Disclaimer: I do not own FMA or any of the characters.

INTROITUS

Ishbal had once been a green land, filled with a people both pious and strong, at peace with itself and with Amestris. Ishbalans were in the Amestrian military, and the Amestrian military helped the Ishbalans.

Those days were no more. Ishbal was war-torn now, green fields burnt and houses shattered and broken; bits of rubble were used for cover against the better-equipped army. The conflict had escalated far, far beyond the scale of the initial incident. Someone's child, shot by accident by a soldier, and it had caused an uprising that Central ordered be quelled. And then it was war.

There are no words to describe the atrocities of war.

There are no words to convey the smells in the air- the stench of dead bodies, piling up too fast to be buried or taken away. The way everything always seemed burnt, through lingering smoke in the air, or the taste of gunpowder that clung to the back of the throat.

There are no words to convey the things you saw. The bodies. There were always bodies, laying on the ground at unnatural angles, missing limbs, in a pool of their own blood, limbs missing bodies, and puddles of blood. The entire land was soaked in it.

So many people had died, on both sides. So many that they were starting to pull ungraduated cadets out onto the field for support.

The war dragged on, and soldiers started to wonder when their days would come. When they would be ordered out into the streets of Ishbal for the last time, taken out by explosion, or knife, or gunshot, and never have to see the war again. When would they not hear the war, when would they not smell the war. They were beginning to dream about the war- sleep was no escape, and if they lived, they would dream war forever. They could tell. They wanted rest. Wished rest upon those who had died.

KYRIE

They go out into the field, and they kill. They kill as many people as they can, because every fighter they kill today is one less person who will try and kill them tomorrow. They come back and wonder who will ever forgive this.

They go out into bell towers of old churches, and they shoot, sending death from above, a earthly judgement from heaven. Orders said to eliminate all enemies. They come back and wonder why there is no mercy in the orders.

They stay in camp and unpackage the new shipments of materials, prepare the new bombs, and watch them explode in the field the next day, destroying another block of what used to be a town. They sit and watch the destruction they helped create, and hope that their own end will be more merciful.

SEQUENZ

DIES IRAE

And one day, the orders changed. President King Bradley had issued an order; this was an insurrection suppression no more. It was an annihilation campaign. Not just the fighters, not just the warrior priests, not just those who resisted- every single member of that race was to be wiped off the map. Women and children should be slaughtered wherever they were.

The soldiers had thought their jobs could not be more devastating.

And then they were told to pull back, because they were now the support units for the military's trump cards- those human weapons, the dogs the military let loose when the situation had to be solved quickly. State Alchemists.

The rumblings of what their alchemy could do echoed through the bones of all the soldiers; it seemed as though the very ground trembled. The Iron Blood Alchemist's cannonfire and weaponry terrified the soldiers assigned to his unit, and they came back at night with their ears ringing, glad to be on the same side as such power. The Silverhanded Alchemist, with his slights of hand, sending lethal bits of metal into anyone who dared cross him. His units stayed under cover, terrified he might catch them in flying shrapnel.

The Crimson. The Crimson stood a world apart, doing his part to destroy Ishbal with a cheerful smile on his face, literally making the world dance under his palms, exploding buildings, roads, and people with a blithe disregard for anything but the exhilaration of the sensation of his own power. And the stories that returned with his unit were horrifying- tales of a cold-hearted man who cared nothing for his men, using them as living shields.

And the Flame Alchemist. The Flame Alchemist's position was easily found no matter how far afield he was- the wall of fire before him was visible for miles. His unit said he was cold too- but disconnected, and made sure to not put them at risk. Fair, they thought. But so powerful- his alchemy reduced all that was in front of him to ash. He never misfired, and his section of Ishbal crumbled into charred wood and bone.

TUBA MIRIM

The campaign was recorded by someone, somehow. In the numbers of how many soldiers had died today, yesterday, last week, last month. In how many bullets had been used, how many throwing knives were replaced, how many had abandoned duty, how many were sent home for being unfit for duty. How many were killed by stray bullets by one of their comrades. It would be recorded in the history books in those numbers, in the bombastic words of Central command, how cleanly the destruction of the race of Ishbal was accomplished.

It would be remembered through the eyes of the soldiers who survived long enough to return home. It would be remembered as a bloody time of destruction, orders they did not understand, and a horrifying display of power. But what could they do? They followed those orders, as impossible as they seemed, because they were merely the footsoldiers, and what say did they have? They knew when they joined that they would be the pawns; their opinions didn't matter, but somehow it didn't seem right. But no one would listen to what they had to say; especially not their superiors. Why was it necessary to go this far?

REX TREMENDAE

Riza Hawkeye was a footsoldier who was fortunate in her specialty. She found a niche with guns in her academy days- her instructors complimenting her on her aim, which was remarkably good from her first days, and with further training had become impossibly accurate with a rifle, nearly always lethal with a handgun. She learned to absorb the kick from the gun, to fire quickly, neatly, and not to waste her ammunition.

She was deployed, and shot holes in her own ideals. This was not the military she had hoped to join, for the protection of the people. This was a military consumed by its own might, destroying another people completely seemingly because it could. And she was part of it. She was killing people right along with everyone else; her orders gave no room for mercy. I don't want to be here. I don't want to have to do this.

RECORDARE

Roy Mustang owed his power to a young girl he knew- the daughter of his teacher. His strength was due to her faith in his ideals. The same ideals that he was destroying with every click of his fingers- each time he used the Flame Alchemy, it was because that was what his orders said to do- not in order to protect anyone or anything.

When he finally sees her again, he can tell she is as disillusioned as he is. Her gift to him is a burden on her back, guilt weighing her down, her own crimes weighing heavier. A girl shouldn't carry that sort of burden.

She found him one day, found him only to ask if she'd done the right thing. If she was doing the right thing, or if she had committed the two greatest errors of her short life. She had enlisted, and she was trained to shoot and kill, and she was a murderer countless times over. And she had given him her father's secrets, knowing he was military, knowing he would be a state alchemist with that power, but without any conception of what that might mean. She watched the flames consume another city block, destroy another house full of people, heard faint screams of those burned alive, and wondered what she had done. Tell me why. He had no answers. Tell me how to atone. And he could not.

Riza Hawkeye was guilty of murder. She pulled the trigger unforgivably countless times each day, for countless days, honing her skills on live targets, garnering a name for herself among the ground crews for her accuracy. But each person was a death on her shoulders, each one a separate guilt she would forever carry, to her shame.

Roy Mustang was guilty of murder. He looked his victims straight in the eyes, sometimes, and clicked his fingers to send them to their end. He heard their cries of pain- occasionally their silence - and learned the smell and feel of burnt flesh by heart, never to be forgotten.

Maes Hughes was guilty of murder. He threw his knives into the skulls of men, and learned what the feel of resisting bone was like, as he retrieved his knives from their corpses.

They killed because they did not want to die.

Hughes tied his only joy to the letters he got from his Gracia, hanging on every word she wrote, every single word precious to him. Let me come back to her. She was his future, his only hope. I just want to get out of here alive. Mustang found no joy here, only one more person he ought to have been able to protect. Hawkeye found no joy; only a grim determination in the sense that she could at least protect a few people from unseen dangers. They dared not hope for anything more.

They hoped to be alive when the campaign ended. They hoped to be lining up in rank and file to leave this place, knowing they were no more qualified to survive than the men and women laying on the side of the road. But they couldn't bear to die here. Not here, among the ashes of Ishbal, not among these people. All I want is to stop all this and leave-- the motto of nearly every soldier.

CONFUTATIS

They will never be able to atone. They look across the wasteland that was once home to a civilization, and the knowledge that they did that sinks slowly into their minds. Their actions destroyed that place, one day at a time, one day of death at a time. They were devastating. The end was coming- there were fewer and fewer fighters. Ishbal had lost the will to fight, wishing instead only to flee. It was a matter of pursuing them, "cleaning up", as the officers were beginning to say. But it seemed wrong to destroy someone as they fled. They were relieved of their duties and went to a lonely campfire with a tin of watery, stale coffee, heads bowed and minds empty. They could not bear to think of what they were doing.

LACRIMOSA

All who were left of the proud race of Ishbal watched their world go up in flames, go down in explosions, break apart at the seams. They watched their homes, their neighbors homes, all they've ever known, reduced to rubble, and cried to their god- Will you not spare us? What sort of judgement day is this?

A mother rocks back and forth on her heels, cradling the body of her child, her son, killed along with his father as they fled their home. Her brothers pulled her to her feet, interrupting her mourning and pushing their own aside in the name of survival. They could not stay here and live. But the wails of the mother could not be contained. You spared us, Ishbal, why did you not spare my son?

OFFERTORIUM

DOMINE JESU

It was over. Celebrations festooned the Amestrian camp, but certain faces were missing.

Riza Hawkeye left camp to fix something that was wrong- the body of a child had no reason to be left on the side of the road like trash. She wanted to bury it properly. She dug the grave with her own hands; if the least she could do was show some respect for the bodies of the fallen innocent, it was what she would do. The child would feel no more pain and suffering, but it was too tragic that it had to happen in this way.

Other soldiers left to go find people in their unit, the people only they knew to be someone from their unit, bodies having lost all resemblance to their living faces. There were too many bodies; they would have to be cremated. Or rather, they would be burned where they lay, or dragged to larger piles and burned there.

It was important to bury them so their souls could rest in peace, not constantly haunted by the dark memories of Ishbal. No one touched the bodies of the warrior priests. Not because they didn't deserve burial, but because there was still an aura of power around them, and none of the Amestrians felt they had the right to move them. Find rest, they murmered over the graves. Find rest.

HOSTIAS

"Amestris has once again proved its might, its fortitude, its courage! And you, the brave sons and daughters of this proud country have proved it a hundredfold." The generals praised their own tactics, the country's power, their immortal actions. How Ishbal would be remembered in the future; a test of their country's will, how strong and unyielding it would be.

"Remember your fallen comrades. They paid a price most noble for this moment." And he passed quickly onto easier subjects, on the nobility and justice of this moment, lecturing the soldiers loosely ranked below. The soldiers were so drunk on the end of the war that none of them bothered to note that the war had not been noble at all, their sacrifices had been unnecessary, it was too much. It was over, and that was all that mattered in this moment. It was over, and they were alive.

Except one- Roy Mustang was hatching a plan to protect the people from this ever happening again.

AGNUS DEI

There was no power in the world who could absolve those atrocities, no power in the world that could take away the visions in the night.

Even a god could not take away the flashbacks, take away the nights they lay in bed, one arm thrown across their eyes as though to ward off the images of bodies strewn everywhere, buildings crumbling before their eyes, an old man bleeding slowly out, the sunken, burning eyes of the last elder of Ishbal, laying the curse on all of Amestris.

A god could not pardon how many times the trigger had been pulled, how many lives had been ended too soon, and without cause. No one could pardon murder. No one did pardon murder.

No power could undo the ties between those who had survived Ishbal together- it was a permanent tie stronger than any other, for good or for ill. Because they bore the same unpardonable sin, they had the same nightmares in the dark, and they had all failed the people.

COMMUNIO

It wasn't that they wanted to keep the sacrifices made in Ishbal hidden away in the shadows of memory, unknown to the newer generations. It was that exposing it to the light made clear all of the ugliness of it, on the mercilessness and cruelty of it, and that was a burden that belonged to them, as soldiers. It was something they would shoulder in the hopes that the next generation would be able to live in the peaceful light of a world without war.

They went, sometimes, to the military cemetery, and looked out over the headstones that stretched as far as the eye could see, knowing that there were even more people who had died on the other side, and lay who knows where, in a rude grave they did not deserve.

Let them find rest there, in death. And we will work on peace here, in life, no matter how hard that struggle may be.

They go on. They use the skills they learned in Ishbal, and they turn them towards the military that made them use them. They will make this world a better place. They will not let it happen again.