Sorore awoke from the blessed, dreamless sleep of the dead to the sound of thin wind outside the waggon. The morning’s sermon on the nature of mages and magic, as well as the recitation of the night of the Burning Tree, was soothing to her. Doubts that had lingered about her ever since the eruption of fire from the church top were set, if not to rest, but to at least silence.
Frare was still fast asleep, and she knew that nothing short of a blow or a scream would wake him. It was odd that he slept with such security with the energy he displayed in waking life. Upon thinking further, Sorore reckoned that perhaps it wasn’t - the boy needed to recover his strength somehow. She picked at her brother’s cheek gently as she fussed over this feature and that, and pondered the riddles of his overflowing vitality.
The strange inkling came that it was not a matter of energy, so much as it was that he bore his confidence into the well of his dreams.
She was about to pursue this thought further before the sound of quiet footsteps outside snapped her to attention. Quickly, she pulled the blanket over her shoulders and pressed herself to her brother, slowing her breathing. The canvas waggon that had been so graciously supplied to them by the villagers rustled as it was teased apart slowly.
“Are they asleep?” came the voice of Niche.
“Yes,” another voice, Lillian’s, “Yes they’re asleep.”
With another rustle, the canvas fell closed, and after a moment, Sorore heard the distant conversation better. She could only see a glimpse of the paladins, perhaps a dozen steps away or two, sitting by the embers of a fading fire.
“What are we doing Lillian?” said Niche, sounding more tired than she’d ever heard before.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“That’s an understatement,” said Niche with a bitter laugh, “we’re letting the commander have free reign.”
“Quiet down,” whispered Lillian, “let them sleep.”
“Why? Why do we let him?” complained Niche, “the children are our charges, ours. Not his. Is he planning to steal the glory?”
“He outranks us,” said Lillian sourly, “it’s that simple. Not to mention he has a hundred men, good, strong, armed men, at beck and call. We don’t. I had hoped we could settle up in the Alonshaze with Ryzea at our backs but…”
There was a silence that hung heavy in the air. It possessed a conspiratorial quality, which disturbed Sorore. The paladins should announce their contentions boldly; skulking was beneath them.
“Do you think he told the truth? About Ryzea?” Niche said.
Something cold and oily ran through Sorore at the words. Of course Naia had told the truth - there would be no reason to lie, would there?
“The other soldiers from the fort held up his side,” Lillian said, “Half the mountain gave way onto the walls, with Ryzea patrolling atop them if the stories are true. He wasn’t lying about the delay either, I don’t think. It would’ve taken weeks to clear the passes properly.”
“I just wish that… wish that we had some idea what was going on,” Niche said as he played with a dagger, “Why were we sent here? So far, with so little?”
“The mysteries of the church run deep,” said Lillian, in a tone that almost sounded sarcastic.
“Please,” he said, “we only stumbled upon lady Aya by happenstance. My faith runs as deep as anyone, but saying that we were meant to find her… after sixty years of nothing? By better men?”
She could see his face, turned toward Lillian with a pinched expression.
“Lillian,” he said, voice grim, “what is the reason we’re really out here?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “you know full well my information is just as limited as yours.”
“Better than mine, by leagues,” he said, “my family’s not on the council of purity.”
The silence became colder and more hostile at the words.
“Do you think I know everything because of my family?” she said quietly, “Do you think they still talk to me?”
“That wasn’t meant to-”
“What? Indicate your intellect?” she said, “point proven then. Your ability to keep your mouth flapping on the other hand-”
“You want to do this right now? Fine,” Niche said, his voice rising, “You know something. You’ve been acting odd from the first moments of our journey. You have connections, regardless of how estranged you might be. And whatever you know, you’ve been keeping it from us the whole time.”
“Keep your voice down,” she hissed, “no, I don’t know anything, and if I did I-”
“Do you trust me or not?” he said, “would it be different if sister Dalia was still with us?”
Lillian’s voice faltered at that, and Sorore remembered the young, brash paladin who’d set out with them. It was a sparse memory - the warrior had always ranged further afield saying that studies were best left for priests, earning her Niche’s exasperation.
“Fine,” said Niche, “now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take the first watch. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”
There was a sound of clinking as the paladin rose, and Sorore quickly moved to press herself to Frare’s back. She could hear the sounds of footsteps approaching the waggon once more as she settled in and stilled her breathing. As the flap opened, she let her eyes close and sank into darkness once more.
“May the lost forgive me,” intoned Lillian, before the flaps rustled shut and the footsteps receded into the distance.
For a few minutes, making certain that the paladin had moved onwards, Sorore lay absolutely still near her brother. She rolled over and peeked through the flap, finding no one nearby, she sank her fingers into her brother’s side. He stiffed, eyes snapping open. She was rather envious of her brother for how quickly he moved from rest to alertness.
“What is it?” he whispered, turning over and looking at her.
“It’s… I don’t know, something just happened with Lillian and Niche,” she said.
Frare grew more upright and attentive as she relayed what she had just witnessed outside the waggon.
“Interesting,” he murmured, messing his hair in a way that seemed precisely calibrated to annoy Sorore.
“No. No it’s not interesting,” she said, “it’s horrible. They shouldn’t be fighting like that. I hate it.”
“Calm down,” he said, shrugging, “I’m sure they’ll get past it soon enough. We should tell her.”
He gestured to another bundle of blankets, slightly rising or falling. That started Sorore, who’d not realised that Aya had made her way in. Before she could stop him, Frare had a hand on her shoulder, shaking her more harshly than a lady should’ve been shaken. To that point, Sorore grabbed his wrists and wrenched his hands away from Aya.
“Ow!” he said, rubbing his arms, “what was that for?”
“You’ll never get a wife like that. Treating her so roughly,” she said, shaking her head as her brother shrank from her admonishment.
It took a few gentle pats, but finally Aya was up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Good morning,” she said, looking around, “is it morning?”
“Nope,” said Frare, and told her about the conversation, with Sorore providing close annotation when he strayed from the facts.
Aya looked quizzically from one twin to the other as she processed the information.
“So… what? Lillian’s hiding things? What’s new about that?” she said, “I’m sure there’s lots they don’t tell us.”
“This is different,” Sorore insisted, “this is… I’ve never heard them fight before. Not like this.”
“It’s a good question,” said Frare, and by his hurried voice, she could tell exactly what he was going to say, “I’ve been saying from the start of the trip that-”
“Oh not that fancy again!” she hissed, nearly swearing before catching herself.
“It’s not fancy,” her brother whined, “it’s a good question.”
“What is?” said Aya.
“Well, when we were back in the shattered city, I-”
“Silver,” Sorore corrected him.
“Silver. Silver city. Well, we were always surrounded by paladins, every day, all day. A dozen between the two of us, so-”
“A dozen?” Aya said, looking notably uncomfortable by the prospect.
Sorore huffed at her brother, knowing that he was going to phrase it in the worst way, and make Aya scared. Dauntless, he continued on with his ludicrous theorising.
“Yes, a dozen,” he said, “and they rotated out. Each watch was led by a light lord proper. So, when they sent us out with just three.”
“They said, if you were paying any attention Frare, which you clearly weren’t, that such a large protection force wasn’t needed,” Sorore jeered, on the verge of losing her temper with her brother, “and they said it was about time we experienced the world without protection. That we wouldn’t always have it. Like Leonard.”
Even as she said it however, she could feel something wrong about the statement. They weren’t like Leonard. No one was like Leonard. A shiver passed up her spine as she remembered the gaunt form of their brother in spirit, and his sickly yellow-tinged eyes. But such thoughts were unkind, and besides, Leonard wasn’t the main topic of conversation.
“I don’t believe it,” he said, “we were safe in Angorrah, safer than here.”
“No one knows who we are out here,” she said, “that was also a thing they said, since you clearly weren’t paying attention.”
Frare faltered at that, trying to formulate an argument against it to confirm a conclusion that he’d clearly already reached.
“But there are beasts, and… other things,” Aya said with a shiver of her own, “they wouldn’t care about you.”
“Three paladins are more than enough to deal with beasts, come on,” Sorore said with perfect conviction, “as for the other things, how would they know?”
Aya muttered vague assent, but Sorore could tell she wasn’t convinced.
“What?” she demanded, “what is it?”
“Nothing,” she said, “but it still seems a little odd. Maybe we should just ask Lillian about it?”
“No!” both twins rounded on her, possibly a little too loud.
“What? Why?” she said, “if someone’s keeping something from you, you should at least ask them. If they say no, then you drop it.”
It was said with such perfect ease that Sorore could see Aya asking every question she ever thought out loud to her parents. There would be some things you never asked in polite society, and the girl would have to know to avoid embarrassment. Making a mental note of teaching her about it later, Sorore chose to discontinue the point.
“I’m sure it's just an odd patch. We’ve been through some strange things,” she said, “nothing much to worry about. Let’s go back to bed, before we wake up Lillian.”
After some humming and hahhing, the trio pulled the blankets onto themselves, and fell fast asleep.
The morning, when it came, was quite beautiful, as far as mornings in the mountains went anyways. They rode along in the wagon, Niche drive, and Lillian riding alongside and ahead. The road was a rough beaten tract through the trees, but it had seen enough use to minimise the worst of the bumps and shakes. Sorore had engaged Aya in a childhood game of Shoesal, using a pouch of numbered tiles she’d carved herself. Aya soon proved to be a competent player, although Sorore could beat her and Frare without much difficulty.
Lunch brought another lesson, this time mastered by Lillian, sitting inside the wagon.
“All right, you have questions don’t you?” she said, never having been one for the more formal speech of the lesson, and looking tired besides.
“About magic?” Aya spoke up.
“Yes. I can’t claim any great specialty, but I’ll share what I can.”
“Well, what is magic then?” she asked, “No one’s explained that to me.”
Her face seemed oddly focused on Lillian’s, almost like a challenge. Perhaps it was the result of last night’s conversation, which made Sorore feel sorry for the paladin.
“The church teaches that magic and faith are distant cousins. One allows you to perform spells, the other, miracles. You’ve already seen an example of this, out on the rooftop.”
She clenched her fist and held it up, within a few moments, a golden light emanated from within.
“This is an example of such a miracle, as humble as it may be,” she said, “we use it to defend the faith. Over time, you’ll be instructed by those better versed in such things, on how to perform miracles of your own.”
“We’ll be using magic?” Aya said.
“Miracles. I appreciate the confusion,” Lillian said, “from a distance, they can look similar. What’s far more important, however, is the source. Our miracles are holy, untainted, because they are produced by our faith in the Lost. In essence, we believe in them, and they give us the strength necessary to serve the faith.”
Aya looked like she was about to say something else, and Sorore willed her to not provoke the paladin. The girl ultimately shrank back, a questioning look in her eyes as she settled. It all seemed perfectly straightforward to Sorore, although she’d been raised in a city with a proper cathedral. Any doubt or anger towards her sister in spirit fell away when she remembered that Aya was from a remote mountain village, and was filled with pity.
“So now you know the difference,” said Lillian, letting her fist fall, “we don’t usually speak much on it. The laity can get confused easily, and we don’t mean to cause more than is necessary.”
“So, we’re going to be able to fight monsters?” Frare said, clearly excited at the prospect.
Of course it was the prospect of violence that excited him the most. He couldn’t help it, being the Bequeathed of Elizarhein, but did he really have to be so forward about it? She still hadn’t figured out what being ‘fertile’ meant in the context of her role as the chosen of Nafthatazia. ‘Life-giving’ made a little bit more sense to her.
She looked at Aya, the chosen of Salahazdrey, there could be no doubt. She wondered what her role would be in the coming years. Something to do with maidens, and water, or something like that. She would have to ask Lillian later about the specifics.
Lillian continued on, answering various questions on what kinds of miracles there were and what they were used for. Frare, of course, was mostly interested in those that were used in combat, while Aya was more interested in those that were specifically associated with tales of the church. Sorore just sat there, happily soaking up the explanations that were offered.
This was her place of peace, where everything was calm and made sense. The only thing that chafed at her meditation was the knowledge that Lillian must be hiding something. But even that overcast shadow didn’t do much to dampen her contentment. As for the other two, when they’d finally peppered the paladin with their last questions, she got up.
“Niche must be tired of leading the horses around,” she concluded, “I’ll have to resume my riding.”
The rest of the afternoon passed without much incident, and the trio amused themselves in various ways, although there was a strange distance between the twins and Aya. Chalking this up to merely being new, Sorore ignored it with what grace she could muster as she played games and recited stories from her youth.
When they stopped for the second evening, it was then that she noticed Aya slipping out for the first time. She was gone perhaps twenty to thirty minutes before carefully slipping quietly into the waggon. Something seemed strange about her, as Sorore glanced at her sleeping form. It seemed more defined, more solid compared to the world around her. Once again, merely chalking it up to an innocuous walk, or perhaps the need to relieve herself, Sorore quickly fell back to sleep.
Ringing hammers heralded her dreams, along with the feeling of heat radiating across her face. She could feel her sibling’s shoulders as she cuddled closer to him, though he seemed both immense and impossibly dense. Cold stone was under her side and to her back, something smooth and black, though she couldn’t see it.
What she could see was something immense before her, a collection of revolving rings, of glass, of metal, of stone, of substances that shone soft like velvet. The thing oscillated and warped into a fantastical facsimile of an immense creature. The gears and rings that comprised its being span and interlocked in a ticking choir to complement its pronouncements.
Thunder claps echoed across the landscape, now a yellow-grey desert of cracked mud and wizened trees. Footfalls shuddered her skull as it rose between shattered mountains, reaching clockwork claws to grip still smouldering rubble. A single glassy orb, within which turned a furious molten fire like the heart of the earth, focused at her from the head of the structure-beast.
The dream ruptured with a grinding bellow.
When Sorore awoke, it was with a pounding heart and the thinnest tracery of light, glowing across her arms.
Sorore awoke from the blessed, dreamless sleep of the dead to the sound of thin wind outside the waggon. The morning’s sermon on the nature of mages and magic, as well as the recitation of the night of the Burning Tree, was soothing to her. Doubts that had lingered about her ever since the eruption of fire from the church top were set, if not to rest, but to at least silence.
Frare was still fast asleep, and she knew that nothing short of a blow or a scream would wake him. It was odd that he slept with such security with the energy he displayed in waking life. Upon thinking further, Sorore reckoned that perhaps it wasn’t - the boy needed to recover his strength somehow. She picked at her brother’s cheek gently as she fussed over this feature and that, and pondered the riddles of his overflowing vitality.
The strange inkling came that it was not a matter of energy, so much as it was that he bore his confidence into the well of his dreams.
She was about to pursue this thought further before the sound of quiet footsteps outside snapped her to attention. Quickly, she pulled the blanket over her shoulders and pressed herself to her brother, slowing her breathing. The canvas waggon that had been so graciously supplied to them by the villagers rustled as it was teased apart slowly.
“Are they asleep?” came the voice of Niche.
“Yes,” another voice, Lillian’s, “Yes they’re asleep.”
With another rustle, the canvas fell closed, and after a moment, Sorore heard the distant conversation better. She could only see a glimpse of the paladins, perhaps a dozen steps away or two, sitting by the embers of a fading fire.
“What are we doing Lillian?” said Niche, sounding more tired than she’d ever heard before.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“That’s an understatement,” said Niche with a bitter laugh, “we’re letting the commander have free reign.”
“Quiet down,” whispered Lillian, “let them sleep.”
“Why? Why do we let him?” complained Niche, “the children are our charges, ours. Not his. Is he planning to steal the glory?”
“He outranks us,” said Lillian sourly, “it’s that simple. Not to mention he has a hundred men, good, strong, armed men, at beck and call. We don’t. I had hoped we could settle up in the Alonshaze with Ryzea at our backs but…”
There was a silence that hung heavy in the air. It possessed a conspiratorial quality, which disturbed Sorore. The paladins should announce their contentions boldly; skulking was beneath them.
“Do you think he told the truth? About Ryzea?” Niche said.
Something cold and oily ran through Sorore at the words. Of course Naia had told the truth - there would be no reason to lie, would there?
“The other soldiers from the fort held up his side,” Lillian said, “Half the mountain gave way onto the walls, with Ryzea patrolling atop them if the stories are true. He wasn’t lying about the delay either, I don’t think. It would’ve taken weeks to clear the passes properly.”
“I just wish that… wish that we had some idea what was going on,” Niche said as he played with a dagger, “Why were we sent here? So far, with so little?”
“The mysteries of the church run deep,” said Lillian, in a tone that almost sounded sarcastic.
“Please,” he said, “we only stumbled upon lady Aya by happenstance. My faith runs as deep as anyone, but saying that we were meant to find her… after sixty years of nothing? By better men?”
She could see his face, turned toward Lillian with a pinched expression.
“Lillian,” he said, voice grim, “what is the reason we’re really out here?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “you know full well my information is just as limited as yours.”
“Better than mine, by leagues,” he said, “my family’s not on the council of purity.”
The silence became colder and more hostile at the words.
“Do you think I know everything because of my family?” she said quietly, “Do you think they still talk to me?”
“That wasn’t meant to-”
“What? Indicate your intellect?” she said, “point proven then. Your ability to keep your mouth flapping on the other hand-”
“You want to do this right now? Fine,” Niche said, his voice rising, “You know something. You’ve been acting odd from the first moments of our journey. You have connections, regardless of how estranged you might be. And whatever you know, you’ve been keeping it from us the whole time.”
“Keep your voice down,” she hissed, “no, I don’t know anything, and if I did I-”
“Do you trust me or not?” he said, “would it be different if sister Dalia was still with us?”
Lillian’s voice faltered at that, and Sorore remembered the young, brash paladin who’d set out with them. It was a sparse memory - the warrior had always ranged further afield saying that studies were best left for priests, earning her Niche’s exasperation.
“Fine,” said Niche, “now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take the first watch. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”
There was a sound of clinking as the paladin rose, and Sorore quickly moved to press herself to Frare’s back. She could hear the sounds of footsteps approaching the waggon once more as she settled in and stilled her breathing. As the flap opened, she let her eyes close and sank into darkness once more.
“May the lost forgive me,” intoned Lillian, before the flaps rustled shut and the footsteps receded into the distance.
For a few minutes, making certain that the paladin had moved onwards, Sorore lay absolutely still near her brother. She rolled over and peeked through the flap, finding no one nearby, she sank her fingers into her brother’s side. He stiffed, eyes snapping open. She was rather envious of her brother for how quickly he moved from rest to alertness.
“What is it?” he whispered, turning over and looking at her.
“It’s… I don’t know, something just happened with Lillian and Niche,” she said.
Frare grew more upright and attentive as she relayed what she had just witnessed outside the waggon.
“Interesting,” he murmured, messing his hair in a way that seemed precisely calibrated to annoy Sorore.
“No. No it’s not interesting,” she said, “it’s horrible. They shouldn’t be fighting like that. I hate it.”
“Calm down,” he said, shrugging, “I’m sure they’ll get past it soon enough. We should tell her.”
He gestured to another bundle of blankets, slightly rising or falling. That started Sorore, who’d not realised that Aya had made her way in. Before she could stop him, Frare had a hand on her shoulder, shaking her more harshly than a lady should’ve been shaken. To that point, Sorore grabbed his wrists and wrenched his hands away from Aya.
“Ow!” he said, rubbing his arms, “what was that for?”
“You’ll never get a wife like that. Treating her so roughly,” she said, shaking her head as her brother shrank from her admonishment.
It took a few gentle pats, but finally Aya was up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Good morning,” she said, looking around, “is it morning?”
“Nope,” said Frare, and told her about the conversation, with Sorore providing close annotation when he strayed from the facts.
Aya looked quizzically from one twin to the other as she processed the information.
“So… what? Lillian’s hiding things? What’s new about that?” she said, “I’m sure there’s lots they don’t tell us.”
“This is different,” Sorore insisted, “this is… I’ve never heard them fight before. Not like this.”
“It’s a good question,” said Frare, and by his hurried voice, she could tell exactly what he was going to say, “I’ve been saying from the start of the trip that-”
“Oh not that fancy again!” she hissed, nearly swearing before catching herself.
“It’s not fancy,” her brother whined, “it’s a good question.”
“What is?” said Aya.
“Well, when we were back in the shattered city, I-”
“Silver,” Sorore corrected him.
“Silver. Silver city. Well, we were always surrounded by paladins, every day, all day. A dozen between the two of us, so-”
“A dozen?” Aya said, looking notably uncomfortable by the prospect.
Sorore huffed at her brother, knowing that he was going to phrase it in the worst way, and make Aya scared. Dauntless, he continued on with his ludicrous theorising.
“Yes, a dozen,” he said, “and they rotated out. Each watch was led by a light lord proper. So, when they sent us out with just three.”
“They said, if you were paying any attention Frare, which you clearly weren’t, that such a large protection force wasn’t needed,” Sorore jeered, on the verge of losing her temper with her brother, “and they said it was about time we experienced the world without protection. That we wouldn’t always have it. Like Leonard.”
Even as she said it however, she could feel something wrong about the statement. They weren’t like Leonard. No one was like Leonard. A shiver passed up her spine as she remembered the gaunt form of their brother in spirit, and his sickly yellow-tinged eyes. But such thoughts were unkind, and besides, Leonard wasn’t the main topic of conversation.
“I don’t believe it,” he said, “we were safe in Angorrah, safer than here.”
“No one knows who we are out here,” she said, “that was also a thing they said, since you clearly weren’t paying attention.”
Frare faltered at that, trying to formulate an argument against it to confirm a conclusion that he’d clearly already reached.
“But there are beasts, and… other things,” Aya said with a shiver of her own, “they wouldn’t care about you.”
“Three paladins are more than enough to deal with beasts, come on,” Sorore said with perfect conviction, “as for the other things, how would they know?”
Aya muttered vague assent, but Sorore could tell she wasn’t convinced.
“What?” she demanded, “what is it?”
“Nothing,” she said, “but it still seems a little odd. Maybe we should just ask Lillian about it?”
“No!” both twins rounded on her, possibly a little too loud.
“What? Why?” she said, “if someone’s keeping something from you, you should at least ask them. If they say no, then you drop it.”
It was said with such perfect ease that Sorore could see Aya asking every question she ever thought out loud to her parents. There would be some things you never asked in polite society, and the girl would have to know to avoid embarrassment. Making a mental note of teaching her about it later, Sorore chose to discontinue the point.
“I’m sure it's just an odd patch. We’ve been through some strange things,” she said, “nothing much to worry about. Let’s go back to bed, before we wake up Lillian.”
After some humming and hahhing, the trio pulled the blankets onto themselves, and fell fast asleep.
The morning, when it came, was quite beautiful, as far as mornings in the mountains went anyways. They rode along in the wagon, Niche drive, and Lillian riding alongside and ahead. The road was a rough beaten tract through the trees, but it had seen enough use to minimise the worst of the bumps and shakes. Sorore had engaged Aya in a childhood game of Shoesal, using a pouch of numbered tiles she’d carved herself. Aya soon proved to be a competent player, although Sorore could beat her and Frare without much difficulty.
Lunch brought another lesson, this time mastered by Lillian, sitting inside the wagon.
“All right, you have questions don’t you?” she said, never having been one for the more formal speech of the lesson, and looking tired besides.
“About magic?” Aya spoke up.
“Yes. I can’t claim any great specialty, but I’ll share what I can.”
“Well, what is magic then?” she asked, “No one’s explained that to me.”
Her face seemed oddly focused on Lillian’s, almost like a challenge. Perhaps it was the result of last night’s conversation, which made Sorore feel sorry for the paladin.
“The church teaches that magic and faith are distant cousins. One allows you to perform spells, the other, miracles. You’ve already seen an example of this, out on the rooftop.”
She clenched her fist and held it up, within a few moments, a golden light emanated from within.
“This is an example of such a miracle, as humble as it may be,” she said, “we use it to defend the faith. Over time, you’ll be instructed by those better versed in such things, on how to perform miracles of your own.”
“We’ll be using magic?” Aya said.
“Miracles. I appreciate the confusion,” Lillian said, “from a distance, they can look similar. What’s far more important, however, is the source. Our miracles are holy, untainted, because they are produced by our faith in the Lost. In essence, we believe in them, and they give us the strength necessary to serve the faith.”
Aya looked like she was about to say something else, and Sorore willed her to not provoke the paladin. The girl ultimately shrank back, a questioning look in her eyes as she settled. It all seemed perfectly straightforward to Sorore, although she’d been raised in a city with a proper cathedral. Any doubt or anger towards her sister in spirit fell away when she remembered that Aya was from a remote mountain village, and was filled with pity.
“So now you know the difference,” said Lillian, letting her fist fall, “we don’t usually speak much on it. The laity can get confused easily, and we don’t mean to cause more than is necessary.”
“So, we’re going to be able to fight monsters?” Frare said, clearly excited at the prospect.
Of course it was the prospect of violence that excited him the most. He couldn’t help it, being the Bequeathed of Elizarhein, but did he really have to be so forward about it? She still hadn’t figured out what being ‘fertile’ meant in the context of her role as the chosen of Nafthatazia. ‘Life-giving’ made a little bit more sense to her.
She looked at Aya, the chosen of Salahazdrey, there could be no doubt. She wondered what her role would be in the coming years. Something to do with maidens, and water, or something like that. She would have to ask Lillian later about the specifics.
Lillian continued on, answering various questions on what kinds of miracles there were and what they were used for. Frare, of course, was mostly interested in those that were used in combat, while Aya was more interested in those that were specifically associated with tales of the church. Sorore just sat there, happily soaking up the explanations that were offered.
This was her place of peace, where everything was calm and made sense. The only thing that chafed at her meditation was the knowledge that Lillian must be hiding something. But even that overcast shadow didn’t do much to dampen her contentment. As for the other two, when they’d finally peppered the paladin with their last questions, she got up.
“Niche must be tired of leading the horses around,” she concluded, “I’ll have to resume my riding.”
The rest of the afternoon passed without much incident, and the trio amused themselves in various ways, although there was a strange distance between the twins and Aya. Chalking this up to merely being new, Sorore ignored it with what grace she could muster as she played games and recited stories from her youth.
When they stopped for the second evening, it was then that she noticed Aya slipping out for the first time. She was gone perhaps twenty to thirty minutes before carefully slipping quietly into the waggon. Something seemed strange about her, as Sorore glanced at her sleeping form. It seemed more defined, more solid compared to the world around her. Once again, merely chalking it up to an innocuous walk, or perhaps the need to relieve herself, Sorore quickly fell back to sleep.
Ringing hammers heralded her dreams, along with the feeling of heat radiating across her face. She could feel her sibling’s shoulders as she cuddled closer to him, though he seemed both immense and impossibly dense. Cold stone was under her side and to her back, something smooth and black, though she couldn’t see it.
What she could see was something immense before her, a collection of revolving rings, of glass, of metal, of stone, of substances that shone soft like velvet. The thing oscillated and warped into a fantastical facsimile of an immense creature. The gears and rings that comprised its being span and interlocked in a ticking choir to complement its pronouncements.
Thunder claps echoed across the landscape, now a yellow-grey desert of cracked mud and wizened trees. Footfalls shuddered her skull as it rose between shattered mountains, reaching clockwork claws to grip still smouldering rubble. A single glassy orb, within which turned a furious molten fire like the heart of the earth, focused at her from the head of the structure-beast.
The dream ruptured with a grinding bellow.
When Sorore awoke, it was with a pounding heart and the thinnest tracery of light, glowing across her arms.
