The Cor Chronicles: Volume 02 - Fire and Steel by Martin V. Parece II Page B

Cor and Rael. They’ve committed crimes against the crown and Garod.”
    “If not kill them, exile them from the West, taking Cor’s wealth as reparation for the death of Jonn and your men.”
    “My Queen, we cannot trust a boy who slays at will, and now he is rejoined by one we thought dead. Their god, a blood god of evil, has resurrected the one just as a Loszian might.”
    “Even if we can trust Dahken Cor, that makes him an idealist, and his idealism will lead us to ruin! Open war has not existed between the West and the Loszians for centuries for good reason! We cannot win such an endeavor! It will mean the end for us as we know it!”
    This last argument he made shortly after the Dahken had returned with his sorceress slut with yet another Dahken in tow, and at this Queen Erella grew angry; she became very quiet and fixed Palius with a cold hard stare. In a way, it was better than the way she had been looking at him over the past few months, a soft gaze full of concern and sympathy as she watched him slowly waste. At that point, Palius excused himself from his queen’s presence, and she had not called on him since.
    Palius hated them all because he truly believed that Queen Erella’s original interpretation of that first dream long ago was correct. The Dahken would, one way or the other, bring about the fall of both the Shining West and the Loszian Empire. He loved his queen, he loved his country, and he loved the world as it was.
    The worst case scenario was unthinkable, disturbing and frightening at the least. Dahken Cor would lead the West to war with the Loszians, and he would turn traitor at just the right moment to allow the Loszian necromancers free entrance into the West. Palius did not think this out of the question, as the blood god was no doubt evil, closely related to those of the Loszians.
    Perhaps the Dahken was truly an honorable and honest man, boy. Again, that made him an idealist, and there could be nothing more dangerous than an idealist. He would inspire thousands in the West, perhaps even the Queen Herself, to rally and form armies. They would launch an attack upon the Loszian Empire, with the Dahken at the forefront. And it would not go well. Its armies broken, the Shining West would retreat back to its side of the Spine, only to be crushed and again enslaved for millennia by the Loszians in an orgy of blood, rape and death.
    Or perhaps the Dahken would succeed in toppling the Loszian Empire with the help of the West. Then what? Too far from home, the soldiers of the West would be unable to maintain order, ignoring that they would no doubt long for home after such a long and certainly terrible campaign. The newly freed peoples of that land would have no idea what to do with their freedom; total chaos would ensue, perhaps leading to the rise of new powers just as evil as the Loszians. The Dahken, servants of an evil heathen god, would come to be known as the saviors of the West, and the people would throw off the yoke of Garod, destabilizing the strength of Aquis and Queen Erella.
    In any case, it meant the destruction of the Shining West, and Palius refused to allow that to happen. He simply would not allow his great queen, for whom he had sacrificed his entire life to secure her power, to let it all crumble because she was caught up in some idealistic fervor. He continued to think, barely moving for hours.
    Palius finally opened his eyes and sat straight in his chair, sliding it closer to the oak desk with a spine shivering scrape on the floor. From a drawer he pulled a blank parchment scroll, and he wrote upon it with a quill pen in shorthand that he invented and that only a few people in Aquis could read. Palius was as loyal an advisor as any ruler could ask for, but sometimes he had to handle things in his own way and had for over forty years. At times, things to which Queen Erella would never agree had to be done.
    After he wrote his message, he sat and poured over it several times,