In the light of the burning temple, the requisitioning began. Weapons, foodstuffs, clothes, currency. Everything of some value, down to furniture was found and catalogued.

Naturally, the lists were not exhaustive, Serafin saw many of her soldiers with considerably thicker pockets than they should have. When she noticed she shook her head and clenched her teeth.

"Commander." Valeria´s drew Serafin back into the here and now, away from gallows and court martials. "Your final orders for this place, and them?"

She pointed over her shoulder. After every house had been searched, the surviving inhabitants had been onto the square. To a soul they looked upon the burning building with horror, many of them cried silently, those who sobbed too loudly were beaten to the ground.

Serafin let out a sigh of relief as she looked at the captives. They had been separated already, humans standing on one side, held back by the threat of weapons alone, while the inhumans stood opposite of them, all bearing chains to the last.

"This-" She shook her head. "Place, is defensible, well supplied. We will hold onto it and advance further upward." Serafin looked further north, a cold shiver running down her back. The mountains looked even greater than the ones they had passed already. "The captives are to be sent back, we don't need them here. The savages are to be put to work, Tatanya wanted some of them, let her have whatever she wants. The traitors however."

She took a deep breath. The truth was out. Even were she to personally instruct every soldier present not to mention them, someone would talk. Someone always talked. If a truth cannot be snuffed out, it had to be altered.

"There can be no crime more repulsive than to aid the inhuman, to grant them our boon of civilisation, to arm them to scour our homeland. I cannot, I will not stand for such an insult to our Imperator tot stand." Serafin rose her voice as she spoke, loud enough that all could hear her. "For not only turning their back upon our empire, but to seek to drive daggers into ours, They are to be executed, to the last, immediately."

Serafin sought the eyes of her soldiers, and saw their hesitance. She sighed, they were not guardians, not gardists. They required motivation. An example.

With her blade drawn she approached the captives. It had to be a striking image. Her eyes fell upon a young woman her age, smart enough to know what was to come. She scurried back, attempting to fall back into the crowd. But Serafin grasped her by her arm and dragged her to the centre of the square, kicking and screaming.

Serafin struck her in the stomach, causing the woman to sink to the ground, arms wrapped around herself. "Witness the fate of traitors." Serafin spoke out, walking behind the woman and resting her blade at her neck. This way she did not have to look her in the eyes.

"Forgive me Aeterna!" The woman finally cried out, folding her hands in prayer and pushing her face into the ground, over and over. "Forgive me for forsaking you!"

All went quiet. All but the woman.

"Forgive me for working for these reprehensible, disgusting creatures, my imperator!" She turned on her knees towards Serafin, staring up at her with a dirtied face. "I had no choice, I had no choice! My parents, they!" She pointed towards two figures in the crowd. "They ran from Zana, I was but a child, I could not resist as they took me so far away into the clutches of these savages."

She pushed her face against Serafin´s boots, wailing. "It is just as you said, my lord, many of these, many are traitors, sharing our secrets and our ways in return for abominable treasure and influence, their hearts are tainted with perversion, but not all of us."

Serafin pulled herself back from the woman, but it did not stop her fervour. "Many came here in chains, others without a choice like myself, my lord, please give us a chance to prove ourselves to you, to the empire, let us repent. We know these lands, the traps these savages have laid out, how to pass them unhindered, and so, so much more, whatever it is you desire. Is that not right?"

She looked to her people, and was met with disgust and disdain. But a few, a handful of younger men and women stepped up, themselves trembling in their voices.

"Zina is right, I was dragged here by my parents too!"

"I had no choice, this beast just took me from my home, oh the torment I endured to just survive!"

"Let us prove ourselves, we'll rid you of these savages for you!"

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Serafin still clutched her blade tightly as Valeria came to her side. "I understand your reprehension, commander." She whispered into Serafin´s ear. "But please do consider the worth that these scum can have for us." She laid her hand on that of Serafin. "We can still have them rounded up afterwards."

"Your conditions do not absolve you of your misdeeds." Serafin´s words immediately silenced the uproar. They hung at her lips. "But they allow a chance of redemption." She sheathed her blade, her stomach was churning. "Those willing to prove themselves may step forward. You will receive a weapon and a chance to redeem your sins, be it through action or through blood."

Forty ended up stepping forward, the young ones, around her age. They stared back at their disgusted former neighbours, answering their disdain with jeering as they were walked out the village in columns. The inhumans up the pass, back to their base. The humans just past the wall. Gunshots broke the silence shortly after.

Serafin did not dignify their volunteers with even a gaze. The woman who had started the entire scene tried to crawl towards her, but Serafin kicked her to the side as she marched off with Valeria in tow.

"I do not want two of them to stand in a place without a weapon pointed at them." Serafin growled under her breath. "And if one of them as much as looks askance they are to receive a bullet through the neck."

"Understood, commander." Valeria had taken out a piece of paper, writing down as they walked. "This valley is rather large, I doubt we will be able to scout it´s entirety before nightfall."

"Then we will simply do as well as we can." They stopped a large building Serafin had been informed about. It was the most liveable, seemingly having belonged to a human family before. A carpet laid across the ground of the entry hall, and the thick wooden walls and windows kept out the biting cold. "Send requests for six or seven hundred to join us here from base. And make sure that nobody exits these walls after nightfall."

Serafin hung up her coat and stretched. "And after that take command of the city."

"And what will you be doing, commander?" Valeria leaned her head to the side.

For the first time this day, Serafin smiled. "Work. The remains at base require new orders."

Valeria let out a long sigh.

For all it´s luxury, the home was far removed from what Serafin truly needed. Finding paper was a struggle, let alone ink or pencil. The office she had made her own soon looked like a battlefield, most of the shelves empty, it´s contents laying on the ground. The room did not have it´s own supply of firewood, and so Serafin picked up books whenever the fires died down, and anything she could not read went into the flames.

The sun had started going down past the mountains when she had finished, another monstrous stack of written orders at her side. But the view did not fill her with comfort. Instead, with her work finished, her mind had time and room to consider things much more dreadful.

Serafin walked back down, retrieving her coat before returning to the office. She pulled out the treaty, laying it down on the table in front of her. And looked at it.

The words themselves meant nothing, she did not care. All that mattered were the seven letters at the bottom. Her own imperator, enshrined this far from the empire, treating with the inhuman.

What was she to do? There was nobody she could tell of it. Nobody she could ask for guidance. It´s mere existence was treason, knowing of it damning. It could not exist, it should not exist.

But it did.

She picked it up and paced, up and down the room. Her mind racing with faux reasoning. The inhuman was the eternal enemy, since the dawn of the empire, the very first encounters. Any attempts at peace had been ignored, every dignitary brutally murdered, so spoke the histories. And here she held a treaty, here she had seen her kin live near abominations!

She did not want an answer. Her feet stopped near the fireplace. No answer could satisfy. The truth immaculate was the truth, the histories were history. They had to be. She reached her hand out to the fire.

Who knew beside her? A few useful traitors, at best. Who would believe their word against her own? She was the acting commander, a former paladin, a devotee of Aeterna. What meant a little paper in comparison to the glory of humanity?

She dropped the treaty in the flames, and her heart sang as she watched it be consumed, writhing and turning to ash. It ceased to be. And if it was not know, who was to say it ever had been?

Her heart was light as she picked up the stacks of paper, carrying them down to the entry hall.

She looked through a window on her way back. Saw her soldiers patrolling the wall. The wind howled around the building, but here it did not touch her. Finally she felt her own exhaustion, how badly her eyes were burning.

Serafin did not bother taking the stairs back up, instead wandering to the living room. After adding a few logs to the fireplace she laid down on a great sofa, resting her head on the comfortable leather as her body began to relax, first now could she feel how tense she had been.

Her eyes fell shut, and moments later she drifted off into sleep, a warm smile upon her lips. No spectre haunted her within her dreams as she walked through her happiest memories, the warm summer days before the guardians. Laying in the grass with Ellyrie, feeling the warm sun shine upon them.

Perhaps she could make things right, she thought. Maybe she could make the world make sense, and have El see it not for what it was, but what it was meant to be. Perhaps then they could all walk together again. As what they were meant to be. Friends, lovers. Wives.