1 Spring 513 AV
18 and a half Bells
18 and a half Bells
If there was one thing Marion knew for sure, it was that she hated Syliras. She hated the biting cold Winter had brought, trapping her in the city for an entire season. She hated the static, immutable stone walls that had confined her for too long. She hated how everything sat still and yet somehow kept her off her balance. She was used to change, it was true. Change was good, she had always been told. But not this change, for it was the kind of change that came without change, the transition from something ever-changing to something stuck, still and sedentary.
Most of all, she hated the knights clunking about in their dull metal suits and infuriating uniformity. It was utterly ridiculous. She had heard Syliras called both the City of Peace and the City of Order during her stay, but it may as well have been the City of Tedium for all she knew. They sure enjoyed their lines and lists and damnable districts. And everything stood too still. It drove Marion mad.
But it was the principle of the place that drove her madder still -- that perverted sense of structure, that obsession with order. She could feel the constant, dark pressure of it, but there had been nothing she could do but wait, pacing her cage like an ensnared beast.
She had spent an entire season trapped in stone walls, longing to escape, filled with a desperate want to do something more than wait. But no caravans dared depart during the coldest days of the year and the knights ran a tight ship. There was no escape, physical or mental, unless she wanted to die or be taken into the custody of the knights, both of which seemed equivalent fates in her mind.
So it was with a childlike giddiness that Marion had packed up her meager belongings and set forth this morning in the company of twenty-some travelers and mercenaries. Nothing could have spoiled the relief she felt at watching the city slowly shrink on the horizon.
Except, perhaps, the Outpost.
It was seventeen bells when some young but ugly mercenary had pointed out the high walls through the trees, and eighteen bells when Marion had seen them for herself, clear across fields of crops. Apparently, the head of the caravan had decided to make a detour to fish around for some supplied he'd forgotten to bring. Instead of taking a left onto the road towards Zeltiva bells ago, they'd simply kept heading south. Marion hadn't even noticed, assuming the road that they'd turned onto to lead them towards the Mithryn Outpost was the Kabrin she'd heard so much about.
Many of the other travelers had apparently already noticed the change in plans, and even those who hadn't didn't seem too troubled by it. Some of them, after a day of travel, also realized there were certain supplies they would need more of. Others simply relished the thought of spending one more night in a proper bed. Marion, to her credit, managed to hold in the chagrin that had welled within her at the familiar sight of stone and glint of guard armor.
Now, thirty chimes later, the sun was beginning its slow descent and she had not yet been able to bring herself to enter the outpost gates. Instead she wandered the outdoors and cursed the flat fields that offered her little shelter from those glaring walls. How long would this "detour" set back her travel? It had taken them the entire day to get here. The road they'd passed bells ago must've been the actual road to Zeltiva, so it would take them half a day to get back there, without delays. So she'd lost two days? Of course, the only reason time was an issue was because she wanted to get away from this tainted place as soon as possible.
Marion pressed her hands to her face in frustration and breathed out sharply. But when she looked back up, glaring once more at the lofty walls, the irritation she felt was overshadowed by a new and deceptively powerful feeling: pity. From where she stood, she could see fieldworkers returning to the safety of their homes behind the wall, and it occurred to her that these people lived their whole lives without knowing what actual living was. Marion, of course, knew that their compulsion towards order was abominable and unnatural, but these people had no idea. They built their walls to keep monsters out, but they had no idea that the true monsters could simply walk through the gate.
They were ants, toiling their lives away under the watchful eyes of Order, and why? To what end? They were clueless, forced into limitation by the Powers That Be. And they call that 'freedom', Marion thought cynically.
She paused and, after a brief moment of denial, came to a realization.
You can help these people. And she slowly began to shake her head in rejection, but her conscience had other thoughts. You know the truth, that which they deny themselves. Ssena has given you the gift of truth, now you can give these people the gift of freedom. Show them what it really means to live.
Yes, the knights will be fine with you terrorizing their sheep-people if you tell them it was 'for freedom'.
Come now, it's not like you haven't --
The internal back-and-forth was interrupted by a sudden explosion of movement across her field of vision. A deer darted out of the crops nearby, hooves skidding to a halt against the pathway in front of Marion as the creature caught sight of her. It stood there for a moment, shocked into stillness. The two locked eyes for a long moment. There was no time to contemplate the beauty of the animal, with its lithely powerful form and flaring nostrils, but she could smell the fear -- a more primal, earthy scent than what she'd come to expect -- in its breath. The Alvad was no hunter, but if she were, she might have been able to lunge forward and snap its neck. Easy kill.
The deer, perhaps sensing this notion, was spurred to action once more. It whirled in place frantically, as if it were lost, before dashing away in opposite direction from whence it had come, leaving Marion's thoughts scattered in its wake.
Most of all, she hated the knights clunking about in their dull metal suits and infuriating uniformity. It was utterly ridiculous. She had heard Syliras called both the City of Peace and the City of Order during her stay, but it may as well have been the City of Tedium for all she knew. They sure enjoyed their lines and lists and damnable districts. And everything stood too still. It drove Marion mad.
But it was the principle of the place that drove her madder still -- that perverted sense of structure, that obsession with order. She could feel the constant, dark pressure of it, but there had been nothing she could do but wait, pacing her cage like an ensnared beast.
She had spent an entire season trapped in stone walls, longing to escape, filled with a desperate want to do something more than wait. But no caravans dared depart during the coldest days of the year and the knights ran a tight ship. There was no escape, physical or mental, unless she wanted to die or be taken into the custody of the knights, both of which seemed equivalent fates in her mind.
So it was with a childlike giddiness that Marion had packed up her meager belongings and set forth this morning in the company of twenty-some travelers and mercenaries. Nothing could have spoiled the relief she felt at watching the city slowly shrink on the horizon.
Except, perhaps, the Outpost.
It was seventeen bells when some young but ugly mercenary had pointed out the high walls through the trees, and eighteen bells when Marion had seen them for herself, clear across fields of crops. Apparently, the head of the caravan had decided to make a detour to fish around for some supplied he'd forgotten to bring. Instead of taking a left onto the road towards Zeltiva bells ago, they'd simply kept heading south. Marion hadn't even noticed, assuming the road that they'd turned onto to lead them towards the Mithryn Outpost was the Kabrin she'd heard so much about.
Many of the other travelers had apparently already noticed the change in plans, and even those who hadn't didn't seem too troubled by it. Some of them, after a day of travel, also realized there were certain supplies they would need more of. Others simply relished the thought of spending one more night in a proper bed. Marion, to her credit, managed to hold in the chagrin that had welled within her at the familiar sight of stone and glint of guard armor.
Now, thirty chimes later, the sun was beginning its slow descent and she had not yet been able to bring herself to enter the outpost gates. Instead she wandered the outdoors and cursed the flat fields that offered her little shelter from those glaring walls. How long would this "detour" set back her travel? It had taken them the entire day to get here. The road they'd passed bells ago must've been the actual road to Zeltiva, so it would take them half a day to get back there, without delays. So she'd lost two days? Of course, the only reason time was an issue was because she wanted to get away from this tainted place as soon as possible.
Marion pressed her hands to her face in frustration and breathed out sharply. But when she looked back up, glaring once more at the lofty walls, the irritation she felt was overshadowed by a new and deceptively powerful feeling: pity. From where she stood, she could see fieldworkers returning to the safety of their homes behind the wall, and it occurred to her that these people lived their whole lives without knowing what actual living was. Marion, of course, knew that their compulsion towards order was abominable and unnatural, but these people had no idea. They built their walls to keep monsters out, but they had no idea that the true monsters could simply walk through the gate.
They were ants, toiling their lives away under the watchful eyes of Order, and why? To what end? They were clueless, forced into limitation by the Powers That Be. And they call that 'freedom', Marion thought cynically.
She paused and, after a brief moment of denial, came to a realization.
You can help these people. And she slowly began to shake her head in rejection, but her conscience had other thoughts. You know the truth, that which they deny themselves. Ssena has given you the gift of truth, now you can give these people the gift of freedom. Show them what it really means to live.
Yes, the knights will be fine with you terrorizing their sheep-people if you tell them it was 'for freedom'.
Come now, it's not like you haven't --
The internal back-and-forth was interrupted by a sudden explosion of movement across her field of vision. A deer darted out of the crops nearby, hooves skidding to a halt against the pathway in front of Marion as the creature caught sight of her. It stood there for a moment, shocked into stillness. The two locked eyes for a long moment. There was no time to contemplate the beauty of the animal, with its lithely powerful form and flaring nostrils, but she could smell the fear -- a more primal, earthy scent than what she'd come to expect -- in its breath. The Alvad was no hunter, but if she were, she might have been able to lunge forward and snap its neck. Easy kill.
The deer, perhaps sensing this notion, was spurred to action once more. It whirled in place frantically, as if it were lost, before dashing away in opposite direction from whence it had come, leaving Marion's thoughts scattered in its wake.