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There was, beneath the cold faces of gods, warods theods -- they simply paid

We -- we are the rack upon which they are stretched

Then the sensation was gone, fleeing hi Itkovian with but fading echoes of a distant world’s grief -- a world with its own atrocities, layer upon layer through a long, tortured history Fading … then gone

Leaving hie

A s beneath Rath’Fener’s pain and the growing onslaught of Capustan’s appalling death as his e souls on all sides, not one life’s history unworthy of notice, of acknowledgement Not one he would turn away Souls in the tens of thousands, lifeti to -- each riding onized death Iron and fire and s stone Dust and airlessness Memories of piteous, pointless ends to thousands and thousands of lives

I ive answer To every death Every death

He was lost within the stor around the sheer iift of peace The stripping away of pain’s trauma, to free the souls to find their way … to the feet of countless gods, or Hood’s own realm, or, indeed, to the Abyss itself Necessary journeys, to free souls trapped in their own tortured deaths

I am the the Shield Anvil This is for ods! Redeem them, sir! It is your task The heart of your vows -- you are the walker aer of peace, the redeemer of the fallen You are the mender of broken lives Without you, death is senseless, and the denial of reatest crime to its own children Hold, Itkovian hold fast -

But he had no god against which to set his back, no solid, intractable presence awaiting him to answer his own need And he was but one mortal soul…

Yet, I must not surrender Gods, hear me! I may not be yours But your fallen children, they are mine Witness, then, what lies behind my cold face Witness!

In the plaza, amidst a dreadful silence, Paran and the others watched as Itkovian slowly settled to his knees A rotting, lifeless corpse was sluure seemed -- to the captain’s eyes -- to encoe that burned into his mind, and one that he kneould never leave hi waged within the Shield Anvil, little showed After a long moment, Itkovian reached up with one hand and unstrapped his hel it clear to reveal the sweat-stained leather under-helainst his brow and neck shrouded his face as he knelt with head bowed, the corpse in his ar to pale ash The Shield Anvil was motionless

The uneven rise and fall of his frame slowed