Ignoring the guarded looks of rebuke from the more pious in his immediate vicinity, Durek lit his cigar as the din of a war-horn shattered the deep silence of Blackridge Plain. The immense horn had been fashioned in antiquity from the head of a beast that had not roamed Gnox’s rugged plains for eons. Even back during that beast’s era, the Way of Stone had been ancient, and not a syllable of its screed had been amended since.

Surrounded by a heavily armed throng, the tribal leaders of the Seven Nations emerged from their tent and stood gravely before the murmuring crowd, their threadbare robes stirring limply in the arid wind.

"To betray the Way of Stone is to renounce what makes us Granok," the high elder rasped. His father looked Durek directly in the eye before continuing. "It chips away our identity. Only misery and death can follow. You are banished from Gnox. Forever. There will be no reconsideration."

So be it, Durek thought as he and the other elders filed away. For saving their species from extinction at the hands of ruthless invaders, a fitting reward.

Durek turned to the sprawling assembly at his back, their chiseled faces grave with stoic acceptance of their fate.

“All right, stow your gear and get ready to move out,” he growled, firing up a fresh stogie recently taken from the corpse of a Cassian officer . “We got work to do.”

Source: World Story