"In the end it was as if the population of Galea's crown city, hundreds of thousands of people, had for the most part been wiped from existence. What was once the heart of Galea is no more. It is now occupied by soldiers in the hundreds of thousands. The camp followers began setting up homes in the places long since plundered, simply taking over what was someone else's. More people from the Old World began to drift up to take places and live in them as their own.

"The only Galean women left alive were for the most part slaves used by the soldiers as whores. After time many became pregnant and gave birth to children fathered by the soldiers of the Imperial Order. These offspring are being raised to be future zealots for the Order. Virtually the only Galean children left alive after the first year of occupation were the boys.

"Drilled endlessly in the ways of the Order, those boys became the Order. They had long since forgotten the ways of their parents or their homeland, or even common decency. They were now Imperial Order recruits — newly minted monsters.

"After months and months of training, groups of the older boys were sent to be the first wave of attackers against other cities. They were to be the flesh that dulled the swords of the heathens. They went eagerly.

"I had once thought that the brutes who are the Imperial Order were a distinctly different, savage breed of people, unlike the civilized people of the New World. After seeing how those boys changed and what they became, I realized that the people who are the Order are really no different than the rest of us, except in their beliefs and the ideas that motivate them. A crazy thought, perhaps, but it seems that through some mysterious mechanism anyone is susceptible to being beguiled into falling for the Order's ways."

Jebra shook her head in dismay. "I never really understood how such a thing could come about, how the officers could teach boys such dry lessons, how they could lecture them that they must be selfless, that they must live a life of sacrifice for the good of others, and then, as if by magic, those boys would march off merrily singing songs, hoping to die in battle."

"The premise is pretty simple, really," Nicci said, offhandedly.

"Simple?" Jebra's brow lifted with incredulity. "You can't be serious."

"Oh yes, simple." Nicci descended the steps one at a time in a slow, measured manner as she spoke. "Both boys and girls in the Old World are taught the same things by the Fellowship of Order, and in the same basic manner."

She came to a halt not far from Richard and loosely folded her arms as she sighed — not out of weariness, but rather with a weary cynicism. "Except that with them it's started not all that long after they're born. It begins with simple lessons, of course, but those lessons are expanded and reinforced over their entire lifetime. It's not unusual to see pious old people sitting through the lectures given by brothers of the Fellowship of Order.

"Most all people are drawn toward ordered social structure and they yearn to know how they fit into the larger scheme of the universe. The Fellowship of Order provides them with a comprehensive and authoritative sense of structure — in other words, tells them the right way to think as well as a proper way to live their lives. But it's most effective when started with the young. If a young mind is molded to the Order's dogma then it usually becomes inflexible and fixed for life. As a result, any other way of thinking — the very ability to reason — generally withers and dies at a young age and is lost for life. When such a person is aged, they will still sit through the same basic lessons, still hang on every word."

"Simple?" Jebra asked. "You said the premise is pretty simple?"

Nicci nodded. "The Order teaches that this world, the world of life, is finite. Life is fleeting. We are born, we live for a time, and we die. The afterlife, by contrast, is eternal. After all, we all know that people die but no one ever comes back from the dead; dead is forever. Therefore, it is the afterlife which is important.

"Around this core tenet, the Fellowship of Order ceaselessly drums into people the belief that one must earn their eternity in the glory of the Creator's light. This life is the means to earn that eternity — a test, in a way."

Jebra blinked in disbelief. "But still, life is… I don't know, it's life. How can anything be more important than your own life?" She softened her skepticism with a smile. "Surely that isn't going to convince people to the Order's brutal ways, convince them to turn away from life."

"Life?" With sudden menace in her glare, Nicci leaned down a little toward Jebra. "Don't you care about your soul? Don't you think that what happens to your very own soul for all eternity might be of serious and earnest concern to you?"

"Well, of course I, I…" Jebra fell mute.

As she straightened, Nicci shrugged with a mocking, dismissive gesture. "This life is finite, transitory, so, in the scheme of things, in contrast to an eternal afterlife, how important can a fleeting life in this miserable world be? What true purpose could this brief existence possibly have, other than to serve as a trial of the soul?"

Jebra looked uncomfortably dubious yet unwilling to challenge Nicci when she framed it in such a way.

"For that reason," Nicci said, "sacrifice to any suffering, any want, any need of your fellow man is a humble recognition that this life is meaningless, a demonstration that you acknowledge eternity with the Creator in the next world to be the consequential concern. Yes? By sacrificing you are avowing that you do not value man's realm over eternity, the Creator's realm. Therefore, sacrifice is the price, the small price, the pittance, that you pay for your soul's eternal glory. It's your proof to the Creator that you are worthy of that eternity with Him."

Richard was amazed to see how easily such a rationale — delivered by Nicci with confidence, command, and authority — intimidated Jebra into silence. While listening as Nicci towered over her, Jebra had occasionally glanced to the others, to Zedd, to Cara, to Shota, even to Ann and Nathan, but seeing none of them offering any objection or counterarguments, her shoulders began to hunch as if she wished she could disappear into a crack in the marble floor.

"If you confine your concerns to being happy in this life"—Nicci casually swept an arm out, indicating the world around her as she glided regally back and forth before them — "if you dare to revel in the senseless trivialities of this wretched world, this meaningless, brief existence, that is a rejection of your all-important eternal next life, and thus a rejection of the Creator's perfect plan for your soul.

"Who are you to question the Creator of all the universe? How dare you put your petty wishes for your insignificant, pathetic little life ahead of His grand purpose of preparing you for all of eternity?"

Nicci paused, folding her arms with a kind of deliberate care that implied a challenge. A lifetime of indoctrination gave her the ability to express the Order's carefully crafted tenets with devastating precision. Seeing her standing there in her pink nightdress somehow only seemed to underscore her derision of the triviality of life. Richard remembered all too well Nicci delivering that very same message to him, only at the time she had been deadly serious. Jebra avoided Nicci's piercing gaze, instead fixing her stare on her hands nested in her lap.

"To bring the ways of the Order to other people, Galea for example," Nicci said as she resumed her pacing lecture, "many of the Order's soldiers had to die." She shrugged. "But that is the ultimate sacrifice — one's life — in an effort to bring enlightenment to those who do not yet know how to follow the only right and true path to glory in the next world. If a person sacrifices their life in the struggle on behalf of the Order to bring salvation to backward, ignorant, and unimportant people, then they earn eternity with Him in the next world."