Somewhere on Tarddiad...
"I felt it Ysbryd. I felt the echo through the shard - a warning throughout the Animasphere. Contact."
"I thought we would have longer. These rites are nowhere near completed. Is there such need for your haste to war again?"
"It isn't Salvidor or The Ascendency, but if I am right, and I'm usually am with these things, they know as much as I know. The First Cruciform may be dead, but concepts endure. They just need another source to work from to re-engineer those abominations - which is exactly what had just opened up back home. The local gods won't notice until it is too late."
"I beg you, please. Can't I dissuade you from this fruitless crusade?. If you bluster away now, before the alignment is complete, your essence will be severed from this plane and the crystal will reject you. I might never be able to find your friends without it!"
"I'd rather die knowing I preserved them, somewhere out there, rather than share the torment of failing to prevent it! There is one truth have learned after all my pain and suffering, Ysbryd. One ineffable fact about life, death, gods, and everything in-between."
"And what exactly would that be, hmm?"
"Everything must come to dust. All things.
Everything dies
."
"You are hopeless, you know that right? Come. I'll dial the gate."
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Cosmos...
"The Vote is taken. Only two stand against, and will stand as monuments to THERE SHAME, like the ancient hyrda of old! "
"Now the vanguard stands prepared, as The Ascendecy returns to the final world, TO GIELINOR!"
