In the months following the reclaiming of Cyrene, the dust has settled quickly under relentless torrents of rain, and blood has been washed clean from the cobblestones as flooding and newly formed rivers rise in response.

Against the overwhelming odds of a powerful invading force, combined with allies turned enemy, and those who simply decided to stand by and do nothing. Despite all of this, the Cyrenian Resistance and the remaining allies it had left were successful in launching a counter-attack that saw the city reclaimed.

When I heard the city had been taken back, I was relieved, happy, and proud. After many months of effort, attempt, and planning, we had done the improbable.

As I walked the streets of Cyrene, carefully picking my way through the rubble and rising flood waters, that sense of elation faded, replaced by a myriad of other emotions as I observed the resulting devastation. Buildings decimated, streets flooded and littered with debris and corpses all the way to the Muurn.

Even as the rain now thickens to snow, falling from the sky to carpet the city like a blanket draped over some macabre scene. As if hiding the result would make it easier to bear the burden of what was lost.

For a few months the efforts to clean up and restore the city to some semblance of familiarity has been heavily underway. Water has been made to retreat, rubble has been piled awaiting removal, and corpses have been collected to be buried, though not always in one piece.

In my movements through the city, helping with the efforts to clean up and bringing corpses to the graveyard, I watched as the bodies piled into heaps awaiting burial. As one pile turned into two, each stacked higher as the days pass, I saw Biagio, the gravedigger grow weary and haggard as he worked relentlessly to lay to rest a tide of corpses that seemed to never ebb.

Eventually I took up my shovel in an effort to help as best I could, telling myself with each bit of sodden soil I scooped out that it was necessary, and that every war has casualties. I reminded myself that we never asked for this, and that no matter how drastic, we only did what we had to do in order to reclaim a home that was taken from us.

So I dug, and I planted corpses like so may sombre seeds in a field of sorrow. As the hours passed, and the piles grew no smaller, I watched as a guard brought in the body of a small child, laying it atop a pile before turning to fetch yet another. In the guard's eyes I saw the grief and anger stripped away, replaced only with exhaustion and a sense of numbness.

Digging one more grave, I wrapped the child in my cloak and laid it to rest, a single question buzzing in my mind all the while: "Was it worth it?"

It damn well better have been.

Penned by my hand on the 8th of Phaestian, in the year 800 AF.