Rausche, disgraced and displaced by the enemy, escapes prison and goes into exile, only to find an unlikely ally in the great war to come... David, in his mad bid for power, goes to the desert to find a device to commune with the nether, as he wrestles with his own dwindling sanity... And Rudin, now one of the highest ranking official in the new People's Government, wrestles with a foreign enemy at sea, a true test to his new government's stability... The contours of the next conflict are forming. The kings are dead or are dying, replaced with madness and death. Answers to the call for a new path vary, signified by three kings now seeking their way.