All Chapters of Forgotten Embers: Chapter 71 - Chapter 77

Avera came with Benjamin back into the living room of Eliezer's home, having finished their jaunt through the woods together, to find their host and his companion sitting, chatting, and sipping on tea along with another man.  "Hello, sir," Avera said sheepishly. "Hello," the man replied with a well-humored grin.

He stood out by the edge of the woods watching for the men to come, but they never came. It was a relief not to be running, but, even so, he wondered why they hadn't followed them.  'Perhaps, it is providence. God has stricken them with blindness; that or they're planning.' 

The scent of death was in the air, carried by a gentle breeze from Elkshire as they approached the crest of the hill which overlooked the damaged city. Avera felt her body tense, and she noticed that everyone had become uncharacteristically quiet.  ‘Out of respect for the dead,’ she pondered. 

'Surely, it is for the dead we find ourselves silent here before our King as we march onward into fate.' Her despair had evaporated at the spirit's presence, but the fact that Avera had seen him also intrigued her. Knowing him was one thing, but seeing their spectral friend was entirely another, and to hear him... that was something very rare, indeed.

She had never seen so many people from so many diverse regions, pasts, and occupations. Even in Pyre, there had never been such unity among the people, despite the government's efforts to make everyone the same. Here, it was different. There was something more genuine, and Avera knew that she liked it much better than Zephyr's form of unity among men. There was work going on to bury the dead there in Elkshire, which Jordan oversaw. Together, many of the men labored to dig the graves and transport the bodies of the people. For the most part, there was a communal grave prepared for all of them,

Benjamin stood at the height of the hill above Elkshire giving to the men who came pure white garments of sparkling pyrite which he and Eliezer had made from the materials which the men from Laoce offered. They had received a steady stream of travelers there throughout the days of their renewed presence in Elkshire, and the later they came, the more ragged they appeared.  Then came some men from Asrymn on the second day, they having decided to tarry three in accordance with Representative McFarland's original timeline, and approached their prince with a humble weariness. These men were a

"No! Absolutely not!” It was morning, and Eliezer was not the least bit amused by the stubbornness of his companion as she looked at him with those soft blue eyes swirling with a harbor mist which penetrated him, piercing straight to his heart, and blinked. “No! You are a