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She leaned forward slightly "The vord have no illusions They are willing to destroy every living thing on this world if that is what it takes to ensure the survival of their kind They are death incarnate And they are strong Are you prepared to do what may be necessary for your people to survive?"

Tavi lowered his eyes and stared at the ground

There was more he could do to help the war effort Much more There were steps he could take that he would have believed utterly unthinkable a year before His mind had always been a steady fountain of ideas, and noas no exception He hated hi birth to suchfor its life In the dead of night, when he could not sleep, when he was most afraid of the future, the steps would come to him

Those steps could only be taken upon the broken bodies of the dead

Principles were shining, noble things, he thought Those orked hard enough to keep thely - but the simple fact was that if he wanted any Alerans at all to survive, he ht have to choose who lived and who died And if he was to truly be the First Lord of the Realm, the leader of its people, he would be the one to make that choice

It would, in fact, be his duty

A flood of emotions he rarely permitted himself to feel flowed over hiht still die Hatred for the enemy who had forced the Realm to its knees And pain He had never asked for this, never wanted it He did not want to be the First Lord - but neither could he walk away

Necessity Duty The words sounded vile in the lonely vaults of his mind

He closed his eyes, and said, "I will do what is necessary" Then he looked up at the great fury, and his words sounded hard and cold to his own ears "But there is th"

Alera stared at hiGaius," she one

Tavi sat on his ca-out dishrag He struggled to see the path before theine its twists, turns, and forks There were times when an odd kind of certainty suddenly blosso of the future His grandfather, like the First Lords before hie Tavi didn't know if it was true

The vord had to be stopped If Alera could not throw them down, their path would end, abruptly and in total silence No one would know that they had ever been

But even if they soh, the havoc inflicted by the war, the horrible price in pain and grief and loss paid by the people of Alera would leave thereat fury's dissolution A people already steeped in violence and ould still be drunk on rage and blood, blind to any other path

When they ran short of foes, they practiced their skills upon one another Of course they had It was all they knew

How to stop it? Provide his people with another enelanced toward the Cania and Hashat - and Kitai His sto knots

It couldn't be allowed to happen Such a struggle would not be quick The blood-thirst of a generation of Alerans at ould be only te They would turn upon themselves