Noah looked at the devastation, and the devastation looked back through a hundred grieving faces.
Aurelius sat on the moss-stone arc with his wife's arms around him and his daughter's forehead against his shoulder, and his blood had dried on all three of them, and his Vanguard was gone in a manner that Noah suspected would not return in a lifetime.
He lifted his head. He found Noah across the wreckage of his own city, and then he gave one heavy nod.
"I did not know you had the pull that you showed," Aurelius said. His voice had lost the steadiness it wore in the sky, and he did not try to put it back. "Thank you. For spending a favor of an Immense One to end this."
Noah said nothing. There was nothing to say that would not sound like taking credit for a rescue that had cost this man half his lineage.
