The second dawn after Julius's decree came with rain.

Not the cleansing rain of spring, but a cold, needling drizzle that turned the camp's roads to black rivers of mud.

Standards sagged, cloaks clung heavy, and the smell of wet leather hung over the legion like a shroud.

Yet no soldier dared slacken his pace.

Patrols marched on, boots sucking at the mire, their torches guttering against the wind.

The old world had ended the moment Francia let poison seep into wells.

The Concordat, that fragile parchment of honor, was gone.

Now, war belonged to shadows.

Reports streamed into Julius's command tent.

They came from scouts, tribunes, even from common villagers dragged trembling before centurions.

Francia's forces, fractured though they were, had embraced desperation.

Assassins had struck at outposts, garroting sentries in the night.

Fields were salted, bridges sabotaged.

Worse still, whispers spread of "Joan's Wrath" — bands of fanatics who claimed visions from their saint, swearing to make Romanus bleed themselves dry no matter the cost.

Sabellus read each parchment with a grim jaw.

"It is as you warned, Emperor. They turn from armies to vermin. They bite at the ankles and flee before the sword can fall."

Julius leaned over the map, the oil-lamps casting his face into hard relief.

Pins marked every frontier: Germania pressing from the South, Visigoths stirring in the East, Britannia striking like wolves across the sea from the North.

Francia, though broken, refused to die.

"They think us too proud to descend into their filth,"

Julius said at last.

"They think Romanus chained to its own laws. That will be their undoing. Either that or they have finally reached that moment when they really couldn't care less what happens to the rest of the world."

Sabellus hesitated.

"Do we then match them in kind?"

Julius's gaze lifted, steady as granite.

"No. We've no reason to stoop to their or anyone elses level. Sure we might engage in some more vigourous espianoge and perhaps an assassination or two, but to go out of our way to kill civilians, if the people themselves rise up against us thats another story but just cause we're taking over a place doesnt mean we need to kill everyone within."

That same night, new orders were carried across the legions.

The orders given were harsher than any the legions had been given before, but they were a wakeup call to prepare the legions for this new era of warfare.

Along with new codified rules of engagement, to make sure that even if the world itself descending into madness his legions remain composed of men and not beasts.

At first, the men grumbled.

But still at the risk of being poisoned the men were not lax in their increased vigilance and scouting.

Meanwhile not much else changed since the origional rules of engagement already forbade violence or looting against conquered people, since the minute they were conquered they were the emperors people.

Beyond that, the only other change was an increase in the number of scouts, since the army now had to be on extra look out for possible guerilla fighters and ambushes.

~

Meanwhile, Francia writhed.

Half their lands already trampled by Romanus and Brittania, yet their nobles clung to Saint Joan as a beacon.

Her name still summoning up droves of volunteers from all over the unoccupied zones, as the young and the old were driven by a sense of hyper-nationalism to rise up to fight and die for their nation, since the saint such a holy person stood against this invading army, clearly they must be of the devil!

Meanwhile the nobles continued to use her name as a source of collecting numbers into their own armies, while also using it as a form of propoganda to incite the public to donate whatever wealth they had to the nobles hands to help them with funding the war effort.

The only isue being that Francia itself was as of yet unaware of the fact that rumours were spreading that they had broken the concordat.

Something that any sensible person on the losing side would never consider since to do so would ensure their absolute destruction not to mention their conqueror would have all the more reason to annex their lands without any of their neighbors having even the slightest problem with it.

A way to stop the spread of this insane action, with a chance no matter however slim of getting the concordat reinstituted to prevent excessive amounts of bloodshed.

Even as Brittania and Romanus's own contributions to their own war efforts were being ramped up, Francia continued to resist as they already had, at least until their fronts in the north started sending back reports of excessive losses, with the reports citing poison and other unhonorable actions by the Brittanians, which sends the Francian court into frenzy thinking the Brittanians were the ones to break the concordat only for it to be revealed at the very same time that this was only a response, and that one of Francia's own armies was actually the ones to strike down that agreement first.

This revelation only sent the Francia court into an even bigger frenzy, as the King who had been weary from this war, became maddened.

At least before they could manage to survive perhaps even living a continued existance as Duke under romanus's rule, but now!

Now!

The royalty of Francia would be held accountable for the actions of its royal army, with the end result being the complete annihilation of the bloodline being viewed as the one giving the ok to tear the agreement up.

Instead the mad king began the action of tearing his court apart.

Sending out royal orders to investigate the noble houses to discover the one truly responsible for this, but the nobles saw it as the king seeking a way out by fabricating a scapegoat whose head he could offer up in his own place.

This further broke the nation down as the nation once split in two between the noble armies and the saints, was further fractured as the nobles now each moved to defend their own domains, while the peoples army became to true unified national army against the ever marching threat of Romanus's legions.

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