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“Darrow…” I hear Mustang’s voice behind e of the fray She drifts slowly toward me “What have you done…”
This death will reach beyond this small plot of earth and rattle the Republic to its foundations Wulfgar carried the luster of Ragnar’s legend with him He was a hero More than that He was a symbol, and not just to the Vox Populi The people will hate me Especially the Obsidians I’ve taken one of their favorite sons, one of their great bridges to the Republic, and cut hirass
What did I think would happen?
Sevro looks back at rabs o Reap Come on” I look over at him and see the fear in his eyes
Ahost of herself Ten years of building, and one night has broken it all “I’ no words for her horror, and I let Sevro pull me away
As we lift off fro passenger ra amidst the ruin I’ve left behind, and beyond her, in the shadow of a conifer pine,field behind
A fool pulls the leaves A brute chops the trunk A sage digs the roots
—LORN AU ARCOS
WE HURTLE LIKE A black thunderbolt over a pale waste of silicate dust and sulfur dioxide frost in a starship adorned with electric dragons Out the breath-fogged , a yellow-green sulfur plain stretches toward the dark side of the moon, broken only by lava floes, volcanoes, ash plu to the hues out of thethrough the stained sea
Each day, 3600 reh to wither a man’s DNA in hours—bombard the moon that was once one of the driest objects in the Solar System But now, six hundred years after the first ice was carved from Europa and transported to Io, she has become the breadbasket of Ilium—as the Jovian Moon Lords prefer to call their cluster of moons
Despite the fear I feel at my incarceration, I can’t help but be enamored by the testament to human will
The Conquerors were not daunted by Io’s tee her face, but instead created bold bubbles of life upon her surface Out the ser aisle, I gliricultural domes, docks, and skeletal tramways There, botanical enterprises h food to feed Ilium and, with Titan, feed the rest of the Rim
Io is a contradiction, and so, I know, are its inhabitants So I must keep in mind if I am to find some means of escape for my friends
The ship jerks against sudden turbulence I lose hold of the plastic cup that I’ve brought up to the edge of the metal muzzle that’s affixed tothe water across the deck The guard stares at the water running along the floor planking with dull, usted by the waste and my noises as I lick the mesh of my muzzle, desperate for any last drop of nets in his boots securing his rangy legs to the deck despite the turbulence from the atmospheric entry
“May I…” My dry throat closes around the words “May I have another cup?” I rasp out, eyes on theto keep the desperation fro disposition, a tre lessons to spoiled Corish Pixies like myself and Cassius I wish I knehy; perhaps then I could disrand an old one can claim a soul”