Saudade

Renkai Luo

For the first time in many years, Rohan sat down and did not feel the need to stand up again. Good Prince Lothric was dead, the king was still prisoner, and the royal capital was alight with as many fires as there were schemes to start them. Rohan had stood guard at the east gate since Lothric was a newborn, when this fledgling nation was at its zenith and its influence stretched far beyond its current, meager borders. He had watched with pride as success fell like raindrops from the sky, as the primitive structures that once speckled this region were reinforced and rebuilt until they shed their shameful husks and stood tall as examples - no, as idols - for all to see.

If ever there was a city that the gods smiled upon, it was that which he had defended for his entire life. The oath he swore to guard its walls was an oath he had planned to keep until age took away both his eyes and petrified both his hands. When pillagers burned the surrounding hamlets and sought to extort the capital, he kept them at bay. When fever swept through the magnificent streets and sent the mourning bells tolling for days on end, he fought through the disease and stood his ground. When the largest horde of invaders anyone had ever seen threatened to destroy this beacon of hope, he rose before dawn each day to ready the defenses.

Rohan came to believe that nothing could pierce into the heart of this greatest city, but what he did not account for was the rot that came from within. Greed and cruelty did more to the walls than any barbarian or plague ever had - there was no better evidence than its current state, a humbled shadow of its former self, its leadership too divided within their own house to address the mounting problems that burned through the progress of years gone by. What he found unbearable was not a decisive defeat, but this slow, poisonous death through a thousand little steps backward.

For the first time in many years, Rohan sat down and did not feel the need to stand up again. He watched from atop the crumbling walls as day slipped into dusk, the chill of a long night already beginning to set in.