He gestured toward Richard's fallen, bleeding form. "If he dies, everything i have invested on him, dies with him. Centuries of work, gone. Power that I cannot easily recover, lost forever. When I saw him falling, when I realized this... child had actually managed to defeat what I'd spent so long creating, I reacted poorly. Emotionally rather than logically."
Chronus met Malakor's hollow gaze directly. "I panicked. I broke our sacred law not because Richard is essential to some grand scheme, but because I couldn't accept that my life's work was about to be destroyed by someone who's barely existed for three months. Pride, Lord Malakor. Foolish, destructive pride. Nothing more sinister than that."
It was a good lie. A believable lie. The kind of lie that had just enough truth woven into it to be difficult to disprove.
