Story:

A roar went up from the ranks—and General Zest stepped forward through it, boots ringing on the stone, and bellowed in a soldier's voice worn raw by apparently years of battlefields:

"LISTEN to him, and listen to me! I fought the empire when half of you were squires hiding your father's swords in thatch roofs! And I am telling you—" his fist smashed against his breastplate,

"—every fortress we take, every banner we raise, more comrades will come! Old Astonia has never been gone—it has been waiting! There are veterans in every province, loyalists in every garrison, old men who kept their oaths and young men who never got the chance to swear one."

"—and along our conquest, they will walk out of hiding and join this host by the thousand!" He swept his arm across the assembled ranks.

"So act brave! Act with FAITH! Show the old kingdom's sons and daughters what their army looks like—and they will know us for what we are!"

"So act brave," he thundered, "and act with faith, and the tyrant's forts will fall like ripe wheat!"

The emotion broke over the inspection ground like a wave over a seawall. Knights roared, swords came out of sheaths in a shimmering steel tide, the dark elves' hooded heads lifted, and Selim's cavalry answered with the wild desert war cry of the nomads.

And through it all, from rank after rank, rose the word that had been growing for weeks and now filled the whole sky over Droughtsburg—the word none of them had needed to be taught:

"The savior! The savior! The savior of prophecy!"