I cradled her head in my arms again, I knew that this time was the end. And it was. She died in my arms, too gravely injured to say her final goodbyes, and I could do nothing to save her.

Aria once told me that our lives were like antelopes. We leapt gracefully across the plains, but one brief second in the path of a hunting tiger, and we were gone.

War.

You'll never know when will snatch your beloved away,

until

it

is

too

late.