“You are upset, I understand that. But please just listen to reason, my son.” Malkolm begged.

  Kalom stood there before his father, mother and sister. While beside himself were two imperial engineers. Kalom was wearing a blue tunic, brown burlap pants accompanied by a belt made of leather, the uniform of the Britonic armed forces. He was much less robust than his latter days, but still had the beginnings of tone showing through. Malkolm clasped his hands together, pleading, his red robes emblazoned with the symbol of a withered tree were splattered with dry blood. Lais, Kalom’s sister, was emotionless. But her mother, standing beside her, was weeping silently. A dry wind blew through the open door to the house, it was going to rain soon, and the air smelled of it. A dark omen to all present.

  “You can’t stop me old man, I’m going. That's final.” Kalom replied to his fathers plea.

  “Don’t throw your life away for some idiotic revenge my son, please, stay and learn and live in peace.”

  “You think I don’t want peace?! I’m going to kill those Cith bastards for their betrayal of our people. They want our ways extinguished, our kingdom shattered!”

  Kalom approached his father, getting angrier with every word he spoke before his voice was almost a shout.

  “First they burn the village of Malanos, then they rape and plunder their way across the lands of the Imperium and even kill my friends, our friends, mothers and Lais’s friends. They destroy everything they touch and yet you expect me to just sit idly by while innocent people suffer? While people we know die?!”

  Malkolm said nothing, his head downcast, his face was hot and the burning in his throat rushing up from his heart like a tsunami. The two men with Kalom said nothing either, not wanting to get involved. Kalom turned to his mother, and despite seeing her tears and the fear on her face, he looked away and turned to leave.

  “Let's go, I’m done he-” Kalom was stopped by a sudden tug from behind.

  Malkolm had grabbed hold of Kalom’s shirt from behind, gripping it with all the remaining strength he had left to give.

  “Please,” he said quietly, his voice weak and Whimpering. “I do not doubt your ideals, but I do not wish you to die.” Tears began to run down the old man's face. “A father should not bury his own son.”

  Kalom stood still, not speaking, neither did his father, as slowly his grip released. As Kalom walked out of the dimly lit house with his companions, he did not even bother to turn back or wave goodbye. He couldn’t, not because he was angry, but out of fear they would see his own tears falling from his face as he left. As he did, his mother Regaia fell to her knees and sobbed.

  Seven years had passed as he and his comrades built and used alchemical weapons in the war against the Cith, the dark elves. Deep within the trench lines of Ourberash heights, he and his team of bombard alchemists were involved in dark matters with their commanding officers. He and his men stood at attention before a man wearing the mail of the royal battery corps. His armor was easily distinguishable among the rank and file due to its bronze color and his helmet plume, a royal burgundy.

  “Listen and listen well for his majesty, King Parker ‘the Aryan’ of the Imperium, sends his decrees and regards for you all.” The General had spoken more like a town crier, rather than the lord of the corps. “He is most pleased with your successes in the battles of Frenthorpe and Bourlo. And he is especially pleased with your alchemical engineering, moreover he has also sent a decree for you to enact his will.”

  The men glanced at one another silently, Kalom included. He knew that usually this was how the empire worked. The Generals would send praise, then order their men to do even more work. He and his subordinates were some of the best siege artillery in the southern theatre and thus were used to this kind of bait and switch. The officer whistled and two enslaved Recdi, who the humans called ‘dwarves’, brought in and set down a large metal box, they bowed and backtracked out of the bunker bowing and stumbling all the way. Lifting the cover, the officer reached in and pulled out a live cannon shell. It was black like most others, but on it was a symbol of a cloud and a skull in red.

  “This is the lord’s newest invention, produced by the magi of his court and the brilliant mind of one Malkolm Grendau.” He said, looking at Kalom. “And if I am correct, that would be your father, is he not, sir Kalom Grendau?”

  Kalom straightened up at the mention of his father, though his superior assumed it was due to his questioning.

  “Yes m’lord. He is my father.” He said in reply.

  “Very good. Today you will cement your family legacy as the heroes of the southern lands. These balls,” he said, holding it in one hand. “are the latest innovation in the technological arts of the otherworlders which your father has reverse engineered.”

  The men eyed the ball and its symbol intently, some already beginning to put the pieces together in their minds as to what effect these weapons held. Kalom already knew the answer to that riddle, as he knew about and aided in his fathers work for many years. But to see the thing in front of him, real and presented to be used, caused him to drip with sweat and a chill to run up his spine.

  “These are alchemical gas bombs as you know. The symbol on the side is particularly useful to tell this, as we in the higher echelons know that many of you are grossly illiterate. Anyhow, the lord has ordered that these bombs be tested in the field and therefore have been chosen for usage in this theatre.”

  The man droned on about the technical aspects and the gas used as well as the arming process. But all the while Kalom drowned his voice out with the doubts in his mind. He knew the effects of that weapon, he had helped his father concoct that poison many years prior as an apprentice under him. In liquid form, it was called ‘doubled sanguine’, and would cause immediate and immense torment and suffering as the victim perished. But it was only ever used on rodents and wolves; and even then its use was seen as barbaric by all who worked on it. But to use it on Cith, on Daeg on anyone at all was a thought that now plagued his mind. After a while the battery was assembled and Kalom, wearing his yellow plumed commander's helm, ordered the first barrage. The bombards opened their first salvo and onto the nearby and besieged city of Lelinos, and waited.

  The guns had settled and silence came over the battlefield, the only sound was the pattering of raindrops onto the mud. But after a moment, the sounds returned, and oh how they returned. Kalom never forgot the screams, they could be heard from the city miles away. Muffled by the distance as they were, yet haunting. After a few hours, trumpets sounded, which Kalom knew meant to advance to the new front lines, and which to his horror, also meant going through the bombed out city, now conquered and dead. As he and his men approached, the bombards wheeled behind them and pulled by more Recdi slaves in chains, Kalom dreaded every step he took.

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  “I do not want to see,” he thought to himself. “Please don’t let me see it, Watchmaker in Christ, save me from this.”

  But no god came. The walls rose the closer he got and he could see the battlefield around him. Ruined tents, bent and sundered spears and swords tossed across the ground and plunged into the corpses of men and elf alike. Blood pooled in many places, the rain began to mix with the filth to make diluted pink mud. The smell of death and decay, a pungent and ever present miasma. A few of the men were uneasy, but Kalom most of all. The walls were tall and battered in, tattered banners draped over the sides with the symbol of a crown and spear sewn on their remains. The beaten walls and the broken down gates made the place look more like a tomb than a city, and that description was not at all unapt.

  Kalom upon entering the city started to see the damage he had caused. Many dead littered the ground, mostly warriors defending the city. But he could see the corpses as they lay, some had their fingers still lodged in their necks, digging desperately for air to enter their lungs. The eyes and nose and mouths of them all were blackened and caked in blood which had left them upon their innards dissolving. Kalom began to hyperventilate slightly, seeing the results of his and his fathers experiments firsthand. Luckily for him and his men, the gas was temporary and dispersed within minutes, however once inhaled it was the end for you.

  The column marched through the city, passing the doomed soldiers and the adventuring mercenaries of the dark elves, and into the city square. At the sight he threw up, and others did as well. There in the square were hundreds of citizens who lay dead, some had tried to flee but most had no time at all to do anything when the gas came. Women, children, dark and light elves alike, humans and Daeg and Recdi all filled the streets and alleys. Kalom felt his heart shatter as he regained his composure and marched on, but the faces of those he passed would not leave him. Why they had not fled to the city's bastion was apparent as they trudged past it. The nobles had fortified it for themselves, but not even barricades could stop the gas. The silence across the city was the loudest thing Kalom had ever heard, aside from the screams in his memories.

  Soon they left the city and back into open fields as they marched onward towards the capital of the south; Aratis, city of the lady Edme, queen of the dying stars. Kalom never entered the city, but he and his men faced great opposition in the coming months. Trenches were dug, bombards were fired and many battles of spear and sword erupted across the woodlands surrounding the countryside. Kalom one day peered out and across no man's land, he watched the fog and the clouds cover the wastes before him. As he did so, one of his men, a fat man in chainmail, came up behind him and patted him on the back.

  “How are you feeling tonight, m’lord?” he asked kindly.

  Kalom turned and smiled as he said, “I’m fine, go rest. I have the first watch tonight.” His smile though, was hollow, unbeknownst to the soldier.

  His subordinate bowed, turned on his heel and marched down a trench path and into a bunker below, the clanking of his armor disturbing the silence as he went. Kalom waited until he was gone, turned back to the fog and let go of his facade. The mists danced across the field like smoke and the clouds of black overhead appeared as specters of death waiting for him, taunting him.

  “I wish I had never left home,” he began silently to himself. “This is not war, I don't know what this madness is, but it is not what I was sold.” Without realizing it, he began to shed tears and his voice became cracked. “Knights were supposed to be noble. Sieges were to be against the wicked. So why?”

  He knew only the tales told to him by his father and mother, children's stories. So when he thought back to the battles he had seen, the blood and the gore and the unending screams and wailing he fell to his knees and then sat on the ground sobbing into his hands as he wept. He had gone to try and make people's lives better, by fighting an invader. But the stress and the deeds he had done had finally started to catch up to him. After a while, without noticing, a figure approached him silently and peered down at him.

  “What a pathetic sight.” The man said.

  Kalom, recognizing the voice, tore his face from his hands and looked up to see the general, no longer wearing his bronze mail but a normal set. Despite this his helmet was the same as before with its burgundy topping.

  “Let me guess, you're afraid. Or perhaps regretting a few deaths of the weaker willed?”

  Kalom was struck with fear, weakness was punishable by superiors. And by the look of the man before him, he was definitely in for a beating. The man was furious as he leered at Kalom, and the elf could feel that rage resonating off of him by his mere proximity.

  “Sir, I beg for your for-”

  “Enough,” the General said, interrupting Kalom. “I have no intention of laying hands on you, captain. After all, I can't have you running to daddy dearest in the capital to tattle on a corps general for smacking some courage into you.”

  Kalom said nothing, he just sat there looking up at the imposing man before him. He was weaker in height and brawn than Kalom, but it was the man’s authority that scared him, not his hale or lack thereof. The general rolled his eyes and in an unexpected gesture, reached out his hand to pull Kalom up. Kalom was dumbstruck, but after a brief instance of hesitation he reached out and clasped the hand of his better, who began to heave him to his feet.

  “Let’s get you up,” he said quieter.

  As Kalom got to his feet and wiped the mud and the tears from himself, the general spoke again.

  “When I was a young man, I feared war. I had seen it when the wars first came.”

  He motioned for Kalom to sit atop the trench wall's wooden watch, as he spoke. Kalom did so as he was told and as the man continued further. He listened intently to the story he was about to be told.

  “I saw my mother killed back then, taken by consumption, and me and my father and brothers were all that was left to fill the hole in wake of her. So when the war came, my family experienced the ultimate loss; annihilation.”

  “I’m so sor-” Kalom tried to say, but was silenced by the speaker, who held up a finger.

  “As I was saying, the wars came. The village we lived in was large, not a well off one though. Plenty had died from the sickness at that time, so loss was a regular occurrence. But when the flames rose on our roofs and the arrows like daggers pierced our walls from above, that's when I experienced true loss. I watched my brother Wilhurd, little more than a boy of fourteen, skewered with a hail of arrows as he tried to flee to the safety of the house. He was the first to die.”

  The general went on but never raised his voice, only talking as if it were a normal conversation about the weather or the king’s orders. And as Kalom silently listened he was increasingly on edge.

  “My father, then stricken with grief, tried in vain to pull the corpse of my brother inside, pleading for him to be alive. But the arrows kept coming and he fires continued rising as the enemy pounded our homes with catapults of brimstone. Soon he stopped weeping, got up from Wilhurd’s side and without a second thought for even me and my other brother Bolivar, rushed outside to his death. He was spared the arrows or the flames, instead getting cut down by blade. The enemy rend his body with ax and sword and flail. Despite him being the second death, the invaders did not stop there.”

  The general had drawn his sword, mock waving it around before plunging it into a sandbag on the trench as he spoke about his fathers death, letting loose a torrent of dry dust onto the mud below.

  “The last to die was my second brother, the youngest of us. Bolivar, who refused to hide under the floorboards with me, opted for the cupboard instead. I could not see his death, but the body was unrecognizable as even being human by the time they stopped bludgeoning him.”

  Kalom was horrified, both at the tale and also the calmness of the man talking about the experience.

  “M’lord,” he began. “Why are you so calm about this tale?”

  The commander smiled, before sheathing his sword, still covered in sand, and put his right hand on Kaloms shoulder. Kalom did not know what to say or do, scared he sat still like an animal trying to not be seen by a predator about to strike.

  “Because my boy, I learned from that experience, I learned that war is messy. And despite my loss, I could do something much better than mourn or beg on the streets.”

  “What did you do?” Kalom asked.

  “I Got even. And moreover, I took my revenge on the barbarians who did those evil deeds. I joined the Imperium's armies, and here I am to this day. So do not weep for the greyskins. Remember why you yourself are doing these things. You joined to become a hero of some kind, yes? To stop their rampage throughout your homeland? So stop crying, get up and keep to the watch. You're doing the lord's work here, and protecting your home at the same time.”

  “But some of them are inn-”

  “There are no innocent dark elves. Never forget that phrase, keep it in your mind as you fight and it will stick with you.” The general stated, before turning and leaving Kalom alone to his thoughts.

  End of Intermission