The Will [on hold]

5000s - Episode 5

5000

They crested a hill, and the city was laid wide and bright before them, like the Glorious world’s first sunrise. Like an open, unread tome.

“So,” Brontus uttered, edging his way past Eldor, who had somehow ended up at the forefront of the company, “this is Daerion.”

He still had his arm about Lincia’s shoulder, as he had throughout much of the journey, if not all the while. His forearm to her felt like deadweight. It had been a long journey. Having left just past daybreak, they now arrived well after noon.

The hour of day was perfect to illuminate the vista spread before them. The sun smiled down on the city’s high spires and smooth marble surfaces as if on its own children. Even the shadows that it cast seemed somehow full of light. The city was sumptuous, regal, its every building borderline palatial—and yet it was modest. As if by some impossible magic, it was modest, no less so than the small neighboring village from which this company had just come.

This company comprised Eldor and Garendor, Lincia and Brontus, and a fraction of the army of Zoll Zorans. The bulk of the army remained at the Dorothan shore.

Those soldiers who had come were now faced with a sight much unlike anything they’d ever dreamt. The jet, onyx, and iron of Zoll Zora were here recast all in lustrous white, silver, and gold. Eldor alone felt that he mayhap had dreamt this vision once before. But that dream was a far distant one, suppressed by years of darkness in the shadow of the king. He smiled deeply now to see that vision, that dream, reawakened, and this time rendered a reality.

Daerion was of no interest to Lincia. It was not any different from her village after all, not in any meaningful way. She rather fixed her eyes on Eldor—looking slightly behind her and over her shoulder, over the knuckles of Brontus’s hand, which there lay—and saw his ebon eyes afire with new light. The same firelight that she could feel kindling in hers whenever she gazed upon him.

Close near Eldor’s side, Claron stood breathless and wordless, his own walnut eyes alight with a similar fire. The walnuts roasted in the fire and cracked beneath the beautiful, blinding sight.

A pool of unshed tears welled in the eyes of pale, beautiful Osus.

None of them dared breathe a word, not just yet. But their eyes were silently eloquent, and just as legible as open tomes. The unread story illustrated in the city sprawled before them was now mirrored in a multitude of wide, Zoll Zoran eyes.

Not all of their eyes, though, were affected in this way.

Garendor for one looked on with eyes unfazed. A quick crack may have formed in the sheet of blue ice, but if ever there, it quickly froze over.

He drew up abreast of Lincia—obstructing her view of Eldor—and scanned the land with his refrozen glare. He smirked, almost scowled. “I suppose everyone is in charge here as well?”

“I am sure,” she affirmed, the sardonic punch sailing straight over her head.

“I will take you to my uncle’s house,” Brontus announced to the immobile crowd behind him, beginning promptly down the hillside.

The others followed as he led them away from the direction of the shimmering city center, his path hugging the Glorian shoreline. The men descended the shallow grassy hill and soon found themselves walking along a long beach. It was difficult, for them, to tell just where the hill had ended and the beach begun—everything here melted into itself, the Glorious sun overhead suffusing everything with otherworldly mystery and light.

The sands of the Daerian coast were much softer and finer than those upon the pebbled beach of Doroth. Beneath the foreigners’ shod feet, these sands swelled and sank, sifting endlessly into each other, undulating as if to the rhythm of the waves.