They sat in the clearing around Reidar's camp. The War Mastiffs formed a perimeter around them, and the Vorathid Sky-Hunters continued their patrol overhead. The fallen tree served as a bench, and the three of them settled into the kind of silence that comes after a long separation.
Jake was the first to break it. "What happened? After the portal took you."
Reidar told them.
He explained how the portal had dropped him on the Ignis homeworld, a planet where the sapient race had failed the test represented by the apocalypse. He told them about the Ignis and how the Allied Worlds had given them the Guardian System, just like they had given it to humans, only to take it away when the Ignis proved too uncontrollable.
