Late at night, in the City of Order.
There was neither moon nor stars in the sky that night. Darkness hung like a black curtain over the entire outskirts of the city, so deep that one could not see a hand in front of one's face.
Outside the northern city wall, a squad of giant guards marched in orderly formation, torches raised, scrupulously carrying out their nightly patrol.
The torchlight drew closer, illuminating every inch of the wall along their route.
At one point, the patrol leader at the head of the squad suddenly stopped. As the torch in his right hand swept past, a tiny black shadow darted across the wall before their eyes.
The next instant, however, a throwing knife flew from one of the guards' hands, pinning the shadow firmly to the middle of the wall.
Only then did they see that the creature pierced by the blade and pinned to the wall was a gecko with a severed tail.
With its body impaled, the gecko struggled desperately with its four feet and head, but could not escape. Soon, its strength ran out, its body shriveled, and it gradually stopped moving.
A giant soldier stepped forward and pulled out the dagger, then released a burst of flame that burned the gecko's corpse to nothing.
The soldier then returned to formation, and the squad continued its patrol, soon disappearing into the distance.
What the patrol did not know was that shortly after they left, once darkness had covered that stretch of wall again, three more geckos emerged from the rubble below. The leading gecko quickly climbed to the spot where the previous one had died, examined the mark left by the throwing knife, then looked around to either side. It flicked its tail downward before continuing upward.
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