-------------- Tales of the Silver Gryphon - Dove's Reflections

There was a darkness growing. She could sense it. It was both close by and far away.

The Crystal War had begun. Dove could see the outcome of that first fateful engagement, and the second and the third. So much blood. So much pain and suffering. There was nothing she could do, nothing she should do. She had a larger concern. Not ten thousand lives, but one, the one growing inside her.

Savra and Neferites and Vhaellik had gone to the Symballan Empire with a team. Their goal was to save a town from annihilation at the hands of the advancing Atheaen army. She already knew they would. She had seen it. She knew the results and the reasons for the first battle, the destruction of the city of Nureth and the obliteration of the famed Nurytan Regiment. She also knew that not a single man, woman or child was spared from the wrath of the Atheaen advance. It was said that when Queen Amalthea laid eyes on the gutted and defiled remains of the hostages and the special unit she'd sent in to rescue them, all killed by the vengeful and arrogant Sultan of Nureth, she went mad. Perhaps. Or perhaps it was Prince Pentellikon's doing. Even Dove could not see that well. The Atheaen army changed at that very battle. They changed from a force sent north to exact justice for the assault that destroyed Battle Ward into a juggernaut rolling across the Symballan desert with one purpose, the total genocide of the Symballan peoples.

Dove knew as well that the turning point was coming. The death of Prince Pentellikon, the mighty General that had tutored Queen Amalthea in the art of war, did not slow the army. Rather, it became yet another battle cry in the Atheaen's desire to destroy their ancient enemy. And Queen Amalthea would prove more than capable of leading her people to victory, time and time again. But even she and the seemingly invincible Atheaen army would finally meet their match. And when that happened, things would get much, much worse for everyone.

Pentellikon had fallen at the Battle of Rhazim'ekfet, the very battle that the SGL was walking into the middle of. They would succeed at saving over three hundred refugees, women, children and old people, sick and wounded from the town of Rhaziteth. In the process, they would place themselves next to the greatest heroes of all time by diving into the midst of four full battalions, twelve heroes and their gryphon mounts, and coming out victorious. Over five thousand Symballans would face better than eleven thousand Atheaens. Casualties would be over eighty percent on both sides. Over four thousand Symballan lives traded to save three hundred. Neither side would claim it as a victory.

But the darkness out there, a thousand miles northeast, was not what troubled Dove this spring day. There was another, closer, more immediate, carefully hidden. And she didn't know if that darkness was in her, or just close to her. It all began when she had found The Book out of its case. She didn't remember taking it out and leaving it out, and The Book was telling her nothing to solve that mystery. Had it finally consumed her? Had the darkness that drove Mordai mad taken root in her soul? If so, how would that affect her unborn daughter? If she already knew how Crystal would turn out, how could she change that now? Too many questions, and no answers. And answers was what the Prophet of the Kar'Thane should have.

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