"I knew this day would come," Leonardo said. "That there would be those who would object to my plans. I have done only what was necessary. They are coming. They are always coming, and there is nothing we can do to prevent it. It is the cycle of nature. When they come, the world will be destroyed and everything slowly built back up over the millennia will be swept away like dust by a giant hand. All that lives will be devoured to feed their endless hunger, or twisted and tortured to create new delicacies of pain to satisfy their jaded palettes." His voice trembled as he recalled those same tortures inflicted on a world he once knew, a world long dead.