Endless Nights and Beautiful Songs

Chapter One:
To The Loved and Lost.

In a dank tavern, surrounded by smoke and laughter, a lone figure sits drinking quietly, waiting out the blizzard that rages outside. “Hey Cutie, what’s your name?”, the man looked up from his drink and into the eyes of a smiling barmaid. He sipped his drink again before replying sombrely “Aero”.
“Well Aero, we don’t get many of your type up here, ‘fact the last time I saw a Rakin was back during the war.”
Ah, there’s that old term again thought Aero, it didn’t matter how many times he heard it, to him it was still derogatory for his kind to be named after some scientist who found a corpse and named the ‘species’ after himself. Just because I look like some cross between a human and a wolf doesn’t mean I’m any less important does it? Aero was essentially a werewolf, but unlike the werewolves of folklore, Aero had no impulse to bite people (unless he was angry with them) and had no ability to change into a normal human being. Rakin was the name for the overall species, there were sub-groups, such as Aero’s own Wolfkin.
“Yea well, this place holds a lot of memories for me, ones I’ll never be able to forget” sighed Aero as he went back to his drink.
“What sort of memories?” asked the waitress.
“Bad ones.” Said Aero coldly. The Waitress looked at Aero with a hint of concern, took his empty cup and went to the bar, when she returned, she had brought a full mug of the strong liquor Aero had been drinking. “Well, round here we have a saying, ‘bad memories don’t deserve to be remembered’,” said the waitress as she placed the mug in front of Aero, “and, if you tell me what’s troubling you, I’ll forget that I just placed a drink here.”
Aero sighed to himself at the thought of bringing up his painful past; but, he was out of money, and he could use another drink just to take the edge off.
“Ok” said Areo. He raised his glass to his lips, then stopped, pulled it away and raised the glass in a toast “to the loved and lost” he said, before taking a deep gulp.
Another shell had just landed close to his platoons position, it was impossible that someone hadn’t been hit, Aero could hear the screams of the dying in his ear piece, their last agonised breaths being broadcast to the whole battle formation. The signal was cut blissfully short by Corporal Raglon, the platoon’s Comms Officer. After a few minutes of trying to decipher the orders he was hearing in his headset, orders barely audible over the constant rain of high explosive shells that rained down all around him, Raglon looked up with obvious shock.

Crouched low so as not to get hit by a lucky piece of stray shrapnel, Raglon ran to the Platoons command post, where Sergeant Brady stood waiting for any word from Command HQ. As Raglon entered the Command post, his ragged breaths hampered him from delivering the message to his leader. “Come Raglon, sit old friend, tell me what has happened” the Sergeant said in a mocking tone, obviously angered by his Corporals inability to talk. Raglon took a moment to regain his breath and build the courage to tell his commander what he had just heard.
“Sergeant, it’s bad, Command has decided this barrage has gone on long enough, they want someone to silence the guns sir…they want us…”
“They want us WHAT?” Shouted Brady, worried now, as the full impact of the orders began to sink in.
“They want us to attack the enemy positions…” said Raglon meekly; he knew these last few words would most likely spell death to him and the rest of his platoon. Raglon looked up to see the sergeant’s face had turned ghost white. “Sergeant?” he asked, concern growing in him for his leader.
“Tell the men…tell them I’ll lead, tell them I’ll keep them safe…” came the sergeant’s reply, as he gathered his equipment numbly, unable to look his second in the eyes. “Sarge… are you ok?” asked Raglon, fearing for his commander, a commander that had lead him through all manner of horrors. “yes… now please leave me.” Came the sodden reply.
A few minutes later, Aero was stood at the base of a ladder, one foot on the bottom rung, ready to climb. He and his platoon of fifty where about to advance on the enemy, he looked round and saw in the eyes of every trooper, human or Rakin the same look of fear and despair. They all had heard the news, and all knew that it was suicide to leave cover in the middle of a barrage, even if the shell didn’t hit you, you were likely to be hit by shrapnel. But, orders were orders, and they had no choice.
The call to prepare came down the line, every trooper in front of a ladder placed his right boot on the bottom rung and their hands on the sides, and behind them three more men prepared to take their places and climb up after them. Suddenly a whistle blast called out into the night, the signal to advance, with no time to even look around, Aero began to climb.
As Aero crested the lip of the trench what he saw sickened him. For miles in every direction, all Aero could see was death, the sky was a darkened shade of red, the clouds black and angry, the ground was littered with body parts and craters; new ones being crated every so often as a shell landed and raised the earth around it up into a great geyser of mud and gore.
Aero looked to his left and right and saw a line of hundreds of his fellow troopers charging forwards, as he looked his spirit was thrilled to be part of this, this could be it he thought, this could be the charge that breaks through and wins the war, the thought was shattered when Aero suddenly realised that men were falling all around him, he could see the tracer fire from enemy machinegun nests ripping through the men beside him, men he had known for what felt like ages dropped, bullets and shrapnel dragging them down into the mud. With no other option Aero charged on, he knew that it wouldn’t end like this, it couldn’t. Just as he saw the edge of the enemy trench, Aero tripped.

It felt like he had been asleep for hours, but it couldn’t be, there was a ringing in his ears that clouded the sounds of the battle that was raging just out of view. Aero found himself in a small crater, a puddle of blackened, oily water rippling at the bottom with each artillery strike. He noticed a trail of thicker liquid, seeping slowly towards the puddle, he shifted his darkening vision to see where it started, and was horrified to find it was starting with him. He knew something was wrong the moment he tried to move, his legs felt weak and his arms where numb. He looked down at his body and saw something that he knew in his mind shouldn’t be there, but for some reason, it was, and Aero’s mind couldn’t work out why. As his vision slowly turned black, he was still trying to work out why there was a large piece of oddly shaped metal sticking out of his chest.
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This was the first story I wrote, please enjoy, there will be more chapters in the future, and i hope you enjoy them too. please rate and leave a comment, as i really want to know if you guys like it :D. This the first chapter of a possible 9 of this book. I will write more chapters and books as more ideas come.