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If the Commons survives — if we six endure into times to come — no doubt it will be called the Battle of the Glade.

It was brief, bloody, and tactically decisive, was it not, my rings?

And strategically futile. An interval of flame and terror that made my/our manicolored bands so very glad/sorrowful that we are traeki.

Sorrowful because these stacks of rings seemed so useless, so helpless to match the frantic pace of other beings whose antic warlike fury drives them so quickly in a crisis. With such speed that waxy imprints cannot form within our core, except duras behind actual events.

Sorrowful that we could not help, except to serve as chroniclers-after-the-fact, bearing testimony to what already took place.

And yet we are also glad, are we not, my rings? Glad because the full impact of violence never quite fills our central cavity with a searing steam of dread. Not until the action is already over, leaving the dead like smoky embers, scattered on the ground. That is a blessing, is it not, my rings? To us, horror is seldom an “experience,” only a memory.

It was not always so. Not for the beings we once were, when our kind roamed the stars and were a terror on the Five Galaxies. In those days, creatures like us wore bright shining rings. Not only the ones given to us by our patrons, the Poa, but special collars, donated by the meddlesome Oailie.

Rings of power. Rings of rapid decisiveness and monumental ego. Had we possessed such rings but moments ago, they might have spurred us to move swiftly, in time to help our friends during the struggle.

But then, if the old tales are true, those same rings might have kept us from having friends in the first place.

Stroke the wax. Trace the images, frozen in fatty drippings.

Images of atrocity and dread.

There lies Bloor, the portraitist, a smoldering ruin, draped over his precious camera.

Nearby, can we trace the slithering path of a dying creature? A symbiont crawling off the face and brow of the dead Rothen named Ro-pol? Revealing in its wake a sharp, angular visage, humanoid, but much less so than we had thought. Less charismatic. Less winsomely womanlike than we were led to believe.

If Bloor died for seeing this, are all eyes now accursed?

There, screams Ro-kenn, ordering Rann, the star-human servant, to call back the fierce sky-car from its distant errand, even if it means “breaking” something called “radio silence.”

There, screams Ro-kenn once more, ordering his slave-demons, his robots, aloft to — “clear all of these away.”

Meaning us. All witnesses to this abrupt revelation. All who know the secret of Bloor’s Bane.

Up, up rise the awful instrumentalities, meting out slashing doom. From their bellies lash spears of cold flame, slicing through the stunned host, turning it into a roiling, screaming mob. Four-legged urs bound high into the air, screeching panic. Qheuens cower low, trying to burrow away from rays that carve chitin as easily as flesh. Humans and hoon throw themselves flat on the ground, while poor g’Keks spin their wheels, trying to back away.

We traeki — those left at Gathering after weeks of silent departures — mostly stand where we were, venting multi-fragranced fumes of woe, erupting wet fear-stench as cutting beams slice through popping toruses, spilling rich liquor, setting our stacks afire.

But look! Stroke the image layers one more time, my rings. See the darkly clad ones? Those who rush forward tvoward the terror, not away? Our vision spots scry little, even by daylight, for their clothing blurs them in uncanny ways. Nonetheless, we/i trace squat qheuen shapes, running with humans crouched on their backs, and urrish troops sweeping alongside. There comes, as well, a booming noise, a rarely heard sound, that of lethal hoonish ire. From their midst, these dim shapes raise strange tubes, even as the soaring demons turn their killing rage upon the newcomers, slashing at them mercilessly.

There is a place…

It is here, in our core, where the wax depicts only a roar — a flash — an overload of searing afterimages — and then…

What followed now lies before us.

Cinders — where the robots fell to sully Jijo’s holy soil, shattered and reduced to dross.

Three sky-lords — stunned to find themselves held captive, taken prisoner, stripped of their godlike tools.

A poignant field — strewn with lamented dead. So many dead.

A makeshift infirmary — where even more wounded writhe and grimace, crying diverse plaints of pain.

Here, at last, is something we can do in real time. Perhaps they can use the assistance of an old retired pharmacist.

Is it agreed, my rings?

Wonderful unanimity. It makes easier the unaccustomed haste as i hurry forth to help.

Sara

The hard march had taken nothing from the tension between the two rebel groups. UrKachu’s painted warriors and Dedinger’s dun-clothed hunters eyed each other warily while eating separate meals under an aged canopy of patched and weathered blur-cloth, never wandering far from their weapons. Members of each group took turns sleeping after supper, no more than six at a time, while the rest kept watch. Sara found it hard to imagine this alliance lasting a dura longer than it was in both sides’ perceived self-interest.

What if fighting broke out? In these close quarters it would be no artful exercise in maneuver and strategy but a roiling tumble of slashing, grappling forms.

She recalled the frontispiece illustration in volume one of The Urrish-Earthling Wars, by Hauph-hutau, one of the most popular titles published since the Great Printing. In small type, the great historian acknowledged copying the scene from a Tabernacle-era, art book, showing the sculpture frieze that once surrounded the Parthenon, in ancient Greece. That famous relief depicted a long row of mighty figures, clenched in mortal combat — naked men brawling with furious monsters, half human and half horse, who reared, kicked, and slashed at their foes in a bitter fight to the death. According to myth, the feud broke’ out during a festival of peace and concluded with extinction for the centaur race.

Of course, an urs had almost nothing in common with a centaur, beyond having four legs and two arms. Yet the symbolism of the frieze was so eerie, so unnerving, that it became notorious during the age of struggle, helping steel the resolve of both sides. Sara had no wish to see such a bloody scene enacted in front of her.

Of the others taken captive at Uryutta’s Oasis, young Jomah was already out like a snuffed candle, curled in his bedroll, fast asleep. The Stranger picked away at his meal of corn mush, frequently putting down his spoon to pluck a series of soft notes from his dulcimer, or else performing the ritual of counting its strings. Numbers, it seemed, were like music to him — a window to what he once had been, more faithful than the knack at sentences, that he had lost.

Kurt, the exploser, doodled on his notepad, occasionally picking up one of the little books he kept so secretively, either in his valise or the inner pocket of his gown. He covered his work whenever any human or urs passed close but seemed not to mind that Prity lingered nearby, after bringing his meal. Putting on her best I’m-just-a-dumb-critter act, Prity spent some time pretending to inspect her leg for lice. But soon the little chimp was peering over the exploser’s shoulder, rubbing her chin, drawing her lips past her gums, exposing a grin of silent, delighted interest.