Once, we got invaded. The army of that despot country occupied our city and accepted our ways. We paid taxes and survived. Poorly
The plaza was silent as always. Despite being full. People felt insecure everywhere. The market was a huge mess. But weirdly it was a slow chaotic mess. Currencies from around the world, lots of scales and abacus. People from around many cities came here. For the trade route that it became. It was dangerous coming here, but it was the best place to go into another nation without causing much alarm.
---- But our city, started changing hands, we had to learn new languages to be able to deal with the new authorities. Or face harsh consequences like amputations or beheadings for very small charges. We couldn't escape, as this was considered desertion and betrayasl. We were prisioners.
Armies fought for decades over this territory. Wars was the norm. Until it was considered a dead zone, with 0 inhabitants but and occupation force.
And we, the people were surviving? We were all left alone to beggar and scrape food from remains left behind by the dead or just go robbing each other. But thankfully, we could all be happy in the dead silence, living among the derelict and abbandoned ruins of our dead leaders. There was no alchool for men, no water for the children. Our prospects in life would be, whoring ourselves for food, or if lucky, finding a job with a merchant and being able to escape this city. But most people would be captured as slaves or forced into any of the militia's sides with the promise of a pay for their family, but we all knew it was a lie. Thats when they forced the city into a slave system, everyone was forced to work, no matter who took care of it. The people just didnt care anymore, they were so much scared of dying that they could only look down and march into the fields.
They forced us to clear the debris, and to start planting where our city once stood
The children were being left to fend for themselves, suffering in the hands of soldiers and evil travellers. The old people were the only ones that tried to at least take care of them. But it was pointless.
They called all who tried to escape the city as deserters, and started executing. But people still kept trying. And so they started flogging people, and leaving them to suffer in a big pole. We, the citizens were all slaves already.
The children started growing, and the old people started dying or just giving up. Our bodies deformed of mal nutrition, and our minds only focused on trying to survive each day.
Each day, the city would receive more slaves from either side. And we never knew who they or where they came from, but we only knew we were already dead. And the numbers were being replenished by other enslaved cities. Our huts made of clothes received people who were thrown inside by soldiers.
And one day, we were stormed. Our old nation came rushing and invaded the whole city. We waited while the war calmed down, and let the healthy young people try and escape. We had been stripped of our identities and language, we spoke now with a different accents, and in a weird dialect. We were not the ones they tried to save.
We were expecting to be kept in slavement. But they freed us. Or at least there was no one guarding us, and they gave us bread. They posted a small army in the region and fortified the area. Most of the people started abandoning the place. And some, just stood there looking at the empty field and into the distance, imagining if maybe our sons wouldnt be as broken as we were now.
Maybe they would one day return, after receiving the news of our freedom. But they would find a poor and desolate city, where there was only drunk beggars, soldiers and thousands of mass graves.