text: I walked toward the stony mound.
  
  <Is this truly necessary?> I asked Merada through the mindlink. She nodded at me, and I tried not gawk over how beautiful she looked in her deep green gown.
  
  <I know ye have much left to do,> Merada answered sadly. <And I'll miss ye when ye finally leave. But this be important.>
  
  <I didn't mean any offense,> I answered. <I just wanted them to know that I would have taken a simple pledge of allegiance from them.>
  
  <And it would have been insufficient,> Merada said firmly. <These Icons have never pledged fealty to any being, Malcolm. Not even Stell. They don't wish to repeat the wrongs they did to her.>
  
  <Fair enough,> I thought as I stepped onto the tall stone outcrop. I was garbed in my repaired armor and clothing, with a long green cape attached to my back. My green mail gleamed with polish over my tabard and padding. I wore both of my strongest weapons, Toirneach and Claimh Solais, strapped to my belt.
  
  Far down below me were the chieftains, heroes and elders of all three Woadlands races. Many below had gone through unspeakable tragedies alongside their people. But at the end of the Tumult, when the last of the captives were finally rescued and their territory had finally been recovered, their losses proved to be far less than the blessings they gained upon their combined victories over their Tumult and Trial. Even conquering the Horde and the Malus Order proved to have provided them benefits. They looked flush with health and power, some of them sparkling with new magic, others adorned with treasures recovered from the Hoarfolk's vaults. The plunder alone was enough to spark a new golden age for the Woadlands, not counting everything else they had acquired. Such a reversal of fortune should have been impossible, by Earth standards. But then the Universal Laws echoed through my mind.
  
  <*All is not lost.*>
  
  <*Failure is non-permanent.*>
  
  <*Greater things are yet to come.*>
  
  I shook my head to regain focus, looking up. Floating around me were the four Icons of this world, garbed and glowing with power. They took up position some feet away from me, all bowing once before beginning the ceremony.
  
  "Hail Wes Malcolm!" the Stag Lord shouted. "Challenger of Avalon!"
  
  "Hail! Hail!" the masses repeated below me.
  
  "Hail Wes Malcolm!" Great Pan shouted. "The recognized Lord of Avalon itself!"
  
  "Hail! Hail!" came the chorus.
  
  "Hail Wes Malcolm!" Lady Titania shouted. "Savior of the Woadlands!"
  
  "Hail! Hail!"
  
  "Hail Wes Malcolm," Mother Glade called out in a clear, commanding voice. "Worthy High King, of the Woadlands themselves!"
  
  "Hail! Hail!"
  
  Merada stepped next to me, unclasping her hands from behind her back. Now I could see that she had been holding an armband, made of two twisted metals, burnished gold and silvery arsenic bronze. It looked much like the torcs ancient Celtic peoples once wore on Earth, save that it fastened over my bicep instead of my neck.
  
  "And hail Wes Malcolm," Merada said softly. "Champion of the Steward of Avalon," she began speaking even softer, to where only I could hear her, "and conqueror of this part of her heart."
  
  She wasn't supposed to say that last line, and I knew it. But she smiled with her usual, reckless confidence, and fastened the armband around my bicep, giving me a brave look that said she wasn't sorry and that she wasn't taking back her words. Power surged through me as the armlet fastened upon me, traveling to my core, to Breaker, and to Toirneach.
  
  The force of her feelings melded with the impact of the honor I had just been bestowed. It combined with the burden of all the responsibilities heaped upon me, and with my exhaustion and all my memories of pain and failure. It combined finally with the voices of three frightened old creatures that shouted "Unclean! Unworthy! Unholy!" over and over, and pressed down upon me with all of their exalted arrogance.
  
  The weight tried to wrap up and smother my heart, my hopes, and my dreams. It even crept up to the forefront of my mind, until it was the only thing my soul could see standing over me.
  
  But just because it covered my vision, didn't make it my limit or my end.
  
  This burdensome mass was not my sky.
  
  It was not my heaven.
  
  It was not my god.
  
  With a defiant inner roar, and a fierce, accepting smile at the woman who had just professed her love to me, I wrapped both knuckles, both talons around the constricting mass… heaved…
  
  And *pushed*.