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Dearest Anya,
I must first request that you burn these letters after reading them. I am sorry I have not written at more length or with more frequency, but trouble follows me like a cub chases its mother.
It is difficult for me to commit to words what I have experienced these many months away from you. Difficult, because each day my thoughts slip nearer to blasphemy.
Our Glorious Emperor has taken us north into the place the barbarian peoples call the Deathlands. It is as inhospitable as the name suggests, unfit for any person to live in. But our Illustrious Emperor presses on, bent on the promise of a city of shimmering waters in the middle of the desert and mad dreams of an immortal army.
See? My pen betrays me. But what else can I call our Inscrutable Emperor's plan? A warrior's reward is eternal glory and rest for his weary body, but what of the warrior who is denied rest? What comfort is there for such a soldier?
Our Resplendent Emperor would deny us death for his own glory. He would profane our bodies by having them rise again in unnatural forms to fight for him across the ages. Once again, my words form the foulest blasphemies.
In truth, I know that it is not our Marvelous Emperor who errs (I do not allow the possibility), but that foreigner who is by his side, always breathing corruptions into his ear. He stinks of ambition and his words cloy with false flattery.
Still, this will be the last time I write to you dearest Anya. The error lies, ultimately, in myself. For though I am pledged to follow my master into death, I am unwilling to follow him after. When I am finished penning this letter, I will take the honorable course and die by my own sword.
I beg you destroy this letter when you receive it, lest our Celestial Emperor perceive that you share in my guilt.
Yours ever and always,
Targa