This time the warriors looked confident that the King would unleash them to fight the legions of Erebus and vindicate Charis’s cause. They sang songs of triumph, ancient hymns of battle written before the world drew its first breath. They were not only an army of retribution, but liberation, coming in response to millions of suffering voices crying out from the darkness of the charred planet, once a garden paradise.

I saw all this not merely as an observer, but as a participant, heart pounding, passionately immersed in the great events unfolding before me.

The army of warriors and chasm-crossers waited impatiently behind the King. Hovering over the City of Light, capital of Charis, they positioned themselves toward the dark city of Babel. They watched attentively for a hand to rise, listened for a trumpet to blow.

There among myriads of riders, mounted on a great steed, I saw Marcus. Next to him rode a man with a face familiar, yet not. This face was noble, valiant, filled with truth and grace. It bore a strong resemblance to the face of the King. And yet he was only a man, a small man, but one made great.

In a moment of stunned silence, I recognized the face. It was mine! A man who had once been a mile wide but only an inch deep. A man who now had a full chest, a purpose for living, eyes that burned with calling and significance, unclouded duty and unswerving loyalty. I who had served as a marine and fought in Nam and never dreamed that one day I might go to battle again, much less as a righteous soldier in the ultimate cause—I, Nick Seagrave, was one of the King’s warriors!

I whirled back toward the man-made city and saw the Usurper assembling his own armies, hordes of darkness. Though they fancied themselves dressed in battle regalia, they were in fact a scraggly pack covered only with dirty rags. They rode pitiful nags—beaten down, overridden and whipped, droopy eyed and lame.

“Throw off the Woodsman’s chains,” yelled one of the enemy generals, fingering several jagged medals on his chest; the medals looked like they had been cut from old soup cans. “We are mighty princes, and Joshua Beelzebub is our valiant king!”

The voice was hollow, lacking not only honor but conviction. Across the stage swaggered Shark Eyes, dressed in a filthy robe, a scroungy old bedspread that had covered ten thousand wanton acts that now hung open in shameful clarity. He pranced and strutted like a washed-out vaudeville performer, gesturing dramatically, taking himself with utmost seriousness, while to the eye of the outsider, he dripped with absurdity. I was shocked by how he’d changed, how he’d lost his allure. Or was it that I now saw him as he’d been all along?