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...I'd have done it too. If I was in their position.

The lands have a saying...'If you see a merchant with gold in his ears, listen. If you see a merchant with gold on his tongue, don't listen. If you see a merchant with gold in his eyes, you didn't listen.' What does it mean precisely? You're asking the wrong person, I'm a soldier. It probably has something to do with seeing things coming, and what happens if you don't. Good advice, good advice...

Doesn't always work though. You can be the smartest person in the room, the town, the lands, you can look under every rock and cast a light in every dark corner, you can sit and think until your think muscle just gives out entirely, but you'll never be able to see everything coming, all the time. Sometimes that's all you need. People will always go for easy and stupid most of t'time anyway. Hell, most of the time, the thing you don't see coming ain't that bad.

Of course, sometimes it is.

Take the Aarde. Good solid folk, if a little too happy to be digging in the dirt. Everyone knows the story of the Aarde. They were men and women enslaved by the Imnoblis Empire, forced to work in the Glareihgem mountains, digging endless mines to let the empire forge its weapons.  Generations sweated and bled and died down there, digging ever deeper, and in time, the Aarde began to hear the world speak to them. It promised them freedom in exchange for their services, power in exchange for speaking its will. The Aarde accepted, having been slowly changed already by all those years of digging in that 'magic dirt', though they'd be cross to hear me refer it as such.  They rose up and threw off the empire's shackles, pulled down the empire that had changed them, but they let the people of the Imnoblis empire go and live elsewhere instead of wiping them out, giving them the second chance the world gave them. Ever since, the Aarde have been in touch with the world, able to hear it, move it, command it. They are the bankers and the wordsmiths of our lands, a sign that the world has a soul and it means us well.

Well, except no one's ever found any solid proof the Imnobilis Empire ever existed. Oh, several kingdoms trace their lineage to them, but there's no pottery, no crumbling ruins, nothing. There's no Glareihgem mountains either, with tunnels that lead to the soul of the world: hell, there's been active disagreement over the years just where the Glairehgem mountains could be or could have been if they've fallen down, even among Aarde. The Hemel have Verloren: it might be damn hard to get to and there's little damn reason to go there, but it's THERE. You'd think the Aarde would have preserved the site of their creation in SOME way beyond a story, but no. They have the tale and that's all they need.

Least so they thought. If it was truth, there wouldn't have been the Vassere'c Schism, what was it, eight hundred years ago? Some Aarde named Vassere'c stumbled over another possibility for where the Aarde came from; wasn't from mining magical earth for years or hearing the world, but just some Blackbird weaving the spell of a lifetime that caused a bunch of babies to be born changed, the reason for it being lost. A weapon? To make their mark on the world? An accident? Whatever the reason, the Aarde were nothing more than the ego of a magician, their past a lie to feel less like freaks. Not many Aarde bought it, but Vassere'c actually had something they didn't: evidence that support his claim. Nothing perfect, but it existed, unlike the empires and mountains of the story. The people were divided, and even today, there's still tension. Me, I'm more prone to believe the latter. There are evil Aarde out there, who use the gifts they're born with for evil things. I don't think a world blessing would stick with them through that. Hell, what the Grandsteppers can do if you piss them off...that's more appalling than what most criminals can do. But I won't be saying that to their faces.

Does it really matter? Picked of the world or a magical bug people, who cares? Really, we're all just trying to do the best we can. Our towns, our food, our lands, our talks with others, our fights, our wars, we're all just trying. Even our pasts is just trying. We all have our stories: humans, Aarde, Icks, Hemel, Ergernis, even Mergewraths seem to have their tales of where they came from and how the world likes them.

Not a single one of them ever spoke of Xaxargas.

No one saw Him coming. No one. Some people talk and try and say that they did, but they're doing it by saying water is also wine if you look at it hard enough. There was no sign, no great calamity, no ancient story that talked about the Fatespinner. Just small and big things that began to come together seven years ago. The discovery of that island, the Blacklands. The formation of the Raze. Whispers of the wilds producing beasts and horrors unlike anything ever seen before. Over time, half the world just sort of...backed into knowing He existed. And the rest...

They knew when the Twilight fell. When He fully revealed himself. When He broke our world in every way. When He told us we would all die soon.

Cynics and nutcases still talk about Him. They say everything in our world was actually created by Him. He made the Stream. He made the peoples. He made the lands and the kingdoms, set everything in motion. That our world was a crop to Him, and the Twilight was the harvest of a god. Others tell other stories. That he was a horror from somewhere else, who devoured the god or gods of our world, or merely set Himself up where they would have been, an outsider who could only exist in our realm by defining Himself by its ways. Or he was a man who sought to be a god, who came so close and yet fell short, leaving Him almost there and unable to go back or forward. Others say He was all the sins and horrible things we'd done finally given the spark of life, our punishment for not living up to our best. No one knows. I don't think we ever will. Unless something happens we don't see coming.

I knew about Him, before the Twilight. You wanna know what some people just don't get? Even knowing about something like that, you still gotta get through the day. 

I'm a soldier. I joined my prince and his council to serve their interests. I have never killed anyone who didn't want to kill me too, and I have never done anything that has cost me sleep at night. But we were a land of many people, a land that could grow, a land that could be more. So my superiors did what they did, even with Xaxargas' baleful eye always on us. Now, when the Twilight happened, things changed. But that was the Twilight, and it's over.

Vurnir's was just...it wasn't worthy of our respect, you know? Not our real respect, not what I feel for Caleb, for his brother Hillel who I joined up under. For Leah and Mattan, heroes who died on the Blacklands so we could live. Incael kings never made their bones on strength of arms, or wisdom, like when King Yael of our lands, the Blessed Mind, chose to share his power with a council who would figure out what the people wanted, even reducing his title to Prince to show his desire to be equal to them. The Incael line never had anything like that. They bought what they wanted. Their respect is the kind that follows a shower of coins, their armies are mercenaries who care more for their own needs than for the needs of their land. I will not lie and say Crown Point never hired mercenaries, nor that mercenaries cannot make fine soldiers, fine warriors, but that kind of man was rank and file of the Incael armies. Their lieges made money (oh, they were good at making money, I'll give them that, but it's not something I could respect) and spent it trying to find everything money didn't give them. King Piers Incael, the one who reigned through my whole service until recently, he had a knack for finding silver mines...without Aarde help. Fortunate, that, as Aarde mining assistance always comes at deep cost. I'm not the first to think he got his things by cheating. Considering the rumors of his death that persist beyond the official story of an accidental fall, it's possible his cheating caught up to him. He left behind five sons...

You must understand. Before the Twilight, it was just...what was needed. We shook hands sometimes, and shook our fists at each other other times. They wanted things, we wanted things, and the council and our princes were quite willing to step outside the 'nice ways' to get them. You think Vurnir wasn't? You think Incael never did? The Twilight was different. We'd have gladly forged alliances, marched together to hold back the end of the world. But Vurnir never made a move. Our spies tell us Piers' sons were paralyzed by fear, unable to look the Eternal Titan in the eye and be prepared that the only thing we might do is spit in it on our way down. So when the Twilight was over, when it was clear the world would not end...

They were weak, so we pushed for an advantage. We wanted proper concessions, alterations to our trading deals, who got what in imports to favor us. Unfair? Maybe, but fair doesn't enter into it. They'd shown us we were weak, and things had to go back to the way they were. That's how the world works, that's what I accept as the world. You think they wouldn't have done the same?

Would we have gone to war if they'd said no?...Maybe we would have.

But I know what kind of war it would have been. Quick. Quiet. Minimal death. Not like this. Not like...this.

We knew about Eudes, that he was the family black sheep. But none of us predicted he could, or would do this. When Vurnir first struck back, we were surprised but not caught off guard. Over-aggression in the face of a weak position is very much something men do. But when it became clear who we were fighting, that he was fighting a war of horrors instead of advantages, when he began to use the weapons of Oriam, the weapons made for the war at the end of the world, not in a disagreement between two lands like ours...

Maybe we started this fight, but we'll finish it too. We didn't start it to pillage and steal, and we will not back down in the face of a madman. 

But...it was unjust.

I can admit that. Our motives were unjust. Not something sparked off by the need to protect ourselves. People suffered because of our choice. Our Prince and Council will never admit it, but they did the wrong thing.

Some things had not changed since the Twilight, and neighboring countries dragged their feet over the lack of clear things. People would die because of what we chose to do.

....But some things were born out of the Twilight. Of the 44, there are two primary groups. Marco Millions' lot...and Marsello's. The largest of them, the champions of the world, with golden boy Marsello at the front. Ask me a week ago, I'd say too good to be true. Ask me a week ago, I'd say this is a fight we could finish ourselves.

...I should be dead.

The group the Hourglass belongs to, Outreach or whatever. Not surprised they showed up, bad things had begun happening in our war and that's what they do. But I'm surprised she did. She once shared our prince's bed. According to some, he kicked her out because she was unfaithful. Others say he felt they were going different ways and made it simple. However it ended, they had personal history. Not only did she come, she brought Marsello.

Marsello has powerful allies, and he's called them in. He could have done that and stayed back in a defensive position, serving as a shield wall until he had greater strength by his side. But when it became clear that it wasn't going to happen in one spin of an arm, he went into the field without them. And Miss Brynn, who clearly hates fighting, hates all the bad things we do because we have to, she strapped on arms and armor and followed right after him. The bargain was anyone they disabled was to be taken alive if possible, a bargain I really didn't care for...

But I'm a man of my word. So are they. And they promised to protect me and all my peers, all my men.

That bomb should have cut us both to shreds. There was no cover, nowhere to hide from its teeth.

She stood in front of me and she brought the world to heel. She made things slow down and she battered and smashed the death flying at us away until none of it touched me. 

Now she's on the ground. Bleeding. In agony. For someone she barely knows. Who she probably doesn't agree with. She does what she thinks is right. 

So do I. Mine probably wouldn't have included trying to save her. Not in the face of this.

...My name is Avidan Reemer, and I look upon something I didn't see coming.

...And in the face of the choices of men, all I can do is hope that I see more of it.