"In the Mountains of the Mist, alone in the emptied city of Manetheren, Eldrene heard Aemon die among a
thousand foes, and her heart died with him. And where her heart had been was left only a thirst
for vengeance, vengeance for her love, vengeance for her people and her land. She set out in
the city, and began to set her traps. Then she lured the sorcerers and generals of the Dark One's
army into the city of Manetheren, and taunted them from within the palace. They came, with
hundreds of their troops to find and have their way with the Queen. She waited until they were
almost atop her, and then, crying Aemon's name, set off the traps she had set. Fires raced
through the streets and buildings of Manetheren, some say made hotter and more powerful by the Queen's
thirst for vengeance, other say enhanced by the Creator in just retribution for evil
done. However it was done, the fires consumed every man in the city.
"The army that stood victorious now ran like beasts before a wildfire in the forest, with no thought for
anything but escape. North and south they fled. Thousands drowned attempting to
cross the Tarendrelle without the direction of their generals, and at the Manetherendrelle they tore down the
bridges in their fight at what might be following them. Where they found people, they slew
and burned, but the need to flee was the need that gripped them. Until, at last, no one of them
remained in the lands of Manetheren. They were dispersed like dust before a
whirlwind. The final vengeance came more slowly, but it came, when they were hunted down
by other peoples, by other armies in other lands. None was left alive of those who did murder
at Aemon's Field.
"But the price was high for Manetheren. Eldrene had sacrificed herself on a pyre of
vengeance. As the enemy generals died, so did she die, and the fired that consumed her
consumed the city of Manetheren, even the stones of it, down to the living rock of the
mountains. Yet the people had been saved.
"Nothing was left of their farms, their villages, or their great city. Some would say there was
nothing left for them, nothing but flee to other lands, where they could begin anew. They did
not say so. They had paid such a price in blood and hope for their land as had never been paid
before, and now they were bound to that soil by ties stronger than steel. Other wars would
wrack them in years to come, until at last their corner of the world was forgotten and at last they had
forgotten war and the ways of war. Never again did Manetheren rise. Its soaring
spires and splashing fountains became as a dream that slowly faded from the minds of its
people. But they, and their children, and their children's children, held the land that was
theirs. They held it when long centuries had washed the why of it from their
memories. They held it until, today, there is nothing remembered. Weep for
Manetheren. Weep for what is lost forever."