 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.... While she waited he spun a dream, attaching it to the crags that loomed over the pass, and to the frozen ground underfoot. 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. 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. 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. "From the memories that the old Watchers have left here, and from the memories of dead men that still echo in the air, I have gathered a picture of that world's end. Only the angry light of fires relieved the city's darkness—that, and the blue-white lightning flashes that silhouetted the naked skeletons of buildings and were followed by thunder and a shaking of the earth. Before them death waited around the citadel where the masters still fought. "Some of the Ryzgas took flight to the stars, and some perished on Earth. These raised a black mountain from the Earth's heart, and in hollows within it cast themselves into deathless sleep, their deathless and lifeless sentinels round them, to wait till someone dare arouse them, or until their chosen time—no one knows surely. Our world is unwise and sometimes evil, full of arrogance, folly, and passion that are in the nature of man. Yet it is a happy world, compared to that the Ryzgas made and will make again."
 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