Orders were barked at us to press our assault.

We knew the truth.

This was no assault. This was a slaughter.

Our Praetor demanded that we march regardless, promising glory and honor as though such words could shield flesh from iron. Before us lay the enemy’s killzone, carefully placed by the Sythgian engineers and guarded by their new weapons.

To charge forward was not courage. It was execution.

And I had endured enough.

I approached the Praetor with nothing more but murder in my heart.

He had promised us triumph, yet all I saw in front of us were graves and a desperate attempt for him to stain his pitiful name with the merit bought by our own blood.

He didn’t expect his own soldiers to turn on him.

We few did.

My blade struck quickly.

And our Praetor fell.

For the moment, silence consumed among the ranks. Those around me stared at me in disbelief at what I had done. Some looked horrified. While others are… relieved.

A few believed I had made the right choice.

There was no time for us to ponder our judgment.

The Sythgians still waited for us.

I quickly seized command and cast aside the Praetor’s strategy.

We will not march forward to die.

We fight our way.

The Sythgians had employed their new engines of war against us. They believed this innovation alone would break our Empire’s veteran soldiers. Yet war does not favor the proud.

They favor those who are willing to adapt.

I ordered our remaining formation to break apart and sent our skirmisher wide alongside the flanks. While the Sythgians watched our center, our light troops slipped through their lines, distracted by our main force, and struck the crew manning their weapons.

Seizing those same engines and turning them back upon their masters.

Is this Unethical?

Perhaps.

But war has taught us little regard for virtue.

And this tactic works.

The field became ours.

Victory was achieved.

However, the death of the Praetor carried a cost greater than defeat.

Word of what I had done spread quickly through the XIV Legion. Though we had won the battle, I stood accused as though I alone had endangered the Empire.

I believed I had acted rightly.

Yet when some of my men later harassed an innocent citizen of the Empire, the blame found its way to me as easily as the rain lands on dirt.

They named me a renegade.

They demanded my head.

But death was too merciful.

The Senate desired spectacle instead.

They wanted me to live not as a warrior but as an example, paraded beneath the accusation of dishonor.

Those who had stood beside me shared my punishment. We were exiled from the city we once defended and sent to a fortress far beyond the Empire’s heart, abandoned to survive by our own hands.

After all we had done, this was our reward.

We, who had carried its banners.

We, who had bled so that our Empire could expand.

Cast aside.

Forgotten.

Ungrateful Fatherland does not deserve my bones.

They had sent us here believing that the stone walls and isolation would bury our loyalty alongside resentment.

They are fools to believe so.

We remember.

We do not forget.

The Senators deserve neither our prayers nor our mercy.

We wait.

And when the day comes, they shall learn what becomes of the warriors abandoned by the Empire they built.