Missing In Action

You were fucked. There really weren’t any ifs or buts about it, no life-saving caveats, not so much as a footnote or a maybe.

It wasn’t even in the one to remember, hot steamy fun way that the drunken sergeants would revel in their campfire memories of. Nope, just impending doom or even a terminal case of wrong place, wrong side.

Whether it was the short-term disaster or the one that would follow, what hurt the most was knowing that it was just too late.

You notice your inner dialogue turn into monologue into a god damn soliloquy. You kick yourself, because rambling and despairing were so last season. Literally.

Four months prior, the wonderful council of various and sundry corrupt officials had decided that the best solution to internal collapse was a declaration of war. When asked against who, the imperial reply was a resounding Yes. That was April, or Sommerseve for the pretentious temple folk. By June all but the most dedicated wailers had run out of ways to despair and promptly gotten bored of it.

News would come in, and aside from the dreaded conscription notices all word of the war effort would go unnoticed; everyone already knew that the end was near (or at best slightly behind schedule)

The situation was almost funny from that detached perspective an out of touch person has.

To the east, supplies were cut off by various navies and pirate syndicates, as the Imperial Mercantilist Authority had managed to turn away all types of trade while simultaneously advertising to the six seas that all Turvorian ships were ripe for the picking. After all, the might Turvor Emperors couldn’t concern themselves with the loss of mere sailors.

Things were slightly worse to the south, where the nations of the massive jungled Sapphis mountains that Turvor had so capriciously “conquered” apparently weren’t informed that they had been defeated. They even tore up the fancy letter signed by the Consul that cordially invited them to surrender their lands. Surprise!

When one looked to the west, away from the chaos of the eastern coast or the entire battalions that disappeared into the Sapphi jungles, they could get a quite stunning view of the sunset overtop miles of grisly trench warfare. How one managed to lose a trench war when your nation was the one with the trenches was honestly baffling, although you never really paid attention in Tactics. When faced with supply chain lessons or twiddling your thumbs, the choice was easy. Ten years later you were delightfully clueless in strategy and the best damn twiddler this side of the Oblin Ocean.

Anyways.

Which direction is left? Oh right north. North. Yikes. You weren’t too sure what went on in the north, what with the messengers never coming back and all. Though you had a sinking suspicion that it might be cold. Or rainy. Or, god forbid, both.

So when you received the beautiful green envelope that could only mean conscription or jury duty, there was no sense of despair. You had known for a long time that the concept of Juries had long been banned in the Empire. (Cheaper to bribe a judge than track down and coerce 27 different people. Corrupting juries was a massive headache)

No, the stages of grief were bypassed entirely with the miserable acceptance that doom was right on schedule.