Atop the Green Dome, the city's anchor point, 'numb' was the feeling that protected me. I had never really been the emotional type, and it wasnt due to some sad backstory... at least from what I can remember. I had never been heartbroken, or given a real reason to grieve, but sometimes it felt like one big illusion. I joked to myself in solitude about having a faulty or shrunken limbic brain, on the contrary theorising that my lack of sadness was a defence mechanism imposed by my subconscious. Whenever something went wrong, or hurt me inside, the memory would unconsciously get pushed to the far off regions of my brain, protecting my sanity. I could ponder this idea all day, but as I stand here watching the city I was tasked to protect, crumble to its knees, numb is the feeling that comforts me. I didn't like this robotic nature of mine, as it gave a sense of alienation, but it was completely out of my control.
"Tell me whats happening." I asked Gre'ce, also watching the annihilation of Baghdad.
"How familiar are you with that talisman you swing from your neck?" He replied.
"How familiar can I get? It holds souls to which I extract energy from, granting me power at the cost of my short term sanity. Or rather, the souls' nature rubs on mine, proportional to how much aura I extract. Or yin-yang energy if you will."
"Hulegu has completely released the talisman containing Genghis Khan's soul, unleashing the full might of its power."
"Completely released?" I enquired, hazily engrossed in the chaos surrounding us, rapidly closing in.
"On occasion, or in this case at will, one can release one hundred percent of their talismans' power temporarily, at the cost of being fully drowned by the souls' nature."
"So essentially, who we're up against now is different from the man before us earlier?"
"Correct." He replied.
A sense of evil soured my soul, something I had a natural distain for. The blank void my mind was staring into, turned into memories that didnt exist. Thoughts I hadn't actually experienced. Crying I could hear, followed by visions of fire and slaughter. Thoughts of the innocent souls I had befriended mere days ago, eradicated in the name of conquest. "The city before us had been alive for half a millennia, with each century containing its own set of characters, stories, and tragedies. It may as well have been all for nothing." I thought, as districts were being flattened by the second, and lives taken faster than anything I had ever conceived. If only I had the power... If only...
A bubbling sensation filled my imagination. My desire for power, to be some sort of hero, anything to preserve this point in history, was subconsciously tapping into my talisman. I may have been a new recruit, a rookie, but the power these souls contained were no joke.
"Lets do it now then. Release our talismans and stop this massacre" I said frantically.
"Have you lost your mind boy?"
"No, but if im being honest, the only thing I feel right now is the desire to act."
"I told you already, the war is over. You wanna release a god upon this battlefield? Go ahead and see how it affects the present we have to return to. Not that I'd even let you."
"Whats the worst that could happen?" I asked, foolishly.
"Once a soul is released and its goal is completed, it passes on into the afterlife. Its akin to suicide, and you will lose that power indefinitely." He replied.
"I don't car-"
"You don't care because you know no better. We didnt come here to save the day, we came here with strict petametres that we must follow."
"Slave mind."
"No, it is you who is being a slave to your desires." He stated.
He was right.
"Sorry."
"Don't deep it boy. But look, this is what we both signed up for."
I was so engrossed in my own mind that I didnt notice the countless blasts being thrown at us, blocked by a spiritual barrier surrounding the Green Dome we were standing on.
"Follow." He ordered, only to be stopped in his own tracks... stunned, fixated on something over in the distance.
"Why'd you stop?"
"No, its nothing." He responded.
"Uhh you sure? You look like you've just seen a ghost."
"Your name... Ma'koh you said it was?"
"Yeah, or Marcko." I responded. I never asked what that was all about, but I assume he was just re-living an old memory, possibly of someone he once knew. A fallen soldier perhaps. Sometimes I wish I had asked him more.