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you’d think it’d be a given, that there are ghosts who haunt the battlefields. before, during, after, there’s always something there. not quite people, not quite monsters. some communities of deserters swear by it, something that will linger around after a fight. some say that whatever it was scared them so bad that fighting just stopped being worth it. whatever it was, it made them run. others say the opposite, that the ghosts of the battlefields protected them. kept them alive, and told them to keep on living.
but all of them can tell you they’re more than just stories.
and well... what is a ghost, anyway?
exhibit a. it’s the malaise, the misery that lingers after a fight. the guilt that weighs you down when you see dead enemies and allies alike. when you see houses burning and civilians screaming and children left orphaned hiding under their beds. for those at the top, it’s an exchange of land. for those living in it, it’s nothing but hell. will the new regime truly bless them? no. never. if only they had been left to live on their own. but you interfered. and now chaos reigns in your wake. a ghost is the feeling of being dragged down with every step knowing no good can ever come from what you’ve done. you can’t see it, but it haunts you. it tells you to retire, to quit, to run. it tells you to stop. it tells you that there’s nothing you can do now to redeem yourself. what else can you do but listen?
exhibit b. it’s truly the dead taken form. spirits which cry out for their remembrance, for the graves that won’t be dug. it’s the corpses littering the streets that will never again be citizens of any nation—sacrifices in a war never won. they warn of futility, of hope, of the past and the future. there’s nothing left to grieve, and yet there must still be something. even when gone from the memories of those dearest to them, they yearn still to be missed. the negative space that remains is a memory of what’s lost in itself. it’s there that the dead remain as ghosts, haunting one with what used to be and what could have been if only they’d just stayed alive.
exhibit c. it’s the names recorded in books, legacies remembered only by the margins on which they’re written. you know, it’s said there’s a book that records everything. every detail of every piece of history. every unnamed soldier, every motherless child, every childless mother. they call it the akashic records. but no one’s ever seen it, of course. it’s only the manmade chronicle of time which lingers, words twisted by memory and meaning. propaganda and purpose. no one will remember you past the words put on paper—what will you have them say? what will you let them say about you, when the deeds are done and the night falls again? is it a mercy to be written out of history, forgotten to the future? or is it misery to have nothing left behind? no one will be able to change it, once the story’s told. try to get it told right, please, for all their sakes.
exhibit d. it’s the crystals which linger, memories of pure will left to guide the future. people who are no longer people, no longer human, but remain amongst the crowd as if they still belong. they’re mourned once, for their lost humanity (how long until they forget us too?), and then again, upon completing their foci. legends of the past brought forth to the present, but what sacrifices beyond death have they made for their people? is it worth being remembered, if there’s so little left to remember?
exhibit e. it’s those who are bound to no nation. warriors who have broken the shackles of patriotism for their own fiendish desire for destruction. they know nothing else but to continue on, searching for their next battle. and who can blame them, for having been raised in a world that asks one for nothing but the will to fight. ask, then, where else they could have gone but back into the fray? coming and passing through war like a whirlwind, with no force of nature to stop them. one could argue them to be the opposite, truly, of the l’cie who guide the world by the crystals’ light: those who shape their world by war and death of their own desire.
exhibit f. it’s the cycle renewed. tempus finis descends time and time again. gala refuses to cease his efforts, as does the good doctor. how many times must it be watched, recorded by children too young to know anything other than the millennia they’ve survived on the outskirts of time and space. they were our friends too, you know, once upon a time. for you, wouldn’t you call them family? does it hurt, to watch them die over and over and over again. forced to live each life with ever so slight of an adjustment only to falter at the end. how many times have we watched this. how many more times must we watch this. and yet, we have no will to do anything else. isn’t it fun? isn’t it fun?
tell me, then, where one can find etro’s gate among the undead. passage onto a realm beyond our own, yet it exists still superimposed upon us. that we might reach out and touch it and know it and pray we aren’t left to experience it. reaching out with arms bearing the power of agito, one can only find it through death. and so thus, ghosts are created ad infinitum, until there are enough that the realm of the dead overflows with them.