Extract from the Memoirs of Julien Carlstadt, Ch. II
On the second day of Borës, the twelfth month of the year four hundred and ninety-one
I had wondered for long why the general insisted that we shan’t cross that bridge. It has kept me wide awake with thoughts that carried my mind away from our enemy at our heels. But it did us no good in the end. We could not withstand our foe’s attack and fortune was never in our favor. After all that we did in following the general’s orders was the very thing we were not meant to do: to cross that bridge. I must admit, for the first few hours, as we fled as far as we could from the frontlines, into territory that unknown even to I, I had hope. Hope that somehow we would find allies in the direction we marched for as long as our bodies would allow. But when the forests began to lessen from our view, as we continued our retreat, as the landscape opened up into that of familiar fields, it dawned on me that we were simply marching into a trap. A trap that is unavoidable.
If the Confederates had made it that far into the Sixth Kingdom, then I was sure that the rest of the country would fall, not by cities, but by regions. Our best hope was to the west where the fort of Tschrewa lay. But as my friends had said, it could have fallen by the time we would have arrived. Our mission was to survive by whatever means we could. That meant to grit our teeth and fasten ourselves in our journey further north. By then, the animated map in my mind began to see what the general had meant before he had sent us off in the evacuation. It was not a matter of if we could survive. He saw that we would have been doomed if we set even one foot across that river because all there was around us were things we would be unable to outlive. To the north, beyond the island where I lived, was the sea. To the west was the coast. To the south were enemies. That left us with the east, the most likely region my people find value in defending. But even further east past the islands of Dannen lay the sea riddled with Confederate ships. From three crowns, this kingdom may become one, and I will be there to see its fall.
— Julien Carlstadt23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJd8sTUpd5U
