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Not only did I overestimate my own importance I underestimated the scope of war

There is no escape from this It will eat us all

I could flee this pain, find refuge in the Mind’s Eye meditation and slip slowly into the Void as ive Grandmother that honor She did some

thing toI cannot understand I was a child who needed love in the shadow of his parents’ deaths Instead, she beat me into the shape of a cup and poured her lessons into me I will not let those lessons be my last act in this world

“Cry not, mortal child,” a voice says in the darkness “They cos of sable, to rend your precious flesh, and send you to the doom which lies beyond this realm of pain”

I sit up A mad?

“Lie still and it will end Lie still and the seed of Silenius ither to time”

“Who is there?” I ask A translucent mass squats in the shadows of the downed aircraft It seehostCloak with hornlike projections If it is a ghostCloak and not thein

“Dwell not on me, mortal Nocturnal devils are afoot Awake, arise, or be forever fallen”

I hear it now The sound of gravBoots

I watch through a fissure in the hull as seven arht Seneca’s voice drifts from the darkness “Lysander, oh, Lysander, come out, come out, little boy Death has come”

So Ajax has sent his boar of a bodyguard to finish the task

The thought of dying at the hands of some thin-blood brute fills h killers My hand goes to the side of my neck where I received my mission implant They tracked it at last I turn to the man in the darkness

“Help

“I help no man who does not help himself, and no man do I help who is no boon to htiest of mortal vessels Yet one morsel still eludes my voluital void It lingers yet, this knowledge in one sepulchre Four days I have followed Four days you have denied me my quest I must know the Mind’s Eye Show it to me Or perish”