We believed it was us or them, Man or Beast, civilization or savagery. We poured all our hearts into that belief --a faith stronger than any religion-- and devoted our arms, our blood, our sons, our very lives to its cause. We built whole battlements from the bones of the beasts we killed in the war, wiped out their tribes, fed flocks of crows fit to black out the sky. In return, they raised shrines to their false gods upon the broken bodies of men, devoured the fallen, and choked our streams with flesh and blood. We had to destroy them or they would destroy us. Man or Beast. That was the cause of our Legion, and we gave everything to it. In the end, we gave our souls.

The Hellbourne were a weapon, we convinced ourselves, no more than a burning sword or some spellbound siege engine. If we did not use that weapon, the Beast Horde would. In our creed of unlimited war, we knew this without any doubt. Prince Jeraziah knew this, and ordered us to claim their damned altars and practice the daemonic rites. Ophelia knew it, and ordered her Hordes to do the same. Only weapons in a war, and whatever price the Hellbourne demanded, that was the cost of victory. For we knew that defeat was riding hard upon us, never more than a day behind. And the beasts knew that destruction hungered at their heels. So Horde and Legion alike raced forward, heedless of the precipice toward which we rushed, our leaders howling victory at our backs and our dead brothers paving the way before us.

The Hellbourne laughed, as we plied them with souls.

And as Man and Beast worked tirelessly together to raise a gibbet large enough to hang all the world, the daemons waded through our ranks wielding butchers' blades and spitting fire. As we summoned their armies to our land --our land-- perhaps they allowed themselves a mockery of a smile. As our forces dwindled and theirs grew, as our faith in the justice of our cause drowned in the bloodbath that Newerth had become, Jeraziah and Ophelia discovered that the Hellbourne were not the puppets. They were the masters. And we, broken things, would soon be discarded.