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PREFACE

It was a tih, for no word of success had yet reached the nest from the warrior-servants which had followed the burrows below the face of the ground toward the broad water which lies beneath the sunset

All had gone as it should at first as the warrior-servants had h the burroard the land of the sunset, killing the s of that land as they went, and the joy of our dear Vlagh had known no bounds, for once the land of the sunset was ours, there would be h which had spawned us all could spawn still , and the overrows larger and more complex with each new hatch

Ih, for none of its servants of whatever forht word of victory, and without that assurance, our Vlagh could not spawn Though our Vlagh reached out with its senses toward the land of the sunset to question the overe form, the overmind did not respond, and that was most unusual

And as the days carew more and more irritable as the need to spaas frustrated by the lack of certainty ‘Go!’ our Vlagh commanded the warrior-servants which protect the hidden nest ‘Go and look, and then return and tell me that which I must know’

Many warrior-servants of venos hurried away, and those of us which are the true servants who care for our Vlagh and the newborns sought to assure our dear Vlagh that all was as it should be

But it was not so

The venoe form returned to report that they could not find even one of those of our nuround toward the broad water which lies beneath the sunset, nor had they even been able to find any trace of those burrows More horrible still, they had felt no sense of the overion

And the pain of our dear Vlagh knew no bounds, for the over-reatly diminished, and it would remain so until the burrowers and the warriors with venos were found and their awareness was rejoined with the overmind

Then there ca limbs and deep burns in its shell, and the burrower spoke of hot light spewing up fro down through the burrows below the face of the ground, consu all that was in its path And then the burrower said that which should never be said ‘They are no h our hidden burroard the land of the sunset have all been consumed by the red liquid hotter than fire, and we are all one’

And then the burrower’s task was complete, and it died

And our beloved Vlagh shrieked in agony, for the word of the burrower had torn away the urge to spawn And all of us were made less by those words, for the many were noer, and the lands beneath the sunset were now and forever beyond our reach The grief of our Vlagh was beyond our understanding, and that grief brought us rage

Now it cae fore in the lands of the e are unlike the true servants, for their task has altered theh’s ie which they have found and even soe which they have found back to the nest

And so it was that the seekers of knowledge agreed, each with the others, that the lands of the sunset were now and forever beyond the grasp of the burrowers and the warriors by reason of the liquid fire which was co forth from the e they had found had suggested to theht it not be better, they said, to expand toward a different direction than we had before? The er summers are quiet, and the need to spew forth liquid fire is not stirring in those s to eat in the land of longer summers than there had been in the land of the sunset Since the presence of things to eat arouses our Vlagh’s urge to spawn, should we not seek out a land where there is row reater, and there will soon be even more of us than there had been when the burrowers had opened the passages below the face of the ground which had led down to the land of the sunset And thereby the awareness of the overhts which it has never reached before

And our beloved Vlagh co the virtue of the alternative offered by the seekers of knowledge, and the overood in that alternative, for it had learnedour attee form had encountered many different creatures as they had moved toward the sunset, and the overht prove to be s in the land of longer sus are most tenacious and difficult to push aside as we oal Then, however, the overer ould face in the land of longer summers would be - even as it had in the land of the sunset - not theinfants and peculiar stones

And so it was that we turned aside from the lands of the sunset and fixed our attention on the land of longer suround and where there is ain stir our Vlagh’s urge to spawn, and the over what it had been before the mountains of the land of the sunset had reduced it, and that will bring joy to all of us, for we all share the benefits of the increase of the overmind

And surely the tis shall be ours, and we shall grow to nu, and our overe is ours - and the world as well

And only then e be content

The Dream Of Ashad

During the course of rown very fond of the mountains of my Domain There’s a beauty in the mountains that no other kind of country can possibly match My sister Zelana loves the sea in much the same way, I suppose, but I don’t think the sea can ever match mountain country Mountain air is clean and pure, and the eternal snow on the peaks seems to increase that purity