As the shell-sky ruptures under impossible heat and pressure, the citizens of the Last University face grim prospects. Beings of empty light tread over the familiar until it is unsafe, recasting the world around them in macro and micro, both. And above, a lord looms. Do they have any hope? Does anyone fight for them, still? Yes. This week on Spring in Hieron: Terrible and Necessary After too many years of loneliness and solitude, I believe even now that I was blessed by accord with two who moved in kindred ways. The paladin felt His warmth, even from the blade, and worked drunk in his faith as I once did. And in that we knew one another, though he knew (and knows still) so little. I was likely a fool for dreaming a solution through his hands. (Yet I am a dreamer, always.) The other knew me in a way only one so devoted to knowledge could. The old stories always missed this about me: I found myself alone in study as often, if not more, than among the carousing congregation. And so in the Wizard Fantasmo, I found someone who understood me. So fixed our bond, that I found the elf slipping into memories deeper and older than he could possibly be participant in. His brilliance made me wonder what might be, again. Old, smashed possibilities picked up like a shattered vase, laid out on cloth, the pieces all there, repair suddenly a possibility. And so I thought: Perhaps Fantasmo could do what I could do not. Perhaps he could retrieve my love from the Blade in the Dark. With the right forge, the right attendants, the right components… I still believe it, in truth. I know he could have. I know he could have brought me, brought us, Samothes again. But these are shadowed times, and in the unjust dark, the brilliant lights are the first to be snuffed out. An excerpt from the journals of Samot, the Unbroken Lord in Exile and Repose   Hosted by Austin Walker (@austin_walker) Featuring Andi Clare (@captaintrash), Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal), Keith J Carberry (@keithjcarberry) and Nick Scratch (@drevilbones) Produced by Ali Acampora (@ali_west) Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Text by Austin Walker (@austin_walker) Cover Art by Craig Sheldon (@shoddyrobot)