>>6110177# # # # # #
Master leaves you four by next morning. You sit on your horse, waving your arm as you keep watching him ride off to the left at a crossroad, directed towards the heart of the Holy Land.
You hope you can see him again.
Maybe the next time you do, you will be getting ready for your Trial of Fire.
Master disappears behind a line of cypresses, and your stomach feels heavier all of a sudden.
You are on your own once again.
The three girls surrounding you wait for your signal to leave. The part of your heart that’s stuck on your sixteenth birthday would make camp here and cry and beg and plead and pray for Master to come back.
The part of your heart that’s been through the Night Well spurns you forward.
You raise your other arm.
“We’ll proceed down the Aurelian Road towards the sea, and do some training in the meantime. As—”
You stop. Something makes you look up, towards the sky, patched with tall white clouds, like castles abandoned in a waveless sea.
And from there, bulging out of one of the clouds, in the distance, miles and miles and miles away, a large black sphere appears from the cloud banks, pushing them off its path as they trail behind it like foam off a towering whale. The sun kisses the polished surface, its own light now blinding bright, so much you have to cover your eyes from the spectacle. It looks just like Master’s weapon, an immense building made of blindglass, impenetrable and formidable. And yet, it shows a large crack right in the middle, the reminder of the night when Saint Bragia was killed and the very first confrontation between the Adversary and the Sun-Birther.
This is Her abode.
It’s the first time you have seen it.
You can faintly spot the rails, the courts, the corridors and walkways on the sphere — they would reach higher than the towers of the Echorian, and yet they do not look taller than a nail’s width from here.
Instinctively, you raise your hand, the three fingers in the middle extended.
Then an even larger bank of clouds comes forward to hide Ansàrra’s floating palace from view. Your heart beats hard against your ribcage.
“I think it’s a good omen,” Soralisa muses.
“Let’s hope so,” you agree, turning the horse towards the south, the sea, and your destiny.
>The next thing to focus on for the next three days, until you reach the Sea, will be your combat style...>You'll keep being the Vanguard, but Salicera will stay close to you, forming two pairs with the others.>You'll let Salicera take the head position, while you stay right behind her to better check on Soralisa and Rubida>You'll focus on a different tactic this time, spending the next three days focusing on Sanctions. This is Heathen lands, after all.>Or maybe... [Write In/Suggestion]I really enjoyed writing that final scene. I hope I can come back to a more regular updating style after this last week. Thanks for playing. 