Brogan sighed, lay his sheathed sword across his lap, and considered the tooling that embodied the art and culture of the Four Kingdoms. "It will end here for me, in all respects," he said with quiet certainty. "My life is of the Four Kingdoms and nowhere else. The arrival of the Enemy will mark the end for me."

Damond fixed him with a look. "What of a certain elven Swordmain?"

Brogan raised an eyebrow at that. "She feels as I do, that our lives are of the Four Kingdoms, and that, as such, our days are numbered. You see, for my part I cannot envision the world after the Four Kingdoms have departed. I do not know why. It is as though my fate, my destiny, begins and ends here.

"I have considered such feelings at great length, you know, trying to divine their cause, their purpose, their meaning. But despite my best efforts they defy understanding.

"At one time I considered that change for its own sake was the answer, and so it is that I became an itinerant soldier. And yet, for myself, not only is life without my sense of the world unthinkable, but without my sense of the world there is no life! The Four Kingdoms and I are one and the same thing, to me! Without the Four Kingdoms, I am nothing, least of all to myself!




Most Popular