[puffyn]

---- Arcoscephale, Turn 13 ----

I really thought it was just a slur. Ever since we got here, the villagers have been calling Golana "a den of vipers," "a snakepit," "full of cold-blooded lizards," and so forth. It turns out, though, that the residents of Golana really are lizards. It's so hard to know what to believe... though I'm trying.

Fortunately, as it turns out, the Golanoids are (oops, were) very weak lizards, certainly no match for the havoc wrought by our elephants. Alas, in their retreat they were able to kill the two mighty creatures, which left me a little sad, because I had grown attached to the beasts. I couldn't help but notice that their handlers seemed almost relieved.

The elders back home have signed a non-aggression pact with the Vans, a race of people living beyond the western mountains who have recently been expanding their territory. Apparently we gave up claim to Godsgrave Mountain as part of the peace treaty. Just like that— what was once worth dying for is traded away for a scrap of paper.

There is something... refreshing about being on this campaign. The phalanx that I now lead arrived in Oast Hills while I was gone, and some of them are old friends, from the long journey out to this excessively god-filled land. Sometimes it almost feels like we are all ten years younger, and I have had perhaps half an hour steal by without thinking at all about... more recent events. Ah, Thymbre... I can picture the way you would have laughed at me, just so, when I insisted on inspecting the corpses myself, just to be sure they were really lizards.

There is another province nearby, weakly defended, that we march toward. Hopefully by then, the men will have stopped teasing me with their odes to lizards, which are, if anything, even more ludicrous than the previous spate of butter songs. Those who have seen them in person insist that the Vans are sometimes impossible to see even if you're looking straight at them. Good men, I have no reason to doubt their word, and there are certainly strange things in this world. But when the men insist that Limmy is a huge blue giant for four arms, I know they're just playing one of these odd mind games men often play with their commanders. I mean, really, I've met the guy.

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