Bom Johoon, hero of Faarie

There was just a letter, hastily written and thrown on the ground along with his shiny uniform. He had torn his braids off, and his medals had tarnished in the crackling fire.

He was found on his bed, on his knees, almost naked, in the centre of a circle of shiny crimson. There he stood, in a stance neither disgacious nor comfortable, his right hand still laying on the gold-lined handle of his sword. It was a honorary gift of the warlord for his career.

I am to leave now

There's only so much shame a man can handle. Maybe they won't understand, maybe they can't understand. My whole life, my star, it was all a lie. I am not their hero. I didn't save them, I couldn't save them. I am a coward, I had no interest in saving Faarie, the city was doomed anyway, when the magissen came from Espliin. I should have covered everyone's retreat, faced the ennemy, fought to the last. I wasn't even in the front lines.

I had never been a good fighter. My rank of commander was never earned. There's no merit in having friends in the higher ranks. I had never been a good leader. I hid my fears behind empty words of "pride", and "faith in our strength", and my soldiers, those blind fools, they just launched forward before me. I never drew blood, I cowered behind my lines to the end.

With rank and decorations came fame and rewards. Not for my soldiers, the true, deserving men, but for their cowardly appointed commander. My medals are all ugly reminder of my undeserving self. I am a fraud, only here at the end to steal the glory of others.

The people, they could have stayed hidden outside of the city, the birds had no interest in all these villages. Farmers, commonners, they would all have been safe. But I thought they would slower the birds' destruction in the city, I used them as a meat shield while I went to flee with a few lucky citizen. Getting everyone behind the walls was not just a strategic error, it was a death sentence. 

And yet, they all believe in my glory, they still chant the "proud defence of the walls", the "last stand in the palace", they didn't see how I let my soldiers, and the people, be slaughtered, sliced, crushed, blood spilled on the walls. History isn't written by the dead.

A few hundred survivors is no miracle, it's no "great deed" from a man who should have let them all be safe from the start. These lucky, selfish basterds, who jumped on their boats with their belogings the minute the walls were breached, selfish like me, they are not worse than me, pretending to have covered their escape, while the people's agony filled the night. I can still hear them when I close my eyes, above all this praise I receive.

Kalsh, even my exit is a cowardice. I fear the pain now, I fear that I can't make the move.

I fear that Paal won't welcome me, I can't face my lies anymore.

Yet they are carving statues of me.

Oh how ironic must times be, when even our heroes fade into the grim truth, the abyss of death will leave nothing to cheer on. As if they needed yet another scandal, yet another falling lie. Our heroes are nothing but myths, forged by design to fill the voids of our catastrophic loss. What is left of the great cities? Nothing. Their wealth, their symbols, their identities, just old, fading memories that will get lost in the misery of future generations. Not even their heroes are left. 

So what is best to do, if we wish to preserve whatever is salvageable from the past? When the truth tears apart what holds us together, perhaps it's better to keep the lie alive. If this letter gets published, if we give it to the people, what will happen to their remnants of identity and unity? No, better keep it away, because it is not the facts, it's the myths that will carry on to future generations. It's not who he was, it's what we believed he was, that's what is important. 

Throw that letter in the fire, today they mount his statue.

Bom Johoon had been viewed as a hero after he brought survivors from the destruction of Faarie in 777.II. His forces had been quickly overwhelmed by the powerful forces of angry magissen, who in their bloodlust had performed massacres in several big human cities already.

Yet, he was praised for the heroic deed of simply surviving. The victims of war needed a symbol, a common ground to which they could relate and look to, because it was their only beacon of hope in the misery of having lost everything. 

His suicide was disguised as an accident by common accord of the governance and police.