Kindle Fortress

If only. the phrase tortured her. It promised, as she argued back in Whitebrook, a possible world where it could be true, that most desired if. It promised unto the best of worlds. It was behind every wish, every hope, it beget every instance of higher thought... But it was no good. Why even think of an if? Why consider it an assuring claim if it was not at least a possible claim, and why call it possible if it was not attainable? If it was attainable, on that note, why did she not have it?  To the civilized in war, the direst casualty is permanence.
The young lament ambition, philosophers lose their theory, civilization abandons its very identity. None is spared the proof of transience. When an overwhelming enemy threatens the town of Whitebrook, the townspeople take to the tunnels, on to Kindle Fortress, while a smaller group sets off to warn their allies. All the while, an evil beyond prediction unravels to a terrible effect. The sapient are on the brink of extinction, and tyrannous fate relishes in their despair.
 ...to see oneself in history was to know oneself in the present; to know oneself in the present was to forget about oneself at any time, and live only for what sought to live through oneself - whether heroism or madness or glory or courage or duty or patriotism. it was not a cause he cared to articulate, for it was enough for him to know it for an impulse shared among the best of men: the allies by whose side he fought; the men that bled for the same goal; the men that cheered over the same triumph.
They were all his allies, and all men worthy of their nations.