Courage is not a lack of fear. Once courage is summoned it is the will to sacrifice one's own safety for a purpose. So it isn't fearlessness and it is purposeful. It is not a foolish endeavor or a lack of self-preservation. The courage of the human-being is the power to ignore self-preservation and to face danger in the name of something more important.

Therefore courage is precluded by having something more important to oneself than oneself. This means that not all humans place themselves as their highest priority in life. This is an important difference between a human and an animal. Yet it seems that many humans are not distinguishable from animals in this way.

So humans, as a species, are animals. But some humans, by their own willpower and beliefs, become something that is not an animal. This is demonstrated by courage.

The column of smoke rose from the fallen tower. A pillar of civilization had fallen. It was destroyed by a warrior that was not fighting for civilization. No, Silver Swordsman was the Apostate here. In the world of Ruin, everything was wrong that was once right. And to be right was to be hated, ignored or even warred upon.

Aidan walked out to the alabaster balcony where his viewing waters rested in silence. He waved one hand over them and the image returned of the fallen tower.

"So my tower falls and a knight returns." Aidan spoke aloud. Nobody heard him, but his moment of reflection was recorded by the water. He had watched it over and over. Every time he did he felt something different. This time he finally felt nothing at all.

It was only a few days later that he had left his home and rode a carpet to the place where the smoldering and smoking ruins lay around the shattered spire. He landed and used a pair of thermal scanners to view the horizon. These made an analysis of the battlefield in ways that he couldn't observe remotely. He returned to his carpet and set a course to follow the retreat of the most recent vehicle: Kaira's sled.

The shadow of the carpet lingered behind her as the old woman knelt gardening. When she looked up it landed in a draft of dusty air. Aidan stepped down from it and the old woman gasped. He was still youthful and healthy.

"Aidan. What do you want?" Kaira asked, sounding slightly alarmed and defensive.

"Solariel is destroyed and it is evidently your doing." Aidan explained.

"Not mine. The Apostate did that." she argued.

"Silver Swordsman? It is dead under all that rubble, surely it was mutual destruction." Aidan decided. He shook his head and reached to his carpet to retrieve a weapon. He leveled the carbine casually.

"Now what? Will you kill me?" Kaira almost laughed. She was not afraid to die. The pain of kneeling and gardening reminded her of time's curse.

Aidan shook his head and thought for a moment. She knew he had seen the battle and wasn't after the fallen warrior under the tower's rubble. So he said:

"I am demanding your help. When you say 'the Apostate' you are not referring to the Machinekind that died in that battle. It is the young woman you brought to my tower. She is whom you refer to. Where is she?" Aidan glared.

Now Kaira did laugh at him. "Always straight to the point and somehow in the wrong direction. Offer me some of your Everlasting Serum and I will help you. Offer me a quick death and I am just going to die laughing at you. You think, Aidan, that I am scared of your threats?"

"I suppose not. I was so busy trying to figure out how this happened I had not considered the best way to resolve it. But still, where is she? She cannot be part of this world. Haven't we all suffered enough? Her presence is too dangerous."

"We suffered? Look at you. Apparently you have not suffered so much. Look at me Aidan, I am aging. I am in debt of all the centuries I walked in the sun." Kaira scoffed. She continued gardening in his shadow.

"You are wasting my time." Aidan decided after a moment of reflection on their conversation. She was ignoring him as he lifted the weapon and left her there, returning to his carpet. Before he went he used a tertiary-scanner on her parked sled so that if she went anywhere or used the onboard communications he would be able to observe her activity. He doubted the measure was worth the minutes it took to complete.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

He went home after that and simply waited for something else to happen. He knew that with this human version of the Apostate that something would happen. It was only a few days before the Temple Of Humanity seemed disturbed by some presence.

He sensed this as he rested on a chaise lounge that was feeding information to his dormant mind. His dreams were disrupted and he got up and went to his own miniature pool of water, the one on his balcony. It was the same as the Pool Of Time, but much smaller and not close to the same scale of power.

"What is it?" Aidan waved a hand over his own water in its white stone basin. An image of the young woman wading slowly into the Pool Of Time was shown. "Well this is good news. Surely she will be dissolved into something non-dimensional. No longer a threat of any kind."

It was like she heard him and stopped out of defiance. In frustration he frowned and said:

"Go on. Get in there."

The image shifted and it was as if her efforts to effect causality were being rewarded. The pile of rubble under the fallen tower of Solariel replaced her. Slowly and deliberately the bricks and dust were lifting away from the corpse of the giant robot underneath.

Then it emerged completely. Only its right arm remained, the left arm below the elbow was gone, and there were burn marks and dents all over it. In some places the scrapes of the self-exhumation had left shining stripes of silver.

Before long the presence of this Apostate drew the mighty Bloomelator from its nearby hunt. A battle ensued as Aidan watched. Silver Swordsman was again armed as it found its missing weapon and wielded it in its remaining hand. With its namesake it slashed and struck blow after blow and severed the vines and leaves of the plant monster. The plant monster's electric attacks, strength and acids were powerful and yet they did not win the fight. Damaged and low on energy the giant robot slew Bloomelator after a staggering duel.

It left its slain enemy near the fallen tower and began a sword-dragging and slumped march towards its summoner.

"This is very bad." Aidan gaped in horror. Although a defender lay dead and a predator too, this third combatant for the survival of Humankind was not a welcome sight. Aidan began to ponder why this was.

Kaira had known the danger. She had brought the mysterious interloper and her imaginary friend to die in the fires of the tower. It had not worked. The Apostate had emerged to defend its host and beaten the fire tower. Not dead, now it resumed its course. Yes it had killed one of the plant monsters but many more remained. Now it was drawn to the Temple Of Humanity which the bloom-things had left relatively intact.

Would it still stand if a battle converged there? The energy of the place was weak and had drawn no further attacks since that fateful day so long ago. But would they return to finish what they had started now that it mattered? Aidan dreaded the answer. All their so called 'savior' had done was restart an old war that could not be stopped. Could it win?

"No." Aidan decided fearfully.

As the giant lumbered towards the Temple Of Humanity the gradual realization occurred to it. It stopped walking slowly for a moment, rerouting some of its remaining energy to its logic circuits. Nothing was conclusive so it decided to jump to a conclusion and consulted its creative circuits instead. It then finished realizing that it was summoned to die fighting Solariel, which meant that its host, Svetlana, was in danger. She was at the Temple Of Humanity already, the empathical machine sensed this. The Temple Of Humanity was still feeding on human suffering. This was a dreadful epiphany.

Before Silver Swordsman could continue its march, however, a shadow of ominous strength darkened its battered hull. Before it stood a towering giant robot, something horrible and warlike made by the Temple Of Humanity to defend itself. It had made this somehow, probably with some help from frightened humans afraid of a reprisal if Silver Swordsman were defeated.

The enemy robot was exactly like any other giant robot except it was armored better and it was much larger and faster and stronger and painted a dark gray and crowned with a skull for a face instead of the normal three-by-three mesh of translucent panels of prisms and purple. In each hand it held a massive hammer.

Silver Swordsman had no choice. If it fought back it probably couldn't beat something made to be more powerful than an empathical giant robot. Then the reprisal, feared by the humans who had collaborated to make this thing, would happen.

And so blow after blow from the dual-hammer wielding war-machine impacted on Silver Swordsman and the one-armed knight of shining armor just took it. Sparks rained and Silver Swordsman felt one knee explode and then the other and fell. Upon its back the blows continued like the anvil of a devilish blacksmith. Finally the giant robot getting smashed by the new war-machine cracked open and blue flames and black smoke erupted out as well as a thunderous grinding noise.

"Telamon is victorious." the standing killer spoke over the remains of its prey.

"Not exactly." Aidan grimaced and said to his creation from an alabaster balcony far away. Ripples converging backwards on the Pool Of Time meant one thing:

Svetlana had left the world of Ruin behind, escaping to a realm of ideas. She had gone back to her Elsewhere. Aidan growled indignantly with frustration. This simply wasn't over yet.