#citrio

Metal upon metal rang out as the tribunus snapped into a proper imperial solute and then turned to stride out of the room, picking up his two highest ranking underlings along with him. Citrio had been livid to be pulled off the front lines, putting down rebellion among the savages had been his life’s work and the empire had never been so sorely in need of his experience and talents in that field. The loss of multiple territories and the constant calls for retreats had been bad enough, but the rumors of horrors from the Homeland had swept through even the loyal pureblood ranks. He had walked into the legatus’s office prepared to fight whatever selfish order he was about to be given. Personal power grabs were well outside of his interest; his hands brought works for the betterment of Garlemald as a whole, not some fool plot snatch power from chaos.

As he walked out from the briefing however he found himself shocking by how readily he had been able to embrace these new orders. He still held no doubt that the man laying everything out was a creature of ambition, he’d never met a legatus who wasn’t. But if the project he was being transferred to was everything the man claimed it to be, this might be the thing that turns the tide. Eorzea, Ala Mhigo, and Doma had been lighting the edges of the empire ablaze, and they were learning how much of their borders had been stuff with kindling for the trouble. And though the manic prince and his jester were certainly enacting a grand plan against those foes, none with allegiance to the empire could truly believe they meant to hold to doctrine and ideals. Wild beasts, seeped too long in savagery to rule.

Through the words of his commanding officer, he could see now that stamping out flames with his boot would not save the empire, or his way of life. Though the kindling was giving way to burning away health wood, it was doing a much better job of ridding the proverbial forest of it’s rot. With that excess and corruption burned away, the steel that lives through the flames will till the land to shape it and give it purpose. Shaping the world was the inheritance of the Garlean people, not a spoiled madman who squandered his own bloodline.