| "Why have you destroyed us my son?" Jakob's mother asked. "Why have you become our enemy?" Jakob stared at his mother, confusion straining his features. Although he was just a boy when it happened, it was a memory he would never forget. His mother had come to him wearing the same flowing white gown hshe wore now, her cheeks wet with tears, and taken him to the cellar of their small village home. That was the last time he had seen her alive. She held him tightly that night and told him goodbye. "We will meet again in a better world my son." She told him, and had given him his father's sword. "Hold this sword forever Jakob. It will be the key to your past and your future someday. "She stood before him now as she had then. Except now she stood hovering in blackness before him, seemingly a ghost trapped in eternal darkness. Her kind gray eyes, that he used to look into as she sang him to sleep, seemed sad now. It was not the way he remembered her. Tears came unbidden to Jakob's eyes now as his gaze met hers. Suddenly the sadness was gone from her features. It was replaced by anger. Her gray eyes turned the color of ice. "Why!" she screamed. "Why have you done this to me!" Her wail pierced the very fabric of the place. Jakob cried freely now. He fell to his knees and covered his head to shield his ears from the echo his mother's screams. When the noise subsided, he lifted his head to a very different image of his mother. Her dress was blood soaked and tattered. She held a long pike in her hand. Her head was missing from her shoulders and was impaled upon the pike. It was the same pike it was on when the corporation had led him out of his hiding place and told him what happened. The Tre'baal had attacked his village for plunder and murder. Jakob had emerged to carnage that no young eyes should ever have to see. The first thing he had seen was his mothers kind face, twisted in an agonizing still life of death. It was forever etched in his mind. He had sworn on that day that he would some day revenge himself upon the Tre'baal. "I'm sorry." Jakob managed to whisper as he stared into his mother's face again. "Why!" The scream tore into his thoughts again, and his mother's body took up the pike in both hands. Jakob struggled to his feet. Just as he did the tip of the pike pierced his chest and reached his heart. | 
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