 What is ironic about the conclusion of the story?
But its outward perils could not compare with the Ryzgas themselves, who slept within, ready to wake and conquer.... For the flame that had sprung between them at the Truce of New Grass, she had challenged the feud of their peoples and had left her home, to follow him. Now, if her father and his kinsmen overtook them, it would be death for Var, and for Neena living shame. While she waited he spun a dream, attaching it to the crags that loomed over the pass, and to the frozen ground underfoot. It was black night, as it would really be when Groz and his henchmen reached this place; lurid fire spewed from the Ryzga mountain, and strange lights dipped above it; and for good measure there was an avalanche in the dream, and hideous beasts rushed snapping and ravening from the crevices of the rock. Behind them began a tinkling of falling water, thawed from the glacial ridges above to descend sheet-wise over the cave mouth, freezing as it fell into lengthening icicles. Hot food and drink were before them almost at once. Warming to the old man now, Var sketched his and Neena's history briefly. And before very long, I'm sure, I would have performed some deed which Groz would recognize as a worthy exploit, and would thus have healed the feud between our families. "But they were such a race as the world has not seen before or since. There were tyrannies before the Ryzgas, there was lust for power, and atrocious cruelty; but such tyranny, power, and cruelty as theirs, had never been known. They were great and evil as no other people has been, because they wanted the stars. "Because of them we must build with dreams instead of iron, and our only fire is that of the Sun, and even now, two thousand years later, the Earth is still slowly recovering from the pangs and poison of that age. If you turn up the sod in the plain where the wild herds graze, you will find numberless fragments of rusted or corroded metal, bits of glass and strange plastic substances, debris of artifacts still showing the marks of their shaping—the scattered wreckage of the things they made. And we—we too are a remnant, the descendants of the few out of all humanity that survived when the Ryzgas' world went down in flame and thunder.
 The slave masters of the Ryzgas were ultimately eradicated by their own slaves
 The slave masters of the Ryzgas were ultimately eradicated by their own slaves  Humans seem to feel they have no other alternative than to kill and cause suffering before they can establish peace  Var will likely be killed or imprisoned for life, and Neena will bear the mark of shame for eternity  Despite the Watcher's message, Var continued his journey to the mountain in pursuit of personal gain