War Without Reason : The Second Battle

Prologue

Their sweat glistened under the midnight moonlight. The silence of the still night was broken only by their scratches and pants.

Phil gasped, stretching his back. Cracks were heard. "This is harder when you're on all fours." he said.

"Just keep going. This is what they wanted. This is what they needed us to do." Abaddos said and got back to work.

"They who? I've been with you for months. You haven't talked to anyone else, well not in a way they could understand." said Kim from a little further away.

"You aren't there when I sleep. He's shown me things... Leto. True things. We just need to do this for now. When the right time arrives, and it soon will - they will join us in the sun. But all that depends on us doing this one job. We need to keep digging!" Abaddos barked at them. Phil and Kim could only look at each other, shrug and get back to work.

There could be some truth to what he's saying, Kim thought about Abaddos. Well, most of his crazy ideas were shared with us right after he had woken up. The more that seemed to happen, the madder he seemed to be getting. Poor Mike was the first victim to that madness.

I wish my sleep would accomplish something. Then I could just sleep forever. Kim continued thinking as he worked.

As signs of dawn approached and the suns peaked over the mounds of dug up mud, the trio started running on their way back to camp.

"Just how long do we be to live like this?" asked Phil, who was the most disappointed with their fairly recent predicament. He was never a hard working type. He was exhausted and the words slipped through his lips. "My buddies don't treat me like they used to. They can't even understand me. Everything's different." he complained.

Abaddos, the bigger and meaner one of the three turned around and came up in front of him, stopping him in his tracks.

"This is our life now. Leto has given us this blessing and you are whining about it?" he shouted, his pointy face very close to Phil's. Kim stood silently, his feet firmly planted in the ground and digging deeper as he got more and more tense.

Shouldn't have said that. Oh you know better than that, Phil! Exactly how we lost Mike. Kim thought.

"No, I'm... I'm sorry. You're right. Leto leads our way." Phil said, his eye twitching. He didn't even seem to breath, as if that would offend Abaddos.

Ah, now that's the right thing to say. It was something that they heard Abaddos telling himself from time to time.

"That's right," Abaddos said nodding. "Until then, you keep up the act during daytime. Yes?"

"Yes." Phil said without a second's thought. Abaddos turned to Kim.

"Yes?! " he barked like he usually did.

"Yes!" Kim replied just as quick.

Without another word, Abaddos turned and continued running. Phil finally breathed and sighed with relief. He nodded slightly looking at Kim's concerned look as if to tell him he was okay.

As the suns came up slowly, they ran back to their camp - Abaddos a few feet before them as he was also the fastest of them.