Suraiya watched Selucia walk with a mix of consternation, fear, and overriding confusion. It had been over three hours since their convoy had been taken captive, and even after they had been reunited with the rest of their people there had been little to no change in the pace the Elyseans set. Suraiya had expected some measure of caution or wariness from the Desolation natives, but instead they appeared to prefer speed to anything else, and answered her concerns about the blightspawn with polite indifference at best, and hostile dismissal at worst.
The latter was the most common, she’d found.
The Princess had learned quickly that Selucia was the best person to stay near after she’d attempted to wander off and interrogate a different one of their captors in the vain hopes of wheedling some measure of knowledge out of them. She could recall it vividly, like a bad memory of personal clumsiness she wished she could erase.
> Valour had cantered some small distance away from Selucia toward the more interior parts of their new convoy arrangement, with the Stormharrow natives sequestered between a surrounding perimeter of Elyseans twice their number.
>
> The few attempts at resistance or tries for freedom had resulted in a thrashing that had ensured the souls attempting it would not make the same mistake twice. It had been all Suraiya could do to convince the Elyseans — specifically Selucia, who seemed to lead them — to spare their lives.
>
> She had exchanged firm nods and reassuring smiles with those who had met her eyes when she ventured Valour into the convoy’s ranks, and though few returned more than a grim stare or look of worry; she did see straighter backs and firmer footsteps among those that received her attention. Her perceived lack of concern was, in some measure, enough to embolden their spirits.
>
> For the moment.
>
> When Valour finally crossed the distance to her target location, Suraiya had guided the courser up beside an Elysean striding across the desiccated earth with an almost jovial, loping stride. He was attired in the same manner as the rest of them, with white linen almost reminiscent of bandages obscuring every inch of his visible skin, a scarf wound tightly over his face and head to leave only his hair and eyes visible, and an obfuscating black-brown cloak that covered his body with only his arms, legs, and head visible.
>
> He carried three short spears and a chitinous buckler as armament, with a curved shortbow and quiver for good measure. She wondered momentarily if he too possessed a sheathed scimitar on his hip, as she had seen so many of the others carrying in the infrequent moments their cloaks had been brushed back or tousled by the stop-and-start dry breeze.
>
> “Hello.” She had greeted him in her most charming voice after properly entering his proximity atop Valour. “Might I ask for a moment of your time, Ser?”
>
> Suraiya had injected every ounce of charisma and princess charm she possessed.
>
> His response had been less than optimal.
>
> “I have little enough time for you Godsworn bastards without being nattered at by a propped up doll, girl.” The warrior had replied in a voice so venomous it had made her reel back as if he’d actually slapped her. “Take your untempered backside away from me before I decide to see if your pale peach of a backside turns red or blue when beaten.”
>
> Suraiya had opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again… and then to her shame, she’d chosen discretion over valour and had promptly heeled Valour away and back towards Selucia. If she had returned to the woman’s proximity a little faster than she’d left, and closer than she had originally been, that was simply something the princess had chosen to poignantly not notice.
>
> Selucia had of course laughed at her return, and addressed her with the same mirth colouring her regal voice. “I take it Voranis had no interest in enlightening you as to what our purpose is?”
>
> “How did—?” Suraiya had sighed and given up before even finishing the question. “No he did not. He was quite… direct about the consequence of continuing to disturb him.”
>
> “I’d tell you not to take it personally, your highness, but unfortunately I would be lying.” Selucia had shrugged at her in a disconcertingly casual manner. “For all that you may not understand or even comprehend, the reality is that you are as much the enemy as the rest of your gods-licking sycophants.”
>
> “I cannot correct some perceived wrong if I do not even know the charge!” She had retorted with a flare of frustration and perhaps some residual anger from the embarrassing conversation with Voranis.
>
> “Perhaps not,” Selucia had conceded, “but are thieves not condemned regardless of whether or not they knew that theft was illegal? Are traitors not hanged regardless of their motivations for the treason? You may plead ignorance, Suraiya Karelian, but ignorance does not exonerate a criminal in your homeland — and it does not exonerate one here, either.”
>
> Suraiya had not been able to formulate a response to that, and the conversation had ended there.
So they continued on, and what few attacks by belligerent blightbeasts that emerged were crushed by the hardened warriors that had taken their convoy captive. Suraiya had taken to watching Selucia as time went on partially because the landscape around them — even with the occasional hill or noxious pond thrown in to ‘spice’ things up — was uninspiring at best and existentially terrifying at worst, reminding her of how far and out of reach they were from any chance of rescue.
Watching Selucia was, by comparison, downright cathartic.
A perplexing desire to try to bridge the cavernous divide between her and the strange, powerful woman had gripped Suraiya ceaselessly despite her best attempts to shake it. Since the moment they’d first been corralled and led off she’d developed a growing fascination for how easily Selucia controlled the Elyseans around her, and how respectfully deferential they were to her every word.
The woman had only to offer a glance or alter her tone and it was the same effect as a general bellowing at the top of his lungs, or a king lavishing riches and praise upon a victorious knight after a tourney. Selucia was the fulcrum around which the entire group revolved. Even Titus — who Suraiya had noticed refused to do more than glare at her and the rest of her people like they had kicked his hound — deferred to Selucia, though it was almost akin to a grudging sort of acceptance.
Not unlike the interactions between family members.
It was an observation she’d filed away for later review.
No matter how much Suraiya observed Selucia and her interactions however, there was an air of enigmatic mystery to the woman that no amount of passive observation — even after being trained in it for the royal court — could properly pierce. It hung over Selucia thicker than the cloak that obfuscated her body, and with greater saturation than the damnable heat of the accursed blightlands that they travelled through.
As much to distract herself as to see if their recent misadventures had netted her further improvements, Suraiya pulled up her personal information on a whim.
Name: Suraiya Vasilia Augusta Tollarius Karelian
Temper: Untempered (Purified Novitiate)
Core: Unaspected Core (Ignition Stage)
Level: 24 | Race: Human (C) | Origin: Highborn (E) | Gender: Female | Zodiac: Lion (R)
Health: 250 | Mana: 136 | Stamina: 130
STR: 43 (47) | AGI: 31 | DEX: 31 | VIT: 25 | END: 35 | INT: 34 | PER: 22 (24) | WIL: 34 | CHA: 55
Mind Skills: Analyse (C) 23 | Linguistics (UC) 18 | Political Intrigue (R) 22 | Persuasion (UC) 22 | Investigation (UC) 19 | Strong Mind (UC) 24 | Tactician (R) 15 | Leadership (R) 22
Body Skills: Pain Tolerance (UC) 23 | Breath Control (UC) 28 | Greatsword Mastery (C) 29 | Running (C) 28 | Equestrian (UC) 32 | Mounted Combat (R) 22 | Dodge (C) 33 | Durable (UC) 21 | Fire Resistance (UC) 12 | Ice Resistance (UC) 9 | Lightning Resistance (UC) 8 | Poison Resistance (R) 12
Spirit Skills: Mana Channelling (UC) 23 | Inspiring Presence (R) 21 | Empathic Link (E) 21 | Radiant Strike (R) 20 | Sacred Flame (R) 23
Traits: Royal Scion (E) | Fast Learner (E) | Blightbane (R)
Titles: Princess (E) | Knight (R) | Blight Hunter (R)
Languages: Common
34% to Level 25
You have 2 Skill Points Available!
You have 1 Skill Upgrade Point Available!
Her time in the Desolation had been, if nothing else, incredible for her advancement. Between the bonus strength from her new Blightbane Trait and Blight Hunter Title, and the new levels across her skills as well as the three attribute points she invested in vitality, Suraiya was far stronger than she’d been when she’d departed Stormharrow. The silly girl in silks and a crown had been left behind to die under the claws of Skarnids days ago. Only the warrior-princess of Stormharrow remained.
Well, for as much as that was worth at any rate. She dismissed the data at the same time as her eyes swept the forces surrounding her and her people, and her momentarily buoyed spirit dampened once more as readily as if she had been thrown under one of those massive, oppressive-looking cloaks covering each of the Elyseans. She was fairly certain she’d have cooked if she’d been forced to wear one.
An idea for discourse occurred to her in that instant, and she pounced on it.
“Selucia, may I ask you a question?” Suraiya said while heeling Valour forward.
“I don’t see why not.” The Elysean woman replied accommodatingly.
“The cloaks you all wear seem rather heavily stitched for the land you travel. I already know you all to be far more capable than my own retinue, but I must confess to some level of bewilderment. Are you not near to melting beneath those layers?”
Selucia had turned to look at her when she’d started speaking, and by time Suraiya stopped the Elysean woman had fixed a very considering look on her.
“My my princess. You are sharp. What a fantastic way of disarming me.”
“I was not—!”
“Very well.” Selucia cut in as if Suraiya had not spoken. “I will play your game. To answer your question: no, the cloaks are neither oppressive nor restrictive. They are stitched with runic choirs that repel the heat, maintain a stable interior temperature, and allow for greater blending in with the landscape. It is why even the scouts that weren’t working for us never found those we sent to observe you.”
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Political Intrigue is now Level 23!
“I see…” Suraiya said with genuine surprise at the wealth of offered knowledge. “And the, ah, bandages?” She ventured hopefully.
“Tch. You’re too greedy, Suraiya. Too greedy by half…” Despite her words Selucia’s tone was amused, and perhaps even just a little fond. “The wraps are called sarvellum. They protect us from the contagion and purify our bodies of its clinging taint.”
“The what?!” Suraiya asked with sudden and genuine alarm.
“You have not noticed your poison resistance gradually increasing?” Selucia asked in an amused tone. “It is because of these lands. Absolum and Eidania took advantage of things to corrode Elysea following the fall.” Selucia spread her arms and Suraiya could hear the sarcasm in her voice when she continued, though it was spoken without overt malice. “Witness the glory of your gods, princess. Their great work stretches all around you, in blatant defiance of all of Solarius’ supposed teachings of righteousness and beatific protection.”
Suraiya stared around them with a hollow feeling in her gut. “That… that can’t be true, surely. I know you have queer ideas about the gods, Selucia, but this… Everyone knows the Desolation was caused by the—”
“Elyseans?” Selucia asked with mirthless laughter. “Saying ‘everyone knows’ is no different to saying ‘the lies we are fed’, princess. You have lived under the thumb and thrall of the Grand Ascendancy all of your life, and yet somehow you have managed to completely miss the rot at the core of its foundation.”
Suraiya licked her lips at the disdain in Selucia’s voice. “There are always a few rotten—”
“Solarius is a lying piece of shit, Suraiya.” Selucia cut in flatly. “Your vaunted king of kings stole that title from the true one, much like he stole the narrative of the Prime Material. I do not blame you, per se, for your utter lack of understanding… you are a victim of their dogmatic influence perhaps more than many others, given your—” she sighed abruptly and shook her head.
“Given my what?” Suraiya prodded immediately with an interrogative tone.
“It does not matter right now,” Selucia said with a dismissive wave. “All will be revealed to you in time, and there are some things that are not my place to unveil. Fear not. You’ll have your chance to rail against the injustice of it all in short order. We are getting close.”
“I…” Suraiya sighed and gave up the argument before she began. Selucia was not a woman easily budged, she knew, and if she was under orders to obfuscate then it was very likely she’d be as likely to violate the command as Ser Gilbert.
A pang of deep concern and fear struck her at the thought of her bodyguard, and shame flushed her cheeks a dark red. She had been so caught up in Selucia that she had barely spared a thought for her valiant protector, spirited away like so much refuse by the mysterious ‘Nicoli’ Selucia had refused to elaborate on.
The man had to be Fourth Temper, but the implications of that were…
Suraiya shook her head. Ser Gilbert would be okay. The man was built of adamantite.
Instead she focused again on her surroundings and the announcement that they were ‘close’.
“I see nothing but more accursed blight for miles. The land here is flat enough that I can see to the horizon. Unless your mysterious Sanctuary is underground somehow, I don’t see how we could be any closer now than we were three hours past.”
“Underground? You have some odd notions, Suraiya.” Selucia replied with amusement.
“My notions are sound, thank you.” Suraiya replied with a habitual sniff of regal disapproval. “I may be out of my element in this hellscape, but I’ll have you know that I am quite capable of seeing a settlement on a flat plane, and there is nothing here!”
“Patience, princess.” Selucia said with the same amused tone. “You’ll see soon.”
Suraiya held her tongue at the other woman’s words, but her mind raced. The only logical alternative to a settlement on the Desolation’s craggy expanse would be some sort of underground safe haven, or far less likely one of the legendary soaring cities rumoured to exist through the Realmgates. Suraiya had never had reason or permission to venture to the other Realms, especially without a single Tempering to her name; but she had heard stories.
Supposedly there were entire cities in Aevum or Hellistrom that soared through the clouds on pieces of earth torn up by the power of ancient mages, but she found it unlikely no matter what she’d been told by supposed first-hand sources. The other Realms were already miniscule compared to the Prime Material, and their only real purpose was to delve into the myriad dungeons and World Shards that appeared in their domains.
Even then it was often safer, and far less expensive to simply partake in one of the many Dungeons that formed in the Prime Material. Travelling the Realms was made out to be glamorous, but in truth it was little more than an exercise in thrill-seeking.
The only known exceptions to such were the Faewyld, the Void, and of course the Highest. Mortals were not meant to enter such places, and even the Faewyld — the most accessible of the three Higher Realms — was at best only mostly guaranteed to kill you.
If its denizens and creatures didn’t drive you mad or enslave you first.
Even thinking about visiting any of the Realms in too large of a group was reckless bordering on suicidal, however, and so she ruled out the idea of a Realmgate housing the Sanctuary that Selucia had spoken of. It was well-documented that taking too many souls through a Realmgate attracted… unwanted attention. Nightmare attention. The kind that kept little princesses up at all hours of the night shivering in remembered terror.
She bit her lip at the thought, and divested herself of the images that arose.
Her eyes swept across the Desolation once more, and Suraiya tightened her armoured hands on the reins of her horse.
Some things were best left unknown.
“It’s time, Princess.”
Selucia’s voice snapped Suraiya from her thoughts and she looked down to where the veiled woman peered up at her with amused green eyes. All around them calls for a halt and shouts for the captured convoy to stop were passed by cloaked Elyseans, and for a single panicked moment Suraiya thought she was about to witness a mass execution — then shook her head. There was no reason for their captors to have taken them miles out of their way at a punishing pace, just to kill them in a flatter stretch of blight. It was nonsensical.
“What is to happen now?” Suraiya asked carefully while watching her people being efficiently and at times not-so-gently corralled into rows of what looked like four people abreast in a column behind her, with its body arcing out to the right as if to give everyone along its length a clear view.
“Now we begin showing you how woefully deceived you truly were.”
Suraiya turned back to Selucia when she spoke, but the woman was already turning away and walking forward. The princess had all but clicked her tongue for Valour to follow when a spear sliced the air right in front of her face. She followed it down to a veiled figure who stared up at her with hard grey eyes. A clear warning not to move.
Disquiet and unease rippled through the column, but even her Knights had long since learned to hold their tongues lest they suffer for the lack of discipline. She had seen more than one of them and several adventurers suffering the very fate Voranis had threatened her with, men and women alike. It was… galling to think of how readily they’d been bested, captured, and led into whatever it was that Selucia was about to show them.
“People of Stormharrow!” Selucia’s voice called from ahead in an orating tone that captured attention immediately. “You have lived lives of ignorance, bowed down by the lies of false gods and the deceptions of those that would see you pinned and helpless under their polished heels. You have been downtrodden, brow-beaten, and taught to accept a defeat you never knew you suffered.”
Suraiya listened intently while the other woman spoke, her armoured hands tight on the reins.
“Your entire existence has been a plaything for fickle lifeforms that name themselves deities, and suck your lives dry of joy for their own demented amusement. Even now you think my words are madness, for surely no mere blighter could know the true glory of the gods!” Selucia’s derision was blatant in her tone and even when she continued, some remnant of it clung on. “Yet I stand here now and I say to you truly: I am a daughter of heroes. I am a child of royalty more ancient than any bloodline you know. I am Selucia Veritas Lirnea Fortuna Tollarius, a Patrician of Elysea; and I welcome you, children of the Mantle, to Sanctuary!”
Suraiya’s eyes widened and then narrowed at the name Selucia offered.
The same name she bore by right of blood.
There was no time to contemplate further on the matter, for the moment she’d finished speaking Selucia had turned and extended her hand; and now Suraiya saw that she held something within it. It shone with blue light and before there was time to do more than attempt an analysis, a flash of magic surged outward from the air within which Selucia held the item.
Suraiya shielded her eyes instinctively when light blossomed across her vision and, when it ended a moment later, she lowered her armoured limb to a scene that set her eyes wide and dropped her jaw.
Where before there had been endless blight and dead landscape, now instead there were looming mountains with peaks that daggered hundreds of metres upward toward the heavens, each one positioned in a colossal circular formation. They stood before one such giant, and at its base was life. Grass. Trees. Flowers. Suraiya stared with mounting shock and disbelief at what appeared to be a whole new world opening up in front of her, where before there had been only death and abandoned Desolation.
Shouts of alarm, cries of shock, and expressions of wonder rippled over the convoy while they beheld the miracle that had erupted into life before their eyes.
The princess lowered her gaze to Selucia when she returned, and saw that the headscarf covering her had finally been removed. Beneath it stood a shock of long, elegant red hair left to fall in waves across her cloaked shoulders, and a warm smile on a pale face dusted with a light smattering of freckles. “Come cousin,” Selucia said with a twinkle of amusement in her emerald gaze, “let’s take you inside.”
“I—” Suraiya swallowed and looked past Selucia — her cousin?! — toward where the vanguard of the Elyseans were entering a door that had appeared at the foot of the mountain, easily large enough to fit them ten abreast and with ample space for even a high wagon to trundle through easily.
She wondered at why their formation was compressed so heavily before realising that the Elyseans stepping inside were not travelling all the way through, but instead taking up position along the edges of the passage and facing inward.
They were not taking any chances with her people.
Suraiya had only a moment to decide before she threw all caution to the wind and heeled Valour forward, with Selucia joining her to lightly take the horse’s bridle and help guide him forward. Once again Valour seemed perfectly content, and Suraiya was forced to wonder once more what manner of strange Skill Selucia must have possessed to so easily calm her trained warhorse.
“The tunnel is but the appetiser,” the redhead said conversationally as they entered the shadowed entrance of the opening, “and little more than an access point. All the lies you have been told, all the falsehoods you have been fed… all of it will be dispelled, just as we dispelled them from the many who now stand among our ranks.”
Suraiya turned at that and looked at the Elyseans that warded the passage, and for the first time she wondered just who they truly were beneath their veils.
“Centuries turned to millennia, and yet the Grand Ascendancy never let go of its fear of this land. We had thought they might launch an attack, but none was ever forthcoming. So we explored. We dared to venture out of our final haven, and what did we meet do you think?”
“Skarnids and mutants?” Suraiya asked distractedly.
“Tch. Some.” Selucia conceded. “But more than that we found people. Abandoned, cast away, decrepit. Here a Knight that had said the wrong thing to a sour Priest, there a weaver whose only crime had been refusing to bed an Anointed soldier, and even children whose only sin had been to be born within the wrong place during a staged ‘purification of heresy’.”
Suraiya’s attention turned completely to Selucia at last, and she listened attentively.
“We gave them succour, we healed them, cured them of the Desolation’s infections, and guided them here. All of them chose to stay, and in so doing dedicated themselves to our ideals. Our beliefs. Our pursuit of what was stolen from us. Our desire to uphold the Mantle.”
Suraiya opened her mouth to ask questions, but a sudden end to the passage killed the words in her throat. Her eyes widened when they passed suddenly out from under a shaded overhang and onto a large granite shelf overlooking a massive basin shielded behind the mass of the colossal mountains ringing its borders.
It was beautiful.
Crystal clear blue-green water ran along streams and rivers sourced from an immense waterfall to the far eastern end of the valley, its flow a roaring deluge whose source Suraiya could not comprehend. There were no inland rivers or seas in the Desolation, and yet the waterfall poured out liquid unabated and without relent with all the force of a wild jungle cascade.
Trees filled a small forest beneath the waterfall, and Suraiya trailed her eyes across their canopies to the centre of the valley, where the true Sanctuary was revealed to her. It was a sprawling city of white marble and artfully sculpted stone, built in an outward flowing pattern that aligned each thoroughfare with one of the many rivers sneaking through its design. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of people walked its streets and even at a distance Suraiya could make out that fact that the city was vibrantly alive.
At the northernmost point of the city and built into the bedrock of the largest mountain rested a citadel that looked out over the valley like a guardian construct, its massive walls and myriad towers defended behind sturdy battlements and flat-top-tower-mounted siege weapons whose design she could scarcely comprehend. Given their apparent size even from a distance, Suraiya reasoned they must have been massive.
The most impressive part of the entire construction was neither its three-row-deep walls nor the beautiful architecture of steps and marble pathways leading up from its single access route toward the beautiful hollows of the castle interior. In fact it was nothing to do with the beatific and mind-bending beauty of the constructed castle, nor the massive city that flowed out from its protective walls.
Instead what captured Suraiya’s notice were the radiant spires of what looked to be pure metal rising from various places throughout the city. From a distance they looked miniscule, yet to be visible at all they must have been at least ten metres high or more. Each one appeared to be topped by platinum, and upon careful examination she noticed they were placed everywhere within the valley. She even spotted several of their rounded tops peeking out of the forest.
Her eyes drifted southward through the valley across the bountiful farmland while scouting the spires, then to the cleared fields to the east where she saw what looked like regimented ranks of people — soldiers? — and then southward again to peer directly down toward the distant pathway some sixty metres below their present position. It nearly gave her vertigo to look at it.
The sheer scale of the valley was… incredible. The city alone must have been at least five kilometres from the citadel’s gates to its own protective walls, which themselves looked large enough to brush close to twenty metres high.
On a guess, she estimated that they might have been able to fit the whole population of Stormharrow itself into the city with plenty of room to spare, and there were easily hundreds of thousands of people in the capital city of her homeland.
“How is this possible?” She asked with a tone of wonder.
“Everything will be revealed soon,” Selucia promised while smiling at her in a self-satisfied manner. “For now though, come. The Regent awaits, and I have learned not to stall them from what they want.”
“Who is this Regent you keep speaking of?” Suraiya asked while Selucia began leading Valour — and her by extension — down the long and winding path toward the valley floor.
“The Regent has many names,” Selucia said with a mischievous tone that hinted at her knowing exactly how annoying the line was, “but there is one that we reserve for them alone.”
The redhead looked back at her, and this time her smile was… sly.
“Calamity.”