The Dissolution of a Civilization
"Chunk. Chunk. Chunk."
Step by measured step, the soldiers of Daehan advanced slowly, their boots striking the ground in unison — while on either side of them, countless corpses stretched into the distance.
"Sir, there's something wrong with these bodies. No decomposition at all."
"You don't mean—?"
The commander swallowed the words before they left his mouth, but the implication was clear: these people had died just moments before Daehan's arrival.
Why? For what purpose? What kind of people slaughter their own kin and pile them up like this?
By the time roughly a third of the force had filed into the city—
"THUD! KUGUGUNG!"
"Gah — what the hell!"
With a splintering crash, the city's entrance collapsed, timber and stone tumbling down to crush several soldiers beneath the rubble.
"Move! Clear the debris! The vanguard is in danger!"
Men scrambled frantically outside the gate, hauling wreckage aside and digging their comrades out.
Inside the city—
"FLASH"
"@$%@$^@"
"&(@$!$"
"AAAAGH!"
The Aztec warriors had been lying among the corpses, all but invisible — and now they rose as one and hurled themselves at the Daehan soldiers.
"Enemies in the bodies! Watch out!"
"It's an ambush!"
"BANG! BANG! THUNK!"
Gunshots mingled with the whistle of swinging axes as warriors leapt from the alley mouths, and the battle dissolved into a sprawling melee.
"FWIP! FWIP!"
"Ghk — what now?!"
Then came the Aztecs' trump card: ropes. They flung them out in great loops, snagging the soldiers' legs and dragging them down, tangling and binding them where they stood.
"CRACK"
"AAAAAH!"
One soldier was caught by so many ropes at once that he was hoisted clean off the ground — and the sickening sound of his body breaking echoed through the street.
"No! Cut the lines, now!"
"Ghk — what is this?!"
Others were simply hauled away by the ropes, vanishing into the crowd of Aztec warriors, and the casualties began to pile up.
"Forget it — just throw the Fist Potatoes!"
"Get a flame going, quick!"
Cutting the ropes one by one clearly wasn't going to be enough. The soldiers dug the grenades out of the crates they'd carried in with them.
Comrades might get hurt in the blast — but it had come to this, and Daehan was playing for keeps too.
"Damn it all. How am I supposed to strike a light in this mess?!"
Lighting a fuse in the middle of a brawl was easier said than done.
"New plan — one man lights, the rest of us protect him!"
"Everyone, form up!"
They clustered around the thrower, a solid ring of soldiers holding the line — and then something began slamming against their shields from every side.
"THUD-THUD, SCREEEECH"
"It's lit! Everyone, heads up!"
"Throw, now!"
One by one the fuses caught, and the bombs began arcing down into the mass of Aztec warriors. Being clubbed with iron was nothing new to them — they bled a little and shrugged it off. Flesh wounds meant nothing to men like these.
But among those warriors charging straight ahead, eyes only for the enemy before them, disaster was about to erupt.
"KUWAAAANG! BANG! KWAGWANG!"
"Gkkkaaaak…."
"KYAAAAK…."
"…."
"Krrrrk."
Those closest didn't even have time to scream. In such a dense press of bodies, the iron shards tore through two and three unarmored natives at a time before burying themselves in flesh. With each thunderous blast, dozens collapsed at once in heaping rows.
"Throw some into that building too!"
"Enemies on all sides — just throw them anywhere!"
There might have been comrades dragged off somewhere in there, but in this kind of situation, the odds of finding them alive were slim. The soldiers hesitated for a heartbeat, grenades in hand — then made up their minds and began lighting and lobbing whatever came to hand.
"KUGWAGWANG — rrrrrumble"
"AAAAAAH…."
"Hup!"
These were their homes, if you could call them that — mostly wood, with only the occasional stack of stone. It took no more than a Fist Potato to bring them down; nothing so extravagant as high explosives or dynamite was required.
And whatever drugs these people had taken, they weren't the highly refined concentrates of the modern era.
"AAAAAH…."
"!#$#!%"
Some of the warriors were beginning to break, terror seeping into their eyes. To them, this could only look like the wrath of the gods — massive detonations, men torn limb from limb and flung through the air. What courage could hold against that?
And yet they could not retreat. Behind them rolled an endless wave of warriors pushing ever forward, and the few who might have fled were far too few to stand against it.
"RRRRUMBLE"
Then the barricade choking the entrance was cleared away at last, and word spread: the Daehan soldiers who had been locked outside could finally come in.
"Let's go!"
"The way's open!"
"Some of you keep clearing the road!"
Two hundred men at the vanguard had struggled to hold the line — there was no chance the Aztecs could stand against the entire force now pouring in.
"THUNK! THUNK!"
"Hah!"
And this — this was combat at nose-to-nose range. At a distance like this, the axe finally came into its own. Practically an extension of your own arm.
"Wahaha! I'm Daehan's Twin Axes!"
Some swung an axe in each hand, splitting men open in alternating strokes.
Blood-soaked medieval men, fighting on and on. A modern man might well have lost his mind.
After a long, grinding melee, gunfire began to ring out once more.
"BANG! BANG!"
"They're running! Finish every last one of them!"
"Kill them!"
Bullets poured into the backs of the fleeing enemy.
"Sweep the area for survivors! There might be some!"
"Check carefully between the bodies!"
The fleeing enemy mattered, but so did their own men — the ones dragged off into the city depths. Somewhere in here, someone might still be praying for rescue.
"Check every house too! Anything you've already cleared — just blow it apart!"
"Move, move!"
Anyone taken by the ropes had most likely been hauled into one of the buildings. The alleys had spat out warriors without pause, so getting through them would have been nearly impossible.
The soldiers worked their way through the surrounding buildings and the heaps of corpses in the alleys.
"Survivor here! Get the Holy Water, fast!"
"On my way!"
Medic, would you call him? Bottles of Holy Water had a habit of shattering mid-battle, so they'd designated a man to hold back and wait in the rear — and now he came sprinting at the sound of his name. After all, if someone was calling for him, a life was hanging by a thread.
"Kkulk-kkulk."
He found a soldier sprawled on the ground, a blade buried in his neck, blood spreading beneath him.
"Quickly!"
Then a memory surfaced — something from his old medical training. Even with Holy Water, you had to stop the bleeding first, or the man would die. Fortunately, the blade was still in place; that was probably the only reason his comrade was still breathing.
"Good. Give me a hand! The moment I pull the blade, press down hard on the wound!"
"Won't he choke on his own blood?"
"Better bleeding out than dead! It's now or never!"
"Got it!"
In emergencies like this, the training had said, use the most concentrated Holy Water you have. He pulled the rearmost bottle from his belt.
"Ready!"
"Ready!"
He drew out a cloth and soaked it through, sparing nothing.
"SPURT"
The moment the blade came free, blood geysered upward — and he clapped the cloth over it, pressing down with all his weight.
"What are you doing?! Press down, now!"
"Uh — uhh!"
His companion had frozen, dazed by the sheer volume of blood. He shoved him into action and prayed for the wound to close. After a moment, the flow of blood began to slow. Was the man's breath simply ebbing away, or was the wound actually healing? Gently, he leaned his ear to the fallen soldier's nose.
"Shhhh…. shhhh…."
Faint — but unmistakably breathing.
"He's alive! Get him to the rear — and this time, careful with him!"
"Ah! Right!"
He swapped in a fresh cloth soaked with Holy Water, bound it tight against the wound, and hurried the man off toward the support units waiting outside the city.
And so, while one corner of Tenochtitlan hosted a desperate struggle to save a life, another hosted an equally desperate struggle to take them.
"BANG! KWAGWANG! BANG!"
At some point the soldiers had hauled cannons inside, and they were pounding the city into a wasteland.
"We have permission to level everything!"
Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital — built barely a century or two past, never very large to begin with — fell in the blink of an eye. The houses and buildings that had seemed so numerous were all smashed flat. In a single day, the heart of a nation had been reduced to ash and rubble.
"Is that the only thing left?"
"What kind of people decorate a building with skulls like that?"
"Gives me the chills…."
"Confirm it's clear and blow it up."
"My thoughts exactly."
Only the great altar at the center remained.
"Search the island, now! Round up every last one of them!"
The commanders surrounded the altar and began sweeping the island, herding together the natives who remained. The island wasn't large, so the search wrapped up before long.
What is there to be proud of, decorating a building with skulls and hanging them on every side? Those are people from other tribes they captured, aren't they?
I'm going to blow up their altar — and let them watch the last moments of their pathetic little god.
"The search is complete, sir."
"Let's go."
So the island wasn't all that big after all.
I considered wiping them out entirely, but I decided to grant one last mercy and ordered them captured instead.
And so I approached the altar of Tenochtitlan.
"How many people died here, do you think?"
"The skulls alone over there… I doubt anyone could count them all, sir…."
What is there to boast about — stacking skulls into towers, mounting them on wooden planks? I truly hate the sight of it. A relic of an entire civilization, and yet I feel no urge whatsoever to preserve it as a monument.
The prisoners were brought up before the altar. I stood above them, looking down at the captives, and said just one thing.
"This is the punishment your god delivers, because you have lived wickedly."
"!#!#$!%!!@#!$!$!"
A soldier who knew their tongue bellowed the translation at them, and a low, restless murmur rippled through their ranks.
"Is the fuse at the top?"
"Yes, sir. Just as you ordered."
"Good. Hand me a torch — I'll light it myself."
"Yes, sir…."
I took the torch from the soldier and flew up to the very peak of the altar.
"!#!#%!%"
"!!@#!%"
The prisoners grew even more frenzied. If it had been anyone else, at any lesser offense, I might have let it slide. But you people — you went too far.
"SSSSSK"
I wonder how long it'll burn?
...Why am I suddenly scared? I should get down from here.
"All right, everyone fall back!"
"What shall we do with the prisoners?"
"Someone has to watch this and carry the story back, no? Take them with us."
Give the detestable one more rice cake, as the saying goes — they've earned one last chance. And if they spread word of this and stop resisting, all the better.
But we kept walking, and walking. How far were the soldiers planning to go?
"Just how far are we going?"
"Far enough to be safe from the shrapnel, sir."
"Ah… right."
Of course — they packed it full of explosives, didn't they? Once you're at dynamite-grade yields, the fragments turn into a truly horrifying instrument of slaughter.
The altar really is enormous, isn't it? Even from this distance, it still looms.
"Should be about time…."
Never knowing exactly when it'll go is the fuse's one great flaw….
"KUGUGUGU-KWAKWANG!"
"Gah! That startled me!"
I'd been staring blankly when it went — and had they buried in an absurd amount of explosives? A colossal detonation roared out, and the altar began to heave.
First, the sacrificial platform at its peak.
Then, after a brief pause, the skull-decked pillars stacked through its middle.
"KUGUGUNG"
And then the base of the altar itself began to burst apart.
"KUGWAGWANG! KUGWANG!"
Even amid the collapsed wreckage, the charges kept going off in staggered succession, and the altar heaved and shuddered, grinding itself into powder.
"RRRRRSHHHHEEEAAAK"
"Shrapnel! Down!"
One fragment actually came sailing our way, and we had to duck.
"KUGUNG! KUNG!"
The explosives thundered on and on. I did tell them to reduce it to powder, but just how much did they pack in there?
"…."
"…."
"!#!#$!…."
The natives, too, seemed struck senseless by the spectacle, staring blankly at what remained of the altar.
Well, shock delivered. Time for the next step. I called the interpreter over once more.
"Tell them: all the lands around here now belong to us, and they are to depart far to the south. And tell them that if they keep up these customs of theirs, we will come back."
"Yes, sir!"
At the very least, there will be no more human sacrifice. What kind of god enjoys receiving that kind of offering? A lunatic? A psychopath, more like.
"#!@$!^!@#"
"@$%@#$"
"!@#!"
"…. !#!@#!"
Some of them seemed to be asking questions; others simply wept in their shock. We turned our backs on them all.
"Prepare to head home!"
"Yes, sir!"
The train station meant a long walk back, so the return would take a while — but soon I'd be home, able to rest easy for the first time in far too long.