War was an unfortunate business.

There were winners, and there were losers. Ronark the Hero understood that. But as Ronark the man gazed out across the battlefield, now strewn with the bodies of hundreds of broken warriors, the zeal of combat still frozen on their gnarled features, a grim frown stole over him. The only winners here, he thought grimly, were the vultures.
They shouldn’t have died here. They should have died defending on their home soil, died for something meaningful. Not here in the back end of nowhere, fighting an uncertain war of aggression just to make sure the newly founded Karus Collective couldn’t do the same to them later. Still, Ronark knew that while the price of maintaining one’s holdings in foreign lands was high, the price of letting them lapse was still higher.

War was an unfortunate business.

Gavinka woke with a start as a pounding sounded through the early morning air in his chamber with all the thunder and urgency of a thousand galloping war horses. For a moment he wasn’t the commander of the armies of El Morad, wasn’t a decorated war veteran who had known nothing but battle his whole life. For a moment, as the images of dreams slowly slipped into unconsciousness and the real world swam into view he was nothing but a man; tired, weary, and above all frightened.
By the time the pounding had finished echoing in the small stone room he was once again himself. Or at least the self he had to be to lead a nation into war against an unrelenting enemy. The summons had come, and the final battle was nigh. Soon it would be decided who would own the frontierlands, and who was one step closer to utter annihilation.