A boat soared through the clouds and the mist, heading straight towards Still City. Ayo laid within the boat, leaning against its stern. Every once in a while his eyes would fall to the boundless lands below. He’d finally made it.
Father, Mother, brother. They must all be avenged. It could easily have been missed but for a moment Ayo’s eyes flickered like fires and a red glow shaped around the fists he didn’t realize he’d made. Ayo tried to relax then raised his palms up only to curse. They were covered in blisters.
Ayo sighed then struggled for the scroll inside the drake-skin-turned-traveler's-pouch slung across his back. He had to shake his fingers here and there to ease the newly made burns, and the promise of tempest would thunder about them with each flick.
He needed to learn some amelior magic while here. But how would he fit that in between his training and his meals and all the merriment he’d encounter with the new friends he’d make?
‘Us Zaven’s were never meant for order’, Ayo’s father’s words came to him and he couldn’t help but smile. Then he remembered the craters now indented where House Zaven’s stronghold used to be and his fists shaped once again, the heat too, but even wilder this time. More blistering.
The scroll was his father’s. How his father had made it, Ayo didn’t want to know. All Ayo knew was his father had been beaten before writing it, and likely slaughtered after. The parchment still had his blood.
There was a shape on it that looked to be a house banner. It was painted in his father's blood with jagged lines here and there where his father must have struggled keeping steady. Ayo could imagine the scene.
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Ever since Ayo left what used to be home he’d traveled alone. A whole year. He’d seen enough to know how insignificant the ones who brought House Zaven to ruin must have thought it to be.
In all his travels he’d searched for the sigil and never came close to finding it.
Ayo’s father was a peak stage Sage, who’d traveled the entirety of Anglae before settling down. If this was done by enemies of House Zaven they'd sooner be arcane than weak.
The daoists that destroyed Ayo’s home were powerful. Ayo knew he would be spitting on his father’s grave if he were to seek them out as he was. And so here he was.
A bright amber light pierced through the clouds. Ayo ran to the mast and leaned over the ship's head. Far below a giant radiant sign beaconed atop a gate.
It was Cammard’s Waymaker, something daoist that considered a city home would bind to. They would add some of their aether to the Waymaker, causing it to shine brighter. Through their divine sense it could help them find their way back.
Ayo had seen some before on his way to Cammard. Each was barely lit, but this blazed like gold and sunlight.
Ayo looked more broadly now and almost reeled back in shock. The city was vast, almost with no end spanning left, right, and back. It had tall towers, statues the size of mountains, and was as dense as thickets all the while.
The streets were winding and haphazard the more you went east, while to the west you saw the buildings rise until some contested giants. They’d morph into mountain ranges then shy away into hills and forests. Cammard had everything.
Ayo guessed it would take him hours to fly its skies. If it took his father’s flying boat that long, then it’d likely take him days on foot.
With the district's size, Ayo couldn't be certain he'd be allowed to travel the air. He willed the boat downwards. It was time to enter Cammard.
Though it was the center of all of Anglae, Ayo knew little of Cammard. To a daoist that could be deadly. He’d need help just finding his future House or Academy. Luckily, he knew just the guy.