Fawfulfan's Disclaimer: The Pendragon Series is the creation of D.J. Machale.

~ Denduron ~

Bollod turned, ashen-faced, to his band of companions. What have we gotten ourselves into?, he wondered.

He could have kicked himself for his foolishness. Because of him, hundreds of fellow Lowsee were going to be slaughtered. How could he have even considered trying to challenge the might of the Empire...and dragging so many of his comrades into this mess?

Bollod raised his head, and looked up at the Loom Mountains. The massive army of dados was coming closer, and hundreds of Bedoowan knights brought up the rear. Though it was impossible to see, Bollod knew perfectly well that each and every one of the dados and Bedoowan knights would be armed with enough tak to vaporize a hut. Or ten rebel Lowsee. The rebels' only small comfort was that none of the three suns, Noab, Lao, and Rigg, were in their eyes, which meant that they would have an advantage of visibility over the enemy. Bollod wondered if that was a problem for dados. Certainly it would be for the Bedoowan knights. But, he realized sadly, it would make little difference if they were fighting opponents armed with tak. Tak didn't have to hit its target; it just had to be close.

Bollod recalled how different it had seemed a few weeks ago. If you were a Lowsee, life was a short and brutal affair...if you werelucky. The unlucky Lowsee would toil in the glaze mines for decades, slowly being poisoned by the toxic gas formed from the extraction of the precious blue glaze stones, until he died a slow and painful death. So it had been for three hundred years.

Once, the Lowsee tribe had been separate from the Empire. In fact, they had been trading partners, back when the Empire hadn't even existed. In exchange for glaze, the Lowsee supplied the Bedoowan tribe with triptyte, a valuable mineral that glowed in the dark and could be used to create artificial light. But that had all changed when the Milago tribe were granted their freedom. Until that time, the Bedoowan had enslaved the Milago and forced them to mine for glaze. But when the two tribes made peace, there was no one to mine glaze. Nobody would willingly poison themselves in the glaze mines. And when the glaze supply had dried up, the Milago and Bedoowan had nothing to trade. The Lowsee had subsequently stopped supplying them with triptyte.

It was then that everything fell apart. The Milago and the Bedoowan would not be denied light. They formed the Empire, and marched on the Lowsee village with tak. The Lowsee had been no match for the volatile, explosive mineral, and fell under the control of the Empire. And it hadn't stopped there. The Empire spread to new lands, and imposed not only their will, but also a mysterious and frightening new philosophy.

Ravinia.

From the ranks of the Empire, the Ravinians selected those Milago and Bedoowan judged to be "elite". The others were used as slaves, performing menial work and living in the squalor and filth of places called Horizon Compounds. The only ones worse off than these people were the Lowsee, who were put to work in the glaze mines from their fifth birthday.

Bollod had just reached his twenty-fourth birthday, and was already beginning to feel the effects of the dread lung disease shared by all the miners. In his late teens, he began to notice that his throat constantly felt a bit rough and tickly, and, by now, suffered a constant and unrelenting, if mild, cough. He knew that the cough would worsen through the years, and, by his mid-forties, his ability to breathe would be completely gone. Most miners simply resigned themselves to this sad fact. Bollod had decided to fight.

For a few months now, Bollod had been rallying the Lowsee miners. His plan was to destroy the tak mine in the Milago city. Igniting the tak would be easy; a simple fire would be enough to blow it sky high. The hard part would be getting past the defenses in the village. For that, Bollod needed an army. He began to build one.

Bollod had been surprisingly successful. At first, he had wondered why so many of the Lowsee miners were so quick to embrace what would more likely than not be a suicide mission. But he slowly began to realize that, even considering the likelihood of death, the Lowsee had nothing to lose. Their lives were so horrendous that they were willing to die trying to fight. So much had changed; this once-peaceful tribe was preparing to fight.

But unfortunately, the Empire had got wind of what Bollod was up to, and he and the other rebels had had to run for it. They had crossed the Loom mountains and hidden in the forest beyond, believing they had given the Empire the slip. Unfortunately, they were wrong.

Bollod realized with a sinking heart that he had amassed the worst possible number of rebels. Not enough to pose a legitimate threat to the Empire, but enough for the Empire to conduct a brutal massacre.

It's hopeless, he thought miserably, gazing back at the advancing army. Completely hopeless...

All of a sudden, the dados began to explode. Enormous fiery eruptions billowed into the sky as the tak ignited. The Bedoowan knights' horses reared in terror, sending many of their mounts flying. The remaining knights seemed to be frantically tugging heavy objects backwards.

A horrible realization dawned on Bollod. The knights were trying to pull away their cannons. There was more tak inside the weapons...much more. Despite the knights' best efforts, Bollod knew that they would never escape in time, much less pull the cannons clear. The explosions spread up the mountainside, engulfing the last of the dados, before catching up to the Bedoowan knights.

There was a blinding flash—a flash that filled Bollod's entire field of vision—followed by an awesome and colossal eruption of white-hot flames. Bollod and the rebels were knocked off their feet by a searing wall of heat and energy. The ground trembled in a mighty earthquake, and, as Bollod tried to focus on the scene in front of him, he saw, to his astonishment, that the mountain was gone, blasted into a million pieces by the still-spreading fiery blast.

And then, one of the Lowsee bellowed, "INCOMING!"

Enormous pieces of rock were raining down on the forest. The Lowsee scrambled everywhere, trying to avoid the deadly downpour of debris. Screams of fear and pain mingled with the thuds and crashes of impacting rock. Bollod squeezed his eyes shut, expecting at any moment to feel a rock coming down on him. Several seconds later, the rocks stopped falling, leaving a deathly silence.

Bollod opened his eyes tentatively. Half of the surrounding trees had been reduced to splinters by the rubble. Several of the Lowsee lay dead and dying, crushed by boulders. Many more were badly injured. Most horrifying of all, however, the mountain in front of them was completely gone, and in its place stood a blackened, twisted wasteland of scorched rock and wispy columns of smoke.

It occurred to Bollod that the area on the other side of the mountain had surely sustained damage just as bad, if not worse. The Empire would be experiencing death and destruction, too.

"War is hell." Bollod muttered weakly. He then staggered forwards, collapsed, and lay on the ground, out cold.