Stories from the India War

For centuries, as Britain's assorted ministries extended their influence throughout the world, colony by colony, the Ministry of Magic followed in the shadows, exerting the powers allotted to it by treaty and managing the populations of wizards which came under its influence. And centuries later, as those few mugglish souls who knew of the Ministry's promises died and (most fortuitously) failed to pass on their knowledge, the wizarding world of Britain slipped away from the control of the Empire, breaking old treaties made with a power which now no longer remembered they'd been made. The Ministry of Magic made itself known to its superiors with every succession, of course, but as equals, a shadow government taking care of things better left unmentioned, living alongside but not subject to the laws of the Queen.

But one day, the Americans rebelled, and the wizards there set up the old Kingdom of Fourteen. It was a strange land, a hard land, with a warped kind of magic, and the Ministry of Magic never reclaimed those lands. It had a hard enough time retaining what was left. "No. Not again," they said. "Never again." Slowly Britain crumbled, letting its colonies slip away, but the Ministry of Magic stood its ground, from Canada and Australia to Pakistan and Somalia.

And India.

"Pax Britannica!" was the cry, when the accidental death of a government figure turned riots into small battles, and the death of a child in the crossfire lit a lying powder keg and exploded into war. "Empire still stands," they said, "and we cannot allow it to crumble. We need you."

So Alex went, and he fought, and now they tell him that the war's over and that he can return home.

He covered in tattoos, just like every other Veteran what came back from that little tafri people so affectionately refer to as the "India War." Those tattoos tell a story better about what happened than he could. Here the vine winding its way up his left arm, thirteen thorns, one for every man or woman what died under his command. These spots of red here mark where he was splattered by the blood of his friend, when the other man was blown apart by a blast of energy what somehow slipped through their shields.

On his cheek, the serial number branded onto his flesh by the Marathas when he was captured three years into the war, thrown into the hell camps so they could draw out the process of his death and tap the energy from it. There on his back he got a little black chicken-scratch mark for every day he spent there.

All seven-hundred-twenty of them.

Come home?

Like hell.

This int home. He came from here, sure, 'fore he spent eleven years minus the hell camps killing so he wouldn't be killed. But this int home. They think he don't know how they lookit him? Fear - Awe - Disgust - Worship. Mebbe most worship the ground what the Veterans walk on. He don't care for the whole lot of them chamchas. He don't know them, they most certainly don't know him.

Here what he know: He fought, bled, almost died for them, they sit on their asses all day, they don't know what they near lost.

Was another world, where all the old rules dint apply anymore, on account of age-old defenses holding up too well against age-old offenses. So it's new strategies, spells designed to heal or fix or just plain clean the house, set to a new purpose, to killing people as bad as possible, and old techniques dredged up, bad things, dark things, almost like magic nukes, things that played games with the natural laws, things shoulda never have existed. How many people died just because all that hagga was interacting in ways it never was meant to, and nobody could have figured that this minor spell and that one caused the body to break down in horrendous ways. Mutating spells, dammit. Hell wasn't all in the camps.

He dint enter hell only when he got thrown in the camps, and he dint leave it when they finally found the one he was in and got him and his men out.

Who knows what he done and what been done to him? Wasn't there when the Marathas went through the Imbued sections of Delhi, during those final fourteen days, and raped and butchered every soul there, just because they supported the Britishers. Anyone who was there, they dead, Mistah Kurtz, if they weren't slaughtering. But he saw the same madness on his own side in those last few days.

He walks down the street, sometimes they ask him, ask him if he was one of the Seven Masked Men. He tells everyone the same thing, that if he wasn't one of them, was only because he wasn't in on their plans.

You can be thrown in prison just for saying you have photos of what the Marathas did to those three Britishers, that day that started the countdown on the final fourteen. Alex saw. There's not a Veteran alive who hasn't. Just that it was only the Seven what actually snapped that day, and if they marched right into Dacoit Gull, and killed every last bastard's son who wasn't torn to pieces already and blew the whole place so down that there was barely dust...

Those were the heroes, the only ones who retrieved those dead boys, and what happened, they had to do, and they sent a message, that you don't do that to Britishers and put them up for display like pieces of meat.

Now, what do the chamchas know? How do they relate? They don't know the cant, they don't know the signs, the marks, the way of living, the thing that makes a Britisher Veteran something more than a British wizard.

So when a kid comes up to him and asks him if he'd go and fight again, Alex thinks right carefully. One day, it might be the kid what makes the first decision.

"A thing's worth doing, anuj, it's worth doing as often as needs doing. Pax Britannica."

The sun can never set on the Ministry of Magic. Dint matter if the words were true. But you got to have something more important than you, and out of everything in the world, there are worse things to kill, suffer, and die for.