“Here’s the tea you asked for, General.”

“Ah, splendid.” Without so much as the slightest hesitation, the general raised the cup to his mouth, smacking his lips as the hot tea slid past in spit-sized chunks. Very good, very good. Always helps me wake up in those dreary winter mornings, ugh.

“Is there anything else I can help you with, general?”

“If she is available, could you please inform Heidi Goodsprings that I wish to see her? We still have a few things to discuss.”

“Aye, your excellence. Consider it done.”

Sanctullator watched with both arms on the desk as the guardsman sauntered out the room, cursing under his breath as said guardsman forgot to shut the door. Useless bastards… can’t even trust these people to close door, let alone fight against monsters. The general left the comfort of his chair to plug the gap in the wall himself, groaning raggedly afterwards as he sank back into the rickety chair. Sometimes I wonder why I still bother.

His eyes fell upon the stack of paper on the desk’s corner, and the inkwell standing astute next to it. Been here for a week, desk’s a mess. As Justitia herself intended. There had been every intent to work his way through the pile, and yet something on the road from bed to desk had fallen apart, it seemed. No discipline or work ethic to speak of. Sanctullator’s head sank onto his arms, which once again had found their way onto the desk.

So much remained to be done. Even after days of signing and writing and throbbing in his arm, the end was nowhere in sight. There was always a little more. Much as a river never ran out of water to fuel its torrents, so too did the paperwork magically replenish. Gallie had returned to the Citadel, and now demanded a daily letter. The armies were in need of fresh orders. Not to mention the deluge of correspondence.

“One passed… two more appear… what in Justitia’s name am I even doing. What am I even doing?! Do the bureaucrats enjoy making work for me? Anything to justify their careers! Damn it, I’ve had enough of this shit!”

Sanctullator threw the papers before him off the desk, biting his lip and pulling his beard. The papers took some of the stack with them as they flew away; within the blink of an eye, it appeared as if a storm had passed through the room. Ink flew out of the well with the wind, splotching the desk and the stones in the floor, all the way to the base of the door. It was by sheer luck that it had all concluded seconds before the door flew open.

“General Sanctullator? I-” The woman in the doorframe took notice of the fields of strife at her feet. “What happened here?”

“I don’t want to speak of it.”

“Is something-”

“I said, I do not want to speak of it, Mrs Goodsprings.” With a frail hand, Sanctullator reached out to the tea. Today’s bad enough as is.

“Oh, alright then. Well, uhm, why did you ask for my presence? Because I do not recall hearing or seeing anything peculiar these past few days.” Heidi ran a hand through her hair.

“To see how things were going,” Sanctullator replied. “Justitia knows we’re living in tense times. How’s the training been going? Are your people prepared for what lies ahead?”

Heidi nodded. “More than prepared, your excellence. All the training has been going quite well. It has been rather arduous these past few weeks, but we were all expecting things to get tougher. It won’t be highwaymen we will be facing, that much is certain. But we’ll manage.”

“Good, good. I was concerned for the longest time, actually. It took us a long, long time to learn these things back in the war against the Buried Triumvirate. Thank Justitia that you adapted so quickly. Many a friend of mine wasn't so fortunate.” Sanctullator sighed, eyes twitching towards his cold bed for a fraction of a second. “Well, that’s one less thing to worry about. How is the mood among the locals?”

“Anxious, to say the least. After Frontier Harbour fell, everyone beyond the simple could tell we were next in line. It’s calmed a little in the past few weeks, what with all the preparations, but you can still feel the tension in the air, really. My family in particular is concerned. They do not want me on the front. It’s too dangerous, they say.”

Sanctullator leaned over the desk, a smug frown depressing his brow. “Then who else is going to prevent this demonic filth from taking over, exactly?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling them,” Heidi replied. “But, you know, family is family. They’ve always had their doubts about me getting involved in any kind of conflict, even if it's nothing more than neighbours arguing with each other over the harvest. And that is small beans compared to this, of course.”

The general sighed. “Your family does not sound much different from mine. You could practically smell the sweat and fear coming off the paper whenever they had written to me. And that was on a regular day. I remember back in my greenhorn days, in the war against the Buried Triumvirate to be exact, I once stumbled over a rock like an utter moron. Broke my leg pretty bad. Family didn’t take it well, to put it lightly. Was a little too close for comfort for their liking.” Sanctullator leaned back his chair, and stared at the ceiling of the room. “Those were the days...”

Heidi held her hands against each other. “Heh, the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Sanctullator nodded, his eyes falling back to the pile on his desk. “Indeed they do...”

“But hey now. I know their heart is in the right place. They’ve never once not supported me during my escapades, quite the contrary, actually. They’ve all heard the tales and rumours, and they wouldn’t want me to end up all torn to shreds. Like that one commander from Ravens Hill.”

“Rumours from Ravens Hill...” Sanctullator bit his cheek. ...That ghost’ll haunt me for the rest of my life, won’t it? “In all perfect fairness, I probably deserve a lot of the blame for what happened. I had assumed we’d have plenty of time to prepare a defense, and that the city wasn’t in much danger. Those beasts and their cultist friends hadn’t dared to show their faces in a headon engagement prior to that. Quite the wake up call, hearing the news.”

Heidi nodded. “Whitestream was in quite the panic when word of it reached our doorstep. We all thought the situation had been under control, so hearing of it was all a bit much.”

Sanctullator clasped his hands together before his mouth. “Still dealing with the fallout from it myself. Every baron has reported an uptick in cultist activity these past few months. Those bastards have smelled blood, and they went straight in pursuit. Damned cult.”

“We haven’t noticed much more of them over here,” Heidi said, “then again, we are a tight knit bunch. If there was any sympathy left in our midst, we probably would’ve found out about it by now.”

“You know...” Sanctullator corrected his posture. “...in a way, I’m glad it’s your town that’s on the forefront of this mess. I doubt there’s a more resilient people in this country.”

“Thank you, general.” Heidi leaned in to bow, but was stopped by a halting hand.

“No need to thank me for compliments. I don’t give ‘em out easily.”

“Alright then, is there anything else that needs to be discussed, general? Or are we done?”

Sanctullator shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s all I have to say, unless you-”

His voice cut off. Even from where he sat, he could tell Heidi’s eyes had caught on to something of interest. Something they should not have seen. A line stretched from her eyes, down onto one of the papers which had scattered onto the floor. And as luck would have it, it happened to be the illustration of the Weapon Research Institute’s newest idea.

Oh, for the love of…

“What is this? Some sort of… cannon?”

Well, there’s no easy way to explain this one way, I’m afraid. Sanctullator tapped his knuckles onto the desk. “Alright, listen,” he said in a hushed tone, “you cannot speak to anyone of this, until I say you can. This is top secret information, meant for imperial official eyes only. You will keep your mouth shut about this, yes?”

Heidi scratched at an itch on her neck. “Yes, understood, err, your excellence.”

“Alright then...” Sanctullator carefully ducked below the desk as slow as he could to pick the paper off the ground, biting his tongue in the process. Damn it! That’s what I get for being too cautious, but a sore tongue is better than having it cut out. Right, she cannot read Justitian. Don’t mention the training or the workings, just thoughts. Here goes.

“General?”

“Yes, yes.” Sanctullator crawled back onto his chair. “Right, so this is a project of some bright folks in the core. A hand cannon, or a musket as they call it. Apparently, it’s supposed to be an ultra advanced crossbow of some sort. It uses little metal balls as ammunition.”

“Huh. That’s intriguing.” Heidi laid a hand on her chin. “How does it work?”

Sanctullator bit his lip. “Your guess is as good as mine. If I had to guess, you have to depress that little metal handle on the bottom to use it. And then… I don’t know. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Heidi nodded along to every word, not the slightest hint of doubt visible in her eyes. “Hmm, interesting,” she mumbled. Justitia almighty, the inquisition didn’t make free thinking illegal, did it? “I wonder, general, do you believe this weapon has potential? Taking a dragon down is tough work, anyone who has done it before can tell you that.”

The general tapped the tips of his fingers against one another. “That remains to be seen. I, for one, still have my doubts. It wouldn’t be the first time one of the Institute’s ideas was nothing but hot air. But these are the same people who designed the Cloudbuster, and I could regale you for days on end with stories on how that beauty saved my neck. Still, as far as I know, they have yet to test this weapon. Then there’s the matter of producing a bunch, passing all the regulations, training men with the weapon, that sort of thing. So it’ll be awhile before you might see one of these things.” And few tears will be shed.

A candle on the wall began to wilt. Heidi glanced at it with the corner of her eyes, her cheek muscles twitching as the light dimmed to a spark. “But… we’ll need all the help we can get, don’t we? What if the beasts attack us at full force?”

Sanctullator leaned back in his chair. “We’ve been over this. There are no army formations to be found out west. Our Spectres have searched past every blade of grass in those mountains. There is no army. And if they do attack all at once, well...” he paused to study the bricks in the walls around him. “Take a look at the cloudbusters outside the town. That is all I have to say.”

Heidi took a deep breath of wax-ridden air. “Okay. I’ll do that. Can you promise me one thing, though?”

Sanctullator raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“That we’ll be able to hold them all back.”

“Of course I can do that. Our empire has prospered for hundreds of years, Heidi. We do not give up so easily.”

Their meeting fizzled out soon after, and both decided it was better to get back to work. Heidi bid her farewell, leaving Sanctullator with his paperwork. The general eyed the messy floor and the stack of paper for several long minutes, eventually resigning himself to his fate, for as much energy as he had left, anyway.

It’s going to be a long day, Stefan...