I distinctly remember coming into existence, in the beginning there was nothing just blackness.

I remember thinking that`s all very well but how and why?

After a few more minutes, hours or perhaps even months I started to become aware of my surroundings.

I was in a dark spacious building made of wood and mud, furnished with animal furs, there were only a couple of tiny windows to high for me to reach.

There were a couple of shadowy individuals who came and went now and then, I suppose they must have been my parents.

For most of that time I remained more or less stationary occasionally moving aimlessly about inside the house, for how long I can only guess because I had yet to develop any real concept of time (or boredom).

Although I don`t think we had to eat, we still needed water.

One day I was sent out of the house with a bucket to fetch some water from the well.

This was a brand new experience for me, I had never been outside before.

The sky was sort of blue but the village seemed to have a faint white glow of its own.

I followed the other villagers to the well and someone filled my bucket up for me I heard him say that soon it would be time to for me to join the army.

This happened a couple more times until what I can only assume to be my mother told me that it was time for me to leave home and go to war.

She took me down to a recruiting office, there I was lined up with the other new recruits then we were marched into a big metal box that took off and landed at the barracks.

As the mere fact of being alive was new to me I took everything in my stride.

After some fitness training we were each given a sort of crossbow and were taken to the shooting range.

We took turns to shoot at various targets, I was teased mercilessly by both the recruits and the instructors because I was a terrible shot.

When we were not training we were left inside our dormitory, it consisted of an entrance hall with abstract wooden carvings on the walls for hanging our uniforms, sleeping quarters with quadruple decker bunk beds (rarely used as we had little need for sleep) and a locker room where we kept our crossbows and armour.

The door was not locked but if we ever left without permission we all knew we would most likely be shot or worse.

Some of the others used their uncanny aim to throw stones at me often from the very other side of the barracks.

When I tried throwing them back I would either miss and be mocked about how bad my aim was or I would hit someone or something else and then I would get beaten up, or worse I would actually hit the culprit who would get furiously angry and he and his friends would all set upon me at once and beat me to an inch of my life, then maybe I would get taken to the sick quarters for a few days and admonished for being stupid enough to get injured.

Fortunately though I did not feel pain back then.

Even when I tried not reacting at all I would get bullied even more for being a wimp.

We were constantly training, some times shooting, sometimes sword fighting sometimes boxing, sometimes running (I was no use at any of them) and we were always being told "Don`t think you are any better that anyone else because you are not, even if you were any better than anyone else (which you are not) then being proud about it instantly makes you worse" and if we seemed not proud at all "Don`t even be proud of being humble because that is the worst sort of pride, you might think you are not proud but deep down I know you are, you worm. "

But gradually I started to improve and was bullied less of the time and after a while we were told we were going to war...

We were put aboard another metal box which took us to a red cold dark desert our commander told us that we were going to meet another regiment who would take us to a secret camp.

The only problem was it turned out that the regiment had been ambushed and the camp had been captured.

We were told that there was only enough fuel to take a few people back so we would have to fend for ourselves until they returned with enough fuel to pick us all up.

I asked how long that would take.

After a while of the pilot talking on his radio I was told it would take fifty years.

We were all herded out into the desert, no sooner had I stepped out then an alarm went off, a craft similar to ours appeared on the horizon just this one was bigger, faster and generally angrier, the last of our troop were unceremoniously kicked out and the box took off, with the enemy one in pursuit.

My first thoughts were "we can`t hang around here for fifty years there must be some way out of this godforsaken place."

Unfortunately I never got the chance to find out because we were in the middle of enemy territory and the closer we got to civilisation the more enemy troops we would find.

At first there must have been about six hundred of us, then after a year there was three hundred then two hundred, then only one hundred after a decade, fifty after twenty years, twenty after thirty years.

fortunately after thirty years the enemy started to thin out and kept their distance more and the twenty of us that remained all somehow made it.

We all collapsed when at last we were picked up because we had not allowed ourselves any sleep because of the danger.

We were woken up when we landed and marched to our dormitories without having a chance to rest and told to put on our best uniforms because we were going to see the king.

There must have been thousands of us all lead through the dreary grey run down corridors corridors of the barracks into a huge magnificent courtroom made out of the strangest stone, timber and elaborately crafted gold work, all beset by jewels, sitting on high platforms we saw noblemen, sneering and scowling at as as if to say You are nothing you don`t belong in great places such as this, just who do you think you are?

We hardly noticed any of this because our attention was drawn to the king...

He was giant, bigger than anything we had ever seen.

He his body emitted pure blue light that dimmed everything else.

He sat on a golden throne, he was dressed in hundreds of different furs down to his feet, he wore fantastic gold and pearl necklaces and earrings, he wore bracelets and rings, he held an orb in his left hand and a great mace in his right.

He had a bushy ginger beard and long curly ginger hair but his face was covered by an evil looking rusted iron mask (with as far as I could see no holes for seeing or breathing) beset by an even more evil looking pointed Iron crown.

I can`t really remember what he said but the gist of it was that we were going to invade a place called The Earth...

We all marched out of the court and into our flying box things and left for Earth.

As soon as we landed we leaped out into the smoke and fire of the great battle that was raging.

The key was not to be seen, the people of earth had great rows of catapults and archers that were lethal if they had your location.

Because we were attacking at night they had some sort of flare that they would fire from their catapults and would light up a large area, if one of these landed near you the only thing to do was run.

Our troops job was to sneak around in the dark until we saw a good target all fire at once then run.

This went well for a while but then we collided with some others doing the same and in the confusion we were ambushed.

The last thing I knew was that someone jumped down from a tree behind me with an axe and cut my head off.

But this as it turned out was not anything like the end.

It must be admitted the fact my head was cut off these has perhaps dimmed and erased many of my memories and the countless years that have followed have done so even further means this is nothing like a complete account.