Along the way, Alucius had decided on his approach. There was no sense in merely putting himself and his companies under the command of some colonel and being ordered to destroy as many Matrites as possible. Not when the crystal spear-throwers remained. Without them, as events had proved twice, the Matrites could be handled. With them, the odds were too great that the Lanachronans would lose everything and be pushed out of Southgate—if not slaughtered in massive numbers. So Alucius and his companies had to destroy the replicas of the ancient weapons, if only to avoid being among those slaughtered by them. That meant the companies had to get Alucius close enough that he could destroy the weapons. How? That he didn’t know, but he did know that when the sanders had attacked the Matrites in Soulend, the Sanders had used Talent of some sort to destroy the first crystal spear-thrower. So it could be done. He had to hold on to that thought. The soarers had told him—and shown him—that he could do what they did, and they could do more than the sanders.
