To be Human by Cait

In a town called Gokheya, on the edge of a foreboding forest rumoured to be full of primeval beasts, one man sets in motion a plan which will alter the fate of a troubled country forever.

Set in the third-world towns and villages of The Old Country following its occupation by Mallogal’s Imperial army, our story centers around an unnamed Imperial Guard. The Old Country’s fundamentalist rebels may have been defeated for the second time by the overwhelming might and technological sophistication of the Imperial Army, but there is bad feeling on both sides; a sense of tension that our protagonist for some reason longs to ignite.

In a time when what side you are on means everything, our protagonist refuses to align himself and remains outsider to the simple farming folk of The Old Country with his manipulative charm and intelligence and, though he is an Guard, his narcissism and violence prevent him from ever truly cooperating with them and their strict rules.

But none of this really causes a problem, that is until the culmination of the plan he has been putting into place for the two years since becoming a Guard coincides with a brutal spate of murders around the town.

What side is good and what side is bad? And what role does this strangely neutral character play in the centre of it all. It is not as simple as it may at first appear.

He, too, is more complex than meets the eye. There is a mysterious woman that haunts his every thought and he seems to be connected to a tragic event that both the rebels and the Imperial Guard were involved in.

Is it revenge that he seeks, and, if yes, for who or what? He is the only one who knows the full story.

This story is one of adventure, violence and one man’s search for fulfillment in a world be sees as meaningless. The whole of the human race is his enemy: it remains to be seen if he’ll ever find allies. Within all of this turmoil, in the country and his own mind, will he be able to discover what it means to be human?