The sweetness of the candy was Doram's only comfort at that moment.
Doram, now wearing the insignia of a major general, leaned against a half-collapsed, charred and twisted metal pillar, slowly rolling a rough piece of hard candy over his tongue—the kind occasionally included in standard Imperial field rations.
Cheap sweetener dissolved on his taste buds. Its blunt sweetness, almost harsh enough to sting his throat, forcibly washed away the lingering tastes of Smoke, rusty blood, and bitterness.
That false sweetness spread along his nerve endings, trying to numb the string stretched almost to breaking by days of relentless fighting, decisions, and countless deaths witnessed.
His breath moved heavily in and out of his lungs, laden with dust and the distinctive scorched smell of ionized air.
Beneath his uniform, every inch of his bones ached, and his muscles trembled faintly from overexertion.
He gazed into the distance, where the lingering golden-red sunset slanted through shattered domes and rising dust, slicing across the ruins before him.
Huge construction machines roared in the distance, like metal behemoths gnawing at the wreckage of war.
Closer by, however, this relatively outlying area, where clearance work had yet to begin in earnest, was eerily quiet.
There was only the sharp, sobbing whistle of wind through twisted rebar, and the occasional faint groan or cry from deep within the rubble.
He wandered aimlessly like that, his boots crunching through thick ash and broken stones.
Mud and suspicious dark stains covered his trouser legs. His gaze passed over a xenos corpse burned to Charcoal, identifiable only by scraps of ruined uniform; the wreck of an armoured personnel carrier half-buried in rubble, with only half its Imperial Aquila remaining; and mottled walls whose colours might have been paint or dried blood.
These ruins were both the remnants of