Consider the no-longer reflecting mirror.

It carries nothing beneath its veneer. Once a conductor of light, it's now nothing but a particularly inspired glass cut. For this reason, it is condemned to a lifetime of irrelevancy- who wants a defective item?

Many things are the makeup of the world, yet it takes the absence of only one for that object to become obsolete.

It is the absence of something, some quality or virtue, that has rendered many in this timeline unsavory. Rats, weasels, foxes, all creatures damned and divine- vermin. What is it that the vermin lacks that a desirable species contains?

To many beasts, the mouse is a paragon, the nadir, a veritable master race. What is the difference between a mouse and a rat, really?

The vermin tears itself apart much better in packs and seems eternally destined to do just that. It's not a question of design, but designation.

Is this really what we're on this earth for?

"I am defective."

It always continues.

"I am unwanted."

"I am wrong."

"I am useless."

"I'm barbaric."

"I am irredeemable."

This is what the camp is chanting. This, the proclamations erupting from souls still bound to the earth, is the result of Dantalion's speech; it's another installment in the lectures he seems to give daily.

"I'm disgusting," Rask says.

Someone to the left of me adds, "I am worthless." It is a cacophony of self-loathing. I'm sitting on a grassy knoll, and I nod along. I still subscribe to most of Dantalion's views, but it has been increasingly difficult to join in on the enthusiasm. It's not that I don't want to do this- in fact, the feeling plaguing me is resignation.

Resigned to the fact that I will have to bring down Martin or this entire campaign will be for naught. It's on my shoulders and it is surely a burden that can only be lifted on success, or the end of my life.

I could just as easily leave, but death awaits in any direction. I might as well see this through to its inevitable conclusion.

The weight of this new, strange, cold, unfamiliar world is squarely on my shoulders. Even so, it's not fear that I feel, not nervousness, not trepidation. I am not entirely sure on howto put this emotion into words.

"We are the irregulars, the misfits, the court jesters of society," Dantalion calls out to the crowd. "Yet here we are on the brink of history. We are the savages, the liars, murderers and thieves, and yet it is us who raise our names into Elysium. We are many things- scum, heteroclite, deviants; pathfinders, trailblazers, conquerors, heroes."

He raises an arm and the legion cheers, clapping, hooting.

"I believe," Dantalion continues, lowering his voice to a whisper and yet losing none of the intensity that seems to course through the crowd like a preacher at a revival- "I believe that the Redwall Abbey is simply nothing more than a dying aristocracy. Tonight, we can fall into this- like a daydream, or a fever. Dethrone royalty, save the world."

Dethrone royalty, save the world.

Death awaits.