Even in exile, some part of me felt at home in Atlantis. Here in this isolated forest wilderness, all but forgotten in the far southwestern corner of the continent, my boyhood whispered to me across the years of absence. I had spent the day wandering through the magnificent, impossibly tall and ancient trees that hid the entrance to my cave dwelling. When I’d set out that morning, I’d had no plan in mind: just the notion of a very long, very brisk walk that I hoped would shake the loneliness from my bones. Peach-hued fungus summoned me from the tangled roots of the massive old trees—messengers from those adolescent years, now so distant, when I had roamed these woods for days and weeks on end, alone. The texture of their soft caps against my fingers as I gathered the mushrooms took me back to my boyhood as surely as a song, or the sharp aroma of the coniferous needles interspersed with the huge, flat leaves of the redbark trees that hid the sky from the forest floor.

Back then, my mind had spun with the confused and grandiose questions that plague every young man on every continent and in every generation: What was my purpose? How could I serve? Where was my mate? I’d come home to my father with my tunic full of tender fungoids, and we’d eat them with fish or bread or roots, depending on the season and my father’s whim during his last visit to the market.

Now I brought my mushrooms back through the lush undergrowth to the luxurious prison where I was honor-bound to spend my days. And my nights. Technically, I was free to leave at any time, and to wander the planet as I would. But I was a Child of Light, and I had given my word. Travel I might, across the length and breadth of Atlantis; but to meddle in war or politics would violate my sacred pledge. I was neutralized by the force of my own vow, as surely as if I were being held behind walls of solid rock.

The sun had already slid behind the cloud-shrouded peak to the west, and now the sky was bruised to an angry violet. I shuddered and quickened my steps as the air turned chill. The wind, no longer content merely to pester the upper reaches where the boldest birds roosted, was dropping down through the trees. I heard a branch crack. The smell of gathering rain swelled the undergrowth beneath my sandals. I broke into a trot. The storm was spoiling for a full-fledged tantrum. By the time I reached the small clearing at the entrance of my dwelling, I could hear the promise of thunder.

I hung my water-skin on an iron hook inside the door and unburdened my tunic of its earthy fungal harvest. I’d promised Isis I’d eat well—she was constantly complaining about my thinness. “Your skin is pale, too,” she’d fretted, drawing her own ashen hand through my hair. I kissed her creamy skin through a net of my black curls. “We’re both drained of our lifeblood, my love,” I whispered. Ever since we’d known of my exile, we’d moved like ghosts through what little time we still had left together.

For my part, I’d had no need to extract promises. I understood why Isis did: it was to insert herself into the most mundane details of my every day. This was her way of staying with me, even when we were forced so far apart. If I could only convey to her the depth with which she rode in my bones, my blood, my pulse … the promises I made her were shredded ribbons compared to her constant presence in my essential being. I didn’t even need to close my eyes to see the reddish sheen of sunlight on her silky hair, or to immerse myself in the twin turquoise pools that were her eyes.

Countless times each day, I saw Isis frowning down at the ground in front of us as we walked one last time by the western riverbank of New Atlantis. She was chewing her lower lip, as she always did when scheming. Isis was preparing a bouquet of promises for herself, to comfort her during the long nights of my impending exile. She knew I’d swear to anything she asked; and that I’d keep every promise as faithfully as if it were a vow to the Unfed Light.

Now I prepared the mushrooms as an offering to Isis. Only by thinking of her and my promise could I muster the energy to feed myself. Left to my own devices, I’d have forgotten to eat or drink altogether. But Isis knew me too well. “Swear to me,” she’d insisted. “Tend yourself, Seraphis. Against the time we’re together again.” And I had sworn.

While the fungus sputtered in oil over a small stove flame, I turned back to the letter I’d begun the night before. "Isis, my beloved." That’s all I’d managed to write. Write, by the Seven Rays! Another promise in her bouquet.

“Write?” I gasped, when she came up with the notion. “Do you mean—”

“Yes, with an inkstick. On parchment. My mother will arrange to have the diplomatic contingent carry it to me.”

Isis’ mother, the Progenitor. The Woman of Iron. If anyone could arrange such a thing, it would be her—although now that the rescue mission was cranking at fever pitch in New Atlantis, it was hard to imagine the Progenitor taking time out to arrange transit for her daughter’s billets-doux. Perhaps it was guilt at her own role in my exile that had prompted her to set up the necessary connections.

At any rate, the courier would be coming for my letter tomorrow, and I still had just three words. It was hard to think of anything worth writing. That I loved my wife—yes, of course. That had been true from the moment I had first seen her. If anything, the feeling had grown stronger during this involuntary separation. But of my everyday existence there was nothing to report. The cabin, though relatively primitive, was comfortable. The novelty of heating and cooking with raw flame had soon given way to routine.

“With an inkstick?” I’d echoed, incredulous. The method was so archaic—and, to be honest, my skills so rusted—that I was starting to think it was hopeless. I glanced wistfully at the screenpad at the other end of my small table. Absently, I watched my fingers caressing the polished wood between the parchment and the vastly more familiar and inviting screenpad. A nervous habit, Isis called it. If she were here now, she’d fold her warm hand around my fingers and bring them to her lap. “Still, Seraphis, be still,” she’d whisper. But I didn’t feel nervous at all. It was my way of thinking. And so my fingers moved rhythmically on the reddish wooden surface while I yearned toward the screenpad. All it would take was a touch of my fingertip to its dock for Isis’ own instrument to signal her attention, all those countless furlongs away in New Atlantis. For her face to take shape before my yearning eyes.

Of course, we had already had many virtual meetings, me floating the screenpad around my cavern dwelling so that Isis could see for herself the beauty of its design and the utility of its appointments. Even though my confinement here in Atlantis was solitary and unwelcome, my surroundings were far from harsh. The use of raw fire to heat and cook felt more quaint than primitive. Other than that, everything was as convenient and practical as in our New Atlantis home: control consoles for all the appliances, composting waste receptacles, automatic temperature adjustments. I wanted for nothing, except the life I had been forced to leave behind.

Another of the screenpad’s many advantages was that I could see Isis, too: her deep-set eyes, always so filled with feeling; the fullness of her hair, inherited, no doubt, from her mother—although the Progenitor’s mane now was silver—that invariably made me want to fill my hands with its burnished silk and bury my face in it. Those slender fingers that knew my muscles and tendons as though they lived inside my own senses, and that had so often and so reliably soothed the ache of too many hours’ work under conditions of too much stress.

But Isis would not welcome a screenpad contact from me now. She was at the lab almost every waking minute, feverishly trying to keep up with the Progenitor’s newly accelerated schedule. Right now, I knew, my beloved was stooped over a table, micronscope at her eye, laser scalpel responding in gigameters to her mental directions as she delicately grafted and reinforced the salvageable DNA in yet another of Hister’s pitiful clones. Fashioned for mindless slave labor, the clones were turned out, assembly-line fashion, in featureless factories on the east coast of Atlantis, near the Crystal Tower and the market cities of Hister’s increasingly barbaric cosmos. For a time, I had been among the Shadow Warriors who guarded the rescuers as they swooped into Atlantis each night. There, they captured the witless clones on the paths between their task areas and airlifted them to New Atlantis.

The risks, of course, were great. To be captured by Hister’s thugs was to languish in unspeakable conditions. Despite the Protocols to which both Atlantis and New Atlantis were signatories, there was clear evidence of torture, and worse. Still, ship after ship of clones continued to arrive at the Progenitor’s laboratories, where Isis and her colleagues laid bare their DNA. It was the only chance these hapless beings would ever have to experience true humanity.

There was no point in writing to Isis about any of this. She knew as much as I about the escalation of atrocities during Hister’s rise to the leadership of the Atlantean Council. We’d discussed and debated and projected and planned and agonized almost nonstop in the days before my departure, and all of it had led to one simple, inescapable conclusion: the Work must go ahead with the utmost urgency. For every new clone Hister and his henchmen manufactured, the Children of Light must rehabilitate two.

Symbolic gesture the clone rescue operation might have been, considering the rapid spread of evil from the very heart of Atlantis; but the etheric energies we generated through our efforts were perhaps even more important than the quantifiable results of the mission itself. The Progenitor was fond of reminding us of this fact, though of course we didn’t need her urgings. The more malicious and greedy Hister became, it seemed, the more the Divine Force inspired the Children of Light. Our rescue forays had become bolder and our DNA skills more finely honed.

They had to be. Hister’s mad scientists deliberately riddled the clones’ DNA chains with exotic flaws designed to curtail evolutionary development. The creatures were imprinted with short life spans to prevent the accumulation of knowledge, and made susceptible to myriad diseases that natural selection would normally long since have weeded out. These beings were designed for manual labor, their intellectual ability limited to the minimal demands of their tasks. They were to live only long enough to complete the next harvest or manufacturing cycle, after which they would die and be replaced.

It was their souls we risked so much to rescue. The ones trapped in these suffering bodies were young and inexperienced—how else would they have found their way into Hister’s clone factories? Without an opportunity to develop normally, they would simply cycle through again and again, doomed to an infinity of unawareness even as they dragged down the evolution of the entire human race.

Last time Isis and I had made screenpad contact, she’d shown me a scan of the New Atlantis domicile for successfully transmuted clones. Many were now tilling their own fields, making their own clothing, even building their own homes as autonomous humans, complete with free will. It was an inspiring and encouraging vision. Yet even as I rejoiced in the success of the Progenitor’s agenda, my heart chakra throbbed with pain. I could almost see my energies dissipating uselessly, like vapor from a boiling vat. While I sat idle in these mountains, all of New Atlantis was passionately engaged in foiling Hister’s maniacal vision.

Isis knew this, too—my pain, my frustration, my bewilderment at how this could have come to pass. There was no point in going over that again, either.

All I could tell Isis now was that the sound of the wind had picked up momentum, charging in from the west like an enraged prisoner suddenly turned loose on this dense, swaying forest. Above the roar of the storm, I could still hear the small crackle of raw fire in the hearth, a comforting throwback to the days before the Crystal Tower. When I lifted the thick fabric shade to peer into the night, intense darkness instantly absorbed the frail light escaping the window. I returned to the table, where my fingers took up their endless stroking without my consent or conscious participation.

I forced myself back to the task of the letter, and recoiled at once. To think of Isis was to be flooded with the agony of her absence. How desperately I missed her embrace, and the flow of fire that would leap between our love chakras when we began to touch! Helplessly, again, my mind took me through our last night together. And as always, my body responded. How could it not? Sparks of desire prickled down my spine as her hand gently traced my vertebrae, one by one, teasing, commanding my awareness to meet her at the tips of those long, sensitive fingers. The sensation forced tears to my eyes even as the heat rose in my groin. To feel her, and yet to be without her—how could I bear this pleasure and this pain, both swelling inside my heart at the same moment and with the same intensity? A sound—a sigh, or a sob, or both—escaped my lips as I leaned back in my chair and surrendered. Isis, my Isis!

The scene unfolding in my mind was so real, I almost reached out to cup her perfect breast in my hand. We began to rock, slowly at first, until the moist flame of our joined urgency began descending to our second chakras, wetting and swelling us as our bodies took up their own rhythm on the enormous, round bed that had been our wedding present from the Progenitor. Beyond thought, I activated the tantric control techniques Isis and I had studied together, practiced together, to keep ourselves from losing the fire to mere physical release. I heard myself moaning, and I swear the throaty breath of my beloved, my mysterious, radiant soulmate sounded right by my ear as we moved together as one, a single organism united in spiritual and physical ecstasy. The fire moved up through my chakras toward the cosmic crown of interconnection.

“Isis!” I cried. I strained to catch the sound of her breathing, her whisper—and then her image shattered to the sound of a loud, insistent rapping. I literally leapt from my chair, adrenaline flooding my nadis.

"Who—?” Was the courier here already? I cast a frantic glance at my pitifully unformed letter. But the voice at the door was familiar. It had the ring of a peer, someone I might call a friend.

"It's Manac." The voice was soft, as if there were anyone to hear it other than the wind-lashed forest. Still, an underlying urgency in the visitor's tone made me hurry to the door.

The night was so dark, it seemed at first to swallow up the form in the doorway. Manac was as black as the sky that framed him, and he stood almost seven feet tall. His muscular arms protruded proudly from the sleeveless tunic favored by his tribe, a people native to the southernmost tip of Africa. It struck me that Manac was very far from home tonight. I narrowed my eyes against the cruel blast of mountain wind that rushed immediately inside, filling the space with sudden movement and the pungent, electrical odor of rain pierced by lightning.

"Manac!" I stood back to let him pass. "What brings you all the way up here on a night like this?" Manac sighed as he settled himself on one of the two straight-backed chairs at the table. I shut the door hurriedly.

"Trouble, Seraphis," he muttered, as if to himself. "Trouble." Manac shook his powerful arms twice, and hundreds of droplets of water flew to the floor.

"Something warm to drink?" I offered, joining my visitor at the table. Manac nodded absently. I flicked a button on the table console, dousing the flame under the hissing mushrooms and lighting a new one under an iron kettle. My already minimal interest in eating had left me altogether.

"What kind of trouble? Hister?"

Manac sat kneading his shoulder with one huge hand, his forehead creased with worry.

"Hister. Exactly." Manac’s skin gleamed almost blue, muscles rippling beneath the surface as his hand worked the base of his neck.

I pushed aside the inkstick and parchment lying between us on the table. Manac glanced at the three words I had written and blushed in a manner only one long familiar with black men would notice. He looked away. Normally, I would be amused at the ease with which my friend was embarrassed; but tonight I had no stomach for social conventions. I was impatient to hear the news Manac had come so far to tell me.

"What could he possibly do to top human sacrifice?” I snapped. But a queasy sensation in my solar plexus told me the answer. Every day, I scanned the reports from the Atlantean Council. I knew that Hister had just enough understanding of the Crystal Tower to turn it into a weapon of mass destruction—and worse, that he was now openly contemplating doing so. I knew that Hister was also possessed of the hubris, ambition, and ruthlessness to pretend that he could control the consequences of such an act. Consequences not only for Atlantis, but for the entire planet.

“Human sacrifice,” Manac repeated. He looked momentarily stricken, as if he'd forgotten about Hister’s ritual killings, cynically instituted in the name of divine propitiation. Then Manac’s violet eyes seemed to turn black. He leaned across the table.

"He means to use the Crystal Tower to destroy Thule." The words came out in a sudden torrent. "He has the votes, Seraphis. Anyone who opposes him is made to look like a coward or a traitor. Even Helaria can't convince anyone to stand with her. She’s the last holdout."

I sat speechless, searching Manac’s face for any sign of hope. “What about Averle?” I demanded. “What about Darveth?” The images of the Council’s stronger and saner members flowed across the screen of my mind like a scan.

"Helaria’s barely hanging on," Manac continued, shaking his head. "Hister’s been spouting his bizarre ideas about women, you know."

I shook my head in disbelief. "The men of the Council are actually buying into that regressive idiocy? The women are standing for it?"

"Well, it makes the men feel stronger to see women as weak. Hister’s playing a clever game, Seraphis. The more he disempowers the men through intrigues and back-stabbing, the more desperate they are to seize whatever advantage they can get." Manac shifted his powerful frame in the chair, making it creak dangerously. "Hister’s diatribes about feminine duplicity and instability are music to their ears."

"So now he’s set half the Council against the rest." A sour taste sprouted on the back of my tongue. “What are the women doing about it?”

"The women are divided, too," Manac sighed. He was still massaging his shoulder, but now his skin had dried, and his muscles no longer shone blue. Still, they rippled in the low light, drawing my eyes almost hypnotically to their rhythmic flexing and relaxing. "Some of the women are working twice as hard to prove their mettle,” Manac continued, “but others are resigning from the Council rather than put up with the abuse. Only Helaria seems to be keeping her head. So far, anyway."

"Don’t they understand?" The words burst from me, despite the relaxation techniques I had begun applying the moment Manac had entered the cabin. "If they use the Tower as a weapon, and the Enochian Principle holds true ….”

“Men and women will die alongside each other," Manac finished the thought. "It won’t matter who’s superior and who’s inferior." The iron kettle began to sputter. I took advantage of the moment to steady myself in the familiar, soothing ritual of tea-making. When I returned to the table with two steaming mugs, my voice was urgent, but controlled.

"Are they mad?" I mused, more sorrowful now than angry. "The men of Thule didn't start this war."

"No," Manac agreed, "but they destroyed the Sacred Cairns. That's the unforgivable thing. Hister is whipping everyone into a frenzy about it. He's calling it a crime against humanity, says it deserves the ultimate punishment. Then if anyone stands to speak against him, he accuses them of staining the honor of Atlantis itself."

"If destroying the Cairns is a crime against humanity, what should we call using the Crystal Tower as an instrument of destruction?" I felt my exasperation rise again. "In the name of the Mother, it's an energy center, a life source, the Grand Specific for the entire Atlantean Empire! It was never designed for destruction."

Manac cocked an eyebrow, then shrugged wearily. "Now you know why I came here tonight."

"I'm sorry, Manac," I muttered, a little sheepishly. "You don't deserve my rage. It's just seems so obvious—especially after Enoch's experiments."

Manac nodded glumly. "Almost everyone accepts his conclusions," he sighed. "I know—and you do, too, Seraphis," he added, as if I needed persuasion. "Using the crystals on that scale will draw the antigravity field into itself. It has to, to build enough power."

"And for a fraction of a second, right at the zenith of the draw, the field will be neutralized." I heard myself speak in a monotone, like a schoolboy reciting a well-worn lesson. "No gravity!”

“Worse than that." Manac stared into his mug, "If I understand the Enochian Principle, the earth's core will tend to implode while the crust explodes." He glanced at me questioningly.

"Right," I nodded. "For just that fraction of a second, the planet's tectonic plates will try to reorganize themselves. The entire world will crumble into … well, there’ll be a massive earthquake."

The tall man leaned back on his chair, stretched, and shook his head. "Enoch even thinks there's a good chance Gaia will shift on its axis and the oceans will seek new levels."

I shuddered. We sat together silently, gripping our mugs and listening to the wind beating against the thick, redbark walls enclosing my cave. Finally, I rose and began to pace, mug still clasped in a two-handed death grip.

"Reality and theory are always—no, wait, let me finish," I interrupted myself as Manac leaned forward to speak. "They’re always difficult to reconcile. You can't tell how a theory will work itself out, any more than you can predict the feel of a laser-rod blast by reading a study about it. Enoch's Principle has been around for a long time, but it can't be demonstrated."

"Without risking everything," Manac added.

"Now the Council thinks it has a solution to a serious problem." I stopped in mid-stride to look at my friend. "A humiliating problem, in fact. After all, in their minds, Thor is practically Cro-Magnon. Yet he and his Thulians defeated the sophisticated armies of Atlantis. I can see why the Council is itching to retaliate."

Manac set his mug carefully in front of him on the table, like a man moving a chess piece. "Of course,” he agreed, wearily. “They're going to choose a solution they know to be certain—destroying Thule—over a cautious strategy based on a theoretical possibility. Which Enoch’s Principle, obvious though it seems, still technically is.”

"Politically, how could they not?" I stopped pacing and sat. I could see Hister’s twisted logic spread out before me as if on a screen. He had been working toward this moment since his first day on the Atlantean Council.

"I've done all I can," Manac said sadly. "I've talked myself hoarse. No one's listening. It's as though Hister has the Council … I don't know, hypnotized or something."

I felt an answering hopelessness begin to pervade my third chakra. It had already begun moving upward, toward my heart, before I shook myself free.

"No."

Manac stilled his hand on the round of his shoulder and raised his eyebrows.

"No," I said again. "I refuse to lie down and let Hister destroy my world." I stood, willing myself to feel the life force coursing through my nadis. "I will go to the Council myself. Not that I have any more skill than you, Manac," I added hastily, but Manac was nodding animatedly.

"No, no," Manac exclaimed, "that’s why I came. You still have close connections with some of the more powerful figures there. I was hoping …."

"At least," I interrupted, "they used to be powerful figures."

"Well, it’s definitely worth a try.” Manac turned in his chair. "You'll leave tonight?"

"At once," I said, pulling on my boots. I reached for my cloak, then rejected it in favor of a thick fur coat. If anything, the storm had ratcheted up in fury since Manac had arrived. With our voices silent, we could hear the determined rhythm of rain beating furiously against the windows. I reached for the door; then realized that Manac was still seated. Now his right hand pummeled his left upper arm mercilessly, like a blind man seeking the throat of his enemy.

I stepped back from the door and willed the blood to calm in my veins.

“Was there something else?” I asked. Manac grunted, looking at the floor. Surely that massive hand must be hurting the muscles it was squeezing. A surge of impatience took me.

“Speak, man!” I barked. “Time is short.”

Manac raised his gaze to fix my eyes with his. Suddenly, his hand was still.

“I have no Warrior training,” he said. “I know you do.”

“Yes,” I agreed, puzzled. “I am a first-degree Shadow Warrior. What of it?”

“Well,” Manac said slowly, “I know that means you can walk between dimensions.” Clearly uncomfortable, the big man began kneading his neck again.

“Oh, no,” I said, as his meaning dawned on me. “I’m not advanced enough in my training to direct the energies of the Tower. Besides,” and now I rode a swell of anger, “I have taken a vow, Manac. As an exile. As a Child of Light. An honest attempt to persuade the Council, in the clear light of day, that’s one thing ….” Manac interrupted me.

“You may or may not have the power to arrest the Tower’s implosion,” he said, his piercing eyes alight with meaning. “But if you do, think only on one thing.”

“And what would that be, Manac?” I inquired, coldly.

“Is your word as a Child of Light worth more to you than your world as a human being?”

Now it was I who remained frozen, as Manac rose to his full seven feet and covered the distance to the door in barely a single stride. For a moment, we stood and regarded each other. Manac’s eyes now were deep and sad. Then he pulled the door open.

"The Divine Force at your heels," he intoned solemnly, slipping his traveling disk platen from the leather bag hanging loosely at his side. I staggered for a moment as the wind rushed through the open door. Then, all at once, my body thawed.

"Thank you, Manac," I yelled into the wind. But Manac was already gone. I seized the door by its bronze handle, pushing it shut with both hands. My body trembled, but my mind was clear. I went directly to the redbark closet in my personal space. From the footlocker at its base I took out a white wetsuit proudly bearing the pyramid insignia of New Atlantis. I hadn’t yet broken my vow of exile, but my heart pounded with the knowledge that I was preparing the ground for violation. Dropping my tunic to the floor, I quickly drew on the wetsuit and secured its belt, taking just a moment to finger the buckle. Its potent properties gave me mastery to the full extent of my Shadow Warrior training. That, and my rod of power. I bent once more and drew the rod from the locker. I had not yet made any decisions, but now I had all my options, literally, at my fingertips. Donning my heavy coat over the white uniform, I muttered the creed under my breath as I strode to the door.

“No violence but that which ends violence,” I murmured, in time with my pulse. “This Shadow Warrior pledges to serve only the Divine, the Unfed Light.”

I pulled an iridescent blue travel disk from my coat pocket and engaged the mechanism with a practiced flick of my thumb. It expanded obediently. I mounted the disk, stepping into its invisible protective field and shaking the rain from my hair. The disk rose above the trees, cutting through the wind and carrying me quickly beyond the dark forest.

Soon, I glimpsed rays of moonlight through the storm clouds. The moon, almost full, emerged just in time to illuminate a great mountain ridge off to the right, far below. The rain had folded itself back into the sky. Stars punctuated the horizon, gradually fading as the moon loomed larger. From the safety of the protective field, I scanned the landscape ahead. The plain spread out endlessly before me. I strained my eyes, searching for the Crystal Tower. I wanted to reassure myself that it was still intact—even though I knew that it must be. My traveling disk was riding on its power.

Somehow, the thought made me start. I gave the command for more speed, and the disk obligingly glided into trajectory one. It wasn't long before I made out the familiar, needle-like form on the horizon. It grew larger as I approached, its subtle golden glow thankfully steady. I felt, as I always had in the presence of the Tower, a complex mixture of awe, gratitude, and fear. The entire Atlantean Empire—all the many devices on which it depended for communication, transportation, food production, warmth, construction—all drew their power from this single Grand Specific.

What hubris was this, then, that I would so much as consider interfering with the energetic patterns of the Crystal Tower? As a Shadow Warrior, I just might be able to enter its subtle circuitry, to redirect that awesome power back to its original pathways. Then again, I was only first degree; nowhere near the level of Warrior Adept. With my limited powers and understanding, I might very well only make matters worse. And, of course, I might die in the attempt, never knowing whether I had accomplished good or evil. Knowing only that I had broken my vow as a Child of Light.

Or would I have? Wasn’t it the duty of every Child to protect the planet at all costs? If I had it in my power to change the course of Hister’s depraved scheme, how could I justify not doing so? In that light, the risk of my life seemed trivial—a trifling price to pay, if it would save the planet from destruction! And my vows, as both a Child of Light and a Shadow Warrior, would seem to demand that I at least try …. My head spun with the implications of what I was—or was not—about to do. My fingers stroked the belt buckle of my uniform, back and forth, rubbing the metal to a high polish. Still, Seraphis, be still.

And then, with sickening suddenness, the field of golden light surrounding the Tower suddenly swelled. The disk skipped like a stone across a lake, throwing me against the protective wall with such force that it almost tore. All thoughts of choice and honor vanished as I watched the platen’s shimmering iridescence wither abruptly to a dull, murky purple beneath my feet. My heart leapt into my throat, cutting off my breath. I was too late. The attack had begun.

Kneeling now, I watched the Crystal Tower blink once, twice, making the disk lurch beneath me with each pulse. Then a great ball of light erupted from the apex of the majestic needle. Even now, looking back, I can say with certainty that I have never experienced a more beautiful or terrifying sight. The disk fell away from me, pulling its invisible field down sharply so that it shattered over my head and shoulders. The rod of power slipped from my grasp and tumbled instantly out of sight. A rush of freezing air filled my lungs. I felt consciousness flicker out as my body plunged through space after the spiraling platen.