"I well remember the first time that I descended this cliff," said Nate Quarter, staring off into the distance wistfully. "The last thing I saw before I left was the worried face of Eudoxia Prade."

"Eudoxia Prade!" said Bron. "But I know of her, too! She was the founder of Omniphrax! I walked by a huge statue of her every time I was in the Western Quays!"

"Aye, lad," said Nate, his blue eyes twinkling like swamp-sapphires. "Eudoxia Prade. Daughter of the greatest phraxmine owner ever to live. But no statue could ever capture her beauty; green eyes bright as marsh-gems, long golden hair like gladewheat, and the most radiant smile you'd ever see. But she was more than beautiful…she was practical, down to earth, and a real fighter besides that—I'll never forget her resilience as she fought for her life at Riverrise, a leadwood bullet lodged behind her ear. And on that day, when I started my descent down the face of the Edge with the Professor, Ambris Hentadile…"

"Hentadile!" exclaimed Durix. "But then I might be descended from him!"

"I don't know if he ever had children," said Nate, "but it would have been before I knew him. Anyway…Eudoxia pleaded with me to stay with her, so we could rebuild old Sanctaphrax together, but I knew that my destiny lay in another direction."

He sighed.

"Yet it was not only Eudoxia that was on my mind that day," continued Nate, "for mere hours before I left, I had witnessed perhaps the most incredible event to happen since time itself began. When my friends and I arrived in the ruins of Sanctaphrax, we were met by an army of gloamglozers."

"Gloamglozers!" gasped Celestia.

"Yes, indeed," said Nate. "You see, on that fateful day, over a thousand years ago, when the Mother Storm returned to the Edge and Sanctaphrax was lost in open sky, the gloamglozer returned to it—the original gloamglozer, which terrorized the Deepwoods in ancient times, and faded away with the Time of Enlightenment, but was accidentally resurrected by the ancient Most High Academe, Linius Pallitax. It had been banished from the city soon after its creation, but now that Sanctaphrax was lost, it was free to return.

"In its absence, the gloamglozer had also created stone-sickness, which spread from the terrible demon and incubated in the flight-rocks for years. Now, the gloamglozer ruled Sanctaphrax. It made short work of the hapless academics who had been stranded on the floating rock, and revived the Ancient Laboratory, from which it brought forth an army of new gloamglozers.

"Hundreds of years later, the Sanctaphrax rock blew back to the Edge, succumbed to stone-sickness, and came to rest in the Stone Gardens. The gloamglozers spread forth into the Deepwoods, seeking out those souls who couldn't compete in the frenetic pace of the Third Age of Flight, and luring them to their 'city of shining spires', where the gloamglozers devoured their fear.

"My friends and I arrived at the Edge on a beauty of a phraxship called the Archemax. We encountered a band of fettle-leggers who were following the call of the gloamglozers, and accompanied them to Sanctaphrax. The original gloamglozer wanted to kill me, to settle his ancient curse, but then…"

Nate looked up at the heavens, "The Immortals came down from the sky. On that day, I witnessed the return of three legendary figures from the past: the great Knight Academic, Quintinius Verginix, his son, the legendary sky pirate captain, Twig, and his great-grandson, the Freeglade Lancer company-commander, Rook Barkwater."

Bron's eyes were wide. Who in the Edge had not heard of Quint, Twig, and Rook? And Nate Quarter had seen them all, in the flesh!

"The three of them destroyed the gloamglozers once and for all…and then turned back into glisters, finally freed from their unnatural immortality. And as I stood there, a chine-flecked rainstorm pouring down around me and healing the stricken Sanctaphrax rock, my ears rang with the final words of Quintinius Verginix: 'the story of your life, Nate Quarter, is just beginning…' To think that I, a simple lamplighter from the Eastern Woods, could have had such a privilege, such an honor…

"The experience left me with a burning desire to prove to myself that I was indeed worthy to have stood before the three Immortals. And what better way to do it than journey to the bottom of the Edge cliff…to a place many had tried to reach, and a few had come close to finding, but none had successfully made it to? The Professor, meanwhile, was struggling to come to terms with the loss of his brother, Ifflix, a fearless descender who had already journeyed deeper down the cliff than any before him…and the Professor had vowed to give his own life a purpose by taking Ifflix's place. Our two desires fit together perfectly. We would descend together.

"The most painful thing I had to do that day was leave Eudoxia. She made me promise to return to her. And I, in turn, gave her this portrait miniature." He reached inside his tattered clothing and pulled out a small picture on a chain. It showed a boy of about Bron's age, wearing the armor of a Knight Academic, the twin towers of the School of Mist and the Loftus Observatory visible in the background.

"This is a portrait of Quintinius Verginix himself, for I am distantly descended, and this painting, originally affixed to the hilt of Quintinius's sword, has been handed down through the generations."

Bron decided not to ask why Nate still had the portrait miniature, if he had given it to Eudoxia Prade. He had a feeling that it would all be explained in a moment.

"The Professor and I began our descent. As we climbed down, the Professor explained to me everything Ifflix had told him about his own descent, so that I would know what to expect beforehand. It was everything the Professor described." he shuddered. "Cold, foggy, pitch-black, and clammy. The whole place was shrouded in an icy wind. But of course, you already know. You have seen it for yourself.

"We made it to the bottom after several days. The Professor planted a flag and took a sample of rock from the empty, infinite plain at the bottom of the Edge cliff. I had thought that getting down was hard…but it was nothing compared to what we experienced on the way back up.

"Back when we were descending, if we slipped and fell, our ropes would catch us after a few strides. Now, if we fell, the ropes still caught us, but it meant lost progress. And it got worse…much worse…"

"What do you mean?" asked Bron.

"The Professor's rope broke about halfway back up," said Nate with a little shudder. "I lunged and grabbed his hands, but…but I was clammy and sweaty, and I couldn't hold on to him. I lost my grip, and he plunged into the blackness, his screams quickly lost to the wail of the wind." Nate hung his head. "I never saw him again…and it was all my fault."

"No it wasn't," said Raziel firmly. "You tried to save him. You did your best."

"But the best wasn't good enough," said Nate in a choked voice. "And from that moment on, the thought of mortality was drilled into my skull like an ironwood nail. But it wasn't that I dreaded dying. What I dreaded was breaking my promise to Eudoxia, who, I knew, was waiting patiently for me.

"I still don't remember quite how I managed getting back up there alive. It was all a blur. But I made it. And Eudoxia and I were reunited." Nate's eyes sparkled with a faraway look. "We were married, right then and there, in the shadow of the pitted, scarred Loftus Tower. And then we departed for Great Glade in the Archemax with Cirrus Gladehawk, whom Eudoxia had persuaded to stay and wait for me to return.

Nate's expression suddenly darkened. "But those upstarts in the Cloud Quarter laughed me out the door when I told them about the descent."

"Why didn't they believe you?" asked Celestia.

"For one thing, they were always disdainful of Edge cliff studies," said Nate. "Just as the ancient sky-scholars of old Sanctaphrax discredited and exiled the earth-scholars, the Great Glade academics were content to study phraxcrystals—and coming up with even better ways to profit off of them—and quick to dismiss anything else, especially descent. What profit was there to be had from journeying to the bottom of the Edge cliff? There's no stormphrax down there. No money to be had. Just knowledge. And why in the name of Earth and Sky should an academic want to pursue knowledge when he can pursue money instead?" Nate's face was hardened with contempt and fury.

"Of course, even if they had been prepared to listen to me, I had no proof. The Professor had been the one carrying the rock sample. It fell back down along with him. I found myself asserting things I had no proof for, to an audience who didn't care anyway. So, I ended up storming out of the Cloud Quarter in disgust, just as I had done the last time I had visited, and my uncle, Quove Lentis, High Professor of Flight, refused to help me in my time of need. Now, he in particular was laughing and ridiculing me as I had tried to convince the academics of my findings. From what I've heard, he was stripped of his office and imprisoned twelve years later…something about conspiring with rogue pearlers in the Farrow Ridges and putting out hits to cover it up. Serve him right, I say!"

"Anyway, we learned soon after that Eudoxia was with child, and we went back to Sanctaphrax, where the fettle-leggers were still restoring the city." Nate went on. "A few more clans had arrived by now, with plans to rebuild old Undertown. After ten years, the place was starting to look much less like a ruin, and I had four children, the oldest of which was already helping in the restoration project. I was now starting to think that our little project could save the Edge, acting as an alternative to the greed and ignorance that has plagued the rest of the world for so long. As time went on, more groups came, and the future was looking bright. But then it happened. Vartolius Xax.

"For a while now, he had controlled Riverrise, with devastating effects. The waifs had fled to escape genocide. The sudden cessation of publicly available Riverrise water devastated the Edgeworld's economy. An influx of gabtroll refugees to Hive and Great Glade tested the resources of both settlements. But now, things went from bad to worse, as Vartolius Xax seized control of first Hive, then Great Glade, then the entire Deepwoods. Our newly founded city of Omniphrax was suddenly the only free place in all the Edge…and Vartolius Xax quickly set his sights on that, too. This, combined with the newly-emerged threat of the Blight, prompted the continuing expansion of Omniphrax. The Mire Provinces were founded to preserve biodiversity, and Twilight's Edge was constructed to lessen the threat of attack.

"My hopes of a better Edgeworld lay in pieces. And somehow, it lit a fire in me. I can't explain why, but now I felt I had to descend again…to prove once more that I meant something, and this time do it right, maybe because everything else I had worked for was crashing down around me.

"I said goodbye to Eudoxia again, once again with the promise that I would return to her. But as I left, she slipped the portrait miniature into my pack. I don't know the reason…perhaps she felt that, if I never returned, she didn't want the portrait to serve as a constant reminder.

"But this time, I…I failed to keep my promise to her," said Nate, hanging his head. "I never saw her again.

"The descent was just the same as last time for the first two weeks. But then…" Nate looked up. "It was so strange. I still don't understand it."

"What?" said Bron eagerly. "What happened?"

"I saw a crowd of glisters moving towards me from out of the darkness," said Nate. They surrounded me. I was blinded with their flashing, multicolored light. I lost consciousness…and I had a nightmare. I don't remember what it was, exactly…I just remember a vague feeling of dread, like I had learned something about the future…about something that would come and destroy everything, because of the foolishness of creatures who dwell on the Edge."

"Maybe you were dreaming of the Empire," said Durix. "Or the Blight."

But Nate shook his head. "Those things were already happening by then. And in any case, I think my nightmare was forecasting something bigger…something more sudden, violent, from which there would be no hope of recovering. And I'm sure it hasn't happened yet."

"Do you think that the dream is warning of something that will really happen?" said Celestia, her eyes wide.

"I'm not sure. All I know is that, after the nightmare, I came to at the base of the Edge cliff, with no memory of having gotten there. And…I was glowing brilliantly, as if the cloud of glisters had embedded themselves in my skin. Worse still, my equipment was all gone, so I had no hope of climbing back up. I was sure I was going to die."

"Why didn't you?" asked Raziel, puzzled.

"I have absolutely no idea," said Nate. I thought I would surely succumb to hunger or thirst, but somehow I didn't seem to need sustenance. The hunger and thirst were there, and they were terrible, but my body refused to die, no matter how much punishment it took. I lost all track of time. I was probably wandering along the base of the Edge cliff for years. Eventually, I stumbled into New Edgelands. The waifs immediately imprisoned me. I think you've already learned why. And there I remained, for hundreds of years, until you came."

Nate Quarter hung his head, and let out a shuddering sigh. "So there you have it. That is my story…the story of a ruined, failed old man who deserved none of the triumphs he once thought he had."

"How can you say that?" demanded Bron fiercely. "How can you say you're a failure?"

"Nothing I fought for lasted!" snapped Nate. "I liberated Riverrise from the Custodians, only to pave the way for the Phraxguardians. I dreamed of taming the ferocity of the Third Age of Flight with Galston Prade, only to look on as glisterships took over the sky. I journeyed where no descender had ever gone before, and nobody cared. I couldn't keep a simple promise to my wife. I couldn't even achieve death when I longed for it!"

"You've forgotten one thing," said Bron. "Your last and greatest achievement."

"Oh, really?" snorted the emaciated lamplighter. "And what might that be?"

"You inspired us," Bron answered. "You inspired Omniphrax. Your spirit is what every being east of Twilight's Edge strives to emulate. You never gave up. You kept fighting in spite of impossible odds. Without you and Eudoxia to give us courage, Vartolius Xax would have won long ago. Because believe me, as long as even one Omniphrax academic still exists, the Empire cannot claim victory."

Nate said nothing for several moments. Then, his face split into a smile. "Earth below and Sky above, you sound just like me when I was your age."

"Is that proof enough for you?" said Bron. "You're in all of our hearts. And just think what will happen when the academics find out you're still alive!"

Nate's expression had brightened considerably. He got shakily to his feet, and looked around. "I suppose we should go to the Stone Gardens Council Tower. It's nearest."

Bron, Raziel, Celestia, Durix, and Verticule also stood up, and followed the surprisingly energetic strides of Nate Quarter, heading for the Stone Gardens Council Tower. At long last, they were about to get proper help.