Free Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) by Brian J Moses

Garnet
wordlessly slid the bowl toward him.
    “Also, you and
Guilian work up a new training roster for each platoon,” Garnet added. “I’d
like to get in some more work with ranged weapons. We got that load of bows and
crossbows in just before we left, so we can go ahead and start putting them to
good use. Marc, your platoon will be next.”
    Marc looked up
from Garnet’s bowl of oatmeal and nodded.
    “Your little pet
project?” Danner asked.
    “We’re close to
perfecting it,” Garnet said, “and hopefully now with fresh supplies we can get
it down without further injury.”
    “You’re one to
talk,” Flasch grumbled. “You stand in the back the whole time.”
    Garnet waited
for everyone to finish their breakfast, reveling in the moment of silence
between them. For a few minutes, the tension of the past few days simply didn’t
exist. Danner made a show of trying to reclaim the sugar from Michael, who
defended it valiantly with his spoon until Brican suddenly joined in with a
surprise attack and snatched the bowl of sweetener from under his nose.
    This is what
it’s all about, Garnet thought to himself as they all laughed. This is
how it should be. Right here. This is what’s important.
    - 2 -
    “You said you
have their welfare high in your priorities. You told me you have looked after
them since the beginning – before that even. You have told me many things, but
you have never explained any of them to me. How have you been a benefit
to them?”
    “Everything
in their world that lives, my dear Kaelus, everything that EXISTS, does so
because of their God and because of Me. We looked toward the world We both knew
would be created in the Great Schism, and We saw something that had never
before been conceived of since the dawn of time. We saw the potential for what
is now called Life, but it required both Our forces working together, or rather
working against each other, to fulfill that potential.
    “Finally,
when Heaven and Hell divided, Creation happened.
    “Some of the
stuff of the world was not fit for life and was left as stone. Some of it was
not fit for intelligence and was left plant-like. Some was not fit for
sentience and was left animal. But a very few of those… those primordial bits…
a very few of them were fit for intelligent life, and they became men and
elves, dwarves and gnomes. They are the natural races of that world.
    “But from the
most powerful and learned of men to the lowest speck of pond scum that is only
alive by the barest stretch of the definition, it was two hands, God’s and
Mine, that made their world what it is. God made the living things able to
grow, and I made the life cycle whereupon living things consume lesser forms of
life. He gave sentients creativity, I gave them competition. He brought them
the ability to procreate and bring life to another sentient being, I brought
the necessity of death to make them struggle to learn and accomplish something
in a limited span of time. He brought them sex, but I brought them passion and
ecstasy. While he merely wanted them to have life, I wanted them to live that life. I wanted the sentient species of the world to fulfill their
potential and realize the unique power of their souls.”
    “Why?”
    “So I can
make that power My own…”
    - 3 -
    Birch raised his
head from the table and rubbed his eyes, blinking past the weariness that had
settled in every muscle of his body.
    “I must have
dozed off,” he muttered, irritated with his own lack of discipline.
    The gnomish lamp
on the desk next to him still beamed with a steady, yellow light; a dozen
candles would have burned out in the time since he had started working, but
still the chemical lamp blazed steadily with light. The lamp was certainly
going to outlast Birch himself, who felt like he could fall over again at any
moment and sleep for a week.
    Still, he had
more work to do, and Birch would only afford himself a few hours of rest before
he returned to the pages before