Please Wait

Sweet Gwen,

It is my hope that this letter finds you quickly. I don't know when the next time is that we'll be back to the main base, but I'm writing this sitting on the front lines of the battle against the Letonian Empire. I don't know how long I will be allowed to sit here writing this but I want you to know that you are the center of my dreams and my hopes. I still keep your ring around my neck as a reminder of our love and that I have a place to return to when all this is over.

I would pray for my return but it seems that Leto, God of Light and Hope, has chosen to support the Emperor and without his guidance I am left adrift with you as my only anchor. You are the thing that keeps me fighting, if I believed there was a land beyond the reach of the Emperor I would run to you and we would flee beyond his grasp but I fear that no such place exists. When he has finished with our northern neighbors in Dillan he will surely turn his war machine on us next. The Emperor will not be satisfied until he and his accursed Letonian Empire stretches to the point where the sun never sets on his lands.

In your last letter you asked me to tell you what things are like on the front lines but you've asked so many times that I feel I must relent and tell you what things are like here. It's like being in Arkon's Grasp each and every night, we live our lives dug into our trenches and the trenches are full of rats. They eat everything. Not just our food, they eat our boots, our scabbards, our shirts, our dead. They even nibble at our toes when they get the opportunity. Nothing keeps them out. Some of the men have taken to eating them especially since rations are hard to come by and going out to hunt is very nearly suicide.

The reason hunting is so dangerous is because the elves rule this land. Every blade of grass seems to hide a new threat. Snares, bear traps, sometimes they snipe at us from their hidden places. Sometimes hunger drives men from the trenches, sometimes they even come back but it's not something that happens frequently. Then there are the lions. I don't know how but Emperor has bred lions, horrific beasts as big as a horse yet silent as mice and smart. If we didn't know it was impossible we would swear they can somehow smell rank because they go straight for our officers and most of the time we don't even see the great cats until they are already upon us. We've tried everything, they robe us of sleep with their roars and of life with their fangs and claws.

I won't tell you what things are like here during the day for I fear they will give you and the others in the court nightmares. I know that no matter how long I live I will never be able to purge my dreams of the looks on faces of the Emperor's Ebon Knights Brigade or the unholy stallions they ride when they attack us. It's like something out of story book, we can hear them coming for miles, like rolling thunder through the forest and their faces are like monsters from dreams. And that is ally I will tell you of them.

I would rather tell you how I miss you and how your memory keeps me warm at night. I can still remember the way you always smell of lilacs, and the soft touch of your lips on against mine. I dream about your sky blue eyes and milk white flesh and of your touch, so gentle and kind. These are the things that make my life worth living, worth waking up another day.

I hope you are not offended that not all of my memories of you are as chaste as those. I do dream of your soft breasts again in my hands, and the way you whimper when we make love. I miss digging my fingers into your hips when we're together. I miss tasting your sweat as it drips down your back and feeling your thighs cinch tight around my waist. I miss bathing with you and taking the time to memorize every single inch of your skin, with my lips when time allows it. I miss it all and you've no idea.

I cannot wait until it is time again for me to be with you and when I return we will renew our vows before our friends, the king and the Gods I swear it.

Please wait just a little while longer.

Jacinto