>>6088847Riberia momentarily blushes at being called young. Under the care of Ansàrra it has been fifty six years since she has picked up the mantle and walked through the Trial of Fire, but her face is just as youthful as the first day. Her ligaments just as quick. Her muscles just as springy.
Her heart is the one that’s been aching more and more.
For this day. For this blessed day. It thumps and roars in her ears as she approaches the old man. Since the last time she has seen him, two more lines adorn his forehead — numbering twelve. His eyes are a burnt shade over his face, two cavities long-since forgotten. His pale skin covered in long flowing bandages, etched with holy words and commandments, shining gilded with the blood of the Sun-Birther.
The Blessed Blind holds out a shivering hand. With every step, Riberia comes closer and closer to fulfilling her destiny.
“We found it in a deep cave on the border to the Kìtum,” she explains, eager to boast of the trial she and her fellow seekers had to suffer. “Strange old things wrangle the stalagmites in the bowels of the earth. We had to pass through them, and through freezing waters where light has never been known, to reach the nethermost hall where the wyrm slept.” With a trembling hand, she reaches for a small pouch to her side, pulling out a tiny white thing — a circlet of ivory, banded in bent and misshapen gold. “The beast used it to fill a hole in its belly. We had to pry it out of the wyrm’s corpse.”
“Ah, splendid,” the man chuckles. “A fitting end for such a heretical piece of artwork, don’t you think? And there it may have slept, were it not for the wisdom of the Sun-Birther.”
“Indeed,” Riberia now grins, holding up the engraved cameo. “But that time is now past. This is the final one. The very last one. The quest is over.”
“Ah— over… it’s over…” his fingers tremble against the etched lines on his forehead, rubbing all the way from one side to the other, lingering over the twelfth and final one. “Hand it over, questing Knight. Hand it over!”
[cont.]
