"Because I fear you are still taking the matter of the emperor’s arrival and all it’s ramifications too lightly, my friend." Amhain sternly said, keeping his eyes fixated upon the distant mountain.

Sighing, Barrafin replied with a gentle shake of his head "How bad has it gotten?"

"Bad." The Enkada prince replied, his voice ladened by his unspoken worry.

"Have you figured out who they’re rallying behind yet?" Barrafin darkly asked, his eyes narrowing at the unseen foe they’ve been trying to catch for months now.

"No." Amhain frustratingly shook his head. "There are simply too many voices vehemently whispering this ill-conceived belief of theirs."

"It’s like being faced with the task of exterminating an intrusion of cockroaches, even if we deal with ten, another twenty have long since been spawned in their place." He replied with vexation venomously lacing his every word, as he roughly swept his hair back in an almost instinctual show of irritation.

"Ever since the slow of hostilities in the south between the great clans, this delusional dream of a return to how things were before the initial invasion of the Eclipse Empire has been sold with greater and greater success to the patriarchs of the northern clans." Amhain woefully stated, his head bending to as he rubbed his tired eyes.

"Have they already forgotten the disaster we suffered on the banks of the Thiar river, and through out the last war?! Do they want our people extinguished beneath the sword of Lord Hamilcar" Barrafin asked to no one in particular with pure disbelief lining his tongue.

"I can not say." He replied with a look of forlorn resignation, his eyes momentarily flashing in fear and awe at that battle he’d once conducted against the demon he’d since come to harbour both true admiration for and apprehension against; both because of his almost impossible strength, that utterly eclipsed his mother’s. who’d once seen as invincible, but more importantly for his unfairly strategic and experienced mind that could conjure up plans so magnificently intricate and that that made his most sophisticated schemes seem like a child’s sloppy finger painting.

A sigh passed through the two’s mouths, and for a few seconds following a heavy silence weighed down on their shoulders, before Barrafin then asked "What is her ladyship’s next directive? Do we still maintain our current strategy or do we pivot to our secondary plan?"

Amhain calmly shook his head in response, before he then answered with a frigid tone "I’m afraid we can no longer put our full trust in the union we formed with the others. From this moment on, we will be working under the presumption that every clan and patriarch who is not of your ilk or ours, are traitors or compromised beyond a shadow of doubt, and can no longer be trusted."

"So what do we do?" Barrafin asked again, his brows furrowed as he kept gazing holes into the northern mountains.

"...My mother has decreed that we begin the immediate implementation of the Desperate Doctrine." Amhain paused for a moment, then began almost hesitantly, before his voice then gained a chilling edge of cruelty and detachment at the tail end of his words.

"What?!" Exclaimed Barrafin, as he turned his whole body to his friend in utter disbelief, finally sparing the mountain his burning stare.

"It’s our only choice by this point." Amhain coolly replied.

"Don’t give me that nonsense!" Barrafin roughly snatched his collar with one hand, forcefully bringing them face to face. "I was against that insanity from the moment you mentioned it, but I chose to let it go then, because I thought you and the duchess were wise enough to not actually act upon such madness!"

"Then do you prefer you hand our people’s fate to the truly deranged?! Huh?! Answer me Patriarch of the Dolgun Clan! Would you rather we hand our innocent people’s lives to those demons and their rumoured dragon of a master, because of the wills of their half-witted, blind, gaggle of fools they call patriarchs! Is that it? Or do you want to see the tragedy of your best friend’s and wife’s clan returned to our lands so desperately?!" The usually calm and composed princely heir to the most powerful woman in the northern lands of the Murathicus Tribes, roared out in response, slapping away the hand of the Nineth Army’s general as he did so.

The two friends stood frozen before each other, one stunned in guilt ridden, grief riddled, agonising quiet that knew not what to even say in response; while the other stiffened in petrified shame and horror at the syllables that just skidded over his tongue and so ruthlessly hurled towards one of his so few friends.

"I’m sorry Barrafin. I was out of line." It took a moment more for this awkward silence to finally be interrupted by Amhain who instantly bent his back as low as it could in apology, as he proclaimed his fault.

Barrafin did not immediately respond to his words, as his face was still a frozen granite mask of heart wrenching grief, that fully and brutally opened and exposed his still bleeding heart.

"...You have my forgiveness, but never repeat it." Barrafin’s words also needed a moment for them to drag themselves beyond his teeth, and give peace to the clever prince’s conscious.

"Thank you." Barrafin again bowed before the man he called friend in gratitude.

The two slipped into silence again after which, neither saying anything to the other, as they then turned their eyes to the festive city this time.

"Amhain." Barrafin called out.

"Yes my friend?" He questioningly answered.

"I will command my clan to aid yours as best as they can, we will spare no resource unspent, no pair of hands unused, but I fear we might still not be able to accomplish what our desired ends. Neither you nor we have the abilities or the expertise for such a vast, bloody and meticulous operation. Might we consider presenting this issue before those who have more knowledge in this than us?"

"You mean Lord Avestan and lord Hamilcar, don’t you?" He knowingly asked, seeing past his friend’s well meaning, and on the surface, wise intentions.

"Yes." Barrafin did not deny it. "We’ve come to know each other very well in recent years, even being considered good friends, at least you and I with lord Avestan, while your mother has risen to a position of trust among the Grand Marshal’s inner circle, can we not rely on their support for such a difficult mission. Especially if it would eventually service the empire’s interests?"

"This is not a matter of simple skill and competency, but one of trust and necessity." He replied, his tone as resolute as hardened steel. "We must be the ones to clean our people’s own mess Barrafin. Only us! And not just for those of us already under the empire’s rule, but for those who would soon be forced beneath it as well; we must be strong enough, wise enough and most importantly, valued enough to be entrusted with their management, so that no drastic actions would be done upon our people."

"...Would you calm yourself my friend, we aren’t even sure yet that we are truly going to head south this year." Barrafin said a second later, his face unconsciously stretching into an uncomfortable smile.

"Ah yes, the man they keep praising as the Mad Monarch, the Ruinous Dragon, the Bloody Emperor and the greatest military talent to be born in a millennium is only rushing here for peace talks and cordial negotiations." Amhain replied with a sarcastic roll of his eyes. "Optimism is a good thing to have my friend, but be careful to not let it pull the wool over your eyes, blinding you of reality."

Barrafin caught an odd ripple in Amhain’s voice, that was not present there before, prompting him to ask "What weighs so heavily on your shoulders dear friend?"

"Lord Avestan claims that his majesty is the equal, if not the better, of his lordship the Grand Marshal." Amhain calmly replied.

"Is that even possible?" Barrafin asked half in disbelief, half in a light hearted way to shatter the taught air beginning to thicken around his friend.

"Have you ever known the man to lie, or even exaggerate?" Asked Amhain, shrugging away his attempt at humour. "But what truly weighs on me so these days is what he, and a few others I’ve come to know from the Fifth Army also claim about this emperor."

"What?" He questioned. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"They say that a monster, something beyond humanity, unlike divinity and wholly dowsed in infernal, manic fire and wrath, a perverse warping of sanity, resides within the eighteen year old monarch. Something that usually lies dormant within his mind, slumbering in the deepest recesses of his soul, awaiting the moment bloody rage and senseless madness takes hold of his senses, which is when they say it would peer through his abyssal eyes and damn all who stood before him to gruesome fates." Amhain said with a gradually paling face.

"...And you believe such tall tales?" Barrafin asked, his brows furrowed and his heart beating in acknowledgement of the words he always heard of as well, but always desperately dismissed them as exaggerations.

Amhain grimly responded with "We will see for ourselves tomorrow, but I have a feeling the beloved master of such men as the Grand Marshal, Avestan, Archon, and that lunatic Orhan would not fall so short of his reputation."

The two again returned to silence, before Barrafin then asked with a tired voice "To what sort of war are we headed to my friend?"

"I don’t think either of us want to know." Was all Amhain said in return.

Yet while these words of concern for the future of a people unknowingly standing before a mad dragon’s march were being discussed, a man broke free from his company’s assigned tasks, and carefully headed outside the military encampment, pretending to need to relieve himself in the nearby forest, when he came across a certain tree with a subtle symbol carved upon it’s trunk.

He did a quick check around, making sure none was following him, before he then bent near the tree’s exposed roots and began rummaging through the rough overgrowth around it, until he found a carefully hidden latch, which he quickly opened and slipped inside.

Once he was in the small borrow carved into the earth, he found himself face to face with a dagger pointed threatingly at his throat.

"For freedom." The man calmly said, raising his arms in surrender.

Hearing his words, the hooded and masked man who held him at knife point dropped his hand, and asked "What do you report?"

"The northern demons’ master will be arriving tomorrow." Answered him the man with a delighted grin.

"How certain are you?" The hooded man seemed shocked, before he again questioned him.

"Perfectly." Confidently replied the informant.

"For freedom." The hooded man remained silent for a moment before he then resolutely saluted him.

"For freedom!" A salute the other repeated with great gusto as well.