It all looked so peaceful, so beautiful now. There was only the distant, hazy shimmering as the Forbidding caught the sunlight to remind her all was not as it seemed. That and, far away in each direction, an inky, smoky blackness, a glimpse of the land outside the protection of the wall: despoiled, burning, corrupted. The barren and ruined Darklands. The true home of her people would be like that now: the endless green Lhean plains over which they had once wandered so freely would now be a smoking wasteland, devoid of life.
And heading there even now, young Ghenn. Ghenn of her own people, the Vannai. The arrogant boy! Preparing all on his own to pass through the wall, to greet one of the parties that had ventured outside, whilst she stood there useless and powerless to help him. Too full
