>>6150074“Your grand aspirations will turn to dust in your hands, and leave you with nothing,” she continues, “You will be granted a new form, yes, but it will be a form better suiting your true nature. Perhaps you think you know what this will be. You are wrong, Bleddyn the Wolf. You will be destroyed, as men such as you always are, and nothing will be left of you.
“Even your goddess will be forgotten,” the priestess hisses, “buried deep to slumber beneath the soil for one hundred generations.”
And then you leave, but not before see the terror in Bleddyn’s eyes. He casts his gaze up towards the sky in search of the moon, that he might ask for forgiveness, but it is futile. The moon has turned its face away from him. For him, there is only the Eclipse.
-
You jolt back with a shudder, pulling your hand away from the statue. A sickly feeling churns in the base of your stomach, but a few deep breathes help to settle your nerves. The Lesson has left you shaken, but also with a faint sense of… disappointment. It’s the feeling of a story left without an ending, the true meaning of the tale left in obscurity. You’re missing something, but what?
[Solitude Attunement increased by 1]
A dull thud rings out as Cato drops down into the pit beside you. “Are you okay?” he asks, brushing loose dust from his uniform, “You were lost in thought.”
“This statue destroyed the last set of people who worshipped it,” you answer bluntly, still shaking off the last remnants of your nausea. Cato stares at you in disbelief, and you feel a sudden pang of pity for the earnest young man. He wouldn’t understand, no matter how you tried to explain it to him. He may have plumbed the depths of the Demesne like you, but his Lessons are not like yours. His come from a purer place, an orderly world laid out in holy scriptures. Yours are…
Different.
“I think we should get you out of here,” he says, touching you lightly on the arm. You’re not sure if he means out of the pit, the dig site, or the Silvera territories as a whole.
-
Not entirely willingly, you let Cato lead you back out from the pit and back towards your impromptu base in the church. Misty buzzes around you like a fly, cooing with questions and vague suggestions of concern, but you do your best to ignore her. Despite Cato treating you like a cripple, you can walk perfectly fine by yourself. You stumble only once, when you glance back towards the statue. Just for a moment, the sunlight pouring down upon the white stone makes it seem as if her hands are soaked with blood. The illusion is gone a moment later as a cloud passes across the sky, dampening the red-gold light and washing the blood away.
[2]
