We have been cut off from the fortress.

Our plan did not survive contact with the enemy. What we should have been a fighting withdrawal became more of a disaster the moment the bastard XV Legion joined the fray. Their arrival shattered our formation and drove a wedge between us and the fortress walls.

Now we are alone.

I write these words while I still can, before I meet my end within this metal trophy we call Scorpio. Once, she was a prize seized from the Sythgians and remade in the image of our beloved Empire. Today, she shall become our tomb.

We know it.

Yet we speak little of it.

Death sits among us now, sharing our rations and riding beside us through the smoke.

I fear death as much as any man aboard this sacred engine of war. Yet fear changes little. Whether we welcome it or not, our path has already been chosen.

Perhaps this shall be the last time we gaze upon our brothers.

Perhaps the fortress will never see us return.

Then so be it.

If fate had decreed our end, then we would ensure it is remembered.

We are the proud crew of Scorpio.

If we cannot reach the fortress to aid our own, then we shall create our own victory amidst this disaster. Every shell we fire, every engine we cripple, every fortress we leave in our wake shall buy our comrades another moment to breathe.

That is enough.

Whoever recovers this page, I ask only one thing.

Bury us here.

Do not carry our bones back to the Empire.

Do not raise monuments in our honor.

Lay us to rest in this soil beside the wreck of our engine.

We are tired.

Let our service finally end.

Before they reach the fortress, we shall make them bleed.

Before we fall silent, we shall remind them why the XIV Legion was feared.

Farewell, my beloved Empire.

I mourn not merely for my own death, but for yours.

For I know that Akkatan has already fallen, and we are nothing more than lost children wandering the ruins of our dead parents home.

May history remember us more kindly than our own people did.