Dragon.

I have treated with you fairly. I have invested no small amount of time, labor, and admittedly, sanity, in attempting to find a course forward. I have warred against you when the craven and the petulant you once decried slunk to your gates in the night, unable to bear a solitary rap of the wrist with the flat of blade.

I have not been unreasonable. If the childish antics of one, whom neither you nor I have unveiled, are sufficient to immolate all we might once have wrought, I find myself wondering if I ought have been. Ambition does not only cut its teeth in the Spires, and I had tested mine, however hesitantly, on the idea we might carve a groove in our fathoms of bad blood in the name of progress. Yours. Ours.

If that is a personal failing, I suppose it is mine to own and know. Perhaps I will look back upon this in a season, a hundred, or some distant future age and glean further understanding.

A war was fought, and a war was lost. That is the bitter price of existence. That is the sacrament that my Father's and your Warlord's holiest know. That is the truth. I do not regret it. Nor will I balk when the next arrives.

If you seek recompense for the - at worst - mild indignation suffered your soldiers, and if this is the means through which you seek to soothe their wounded pride, so be it. If it will sate your desire for vindication such that a foundation may yet be cut, then designate for me the time and the place, and I will do as I have always done, and bleed for this Empire.

They are my responsibility.

My blood and bone may be the tithe.

I am not unreasonable.

Mind, you can only wring so much copper from stone.

Paxe Visara
Thronekeeper of Bones

Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 8th of Lleian, in the year 5 AC.