"I was afraid, at first, terrified... but soon I came to realize that all he told me was true. All the years of doubt, of pain, were put to rest at last. But before I entered into that rest myself... I waited. I had been watching, and I knew he would come to me soon. When the time came, I felt him drawing nearer and nearer - as afraid as I had been, despite all his wisdom - until he was close enough that I could reach out and draw him into my arms. But it was as if I had embraced water; he slipped away from me and vanished as though he'd never been.

"...I raged then. I raged at them, for allowing him to do this. It was a foolish thing to do, in my situation, but fortunately they are more forgiving than I would have been, and they gave me a choice. It was a choice they had not given him... and they warned me that as this was such a critical time in Valendia's history, dire consequences would likely befall many if I chose wrongly. Even so, it would be my choice.

"What will I choose? Hah... What have I ever chosen? I choose him."

-John Hardin

*****

"All my life, I've felt as though something were missing. I saw that something in him, and yet I'm still not sure what that something is... I only know that he possesses it, and I feel more complete when he is nearby. More stable... It's the strangest thing - he puts me in mind of a man I met when I was a child. I only saw him once or twice, as far as I can recall, but I can still remember him with remarkable clarity, and the one who is by my side now doesn't look like this man at all.

"They say that this man I'm remembering was the one who killed my father.  I know that he did not, but when so many, older and more stubborn than yourself, are telling you that there were eyewitnesses, how can a mere boy make them understand? I had no proof - I never had proof, except that I knew. And knowledge, to those outside the one who knows, is nothing more than believing; and for all their talk of faith, they cannot place any importance on it when it is found in another.

"Knowledge or belief - it doesn't matter which. He didn't kill my father. I know the truth. ...Somehow."

-Joshua Corinne Bardorba

*****

"The duke... the golden-haired, selfish, boy duke.  All my life I've been taught to hate him, by those who knew my mother. He takes our money by way of taxes to support a false religion run by hypocrites, he does nothing to overthrow the laws that have driven our kind into hiding in slums and caves, despite his family's past covenant with the Dark. He probably would have thought that my mother deserved what she got.

"His own mother's hatred for us was no secret, and eventually she turned his once-sympathetic father against us. It seems young Joshua Bardorba has followed in the footsteps of his mother just as I have followed in the footsteps of mine. Our footsteps will eventually lead us to each other, and a massive confrontation - it is fated, our oracle tells us. I was born to overthrow him, dedicated to this task while still in my cradle, and blessed by the true gods of the Kildean people. I know not what will happen once I've taken him down from his little pedestal... Perhaps in destroying him, I will be destroyed myself. I do not mind - this is what I was born for. 

"...And besides, now that I have seen him with my own eyes, there is something about him that makes me unable to hate him as I should. Perhaps he has some of the magic of his father, that he could bewitch me so... but I will do what the gods created me for. And then... I do not think I will want to go on living."

-Diardan? Corran? Di\ogan?

*****

"My life has become nothing more than a series of instructions to be followed. Sydney marked me well in that regard - my body and soul indeed are separate, ever since the deaths of Tia and Marco. ...Whoever they were. Tia told me, at the last, to be not misled by the words of others, but how can I help but doubt? My heart is not something I've listened to for a long time, and when you have been away from someone for so long, you sometimes find that they have changed, that they cannot be trusted... and I was never so good at trusting to begin with.

"In this one thing, however, I knew my heart did not lead me false: When I heard what had become of the son of Aldous Bardorba, I knew I must do what I could to correct things - whether that meant supporting or opposing him. But when I arrived, I found the situation much different than I had expected... and my mission became simply to make certain that nothing unusual came to pass. I could not say why I bothered, except that the Dark prompted me. After all, I'm certainly not grateful to Sydney, nor did I feel that I owed anything to him or his family. All I knew was that this was important to the Dark, and so I must.

"Things might have gone on normally till his death, if she had not come when she did. I wonder now if this was ordained to come about, or if it was the very thing I had been instructed to prevent. If the latter...  then I have failed for the first time since becoming a Riskbreaker. May Sydney's gods - now mine - help us all."

-Ashley Riot

*****

"I'd given up on finding him long ago, to be honest. As much as I wanted to know what had happened, what was done was done... and if it was as he'd said, when I did speak to him briefly just after the destruction of Lea Monde, I would never find him unless he wanted to be found. As I searched and never did find him, apparently he did not.

"As much terror as I experienced in the city of Mullenkamp, I found an unlikely friend there, in the little boy who experienced the same horrors I did. Since I knew the truth behind the events that had transpired, I wasn't sure whether I should take him and run, or do my duty as an agent of the VKP and return him to his father. Some have called me cold in the past, and in this I certainly was. My work was my life. I wanted our lives to be normal again. I did what was proper. Naturally, it turned out to be a mistake.

"Perhaps it is unfair of me to say that... Could I really have protected him from such troubles, even knowing what I know? All I could do was try to stave it off by being there for him, when my work allowed, but so often it did not. Fortunately, another arrived to care for him - and of all the people I might have expected..."

-Callo Merlose