Some roads never end, but sometimes it is a new traveler walking....

 

   

                                                                                                                                              

...and sometimes the very thing you never wanted, will be the thing you've always been.

The colony has met its match, the entire group of farmers and misfits have been deemed traitors to the Byzantium homeland, a casualty of the war for independence with the Warlock Council of the Shadow Coast.

An unlikely suggestion from Jesmin's childhood friend, Claire, leads to a desperate gamble.  Trial by Combat.  Sir James seeks to lay it on the line, to fight for justice, and to prove in the trial, that his precious few survivors are innocent of such charges.   Jesmin chose to clear her noble house's name of any wrongdoing.  And together, they wait in the ruined city of Tiras Le, awaiting the Empire's champions.

Outnumbered mightily, the two hope that their political maneuver will be enough to win their freedoms.  And yet sometimes heroes move on, and sometimes they fall. This is the end of the story of Tuffluv, and it's would-be champions.                      

And so it goes.