[center][b]From Wisdom comes Power. From Power comes Right.[/b]
From the [i]Twenty Seven Hidden Precepts[/i], Drathan Holy Text[/center]

He stood quite still, curved sword held loosely in one hand, dark eyes watchful and alert. He was in the nave of some ancient temple to a forgotten god, half buried in the sands. Shafts of sunlight streamed through cracks in the crumbling dome above him, filtering through falling trickles of dust to create strange, clutching shadows in the reddish gloom.

He tilted his head to one side, as though listening for something in this forsaken place other than the howl of the wind outside.

After a long silence, he nodded, as though satisfied.

"I come in my own name," he said, "I offer my own blood."

He ran his free hand quickly against the edge of his blade. Blood pattered from his palm onto the sand-covered floor. Outside, the wind picked up to a new pitch. Something stirred, or seemed to stir, in the darkness of the temple, just out of vision, but he did not show his fear. To do so, in this place, would be death.

[i]Yes, yes the blood is precious.[/i] said a voice like echoing brass. It came from everywhere and nowhere, filled with unimaginable greed. [i]This libation merits reward.[/i]

He closed his bleeding palm, wrapping it in a strip of linen. 

"Now," he said, "I claim the offered reward. Reveal to me that which the augurs foretell. What doom approaches?"