My name is Edmund of Galea, son of Regan, son of Edmund. I'm a decorated army Tribunus, commander of this cohort.

I was quite upset to have been tasked by the king to come to this lightly defended frontier city and reclaim it from the wild beasts that apparently took over. A very shaken citizen reported having seen a bi-headed demon spewing fire from its mouth, setting the town on fire and detonating the walls with its mighty blows.

Another one reported some sort of furry viper that stood on two legs, slithering inside the governor's flesh and mutating him into some awful hell-creature. Then, almost out of the blue, over a hundred reports of wild hunts and gates of hell unleashing their beasts upon our lands, all coming from this particular town.

It wasn't the first time these peasants' overactive imagination replaced a wolf pack with mutated shadow hounds or some other pseudo-political ploy by the local feud trying to pull a scheme to avoid war taxes or getting conscripted.

I don't want to boast too much, for that would be unbecoming, but I'm well-taught in the arts of war, and I've been striving hard to make sure I can one day reach the top of the military hierarchy, command hundreds of legions, and have my enemies quiver at my name. Gain an epithet, Edmund the Conqueror, or Edmund the Great.

But after hitting Tribunus, I keep getting sent to these low-priority tasks at the derelicts of our mighty nation, and getting told by geezers that it's as important as the war. I know it's not. Have you ever heard of a soldier getting promoted for doing ranger's work? For killing a pack of wild animals? Exactly. Merits are made on the frontlines, and the frontlines alone.

That's why, when I saw this two-bit horned cat incubus - a minor entity, of course - I simply tried bribing it away. I get paid anyway; I didn't care if the thing lived or not. But it had the audacity to kill my envoy in an insulting and gruesome manner, the wicked thing.

I decided to show it its place, hammering them with the full blunt force of my cohort. I followed all the instructions they taught me in the academy:

Never underestimate your enemy, even if it's a hastily put-together company of peasants. Since we were heavily outnumbered, I had my archers launch fiery volleys and set the camp ablaze, reaping their lives by the dozen.

While my men also suffered from the attack, our casualties were much fewer in quantity; a complete success.

Spread your troops to appear larger and more intimidating to the enemy, clear a path to their retreat, and pressure.

Advance surely and decisively, stomping on their morale.

Of course, I also applied other strategies, which would take too long for a novice to understand. Mastery is shown in the details - the micromanaging of one's troops and strategic positioning of armored troops is decisive to one's victory.

I crushed the opposition, as it was expected, to the point where they simply decided to give up and throw their weapons aside. It was very sudden, as if the demon's hold was cut clean like a puppet's string.

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The thing retreated further into the city, probably in a futile attempt to narrow the passage and compensate for our numerical superiority - a vain attempt from a feeble mind incapable of accepting defeat. We followed the thing into the chapel, something that stirred men of more religious disposition.

Ominous wailing could be heard from the bottom of the building, and even against reason, it sounded as if it were hundreds, perhaps even a thousand meters into the earth - echoes over echoes deforming the sound into something that could not be understood.

My men looked at each other, considering throwing a game of stones to see who went down first, but I knew that the first rule to gain respect from your men is to appear a courageous commander, even if you were the one shaken the most by the perverse sounds.

I'm not a man of words, so I cannot precisely describe how macabre the descent was - like walking inside a living tomb made of rotten corpses, like a curse constantly buzzing inside your head, slipping profane thoughts I dare not repeat, images not meant to be seen, immediately blocked by the mind, straining it, pressuring one.

A heavy air, so dense it made it hard to breathe. It got worse the more I went down, that humid, rancid air. It gnawed on my mind so much that I didn't notice some of my men fainting in the back.

For a minute, I thought of going back and setting the chapel ablaze, but none would stand by it, and even worse, given the amount of water in the ambient, it was unlikely to kill that cat-eyed demon bastard.

The rest of the descent, I felt absent-minded, as if... As if I wasn't quite myself. Daydreaming in a place like this! It was like turning my back on a flintlock-wielding scoundrel and expecting him not to shoot me in the back. The only thing that brought me back to reality was seeing them - ex-humans, dragging themselves around, walking, even talking, but make no mistake: those things aren't humans anymore.

I'm a man of war. I've seen men break in a thousand different ways: I've seen their faces when they know there's no retreat, when they know they're not coming home, I've seen their faces when they were told that there was no home to come back to, that a noxious miasma had passed through their hometown and reaped the lives of the entire place. I've seen their faces as they were disgraced after defeat; I even saw them when the supplies were running out and they eyed the crippled and weak, or how they looked at that one loner when they'd run out a week ago.

I've never seen this expression on their faces, this combination of conflicting emotions - utter hopelessness and fierce anger, as if their very purpose of existence was ripped out of their hearts, as if they'd felt the pain of the downfall of humanity inflicted a thousandfold upon their souls, and the strangest thing of all, relief.

I don't know at what. I don't know what plagued their minds, what forbidden, black malediction could devoid them of humanity so fast, but I knew one thing: I wasn't going to let that happen to me.

A blighted being that appeared healthy compared to the other willow figures tried to impale me with some crude spear, and I dodged in time.

The lad behind me wasn't so lucky, though, and the spear hit him square in the chest. He looked at me, still dazzled by the basement's miasma, as his midsection turned into a black goo, killing him instantly.

I was set aback at the consort of magicks, as if this was a manner of witch convent we'd stumbled upon.

The fright that these things inflicted upon my soldiers was something that no spreading of troops could ever compare, and the worst thing still - as a thing that used to be a young blonde man lowered his sword towards me, I felt struggling to rise my own, as if a darkness was beckoning me, as if the abyss was calling me.

I, Edmund of Galea, son of Regan, son of Edmund, am a decorated army Tribunus, commander of this cohort. I'm already dead; I feel the sharp steel lacerate me as I repeat my conviction:

I refuse to turn into one of those things.