Beyond the confines of rain and blood stained canvas, distant screams rung through a sky alight with fire and death. Some of the conjurers inside winced with their hands flinching up to their ears, but it was nothing to drown out roaring quiet of the dying and the battle beyond. A sharp gust of wind rattled the large, rectangular tent upon it’s frame, an errant window coming loose and starting to flap loudly. Smoke billowed in. A woman robed in once Adder’s gold but now oil, blood and sweat hurried over to wave her arms. It did very little to dispel the intrustion but soon she managed to wrestle the flap shut, guarding her innocent eyes from the enemy boiling over the horizon.

The battle beyond however, was not all that could be heard through thick, fetid air. The groans of injured soldiers clad in the sorry remains of scarlet, gold and bronze were unmistakable. A tired sigh cut over the low, aching undertone in the tent; Private Second Class Orva Redd, a haggard hyuran conjurer, stood staring down the aisle lined with cots. With eyes devoid of life, drained of her everything, she remained rooted to the spot with boots sinking into the bloody mud beneath her. There were her fellow healers bustling about, but they went unseen in her daze. She barely registered their unusual panic and quickened steps as they converged around one bed towards the corner.

“Is he-”

“Shit, have you tri-”

“Of course I have! We all did! Are you sure there’s not a pulse?”

“Aye, sir.”

“You let him die!?”

A flurry of indiscernible, squabbling voices wove through the air. Voices of panic. A healer was to be the calm of the storm, tranquil as the Shroud itself, the hand in the darkness. Yet there they argued in hushed, urgent whispers, rising in pitch until someone called a sudden silence. They shook in tandem, even the most stalwart now losing hope and solidarity in their united colours. With their backs turned to the injured, the healers hid their hopeless expressions to each other. Some shook not with fear though, but with boundless anger and blame. The corpse between the four or five strained souls however, remained peaceful, for all the blood and bandages he lay in. Flame Sergeant Sosoliro Loloriyo was dead and the current subject of the swash of emotion around him.

Some of them tried to reason. One woman, R’uhkna, sobbed in blind terror. Two had split off to administer autonomous care to the remaining patients. Storm Corporal Caulaire and Storm Private First Class Helbharrwyn stood just a small distance from his now covered body, tense and hard faced. Niether spoke for some time, but simply watched the two end their rounds, escort R’unkna to a chair and then do the same for Private Redd, pulling her from her stupor.

“It’s bein’ yerself at t’helm now, ain’t it, Aubin?”

“What?”

“Now Loloriyo’s bin-.”

Corporal Caulaire cut her off with a tight folding of his arms and a sharp nod. Helbharrwyn watched him for a moment, as she’d watched the other medics, then sighed. She opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it. Gold gaze flitting over to her, Caulaire’s stony expression hardened some more. From stone to steel. Limsan, Ul’Dahn or Gridanian; they were all the same. Doubt and suspicion were emotions easy for Caulaire to see.

“We all took the same oath, Private.”

Helbharrwyn averted her gaze to the body. “I know, duskwight.”

“Good.”

Caulaire strode down the isle, hiding a limp from a bandaged leg. An uneasy, false calm had quite suddenly spread through the air and over the infirmary, though the tent shivered in another gust of wind. They were his medics now - a soberingly terrifying thought, with the remains of R’uhkna’s exhausted sobs ringing through his ears. She was at the end of her tether, he knew. They all were, stretched thin and beyond their limits as conjurers, as people. Caulaire knew he wasn’t the only one who had little aether left to pull from and already he ached to his bones with the persistent strain. Not to mention the gash he’d taken to the leg in an earlier assault.

An explosion filled the sky and stained it red, rolling over the crest of the hill.

The elezen was the only one to flit to the side of the tent as it swayed ominously from it’s residual force, staring through the windows with wide eyes. A terrified screech filled the air, R’uhnka again, as the frame rattled and started to give in and collapse on one side. Caulaire caught sight of Helbharrwyn and the rest of his medics snap into dazed action to keep their shelter erect. He paid them no mind, attention focussed solely upon the slope ahead.

A day, at most. A day at most to evacuate the injured and his charges. Corporal Caulaire turned on the spot, staring across the tent with a void expression. Gaze remaining set, he strode forward, painfully, past the cots. He turned left to exit down the aisle, heading into another section of the tent. Secluded away, the room was centered around a rectangular, pop-up desk and several chairs. A chest sat in the corner, with other supplies.

Caulaire pushed one of the chairs away and sat down on another. Soberly, slowly, he pulled out a thin deck of cards, shuffled them, then quite suddenly slammed them down onto the surface. With a heavy pause and a prayer to the Spinner herself, the Corporal took several deep breaths.

He thought his intent, a desperate plead for guidance, then dealt his hand.

Till sea swallows all.

Whoa! This is really good, such a great attention to detail. Very impressive!

They brought him in, wrists bound in iron and stripped of his dignity and pride. He bowed his head stiffly, weighed down beneath a mantle of guilt. A guilty man's mantle with bridled fury sewn into the lining, hidden away for any to see. Caulaire stood, reduced to nothing, before his judge and jury with little outward feeling set in his weathered features; he refused to betray the storm inside his soul. His brow had etched into a perpetual, pained frown and only now after suffering their stares, did his expression start to crack from stone.

The prospect of closure did not serve to ease his hurts, either, for nothing could solace his atrocities. His anger, his pride, his honour. All of which they had torn to pieces over the lies of those who he once called trusted allies. Friends.

Death would be release, but he knew the Maelstrom were unlikely to serve him such a favour. He’d suffer, first, then maybe put to the gun.

One of the two guards flanking him, one Highlander and the other Sea Wolf, plunged their hand into his short, trimmed hair and yanked his head up, stripping the duskwight of his last defense and privacy. He stood, slender but with wilted legs bent inwards, and may well have been naked before them all for what their invasive stares held. There was no pity, nor mercy, sat upon the jury. Seven of them in total, Caulaire counted.

The man at the centre spoke first, a Captain. From which squadron Caulaire did not know, nor was he told. He simply spoke, commanding the room with a voice tempered for raging seas. Deceptive, from the body of a Midlander.

"Storm Corporal Aubineaux Caulaire."

Captain Summerpath gave a pause and Caulaire seized it.

"Aye, sir."

He received a glare for his audacity, but he minded not. It would be over soon. The Sea Wolf guard jostled his shackles for punishment, but he did not receive the reaction he had baited. The duskwight remained stiff and silent, lest he falter and be his own undoing.

Summerpath continued, ruffled but unperturbed, reading from what he assumed was his personnel file. "Caulaire, Aubineaux Sylvestre, thirty five years old, Corporal of the now defunct twenty-eighth Squadron."

He spoke with an efficient tone and most certainly stated, rather than asked, this time. Amber eyes remained forced upon his visage, though occasionally they flicked across to the rest of the jury; two Plainsfolk, two Sea Wolves, another hyur and a single, female Wildwood who sat at the far end of the row with disdain in her eyes. It wasn't long before he was fighting the temptation to look behind himself at the audience, but he already knew what he would find. The faces of those who placed him there with the chasms in their trust. Their lies.

Summerpath pressed onwards, barraging the broken remnants of the elezen’s pride with testaments of his apparent crimes, stories warped and twisted as if debuted a thousand years ago and so left to rot, not mere moons. Summerpath was ever relentless with his accusations and offered no quarter. It seemed Caulaire's squad mates had relayed their tales enough to have him screaming against the wind in defense, but to no avail. Lips twisting into a snarl, the Highlander guard promptly kicked the back of one of his knees in when one announcement, the abandonment of injured allies, was made. He fell forward to one knee, but defiantly kept from calling out in agony.

"–Caulaire. Your charges stand as follows: abandoning post, abuse of authority, deception, gross misconduct, disregard to safety, medical protocols and the Maelstrom oath which ultimately lead to the mass loss of life, betrayal, theft, and finally, murder. How do you plead?"

Aubineaux let out a hopeless, bordering on hysteric, scoff and so dropped his head downwards, again. A broken creature, prey, brought before the hunter. The duskwight had no defense, no hope, no more heart to put into anything. The Calamity had devoured him and his allies, only for them to crack the last nail into his coffin for him. A suitable punishment, perhaps, for one such as himself. Vengeance for those his decision had killed.

The elezen, dark skinned and much like the cool night sky, looked up across the jury. He gave his own shackles a jolt shake, his surprised guard enough to haul his sorry frame upright. A tall creature, perhaps handsome in his days before the Calamity, gathered the last dregs of his pride, and spoke. Yet what he said had everyone wear stricken faces in their surprise. Perhaps, they knew deep down, it was but a masquerade to save themselves from the creeping, predatory guilt of I could have done more.

Caulaire handed over his final shreds of dignity, pride and heart. Their oaths meant nothing to them anymore, let them have their twisted way; he could stand no longer.

"I, Aubineaux Caulaire, plead guilty."