The darkest scene I’ve written shows what war propaganda tries to hide
It’s easy to buy into war propaganda and cheer on vicious military strikes when they’re happening halfway across the globe.
Astray Mage takes a deep dive into a cataclysmic event that shook the nation two-to-three years before the book’s events.
I launched Astray Mage one week ago, just days after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran under Donald Trump—and the neocon justifications started pouring in. I’m paraphrasing the following excuses:
- Iran could have held the world hostage
- They were close to building a nuclear weapon
- We’ve been at war with them for 47 years
- We’re fulfilling biblical prophecy—from some religious nationalist commentators
It’s literally gotten to the point to where these people and their followers have become dangerous cultists. So much so that it’s not unfair to put them into the same league as other dangerous political factions that have wreaked mayhem in the last century.
The only difference is that you couldn’t put it past these people to launch a nuclear weapon, celebrate the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands, and the displacement of millions—for their own long line of excuses:
- Peace through force
- Ending the Middle East conflict
- Jesus returning
- The list goes on…
The people making these claims are unhinged. Plain and simple. And you know me too well these days—every book I write paints political cultists in a grim light regardless of what color their jersey is. That means the other extreme—woke cultural Marxists—are every bit as bad, but in their own way.
So, when I penned Astray Mage, what’d I do? I wrote a scene that I almost wish I hadn’t written.
Kaija’s darkest moment from Astray Mage’s ARC
Kaija’s eyes snapped open. A presence loomed over her. One that made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand. Intuition told her this presence, whatever it was, situated itself between hers and Lilja’s beds.
But when she turned to face this entity, Kaija’s head refused to cooperate. No matter how hard she concentrated or tried, neither her head nor any part of her body would move.
Sleep paralysis. It had to be.
“Oh, don’t worry, Kaija,” came the high-pitched voice of a young girl. “You’re perfectly fine.”
Knowing it wasn’t worth opening her mouth to respond, Kaija let her thoughts go to work.
Are you the reason I can’t move?
“I am.”
Were you the same one who attacked me at that party?
“I wouldn’t say attack.”
Sure felt like one.
“Well, you’re the only one I could talk to about what happened to me.”
Can you tell me so I can help you?
“Oh, I think you already know the answer to that.”
Then confirm it.
“Why don’t I show you?”
Show me?
“Sweet dreams, Kaija.”
An ensuing blast tore so much at Kaija’s ears that she was sure it ruptured her eardrums. Kaija screamed as a flash pierced her eyes; one that was so blinding, she knew there wasn’t enough technology or rune magic in the blood of the most powerful healer that would let her see again.
But she needn’t have worried about it, because red-hot knives penetrated every micrometer of her body, and ensuing screams tore her vocal cords so much that a thick, dark red substance oozed from her mouth.
The earth quaked, and panicked, borderline-insane yells of the children she attended school with that morning invaded what was left of her hearing. Distant gurgling, sickening crunching, and thumping told Kaija her classmates succumbed to whatever it was that knocked down their school.
And then…nothing. Nothing but bliss as a white light encompassed her. Or, at least it tried to. But Kaija wouldn’t go. No. Not after she caught a glimpse of the wreckage around her that the light’s blinding rays wouldn’t, or couldn’t, cover.
In the distance stood the castle. Linna Yliopisto. A place where she’d one day learn to fully embrace and enhance her secret Water Mage ability. Her eyes traveled to the ramparts, one where a blonde-haired girl liked to sit and gaze into the city.
But the girl wasn’t there. Not that she’d expect her so early in the day. No, the girl always came at twilight.
She knew this because she loved looking at the castle with the binoculars Mom and Dad bought her for her birthday, dreaming about the day she’d cross the threshold, step into the castle, and meet that girl.
Instead, a man in a regal-looking overcoat stood with a painted smirk on his face. A blonde woman who looked like an older version of the girl and a brown-haired girl flanked him. She turned to face what remained of the school, but wow, what a mistake. If she could, she’d vomit her breakfast at the sight before her.
Wreckage unlike anything she ever witnessed scattered about this classroom’s linoleum floor. Miss Kekkalainen, who sat behind the big, green desk moments ago with a welcoming smile, had gone. Instead, a blackened, charred skeleton wearing rags that used to be Miss Kekkalainen’s dress sat in its place, slumped over the desktop computer.
At her feet lay her best friend, Roope. Or, what was Roope. Now, nothing but shards of bone and dust rested under the girl’s hot pink dress. A dress that was torn, tattered, and blackened.
She looked about the room. What was left of her classmates and the clothes they wore to school scattered about. They looked so unrecognizable that, if someone walked in right now, they would have never known that these smoking fragments of bones used to be kids. Kids who were full of life until that one event took those lives away before they had really begun.
Her eyes caught another body. One every bit as wrecked as her classmates’. It no longer had dark hair that its mother tied into braids that morning, and it never knew that same mother held her hand when she entered school that day, ready to be the first one to volunteer for show and tell.
The broken, battered body that neither knew nor cared about how excited its inhabitant was for school today…to present her favorite stuffed bear to the class and talk about how much it meant…was hers…
Gasping, Kaija sat up as cold sweat poured down her face. The images in her dream flashed before her like a photo montage, one growing more disturbing than the other, until that final dose of realization sank in and she stared at her own corpse.
No, the dead girl wasn’t her. She saw the dream through that dead girl’s eyes. Did this spirit possess her or something?
“Like I said, Kaija,” came that same girl’s voice from the middle of the room. “I know and am okay showing and telling you about what happened to me. But the one responsible for this never got in trouble because the only ones who know the truth can’t reveal it.”
Now that she could move, Kaija whipped around, only to glimpse a dark-haired girl with fair skin vanishing.
War propaganda makes it easy to “celebrate” when you see people as objects
A girls’ school was one of the first places struck when Trump played a role in green-lighting the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. But did that stop the neocon cultists from justifying and even celebrating the attacks?
Regardless of which subcult they’re in—the “Jesus is coming to save the world” subcult, the “Iran’s regime sucks so we need to free the people by all means necessary” subcult, or something else entirely, the common denominator is that justification and celebration—without any regard of what people halfway around the world are going through.
Does Iran’s regime suck and should it be toppled? Absolutely. But as I’ve implied before—hasn’t America done enough damage to that country already? Damage that indirectly led to the current oppressive regime taking power? They need to stay out of this.
Another common denominator is that they see people halfway around the world as objects. They can’t feel those people’s pain, so why bother expressing even remote sympathy? Or so they think. They’ll claim, “We’re fighting to free them. They should be grateful. Some are grateful.” All the usual B.S.
Tell that to the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, and the Libyans, to name a few. But until these necons start seeing reason, they’re going to be perfectly fine with bombing children as collateral damage.
So if that scene above unsettled you, at least you get it.
In Astray Mage, Kaija uncovers the truth behind the massacre — and the powerful forces determined to submerge it.
You can read Astray Mage and its predecessor Cursed Mage today at The Rebel Lore Vault, where readers—not algorithms—decide what stories survive.
A version of this article first appeared on The Rogue Scribe.
