The sun crests the jagged horizon of the Pirus highlands, bleeding a bruised gold over the village of Admonito. Light fractures across the surface of Lake Admonito, its waters still and heavy like liquid lead, reflecting the towering, somber silhouettes of the surrounding pine forest. The air is thick with the scent of crushed needles and the metallic tang of old blood—remnants of the dragon's fall.
Aldo stirs. The floorboards of the shack groan under his weight as he sits up, his joints popping like dry kindling. His muscles are a map of fatigue, every fiber screaming from the hunt. He stretches, his fingers brushing the low-hanging rafters, and stares out the window at the shimmering grey expanse of the water.
[Another mission accomplished. Just another notch in the bone. How many more dragons, how many more peasant rebellions before I can stop being a piece of property? I hope I'll soon transform from a slave soldier in this cursed world into a free citizen.]
He rubs his face, the stubble rasping against his palms. The silence of the morning is broken by the rhythmic thud-thud of heavy boots.
Comtois bursts through the door. His face is a sunbeam, eyes wide and sparkling with a rare, frantic energy. He clutches a parchment bearing the wax seal of the Professional Central Army—the PCA, those distant architects of misery in Heilop.
"Aldo! Wake up, you old war-horse!" Comtois's voice bounces off the wooden walls. "News from the high-and-mighty in Heilop. We aren't moving out yet."
Aldo's brow furrows. He doesn't look up. "Tell me we aren't heading back to the mountains..."
"Better or worse, depending on how much you like the smell of pine..." Comtois says, leaning against the doorframe. "Orders are to stay put. We're to pacify the region and help the Marquis manage the sixteen villages around the lake. For four weeks. We are, as of this moment, THE LAW."
Aldo lets out a long, jagged sigh that seems to deflate his entire chest. He stands slowly, moving toward a small table where his meager kit is spread out.
"Four weeks ?" Aldo mutters, his voice gravelly. "They once made us climb the snow-covered mountains of the northern Mikhland Federation to kill wolves and fight those Earthling communists. Then they sent us to manage a barren land for farming in central-northern Heilop. Then we come here to kill the dragon at Lake Admonito... and now? Now we're to be the regional administrator? We're killers, Comtois, not tax collectors."
He pauses, a grim, fleeting smirk touching his lips as he looks at his comrade.
"Maybe they'll assign us a mission to teach the local squirrels how to march in formation next."
Comtois lets out a sharp bark of a laugh, shaking the letter. "Look on the bright side, man! At least they've assigned tasks close together to earn more money faster. In our case, it's all about monster slaying and pacification. The more we do in one spot, the less we march on empty stomachs."
Aldo doesn't respond. He reaches for a dried orange peel and a small pouch of ash. He dips a damp rag into the soot, then begins to scrub his teeth with methodical, violent precision. The grit of the ash grinds against his enamel. He spits into a bucket, his jaw tight.
[Money. It's always about the bounty. But what is gold to a man who belongs to the state?]
Comtois follows suit, grabbing his own cloth, the two of them standing in the dim morning light, performing the mundane ritual of soldiers.
"You know," Aldo says, his mouth half-full of ash, "if Heilop's Palanton doesn't find the spine to abolish this feudal system and replace it with an absolute monarchy or bureaucratic monarchy, like a China-lite, to unify the land, it won't matter what we earn. These nobles, these petty lords... they breathe the air we provide and then charge us for the privilege."
He rinses his mouth with a swig of stale water, spitting it out the door into the dirt.
"The Earth slaves and the PCA freeman soldiers wouldn't have enough bounty money no matter how much they earned. The system is designed to leak."
Comtois chimes in, his voice dropping an octave as he mimics a merchant's whine. "Isn't that just being 'ripped off' with extra steps?"
Aldo nods, his expression deadpan, as if Comtois had just stated a fundamental law of physics. "Exactly. It's the natural order of things in a dying world."
Comtois chuckles, though the sound is hollow. He taps the letter against his palm. "Well, all we need to do is follow the request of the Marquis from northwestern Samekh, for a month. One month of playing governor, and then we're off to the next nightmare."
Aldo stops. He reaches for a basin of cold water and plunges his face into it. The shock of the temperature clears the cobwebs from his mind. He emerges dripping, his hair plastered to his forehead, his eyes piercing.
"What does this Marquis from northwestern Samekh, specifically Pirus, ask us to do? Read the letter carefully!" Aldo's voice is sharp now, the commander returning.
Comtois's smile falters. He unfolds the parchment, squinting at the cramped, elegant script. As his eyes scan the lines, the color slowly drains from his cheeks.
"Pacify the Greywater area..." Comtois reads aloud, his voice trembling slightly. "That is... Lake Admonito. The locals call it Admonito, but the Marquis and the nobles of Samekh call it 'Greywater.' I dunno this mismatch...He wants us to 'build a road from Greywater to the Jurat plain' and 'ensure the best conditions for the Greywater Basin.'"
Comtois pauses, looking up at Aldo with a forced, pathetic grin. "It... it sounds simple enough..." he says, trying to reassure himself more than his friend.
Aldo stares at him, unblinking. The water drips from his chin onto his tunic. "Does the letter explain what... 'best conditions' means?"
Comtois looks back at the paper, flipping it over as if the definition might be hidden on the back. "No."
"So..." Aldo steps closer, his presence filling the small shack. "You didn't clearly explain what 'best conditions' meant because the letter doesn't define it?"
Comtois thinks for a moment, the realization sinking in like a stone in the lake. His eyes widen in panic. "That means... that means the Marquis could take advantage of that to get the money. If we finish, he could claim the conditions aren't 'best' enough. He could withhold the pay, or worse, claim we failed!"
Comtois begins to pace, his breathing becoming shallow. "What should we do now?"
Aldo turns away from his friend, walking to the open door. He looks out toward the pine forest. The trees are giants here, their needles so thick they block out the sun in the heart of the woods. The lake is a mirror of silver, beautiful and indifferent.
"We are slave-soldiers..." Aldo says, his voice low and steady. "Only able to obey orders and not resist, so we must find a way to achieve the best results. Results so undeniable that even a snake from Pirus cannot twist them."
Comtois's shoulders slump. His eyes are drooped, the light of his earlier excitement completely extinguished. "Well, what else can we do now?"
Aldo turns back, his eyes burning with a sudden, cold fire. He moves to a map spread across a crate and slams his hand down on the center of the lake.
"There are four things we need to do right now," Aldo declares. The air in the room seems to hum. Outside, a hawk screams as it circles the canopy, and the wind picks up, whistling through the pines like the ghosts of the fallen.
"First, inform the fifteen villages along the lake outside Admonito that we have killed the Drakolimne and will temporarily manage them for the next four weeks. They need to see us as protectors."
He points to the clusters of dots surrounding the water.
"Second, the two hundred slave-soldier earthlings in our two companies will work with the villagers in sixteen villages to repair the damage. We have only focused on Admonito so far, but my subordinate Ryong says the other fifteen villages are in a state of considerable destruction. If we want 'best conditions,' we rebuild their homes first."
Aldo's finger slides across the map to the surrounding hills.
"Third, ensure a food supply because a hungry village is a rebellious village."
Finally, he traces a line from the lake toward the distant horizon, past the edge of the forest.
"Fourth, build roads connecting us out of this vast pine forest of Pirus. We carve a path out of this greenery so that trade can flow. If the Marquis wants a road, we'll give him a road he can see from the clouds."
Comtois watches him, the fear in his eyes slowly being replaced by a grim resolve. He nods, once, sharply.
The sun hemorrhages a violent violet and bruised orange over the Pirus highlands, its dying light catching the scales of the water as if the lake itself is a dragon slowly breathing its last. The surface of Lake Greywater—or Admonito, as the locals stubbornly cling to the name—shimmers with a deceptive tranquility. Beneath that mirror-sheen lie the leftover bones of the Drakolimne, but above it, the world is screaming with the friction of progress.
The shores are a chaotic symphony of saws, hammers, and the rhythmic thud-thud of heavy timber being dropped onto the earth. Newly built piers stretch out like skeletal fingers into the deep, their wood still weeping sap, smelling of pine and salt. Fishing boats, fresh from the stocks with hulls of pale, unweathered wood, cut through the leaden water.
"Steady the bow-line, Barnaby! Thou'rt hauling like a blind mule in a peat bog!" shouted Old Winton, his voice cracked like dry parchment. He spat into the froth as his vessel kissed the raw pine pilings. "The Admonito yields her bounty today, aye, but she'll take thy fingers for a tithe if thou treatest her like a common pond!"
"Let her try, Father!" the lad laughed, hoisting a net that groaned under the weight of a thousand shimmering coins of flesh. "The Drakolimne is a ghost, and ghosts have no teeth for biting. Look at this silver! 'Tis enough to buy a winter's worth of ale and a new cloak for the babe to boot!"
Fishermen, men who spent generations fearing the spray of the lake, now haul in nets bursting with silver-scaled life. On the bank, the air is thick with the scent of brine and sweat. Women call out to one another, their voices sharp and melodic over the crashing surf, as they drive knives through the bellies of the catch, washing and salting the meat in a frenzy of newfound abundance.
"Heigh-ho, Elspeth! Cast another handful of salt on those gills !" sang out Marda, her sleeves rolled past her elbows, stained with the iridescent gore of the harvest. "The salt-man will be at the gate by vespers, and I'll not have him find our barrels weeping water instead of brine. Work the steel, lass!"
"My blade is singing, Marda!" Elspeth replied, her rhythm unbroken as the steel flashed in the violet light. "For ten years I watched my man fear the mist, and now look—the Mist-Mother feeds us! I'll gut a thousand more if it means the pot stays full through the frost and the hearth stays bright."
For the first time in living memory, the lake is not a tomb; it is a larder. The skeletal fingers of the piers may be new, but the hunger they satisfy is as old as the mountains, finally met with the wet, red reality of plenty.
Hano Kichiro stands at the edge of the central pier, his boots caked in the grey mud of the shoreline. He is young, his face lit with a mischievous, feline grin—the kind of expression that looks like a drawn emoticon, a :3 etched into his features by pure, unadulterated sass. He is a Japanese boy serving under Aldo, and like his commander, he possesses a restless, almost obsessive drive to impose order on this chaotic, medieval filth. He wants to Japanize the very air they breathe.
[Look at them. Scrambling like ants for the first time they've seen sugar. It's messy, it's loud, and it's gloriously efficient. If only the smell of rotting fish didn't stick to my uniform so much.]
Hano turns to a group of slave soldiers standing nearby, their armor dull and dented from the dragon hunt. He snaps his fingers, pointing toward the village square.
"You lot, move it! Get to the tavern. Find the Admonito elders and the quartermasters. Tell those greedy merchants we need salt—more than they think they have. If the fish rot before the sun goes down, it's coming out of their hides!"
The slave-soldiers scatter. Hano doesn't wait for a salute; he dives back into the throng of workers, his eyes darting like a hawk's. He spots a small boy, no older than ten, his hands raw and red as he tugs at a heavy crate of fishing tackle. Hano's face sours. He clicks his tongue, the sound sharp as a whip-crack.
"Hey! You three!" Hano barks, gesturing to another pair of slave-soldier guards. "Drag that kid out of here. He's too small for the docks. Take him to the makeshift hall. He should be in class, not breaking his back for a few coppers. Education is the only way these peasants stop smelling like wet hay."
The boy is led away, confused and trembling, while Hano simply adjust his collar, muttering about the lack of proper school supplies in this godforsaken world.