Where were you?

[Genesis]

The bulletin on the board spoke of tragedies two dozen miles away from town.

Fifty-two lost in collateral, the Order advances against Atrellyan effort, it sings.
The marsh has frozen over, our horses refuse to cross on through.
That day, I went to bed thinking of the number, with a stomach only half full and clinging to my mom's rosary.

Father woke us in a rush, and I stared through the window.
The fires burnt so brightly then, I remember it clearly.
When men and beasts turned the midnight sky to morrow half a night early, and the purple palls turned orange and grey.

That was the last evening that I saw anyone or anything that I knew before that day.
We ran across the marsh and hid in the hut, but they stayed outside.

They raged over, those creatures. They did what — in my youth — I thought was unthinkable.
I'll not forget the silhouettes of my neighbors, standing outside in the afternoon...
red mist sprayed on the rime not long after.

I prayed.
I remember praying through every second of it.
The smoke threatened to sneak into my lungs, and the door nearly caved to the bashing.
I was next, so I found myself at large through the back, and past the barn before it collapsed.

After my panic no longer strangled me, and a whole day of hunger and cold, I crawled back.
The orange hues of war had vanished, and so had every last building in the village.
I didn't find my parents, I found charcoal.
We were collateral.

Where were you?

[Genesis]

In the weeks that would follow I'd learn that hel is not a place of blaze and scalding air.
My stomach's growl did not vanish for two full days, and the aridness of the wildfires left no succour for me to remedy it.
The thirst had become unbearable, and my fear of frostbite making me lose some of my fingers kept me from sound sleep.
Nay, hel isn't a molten tomb of raging death. It is a heartless, desolate, and gelid waste.

On my third day, when my traveling speed had reduced to a crawl, and my legs could seldom support me, I came across them.

Knights, they seemed. Their mantles were white with dashes of onyx, and their steeds marched on with vigor, heading toward the next string of demonic wildfires.
Their quickening was such that I was nearly caught beneath their hooves, only saved by a brusque leap of one of their horses. 

None of these men turned to face my then-felled form, for the then-present crisis was more important than the one they cared not to reach earlier.
I was collateral.

The cold,
the helpless void in my stomach,

the mirthless pit of being trampled over by the men I thought I'd be rescued by...
I'll never remember that misery with anything but spite.

I watched them speed away, and onto another crisis to arrive late to.
And in those moments of self-pity, I could only ask twixt pressed teeth:
Where were you?

[Moloch]