Michellin

Wanderers

Kire had had this nightmare before, many, many times. The world around her on fire, and the rubble of the Palace about to fall upon her, as it did sixty years ago during the Storm. The only thing that saved her then was an attendant, who had helped look after her as a girl growing up in the Capital, falling upon her, her final act of service shielding her from the worst of the damage. In these dreams she would relive that moment, her young hands reaching up, the world going black, the death cry of the woman who saved her, and pain. She knew how the rest would go: she had fallen in and out of consciousness on that day, until later in the evening she would be found, bleeding from some cuts and scrapes but otherwise alright, with the blood of the dead attendant on her tattered dress, and later she would be told that she had lost her mother and father, too. This was how she became Empress, upon the ruins of her home, and at the cost of many lives. Her dream would flash through them, the events of the day blurring into one another until she was told of the loss of her parents, the one other moment besides the collapse of the old Palace wing that would be most vivid of all.

But the nightmare was different this time. Though it began the same way as before, this time, she was a grown woman, and she was alone, buried under the rubble. Through the cracks and crevices she could see red skies. Her throat burned with thirst, as if she had been under the rubble for hours, and she could feel their oppressive weight pushing down on her. Get out, get out, get out! In desperation she dug through, clawing at the debris until, at last, she was able to free herself, her fingers bleeding from the effort. When she stood upon the rubble, though, she found, to her horror, that she wasn’t anywhere familiar.

She was standing on the ruins of a place she had never seen before: broken pillars of stone and wood, statues cast down onto the ground, and the fields around her on fire. Above her, flashes of flame. Kire looked up and gasped: the great silhouettes of dragons fighting in the air filled the sky. A white-hot light shone behind her. When she turned, she saw a massive gate, so huge and bright it blinded her. She heard the angry roar of dragons rend the air, and Kire cowered, covering her head with her arms, as they swooped down upon the gate, ready to breath dragon-fire at it…

Kire woke with a gasp. She had been gripping the sheets, her body tense, breathing heavily. “Fuck…” She collapsed back onto her pillows, rubbing her face with one and with the other reaching for Ruli’s hand.

--

Ed stepped out of the gate, sword at his hip. He hadn’t been able to sleep properly, between worrying about what the strange forest and visions could mean for Amria and about his fight with Ysaryn. There was so much about the former that they couldn’t control, not until Kire or the others found some other clue or gathered more information about it, and the latter he attributed to his own stupidity. But at least he could do something about it. Would she even entertain me now? he wondered, feeling very much like the young, foolish man he had been when he had been Earnest’s age.

Wanderers

She snorted softly at his remark about the Seers. "I've stopped expecting actual clear direction from Them," she muttered, her thumb softly rubbing his. "But--I don't know, it felt like a warning to me somehow. You saw a god from your world and I saw mine. If magic is coming back..." Her voice trailed off as her tired mind wandered. Dragons. What if they came back too? And would they be happy with another deity in Amria?

She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the warmth of his hand, comfortable as she nestled against him. "I'm half-asleep," she admitted. "Will you stay?"

Wanderers

Kire smiled back when she saw Ruli inside the sitting room. She sat down on the couch next to him, then slumped back with a huff. "He's still researching when I left. I don't think he intends to sleep; he brewed another pot of coffee. We mostly just tried to anticipate which provinces would experience some magical anomaly, though it's mostly just educated guesswork."

She yawned, then leaned closer, resting her head on his shoulder. "Last thing I saw him doing was look up emblems, sketches, insignias. Said something about the woman's dress being familiar somehow. He's practically married to the desk right now." She sighed, lazily reaching for his hand, lacing her fingers with his as she fell silent. "And you? No luck remembering yet?"

Wanderers

Kire nodded, stopping when he did, all too willing to leave the task for tomorrow. “Ugh. Yeah, sure. Even if we get anything useful out of Risa, Solaralai’s appearance and behavior in Amria is uncharted territory. Until it happens again, which, safe to say, is a certainty, and we see a pattern in the phenomena, we’re flying blind anyway.” She grinned when he said he couldn’t promise cake. “I’m not that big of a glutton. And fair enough, I can talk to Risa with just Ysaryn tomorrow. I’ll go back home for a bit and check on Daryll’s progress, see if he needs a second pair of eyes looking over the manifests. I’ll be at the house after dinner.”

The moment she returned to the Tower, Daryll immediately roped her into his research which, to her dismay, involved poring over long lists of major and minor families, tracing their bloodline to any prominent mages or sorcerers, and looking up old accounts of places where magical phenomena may have happened. Most of these were recorded in stories, or in tomes that detailed major events in certain regions of the continent. Now and then Daryll would stop as if distracted, and Kire wondered if his thoughts drifted back to the woman in his vision. By dinnertime they had pinpointed areas on a map that might be potential sites for an explosion of magical energy like the forest today. These were places were supposed miracles, faery-stories, or legends allegedly took place, though given the nature of such tales, it was hard to know for sure how accurate this information was.

Daryll ate by the table, still looking at his notes, while Kire ate with Ed and the little ones. Etta was more glum today; she had been having nightmares, and last night she had woken up feverish. Precy, too, wasn’t her cheerful self, worried about her cousin. The healers at the Palace were able to care for her earlier that day, but the girls missed Elva’s care. “We’ll see her tomorrow, don’t worry,” Kire assured them. After dinner, Kire told them she’d be staying over at her house in Uvano, and Ed asked her to give word to Ysaryn he would be coming over the next day. Remembering that the elf had insisted she not say a word about the conversation they had about him, Kire only nodded in reply before going over the gate. “Ugh. My poor eyes,” Kire muttered in Taakalon as she stepped through. She’d hunt down Ysaryn first, then head over to her house, already thinking about the soft bed.

Wanderers

Kire chuckled at his comment about Envy as they made their way outside. “That’s a surprise for me, too. Narda’s mellowed out a lot more than I thought she had. I suppose the two of them have really been longing for the kind of company the other provides. It’s adorable, and that’s a word I don’t normally use on my friend.” She grinned briefly at that, then remembered their impending task and sighed. “You’d think being used to pompous nobles like Risa, and worse, that talking to just her would be less taxing. But I feel my soul rolling its eyes at the mere thought of it. I’m tempted to put it off for tomorrow.”

She glanced at Ruli. “Are you alright? You seem pretty shaken by what you’ve seen. Then again, who doesn’t get shaken by a sudden appearance of a god?” She shook her head, then paused, looking back at him. “Um.” She rubbed her nape. “I know it’s not a week yet, but can I sleep over here tonight? Just that—with this whole thing going on, I’m already anticipating a week’s worth of headaches.” She shrugged, appearing—at least in her head—nonchalant about it. “I usually get a good night’s sleep when I’m here.”

Wanderers

Kire smiled briefly at Envy's surprise regarding what she knew about their gods, then listened as he offered a counterpoint to her impression of the Goddess. He did have a point. Gods in general had complicated attitudes, their tempers a reflection of Nature's power and human caprices. "To be honest, I'm not fond of the other god, either. He might not help how he feels and who he loves, but he's a god. Surely he should have had an idea what would befall his offspring if Solaralai found out. And as for my world, if indeed the gods exist, or had existed in its ancient times, then there must have been good reason for their leaving, or magic being sealed away. The idea of a new god taking interest in Amria doesn't really fill me with glee, benevolent or not."

A conversation with Risa, though. She sighed at that. "I'll talk to her, then. Beats going back to the ruins of Ziad, at least. Should I wear my full regalia for that conversation?" she asked, grinning at Ruli, only half-joking.

Wanderers

Kire raised a brow at Ruli as she looked at him. He looked distracted, almost like the way Daryll had been right after the visions. She walked with him back to the caves, similarly wondering why the goddess would show herself to somebody who didn’t really pray to her or worship her. And why did she feel such foreboding towards the temple? Beyond associating it with the carnage Ikegai had brought upon Ziad, there seemed to be something else. The dragon and the goddess. Kire huffed. She couldn’t really blame Ruli for sinking into his own thoughts when she, too, couldn’t help but do the same.

She smiled, though, when they saw Envy, and followed him back to his chambers at his bidding. Once they had sat down, Kire turned to the Kartaian and spoke. “The protection wards might come especially handy now, given certain developments,” she began, and then she launched into a recounting of what had happened, and a description of each vision they had seen. “We’re trying to find out as much as we can about Solaralai. If there are still priests or priestesses alive somewhere, better if they have some record or scripture, that would be good. But right now, it’s anybody’s guess what this Goddess wants with my country, or if it’s just some freak magical occurrence.”

Even as she said that last, she snorted softly. “Fat chance of that, though. None of these visions are telling me she comes in peace—though, okay, none of them are overtly an attack, either. I think. See, this is why I don’t pray anymore,” she muttered, frowning.

Wanderers

Kire barely hid the look of disgust on her face when Sireen described what those who consecrated themselves to the Goddess used to do to dedicated themselves to her. Amria had its fair share of antiquated, barbaric religious rituals, outlawed by her predecessors, but she was sure that there must be some corners of Amria that such practices continued. She returned her attention to Sireen as she told Ruli where the texts could be, and what had happened to the other priestesses.

Deep beneath Ziad. The catacombs. Kire breathed in deep when Sireen said that. Should have known. She sighed, standing up, taking Sireen’s hand gently. “Thank you for answering our questions,” she said, smiling gently at the woman. “If I may ask a favor? If you remember anything else about the goddess or her—children, would you kindly let us know? I will be very grateful.”

She was quiet for a few moments after they left Sireen’s home. “So. Either hunt down the texts or the former priests and priestesses. If nobody’s speaking up about their worship of her here, that might take some effort.” Kire frowned. “There’s precious little else to go on, and I’m not even sure what in the seven hells this goddess wants with Amria. Though, so far, all she’s done is make a forest sprout up out of nowhere and give us confounding visions.” She ran a hand through her hair, huffing. “For now, I think the next course of action is to watch the inhabitants of that town closely, and to see if that weird phenomenon happens again someplace. See if we get more visions, or more ‘miracles’. Wait and see.” She didn’t look happy with what she had just said. "Would Envy know more about Solaralai's religion?"

Wanderers

Kire listened to Sireen explain what had happened to her sister. A dream of a forest, and the Goddess. That made sense in relation to what had just happened in Amria, though having an actual forest spring up was something else. A priestess of the temple… Ruli repeated her questions, and Sireen described a ritual that spited the Moon God. Sounds about right, she thought, seeing the glance Ruli threw her way.

“Did the Goddess keep many priests or priestesses? Did everyone in Ziad worship her, or had there been people who left or were cast out?” she asked. “And did you keep sacred texts, any writing of that sort?”

Wanderers

Kire listened to Ruli as she followed him down, glancing at him as she tried to remember what she could from the temple in Ziad. It looked like any other place of worship, save for the carnage the Kartaians and Ikegai had left behind. Why did it have to be the murderous goddess? Though, if the Ziadi worshipped her because of the life she had given to the city, perhaps she wasn’t entirely malevolent? And what would she want with Ruli, that she should appear to him? And why wouldn’t the goddess allow him to remember what she had said to him? Why did anything that had to do with Seers and gods make no sense?

She stopped when he asked her to, waiting politely as he spoke to the owners of the house, thinking over what they would ask them should they be allowed to do so. She followed them in, down to the back of the house where the woman named Sireen was watching the sea. When Ruli turned to her, she crouched down as he did. “Hello Sireen. Thank you for speaking with us.” She smiled. “We were wondering what stories you tell of her, what she’s like, and what kind of worship is required from her devotees. Does she ask anything of the people who follow or pray to her?”