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’Find a companion,’ Draconus advised ’A worthy one’

’Wise words fro ether, with an intent they had now achieved Perhaps not in the manner they would have wished, but it was done And the price had been paid Willingly Three lives and one, each destroyed For the one, the beginning of eternal hatred For the three, a fair exchange

Elder Gods, it has been said, embodied a host of unpleasantries

In the distance, the beast watched the three figures part ways Riven with pain, white fur stained and dripping blood, the gouged pit of its lost eye glittering wet, it held its hulking ed for death, but death would not coeance, but those who had wounded it were dead There but remained the man seated on the throne, who had laid waste to the beast’s ho of that score

A final longing filled the creature’s ravaged soul Soration of the Fall and the chaos that followed, it had lost its mate, and was now alone Perhaps she still lived Perhaps she wandered, wounded as he was, searching the broken wastes for sign of him

Or perhaps she had fled, in pain and terror, to the warren that had given fire to her spirit

Wherever she had gone -- assu she still lived -- he would find her

The three distant figures unveiled warrens, each vanishing into their Elder realms

The beast elected to follow none of the entities as far as he and his ht have fled to was, in comparison to those of the Elder Gods, ancient

The path that awaited hi heart

The portal that opened before hi storm of power The beast hesitated, then strode into it

And was gone

BOOK ONE