Warp Portal
Farseer Luthien turned from the window, disgusted with the savagery of the battle going on elsewhere in the city.
"They fight like rabid dogs, the
mon-keigh. Can nothing destroy their morale?"
"I am afraid, brother, that nothing can."
Luthien looked at his brother,
Kaelan. His blue and white rune armour no longer gleamed as it once had. Instead, it was pitted, scarred, and filthy. Kaelan had been leading the Guardians in the fighting, and had miraculously survived thus far. His brother's answer did not surprise him. It was what he, himself, had been thinking.
"We are going to have to move ahead our strikes, grab the portal soon." Luthien used his staff to steady himself as the building rocked from a nearby explosion. "We must either take it with us, or destroy it so that the
mon-keigh cannot use it."
Kaela slid his murekh from its holster and slowly, intently, looked at it. "If we cannot move these beasts through any other means, we shall have to kill them."
Luthien looked up, feeling very remorseful about that comment. "That may well be, but we will lose thousands more lives in the process. They have millions of soldiers to draw upon. We do not. We cannot stay in a prolonged engagement. I understand how some might revel in such a situation, such as yourself and the Warriors, but this will do more harm than good, I fear."
"You fear too much, brother."
"No,
Kaelan. I fear only what there is to fear. No more than that. I have been down the path of Seer for more centuries than you have lived. I have traveled down the paths of fate and witnesses the harm a war of attrition will cause us. It will, perhaps, be worse than simply letting the portal fall."
"Were you not the Seer who warned us that doing so might present it as a target for the Great Enemy?"
Luthien's shoulders slumped. "Yes. We must take it or destroy it."
Kaelan glanced out a window, then turned back to
Luthien. "I will be leading the attack on the mon-keigh's new position tomorrow. The position they have just occupied."
"Then there is nothing more I can say to discourage you?"
"I know you have told me you see foul things for me down the paths of fate, but my place is with the Guardians, leading them into battle. They need my powers. Without me they will die by the hundreds."
Kaelan walked forward and put his hands on Luthien's shoulders. "I will come back to you, brother. Wait for the night of the morrow. I will be here again."
Luthien turned away, hiding the tears gathering in his eyes. "I hope so."
A vision flashed through his mind of Kaelan running down a street, leading a group of Guardians, then being cut down with them in a hail of fire.
He repeated his words. "I hope so."
THE
END
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