to Appraise.

[sunbreaker_]

In the hearts of men are machines dedicated to their survival. Though distinct, each is similar and grand and simple in its purpose, to be praised or despised in song through man-ages that each generation might know well its debt. Death and life sit astride these machines, two infants tugging the same bauble fore and aft. Some men are born with fewer of these machines, and it is these men who in their strangeness levy broad swaths of change that burns and grows and heals and vilifies, and it is these men of whom all others are made footnotes in the annals of history, verses long forgotten in songs children are taught to sing.

A machine to these men is fear. It is their strength in ignorance; it is their weakness when named.

[sunbreaker_]

Long has the earth borne the infinite weight of the sky, raising in its vanity mountains and enviously carving seas, living every moment less of itself and yielding more to the inveterate. What peaks he had drawn have since been worn away—what seas upon which he so shamefully gazed have been dashed into ugly vales of purulent vines and dying horrors. Its edges, to which those who loved it wrote odes of admiration and awe, have been shown as continuous, bringing those so bold as to be itinerant to the simple behinds of their maiden villages.

So, then, comes the end of the world. Knowing its fate, fearing it, it falls to its knees.

[sunbreaker_]

And owed this fate, granted it in full lack of the machines of man, casting the everreaching shadow beneath which no majesty might yawn or glisten, is the murderously resplendent sky, to whom inevitably yield all limited things.

"Know defeat, infant."

Ruin marks the guardian, reflecting in impeccable detail the burgeoning strength of the Valkyrie standing above him, scattering the arrested glances of the outlying village to which Rosinder sends gold for beasts. His had been a long life; each scar beneath his father-beard and carpenter's dress told a child of a threat upon which he leveled the decisive blow, often singlehandedly, and reminded a woman of the debt her family will owe him for a hundred years. Wounds from which blood now flows were forged in wars of the past, at the mercy of contingents bade to raze the far countrysides to starve the enemy, all of whom were driven away by his might or lain low by his cunning.

Eyes into which the knight's naked thumbs now press tell in their smiles the struggle of one man in love with his land and his people, and reflect not the slightest regret for all that was sacrificed in their name.

"Know the ignominy of an unsung death."

At the end is hate. At the end is a death befitting no one.

[sunbreaker_]

A machine to these men is fear. A berth to fit a company of riders is granted him, in which he stands with shining crown and glistening fingers like some flesh-borne god, head lowered at behest of his own reverence that he or the dead guardian or some awe-framed man might whisper a prayer. Leathers hug his body as some golem of lovers, arms and legs broken around one another in their demented haste to embrace him.

"It falls in all natural processes to the strong to shape the weak. I and the might that is Avorevon am a caustic river carving fjords and valleys through your featureless land not to forever mar it, but to bring it life. It is only in fear of the beast without and within that you arm yourselves with knowledge and retributive power—this, children, is strength through Avorevon. What prosperity you will in your future relish will be through her and this event and this death. What lives you will spawn and spawn again will grow with her name blessing their worthless tongues."

Sieghild finally raises his head. Each of them tremble in anticipation of bearing the gaze of the river, the beast, but none are such burdened. From within his person is produced a scroll the length of a man's forearm, and nearly twice as thick, closed with a seal these lands would soon recognize in ubiquity. Upon the empty head of the dead-kneeling remnant does he place this scroll, his soles then turning shortly to face his home and begin carrying him there.

"'Rosinder' lies dead with dry wounds. Let mine be the last lips to utter it."