Edus rose sharply from his cot, eyes wide and alert. Sweat beaded down his forehead and neck, not from the dank air. His heart raced and throbbed in his ears, and he panted as if he had just run a league.

“Nightmares again?” Corro simply asked below him. Edus slumped back down against the thin bedding.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“I dreamt of being shot like Edgard,” Corro went on. “My back against the Long Wall, with an endless gunnery line facing me point blank. Except the musket shot turn to swords, and wobble through me to the stone like hot knives through butter. The damndest thing. The damndest.”

Edus stared at the ceiling. He heard Sven nearby curled up in his cot, eyes though shut whispering vehemently, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s best we get some sleep,” Edus eventually said. He turned to one side and thought of better days; of flowing locks of gold, soft with the sweet mint scent of brightflower.

He awoke to the ruckus of leather boots scraping past the stone floor and the low hubbub of soldiers dazed wearily awake from slumber. The door was ajar, letting in bright harsh daylight overlapped by hanging shadows of soldiers bustling past. Grizwald strode in and looked upon his squad, or remainder of it. Edus hastened to don his boots and stood at attention with the others.

“We’re to meet our squad’s replacing members,” Grizwald stated curtly, glancing between them. He turned to the open door, “Follow me.”

Edus hurried to walk beside their captain, the rest trailing behind in two lines. They trod past one of the fort’s gates to the grassy plains outside. Tents surrounded the Middenfort before being surrounded by the ashen moat. It had been deemed necessary to keep the trench, and men shoveled out the acrid mounds of ash and orange dinged scraps of armor left behind.

The nearby grass was blotted with all the soot and browning blood. Death it seemed, had smothered all life around.

There were three encampments within the trench line; the largest hailing the indigo banners of Hearth, the second most showed the amber flags of Lyonia, and the last was where they were headed. It was the smallest of the camps, but compared to the reedy grey clothed tents of the Empire they were larger and circular, made up of tan patched leather.

They were solid and sparsely arrayed. He noticed most of the men were Orient in origin, displaying the curling black beards and long hair of their fashion. Some sat on the ground round bubbling cauldrons. Others wrestled in the grass. A few sparred with wooden swords or staffs using techniques unknown to Edus. He was baffled by their agility and clear prowess.

So this is the famed Jade Company, he thought. The only aid that the Crown Steward has sent us. It was all he had heard the last few days. We waited for more than a week so less than five hundred mercenaries could join the host? They stopped before one tent where Grizwald ordered, “Wait here,” then disappeared inside.

Landon waved through the leather covers beside the captain and two men following close behind. One was a lightly tanned lean man of Orient descent, sporting a closely cropped dark beard hiding the grim line of his mouth. His hair was set in a singular knot behind his head, held by a cuff of jade. The other man was of the Empire, ruddy face with a beakish nose broken as Grizwald’s, brown hair cut to a tufting top. His eyes though dark as the captain’s were sly and squinted, as if he coveted everything the world had not given him. Edus took an instant dislike to the man.

The squad saluted, “Hail Sigmarius!”

The officer was not normally wearing his helmet ornamented of a burnished bronze spiked sun, revealing a retreating head of dirty blonde hair overhead wry grey eyes above a staunchly curling mustache.

“No doubt you have heard,” Landon spoke. “The Crown Steward has seen fit to reinforce our ranks with the Jade Company. These are your new squad members,” he motioned to the men behind him, “Jian and Osgood.”

Osgood cracked a smile, which looked more akin to a sneer. Jian stared ahead blankly, hands clasped behind him.

“They are some of the best warriors the Jade Company has to offer, stated by the Jadess herself. You two are now soldiers of the Empire, and will conduct yourselves as soldiers of the Empire! You will answer to Grizwald, the captain of this squad. We’re to march by dawn tomorrow, to Talibath. So rest until then. You will need it. Carry on, men.”

Talibath? Edus wondered. Did they not declare their independence? The Kingdom of Talibath had not disputed over their borders or sought to extend their territory. Raul was the true threat, then the natives beyond after a united Empire. Lives that will be needlessly lost for the conquest of the mageborn, he thought with bitter anger. Saul, Edgard, how many dead without Gifted aid in battle?

They made their way back, double file. Jian and Osgood followed at the back. Being Landon’s personal squad they were granted lodgings inside the fort town. Same as the Oxenfort, it had its own tavern. All the beer barrels had been spent in the siege, and Raul had made sure the well was unusable in its state, so they nursed their tankards filled with water ferried by the wagonload each day.

Osgood took a swig from his own steel flask and sighed.

“Well then. You lot never did introduce yourselves,” he said in thick Pikend, “And I like to know who I’m fighting beside. You’re captain of this squad, then? Grizwald. Aye,” he pointed his flask to the captain, “You’re a big bastard ain’t ya? Compared to these lads you right well look part giant. The famed captain, last man standing, having taken charge of more than two squads. Survived more than your fair share of the Green Pass. Could have taken off rank of Sigmarius, but you pissed it off to the wind. Why is that then, I wonder?”

“What’s it to you?” Edus said crossly.

“Now now,” Osgood raised a finger, never taking his squinted stare off Grizwald. “The grown ups are talking now lad. Best feck off, before you get slapped, or worse.”

“I know your kind,” Grizwald said. “Disgraced from service by dishonorable conduct. Now you can do so without consequence as a sell sword, and blacken the name of honorable mercenaries as Jian here.”

Osgood sneered, “They say you are a mage.” Quick as a wink his hand produced a curved and sharp gleaming knife. “Shall we see if that is true?”

“I can have you flogged for your actions,” stated Grizwald.

The knife flicked out of existence. “You won’t though, will you? No use in wasting a good blade. You’re a right man of action then, all pomp and valor!”

“Shut up, Osgood,” Jian murmured.

“Jian here was a promising student of the great Huang School,” Osgood continued. “Before he killed another student in a duel, over a girl no less. Heard she was a pretty bird, the famed songstress. Could sing you to a naked stupor. A courtesan that graced any copper King's court with her esteemed presence. Well, she did catch the heart of our young Jian here, amongst a few others." Osgood gave a derisive snort. "Disgraced and disowned from his line, our honorable Jian now fights for the Company, with such rogues and vagabonds as myself."

Jian's expression was carefully blank, no doubt used to his goading.

“My name is Jian Ozashi,” he bowed his head to Grizwald. “It is an honor to meet the Bear of the Empire.”

“I have heard of your surname,” Grizwald nodded in kind. “Your line holds many warriors of great renown, founding the Way of the Whispering Blade.”

“You are educated in our Ways. Surely you have traveled to the Orient in your life’s journey.”

“I have. My wife was of the Orient,” Grizwald gruffed, and that was all.

Edus spoke up to fill the silence, “My name is Edus.”

“Mikaal.”

“Fredric.”

“Corro.”

“Sven.”

“You’re a lucky lot to be the personal guard of a Sigmarius,” Osgood cut in. “Everything cushy watching the war from behind the front lines, isn't it? I’m not complaining about our circumstance, we’ll fight a drained enemy that way. A tired man in battle is a dead man.”

“And have you ever fought a man head on?” Edus asked. Osgood gave a toothy grin.

“War has no honor. Did you not see that in the one battle you looked over, and lost?”

“A coward stoops to such an underhanded level,” Jian said. “A brave man looks a man in the eye in battle-”

“With respect, yes yes, spouting the teachings of your School,” Osgood clapped his hands in mock grandeur. “All very honorable, all well and good. But that is not the way of the Company, is it? No, the great Jade Company takes in warriors from all walks and Realms of life, where the dishonored and disgraced go to submit themselves for slavery to the Jadess herself.”

“The Jadess will found her own fiefdom once she returns to the Orient, each of those loyal to her granted land. Much more than you deserve,” Jian sipped from his tankard.

Osgood chortled, “You think that any common born will live long enough to see her ‘vision?’ The most any of us can do is find whatever coin we can stow off in this war, and hope for some peace in between the next war. The Orient will forever be broken, not compared to the Empire.”

“So you believe this civil war will end in peace?” Corro asked.

“The way I see it we’re in a never ending loop, of sorts. Monarchies fall after each death of such and such, and the next in line won’t see who’s who in whoever stabs them in the back. And as mages, nasty immortal bastards they are, they’ll live long enough to make enough enemies to start it all again.”

“That… makes sense.” Corro agreed, though begrudgingly.

“When you don’t think of them as the Mythic’s chosen, you’ll realize they shit just as the rest of us. They just don’t want us to know about it.”

“And how would you break the loop?” Edus asked.

Osgood wagged a finger. “Careful now lad, if I didn’t know better you would be speaking of heresy. Rebels never did last in the Empire nor the Orient, and it seems you’re in dire need of some education. Seems all this peace has left you addled as to what really goes on between the common folk and the mageborn. All peasants in the Orient know this tale, and know it for good reason; the fall of Shangri La.”

The Orient has been broken even before the Empire got their lot together. And the mage Kings and Queens fought tooth and nail over their kingdoms, uncaring for the folk that lay dead in the dirt by the wagonful.

Bandits roamed the roads between the borders of each kingdom. Got to the point you couldn’t fetch a pail of well water without a sword in your gut or an arrow in your eye for trespassing on their grounds. They were cutthroat bastards, cunts second only to the mages, and a woman, a woman of all sorts! Would go about and change that.

Some say her family was slaughtered by the Faith for false charges of heresy. Others say she was brought up by bandits, and killed her way to the top. Either way you can see that she was a she wolf, a woman bound to do things no man could hold a candle to.

The bandits seemed to have all got up and left. No man’s land was now spread throughout the common folk to be every man’s land, a place of sanctuary for every mortal born: the city of Shangri La. A city where folk could live free, built over the ruins of the natives. Tucked away in the Twilight Forest, headed by one woman: Mitsune was her name. She had united all the bandit gangs into one army, a proper army that knew the forests and the places between the Kingdoms where they could spread the word of Shangri La to the common born.

Folk left in droves, and the mages wondered where their pissant subjects had gone off to. It took a tortured village for one King to learn of Shangri La. But Mitsune was wily in her ways, for the bandits would lead the people to the hidden city, and could be gone without a trace.

The King was no fool. He knew this was the start of an uprising. Now the common folk had had enough of being the subjects of such evils, major and lesser, that they had endured at the hands of their rulers. The mages had long broken the Mythic Mandate, had long fecked it to death and more. He held a truce between the other Kings and Queens and told them of what he had learned, and what would come should they let it pass ever on.

It’s not known how the city was found, but it’s known what happened at its end. The mage Kings and Queens banded together, a common cause in keeping their power. Can you hear the screams; of men dying, of women better off dead, and feel the flames burn the meat off of your bones? For no man, woman, and child escaped the fall of Shangri La; a tale repeated to any peasant thinking to rebel against their mage rulers.

“What happened to Mitsune?” Corro pressed on.

“She died, burned at the stake. After being passed on by the mages one by one and all their soldiers last,” Osgood said mildly. “And what did the honorable Schools do for their common man?” He sneered. “They joined in the razing to save their own lot.”

He scratched the scruff on his cheek and took another swig from his flask. “You may call me a coward and scoundrel. I reckon myself as a fellow of practical notions. Come what may, it’s best to get out the way of the mages, do their dirty work, less blood spilled than the latter, and get paid doing it. For to go against their kind, you may as well be rolling the world up the sky.”