“It was the smile you sent me to war with, Sabrina, that kept me fighting to the end. I was blessed with the best of wives.” He was silent for a moment. “Thank you.”
Cornelius thought of his wife cheerfully baking, and slowly closed his eyes...
Cornelius died at the age of seventy-two. No one in the generation to come would know his final words. But the great deeds of Cornelius the hero would grow into songs and epics, and he continued to be loved by many.
“Forgive me, Lord Paul, that I could not be at your side ’til the end...” The captain of the guard, the last of them still standing, drew in his final breath. Paul looked over to where Cornelius was, but the spot where the man once stood was already swarmed by ghouls.
You went on ahead, eh...? Paul thought back on what he had said, half joking, back at Galia Fortress. Cornelius, it seemed, had really honored it. Could anything be more like you, my lord? “I’ll be close behind”...?! All of a sudden, he found himself looking at someone who ought to have been long gone from that place. The fool! He cursed, jumping into Swift Step of Thunderclaps. Stabbing through the chest a ghoul just as it was about to dive on the other man, Paul bellowed, “What the hell are you doing here?!”
“The ghouls divided us, ser.” Otto turned back, his voice calm as he flicked a fragment of skull from his blade. “I ended up left behind.”
Not for nothing had Paul kept Otto at his side for twenty years. He saw right away that this was a total fabrication. At the same time, Otto knew that Paul knew. “Able soldiers will be needed in the days to come. You understand that full well, yet...” He broke off, then burst out, “You infuriating idiot!” A group of ghouls came at him, but Paul cut them down in a furious strike.
“Me, able? This is the first I’ve heard of it.” Otto drove his spear through the chest of the last ghoul.
Was it some ghoulish caprice? Their attention, if they had such a thing, seemed to focus on the corpses strewn over the ground. Paul and Otto took the opening to put some distance between them.
After catching his breath, Otto went on. “I don’t know how things stand for the Second Legion, but whatever struggles lie ahead, General Blood—and Lieutenant General Olivia—will overcome them. In short, my lord, I simply have faith in what you told me.”
Paul chuckled. “To think the day would come where I’d hear those words come from your mouth. Blood’s one thing, but imagine the girl’s shock if she heard you now.” He pictured Olivia’s face, her eyes wide in surprise, and smiled despite himself.
“While she did test me greatly, her successes exceeded all my expectations. Thinking back, I wonder if I wasn’t a little jealous of this girl who walked her own path without being bound by authority or custom... No, I know I was.” The face of the man, nicknamed the Man in the Iron Mask behind his back, lit up now in an unfamiliar, soft smile. It was a fresh sight, even to Paul.
“Then you should tell her that yourself.” He knew it was no good, yet still he asked without asking for Otto to reconsider. As expected, the other man answered with a crooked smile and a shake of his head.
“What about you, my lord? I believe Lieutenant General Olivia promised you cake, did she not?”
“I’m always in awe of the things those ears of yours catch...” Paul muttered. “In any case, I’ll content myself to wait ’til she’s lived out the rest of her days and comes knocking at the gate to the land of the dead herself.”
“I hope, when that time comes, I may join you.”
Paul nodded, then said gravely, “Otto Steiner, you are commanded to accompany your general, Paul von Baltza, to the land of the dead.”
“Ser!” Otto barked. “I never meant to do anything else.” He gave a grin, which Paul returned.
“Insolent to the bone, eh? That’s the Otto I know.”
The ghouls’ moment of caprice was over. They resumed their rampage through the living. Otto and Paul exchanged a silent nod, then turned to the torrent of death and charged.
Long after, the House of Baltza, said to possess the powers of warrior gods, remained shrouded in mystery. Many sources spoke to the deep affection Paul held for Olivia, but one theory posited that this was because the power Olivia possessed—the power of a death god—in certain ways resembled his own power. However, the veracity of this was never established. What was clear was the scholars’ agreement that if Paul had not placed the trust he did in Olivia, despite her rampant disregard for convention, her own hero’s song would never have been born. Viewed alongside his own battle record, there was no doubt that he had been one of the greatest men of that era.
The symphony dreamed up in the pits of the damned died away, and the bloodred sun sank below the horizon, leaving only a faint glow. The black of muck that stretched over the earth darkened further still, and hell’s servants paused in their work.
The year was Tempus Fugit 1000. Operation Twin Lions at Dawn, the Kingdom of Fernest’s great counteroffensive, had ended in failure. Seven for every ten of the First Legion’s soldiers escaped that battlefield, but the price they paid was inconceivably vast. A storm was brewing, greater than any before, ready to wreak destruction upon Fernest.