"Yeah, and the orcs of this world are waking up. Some of 'em anyway."

"Wish I had as much faith in them as you do. The resistance's gaining a few new recruits, true. But enough for an uprising?"

"The more the screw tightens, the more we'll see joining the rebels. We just have to keep goading the humans."

It was nearly dusk and shadows were lengthening. With the curfew looming they upped their pace some more. The edge of the city was in sight now and lights were coming on. Patrols were a real possibility as they got nearer, and they had to move with stealth. They crossed a stream and began skirting a field of chest-high corn that waved in a clement breeze.

Neither spoke for some time, until Coilla said, "Suppose… suppose we don't get the stars back. If we're stuck in this world, and whether it has its revolution or not… well, what's here for us? What place would we have?"

It was a thought that plagued Stryke too, although he was careful not to voice it to those under his command. His mind turned to what he would lose if they really were trapped in Acurial. He pictured his mate, Thirzarr, and their hatchlings, kept from him by the unbridgeable gulf that separated the worlds.

"We'll endure," he replied. "Somehow."

They turned their eyes skyward.

There was a light in the firmament, bigger than any star. It had an ethereal quality, as though it were a burning orb seen through many fathoms of water.

Stryke and Coilla knew it to be an omen. They wondered whom it bode ill for.

2

On the other side of the city, beyond its periphery, the terrain was less fitted to growing crops. There were moorlands here, and large stretches of bog, where not much more than scrub and heather grew.

It was a place with a reputation. This was partly due to its poor fertility compared to the verdant land thereabouts. Although poor was not quite the right way of describing it. Perverse would have been a better word. There was something less than wholesome about the flora that bred here, and the animals that roamed were chiefly carrion eaters. The magical energy that coursed through the world had become corrupted in this spot.