Eternal

Your head still hurts from where part of your skull was replaced with a crude metal plate and your body aches all over as it has been for years. You’re nearly deaf in your one working ear. You’ve got scars all over your face and body. You even have a couple of missing fingertips now. Even if you did go into battle again, you probably wouldn’t even make it to the city.

You’ve finally realized that your days of battle are over, or at least over on any meaningful level. It’s a sobering thought and not one you’re happy with, but if you’re going to truly re-establish the Empire or have a reasonable successor nation, then you’re going to have to step back from the battlefield.

The next day you call in your top staff and tell them that you will indeed pull yourself out of the final push on to the “Eternal City”, they all of course agree with your decision and state they are glad to hear you’ve made it. You tell them all what you want done still as far as the attack is concerned and you also say you aren’t going to be running off the battlefield just yet, as you still want to oversee things from a distance at least.

There really isn’t too much strategy in the scheme of things. You plan on breaching the wall with cannons and catapults and then your soldiers will kill everything hostile within. Simple enough.

You watch from outside your tent when the attack commences, hours pass and everything is going as planned and then your head begins to hurt once again. Cursing, you go back inside to lie down for a while. After a few minutes you begin to feel better, but now you’re tired. If your hearing was better you probably wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, but as it is, the faint sounds of the cannons and battle aren’t enough to keep you awake. You figure a small nap won’t hurt, so you allow yourself to drift off.

You begin to have a dream where you are back in Mistress’ classroom. Everything is the same except you’re the only one there and you’re five years old again. Mistress then walks into the room with a sneer on her face.

“You disappoint me, but then I should’ve expected such weakness from one that begs for his life when faced with the possibility of death!” Mistress says to you.
“I…” is all you get out before she kicks you in the chest and steps on you. You look up and see her cruelly smiling at you.
“Silence! Did you learn nothing from me? You lack discipline! You always did! You’re weak and soft! That’s why your Empire fell! You think you can restore it? It’s gone! Just like most of your fellow Eternals and you’ll be next, if you don’t beg. Now do it! Beg!”
“No…I…” you gasp.
“What?! You dare disobey me?” Mistress shouts and ceases stepping on you for a moment to pick you up and slap you across the face. You slap her back and she throws you into a bunch of chairs.
“Impudent whelp! You will learn to obey!” she yells and moves towards you.

You scramble back and stand up. She approaches closer and you pick up a chair and attempt to hit her with it, but she grabs it and yanks it from your hands.

“Nice try Eternal, but it’s too late for fighting back.”

You try to get out of the way, but you feel hard wooden chair smashing into your body which is already bruised and sore from being thrown. You collapse on the floor and feel something wet dripping from your head. It’s blood.

You are picked up and turned around by Mistress; she spits in your face and lifts you in the air. You can barely focus on her face as you’re feeling very dizzy.

“Is this the best you can do? You couldn’t even land one hit on me and you’re trying to restore the Empire? You need to just let it die. Its time came and went just like yours did. Yet instead of letting go and dying with dignity you’re choosing to live as a parody of yourself ruling a parody of the Empire. Pathetic!” Mistress says and throws you, though you don’t hit a wall like you expect to, you just continue to fly backwards in the air and then someone catches you.

“Oof! What the hell son, I’m not carrying you, you fight your own battles!” you hear Captain Gruz say and then he drops you to the floor. When you stand back up you’re a little bigger. You’re twelve and in Gruz’s training room.

“Now listen, I know we had our differences, but don’t you listen to that svelk bitch, she’s just projecting her own failures onto you. I say go for it. I mean I think you know you can achieve anything you set your mind to. So what if you’re an old broken down warhorse now? You can still restore the Empire. The hard part is over! It’s just the boring part that you have to take care of, and if you start on it now, you might even take care of all of it before you die! But remember you have to work with others, for it to succeed! Now go on, and for the Emperor’s sake, let go of the fucking past, it doesn’t need to be perfect! Nothing ever is!”

At this point Captain Gruz points to a door and you comply and grab the handle and pull the door towards you…

“Sir! Sir! It’s just me!” Colonel Gemma shouts. You open your eyes and see her blurry image and your hand strongly grabbing her wrist. She probably was trying to wake you up and you instinctively reacted. Seeing that you’re not in danger you let her go.

“What the hell’s going on?” you say sitting up and rubbing your head.
“I just wanted to inform you that we won. The city is uh…ours.”
“Hmm, what’s that hesitation in your voice?”
“No hesitation, just well…”
“Colonel, my head still hurts so I’m in no mood for your sputtering, now out with it!”
“The city is ours and the enemy has been defeated, but I’m afraid that the city has been totally destroyed.”
“Destroyed? What the fuck happened?”
‘There were some complications…sir…I…”

You don’t let her finish; you get off you bed, push her aside and are blinded by the light when you open the tent. When you fell asleep it was mid-day, now the sun is coming up! Were you asleep the whole damn day?

You look in the distance and see the Eternal City with heavy smoke rising from it. In fact there is a weird purple cloud hovering over part of it as well. You can’t even see any of the large towers anymore and it looks like the palace was trashed as well, if the destroyed domes and spires are any indication. So much for making this the new capital or even stepping foot into a place that you never even got to visit when you were serving the Empire.

“Why the hell didn’t someone wake me?!” you shout. Several officers nearby are silent. Gemma once again attempts to explain that someone did, but you were in a deep sleep and thought you’d only be angry if you thought they couldn’t handle things.

You look at her and the rest of your staff. Here they are scared of your next reaction and there are several of them and one of you. Some are in very fit condition and all of them are armed with firearms as well as close combat weapons. If they were all of the mind to overthrow you by putting several bullets in your body they could easily do it, and quite frankly you wouldn’t even blame them either.

Yet somehow their mixture of fear and respect for you prevents them from doing so. This is what you have to work with and this is as good as it gets. It could be a lot worse.

“(Sigh) Alright. You all did well and I’m proud of all of you. There’s going to be some changes in command structure, but we can get to that later. I want a carriage sent here to take me back to the capital, but before that I guess a small victory celebration is in order.”
“General, you don’t want the Eternal City?” someone asks.
“Well it would’ve been nice, but no. In fact just leave it; I don’t even want it rebuilt. It’s a relic of a past that’s long dead. The Nalin Empire doesn’t need it.”

You go back in your tent to lay down while hearing the faint sounds of cheering of your staff and surviving soldiers outside.

You drift off again and hope you have better dreams this time around.

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