Katerin is tugged into a brewing maelstrom of chaos in her home city of Hearth-Home, while she battles a foe in her own thoughts.
Mordai has acquired a powerful artifact, and will stop at nothing to get what he wants and get out alive.
Another thr...
"No, dear. I'm just a bit distressed for you. It's been nearly four hours, and you haven't moved, save to gather more books about yourself."
Katerin blinked and looked where she sat on the floor. She had stacks of books surrounding her, all of them with a scribbled parchment note upon them, to denote their subjects of interest. "I—"
"We have tables and chairs." The woman puffed on her pipe once more.
"Too many people," Katerin told her, with a shy smile.
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Fykes walked into the temple and felt instant relief. It was a pleasant place. Clean, friendly, and though it was larger by far than most of the temple he was familiar with, it held that same quiet feeling. He had never been the most religious man, and despite his wandering, temples always offered him the ability to take a breath, and let whatever weighted him down flee, for a moment. He had never chosen a single god, preferring instead to respect all of them.
He walked across the wide open tiled floor, and made his way for a smaller, unmarked temple. These were the places that people like him went to pray. There was no singular deity in which he wished to bother, but if ever there was a time to pray, or a people to pray for, he had a feeling it was here and now.
Lugaria had warned him of Katerin's feelings over this place, and her inability to leave it well enough alone. But Fykes was proud of her decision to come here. She had never been selfish, but this would wear her down. And still she faced it. As he kneeled on a soft cushion, and glanced up to the alter that was bare of an idol, he wondered if she faced it because she felt responsible, or because she wanted to fix it. He would bet on a mixture of both. So he would pray for her, too.
And Brazen. He exhaled a shaky breath as Brazen entered his thoughts. His return was a miracle, and from the outside, one might think that he had always been human. He so easily fit in and had so easily adjusted.
But Fykes knew just from watching that such nonsense was hardly true. Brazen took every choice before him with worry, as if choosing the wrong one could be catastrophic. He was naïve, but he had never learned as a child does about all the things the living take for granted. His caution was no sin, nor some crime. But he had been given a chance at life only to thrust himself into matters that Fykes and Katerin themselves barely understood.
Fykes had been working his ass off, trying to show Brazen that it was okay to make the wrong choices, sometimes. They were not all so big as Brazen seemed to think they were. He wanted Brazen to be happy and secure in his own life. Without the pressures that he and Katerin could lie at his feet when he hardly understood them. Fykes closed his eyes, bowed his head, and he prayed. For a man who was not all that religious, he prayed like a man who prayed every day.
He prayed for Katerin, For Brazen, for the People of Hearth-Home, and the cities armies, he prayed for mercy, and justice, and care, and he prayed for himself.
