A wounded Colonel Baquiste awaiting military discharge from the Monarchy

At the Hospital in the Capital City of Hastan

Colonel Valstohl Baquiste’s white cotton shirt was now sticking to his chest and torso from sweat. His rattan chair was in the shade of the verandah where the hot Hastan afternoon’s sun was gradually inching closer towards his right foot.

Yet it was the humidity of Hastan that was unbearable during the summer. The air was hard to breathe as though there was very little of it.

The nurse had come by a few times earlier to check on him, and to ask if he would like to go inside or move his chair. Valstohl had dismissed her with his iron look of ‘don’t touch me’. She had gotten to know this signal by now.

He despised being touched every morning by the brown complexioned doctor and nurses massaging his right leg and what was left of his left one.

The post-surgery period was ending. The stitches had healed. Valstohl’s pride and ego were still very much raw.

Over and over, day and night, the colonel repeatedly tried to put together the entire attack from start till the point of his fall, to understand how he could have not seen it coming.

Yet the details fell apart around the moment when he tripped over the stairs leading to the queen’s chamber.

The misstep was not fatal, he had gotten up and then for some reason he did not hear nor see the queen’s guard charging at him from behind, with sword, slashing off his lower left leg.

That was the last battle for the Llehstanz Monarchy against Hastanas, in Northwest Hastan. It had been won, not by him, Colonel Valstohl Baquiste, but by his subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel Brune Farmagash.