*Weekly updates* "There are no leashes now, no bindings," she says, her voice a dark lullaby in the flickering candlelight, "and it is their sacrifice that gave us this. Nothing can ever repay it. No one can ever take it from us. So now, in this hal...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
She moves like a wave through southern Keesark into Halften. And as she goes, as she rolls, the sea behind her grows larger.
The bag from the depths stays next to her, in a pouch on the flank of her pale horse, and she never opens it; though Lei Chaudri sometimes thinks he sees it move. But maybe that is the bright sun and the shadows playing tricks, or just a mirage from the aching in his head. It aches now quite often.
They are moving slowly, steadily, along a path the Paragon had once walked before. Before, her journey was shared by only one companion, a companion of solace, who showed her tricks and wove stories in the nighttime sky. Back then he let her live in lives of another time and reality, so she could escape the one she was in.
Now, there is only one story in this ascent.
This story sharpens, grows as they ride on. Dark wings fill it out with tidings of strange occurrences in Quersido, of the walls creeping up along the city outskirts, and an equal but opposite tide to Allayria's pull flows into the turned city from all corners of the kingdoms. A trickle of that tide even tries to sneak past Allayria in the dark one night... but it fails.
But this does not worry her too much; Ben always had friends in many places and for them to all now gather in one spot for her is... rather kind of them.
She smiles at this, alone, and it is an expression nearly as dark as the night that surrounds her, no starlight on the horizon. She stares into it, through it, and muses that all she will ask of them now, even as her own horde moves, is a little more patience.
For there is one piece left on this board that she must deal with before she moves in on the king piece. One last piece to fall.
She turns to the creature waiting, behind her, only its pale leering mask visible in the night.
It sets to work.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Bear's Spear is exactly how she remembers: tall, flat, and hewn in dark stone and steel; a cold place, stark and unyielding. But inside it this time, creeping along its halls, are vermin, rats in human flesh.
She dismounts from her horse, the pale tendrils of dawn light glinting low on her crimson armor and Marshal Marron approaches. She had come with support from Solveigard City, sent by its queen.
