Table of Contents: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/244705039?page=0&sort=0&showBanned=0&path=1 [b]Chapter 10, Part 3 (continued(2))[/b] As the bright of that day drew into the dim of dusk, Roak found himself standing upon a gray knoll, his host at his back, gazing across those last few miles of plain which separated him from the Ambrosians’ encampment. Distant as he was, the Risen did not struggle to see the enemy force. The refugees saw it, too, and were stricken by a sort of wonder which served to momentarily suspend their dread. The army before them was much greater in size, and grander, than they had dared to imagine. It resembled in form some manner of gargantuan crown, cast from the brow of a tyrant of incomprehensible size. The banners of golden thread-their symbols indistinguishable at this distance-which marked the camp’s perimeter looked, to the youths, to be the ornament’s bounds. The machines of war dotted about it shone as jewels with the light of the setting sun. Yet this crown was not all splendor. The inhabitants of the place, who writhed about constantly, as if a mass of wicked thorns or the worms of decay, added to the piece a sense of morbidity. The herds of beasts-horses, mainly-scattered at the camp’s fringe were by many likened to drops of ancient blood, having dried from a forgotten crimson to the dull shades of their present coloration. There was, they knew, soon to be much more blood pooled about that crown. Fresh blood. [i]Their[/i] blood. With these latter observations, the boys’ dread returned in full, and they began to flee from the hill, and from the sights that it offered: sights both of what was and what was to come; different sights, within the mind of each who saw them, but gruesome, all. Roak had no quarrel with the refugees’ retreat. He, in fact, found it rather convenient. Had they not left of their own will, they would soon have left of his, as he knew that his intended course would not reward the keeping of company. The frontiersman descended from his modest perch and advanced upon the camp. Weaving about so as to break up his movement, and wary to avoid too sudden an approach, he drew ever nearer to his destination. Though he was in the light of the sun, it was by this time so low as to cause little trouble, and he was not seen. Roak had drawn near enough to Ikoris’ force to gain the faculty of his hearing in addition to his sight, and was engaged in absorbing his ears’ communications, when a figure suddenly struck into his field of view. [Continued]