MxF They are here

[Cena]

They are here…

The pale light of the November sky shines over the trees of the surrounding town. The silence and tranquility of the small forest contrasts with the cruelty of war and the chaos of world events. Women are in the kitchens, covered in flour and cement, trying to hold the town together while the men are sent to the front. Children do not know laughter, they only know the crying and despair of their own mothers. The towns are partly destroyed, the air smells of burnt plaster and blood from the deaths of innocents. Fear, misery and frustration spread through the houses like a strong breeze... The breeze of a November morning.

She is a strong pacifist. She rebels against the government whenever she has the chance, she has so much passionate anger in her heart; she feels the flame in her chest growing bigger every day. She looks out into the streets, she sees the argent soldiers walking along the sidewalks and behind them the strong stench of hard alcohol wafts.How disgusting, she thinks.. But she has no time to think.. She has to go quickly to the main square, see who all returned from the war. They will need help, there is no one to take care of them.. And so she gets up, her long legs walking towards the fog... She doesn't know how far she is from the square, but in the background she hears women crying and blood on the ground. It must be close... She doesn't look ahead, she just watches the scene around her as wives and mothers throw themselves into the arms of their husbands. Some are missing their arms, legs, eyes.. It looks terrible, she feels melancholy in her chest... but from this observation she is suddenly interrupted by a feeling of the unexpected... Damn it, she thinks and looks up... She doesn't recognize him, but from the uniform and the dead look in his eyes she knows that he was a participant in the war..

 

[Tamarack]

CAPTAIN ELIAS VEYNE
"They call me a hero. That's the worst part."
The Character Pitch: A decorated officer hollowed out by war, Elias is a ghost in a uniform who once believed in honor (Noble birth, estate destroyed). Now he moves through the ruins of his own morality, clinging to whiskey and unsent letters as his last tether to humanity. When ordered to burn another village, he faces a choice: follow orders like a good soldier, or finally listen to the dying whisper of the boy he used to be.

Tragic Flaw: He still believes he's the villain of this story.
Secret Heart: Carries a pressed wildflower in his journal - the last thing his mother gave him.
Defining Conflict: The war needs monsters... but what if he's tired of wearing the mask?

In Three Words: Guilt. Fire. Fragility.

NARRATIVE BACKGROUND
Elias Theron Veyne was not born for war. He was born for light.
His earliest memories are of barley fields rippling in the wind, his mother's laughter drifting like pollen through the windows, the weight of history books on his lap as his father read from worn pages by the fire. His family estate—Veyne Hall—sat nestled in a modest stretch of noble land, their rank just high enough to be respected, never influential. His father, a viscount's second cousin, served as a local magistrate and historian; his mother cataloged plants for the university in Halvryn.
They were minor nobles, yes—but proud of what they had built. Elias was meant for books. For medicine, or maybe the study of waterworks and levers, dreaming of irrigation systems to end famine, of aqueducts to bring life to dry villages. He wanted to make things better, not bleed for them.
At fifteen, he fell in love with a baker's daughter—warm hands, honey voice, dusted in flour and joy. He wrote her poetry. Terrible stuff. He kept the pages under his mattress and her memory tucked in the corners of his better self.
But the Veynes were a military family in a kingdom that remembered every war like scripture. His great-aunt was a famed longbow captain. His uncle died a hero with a sword broken in his chest. When the Academy's seal came embossed on his birthday letter, his mother wept. His father poured two glasses of plum brandy.
"You don't have to go," he said.
"I know," Elias lied, and drank.

---

The Academy Carved Away the Boy
The war academy was not a place for idealists. The cane beat that out of them fast. Elias learned quickly—how to answer without speaking, how to lie without blinking. He memorized tactics, soaked in formation science, and read ancient manuals on siegecraft like scripture. But he also learned to fight dirty. A knee to the groin. A knife in the kidney. Fast, silent, final.
He still wrote the girl. Her letters stopped. He didn't blame her.

---

The Night Before Deployment
The last peace he ever knew was standing beneath the old oak at Veyne Hall, with his grandfather—who had served in the Iron Rebellion—pressing a rusted dog tag into his palm.
"They'll ask you to be proud," the old man said. "You do what you must. But don't give them your soul."
A week later, the first shell crater took his company. Three survivors. He never saw the oak again.

---

The Fall of Veyne Hall
The war marched past the border and ate the countryside like wildfire. Veyne Hall was burned in a punitive raid after Elias was implicated in a rogue maneuver that flanked the enemy without sanction. Some say the nobles were collaborators. Others say it was revenge. He doesn't speak of it. The fields are gone. His father died in the library, his mother in the greenhouse. The family name survives only on military rosters.

---

Now
He leads ghosts. Half his men are broken, the rest are patched together with string and spite. He drinks. He writes letters he'll never send. He avoids mirrors. He's still brilliant—when he cares to be—and dangerous always. But his soul is thin and fraying. He is the war's unwanted child. Its last true believer, and its greatest regret.
They call him "Butcher" in whispers. He doesn't correct them.

---

Writing Sample: Return to the Square
Mud clung to their boots like memory. Its weight made each step hard, causing some of the men, boys really, to stumble. They carried the smell of powder, of sweat, blood, and death.

The sound of steel-shod hooves echoed through the stone square, but it wasn't the horses the townsfolk looked at. It was the faces. What was left of them. Captain Veyne dismounted stiffly, a twitch tugging the corner of one eyelid as the cold bit through his bones. His cloak reeked of sulfur, smoke, and wet dog.

Behind him trudged Corporal Teff, missing an eye and most of a hand. The boy still cracked jokes. Then came Holvar, gut bound tight with wool bandages and breath rattling like dry parchment. Sergeant Alwin limped up last, dragging one foot and smiling like he was grateful to be anywhere at all. Then the rest of the troops stumbled behind.
No cheers met them. Only the sharp sob of a woman as she recognized what remained of her brother.

Veyne stepped forward. His hair hung in wet ropes over his collar. His saber was tied shut in its scabbard—no more orders to give.
He didn't look for familiar faces. He knew better.

Instead, he watched the crowd for eyes that flinched. Those who saw him and turned away. He believed they could see the monster that he had become.
Good, he thought. You should.
Stories of what he and his men had done in the war would eventually be told. War had a way of taking good men and bringing out the worst in them.
A child laughed nearby—short, high, like glass shattering in his ear. He flinched and bit the inside of his cheek until it bled.
One of the soldiers leaned in. "Captain?"
Veyne blinked. "Help the wounded. And send for whatever passes for a healer here."
"And you?"
He looked toward the square's edge, where the fog crept in like smoke.
"I'll find whiskey."
And he did. He always did.