Completed The bells

[Nemori]

37th, Winter, 516 AV

The bell rang, its irregularity cutting through the city streets. Nemori heard it from the small she shared. It made no sense. The piercing rang a few times, inconsistent as the rest of the city. It had been bothering her, one of the many things about the city that did. So, in order to attempt to put to rest one of the many mysteries, she donned her coat, hood carefully covering her hair and eyes. Shortspear on her back. Out she stepped into the corridor, slipping through the passages and hoping to avoid the innkeepers gaze. It required careful timing, waiting for her back to be turned on some paperwork or other. Nemori suspected that it would be fine if she had gotten spotted, but she would rather not run the risk for as long as possible. The floorboards creaked underfoot a mere few steps in. She was not as stealthy as she was pretending she might. Normally she waited til the innkeeper was in another room, but the bells had already stopped. Her memory of their location was quickly deteriorating and she wanted to capitalise on it while she could.

A quick glance at the innkeeper revealed her to be attentive to her task, not caring for the passing of her customers. Nemori quickly tossed up her options, another failure would definitely attract her attention. Instead Nemori attempted to merely lighten her footing, instead of outright stealth. Her eyes fixed firmly on the bottom of the door. She believed that her steps were lighter, although she had little proof. She did not look around at the innkeeper again, for fear of catching her eye.


She pulled the door open, stepped through into the busy street. Was that such a large gap before? She pushed the though from her head, allowing the door to close snuggly behind her. She stopped. Taking a moment to close her eyes and focus on the dangers in the city. She concentrated on what would likely happen if she was caught, what they might do to Morwen. She gulped, sufficiently fearful to turn her eyes into a pale green. The bells had definitely ceased and this irked her. Perhaps they would sound again soon? It seemed unlikely, she had yet to hear them in quick succession. Instead she took to walking away from the slowly spinning cubes of the inn. Part of her was glad to be outside again, even if it was a chaos of bodies and voices pushing their way through the streets. It was easy to allow the crowd to direct her. Head down and following the easy path of the pedestrians. The voices were unfamiliar and many of the words were equally bizarre.

Occasionally Nemori would be jolted into a different group of commuters, but she did not mind much. She had no idea where she was going, and she suspected that the city would not allow her to find what she wanted anyway. It seemed to make a habit of that. Nemori wondered if they was some curse to make it more difficult for Vantha to traverse, despite Alex claiming he felt the confused sway of the city too. Did she just get it worse? Perhaps it was her newness to the city that caused her confusion, although truthfully she had no idea how long Alex had been here.


“I can’t wait to see the temple. Is it really as glorious as they say?” The word temple struck Nemori and she felt herself stop. The rest of the sentence passing over her as background babble and unimportant. A few disgruntled passerby’s knocked into her suddenly stopped, aggressively telling her off and she started walking again. A sinking feeling manifesting in her stomach and she started to feel ill at the idea of being pushed towards the temple. From what she could tell the temple was the centre of their attempts to execute the blessed of Morwen. She dared herself a glance up, attempting to find a way out of the crowd. Much to her dismay she found herself in the center of a gaggle of excited people. As far as she could tell they were discussing the temple, but the words were far above her linguistic capability in Common.

[Nemori]

When they was finally a gap Nemori took it, darting through near a tree. The crowd was starting to disperse and she watched it uncertainly. Where was she in the city anyway? They was a tall tower separated from the main path that Nemori glanced at. It did not look familiar to her. The main path led towards a large open space. People would follow the path and then stop at the end. They was a small wooden platform not far from the path. The platform was unoccupied and most seemed to be ignoring its presence entirely. The large expanse of space going unused. It appeared to be a bizarrely large patch of grass for the city. The people excited for the temple that Nemori had been swept up with seemed happy, but Nemori could not see any temple. Was it merely the tower? If so it did not seem to match the flourish of words they had cycled through to describe it. A few people were looking at the tower, but more seemed intrigued by the empty space. Nemori felt on edge, worried that she was missing something. Worried that it would somehow be used to capture her. Her muscles felt tense and she found herself attempting to study every face and checking if someone was watching her. She felt ill, concerned, scared and confused all at once.


She watched someone pressing themselves against the empty space, as if they were feeling something invisible. Did they have invisibility at their disposal? Was it just her who could not see it? Her nerves were not resolved when they was a sudden noise from the empty space. It sounded like a ripping noise, but not of fabric. She could not place the material. Suddenly they appeared a great archway, tinted green by a layer of almost perfect moss. It stood high up, as if a bridge between two vast towers that did not exist. Nemori startled at the suddenly appearing structure, as did some of the visitors. It seemed to delight them but Nemori could not shake the sinking feeling. Was this magic? Did the people of this town practice some kind of invisibility? She started to doubt if she was ever safe. She knew nothing of magic, or how it worked. Could they just appear anywhere? Could they follow her? Hear her words? She closed her eyes, trying to shift the overwhelming feeling of panic that was bubbling inside her chest. The sense of doom was quickly becoming too much. How was she going to survive? In her mind she begged Morwen for help, begged that they both, and all the other Vantha of the world, would be safe and protected.

Nemori opened her eyes to find the large expanse had changed more. Large double doors sat at the front with what looked like carved stone surrounding it. They were too far away to identify what, if anything, the carvings depicted. Nobody seemed to want to enter through the door, although several surrounded and even more where staring. Where they expecting something? Nemori hoped not. The last thing she needed was for a priest to appear and notice her staring. Or worse, the god himself. Did he walk amongst his people as Morwen did? A few windows stood, stone working randomly surrounding them. They were small windows, very high up on where she imagined the temple would be. Did it ever appear fully? She found herself focusing on one specific window. Ivy clung to the wooden frame and dangled downwards. The pale white and green contrasted against the grey stone walls. For a moment Nemori thought she had seen a flicker of something behind the glass. Something small? She did not think that it was eyes but, perhaps a bird? Or a rat? She puzzled over it for a moment. Waiting to see if it would appear once more. She doubted that something appearing in the window of a temple was a good omen, more than likely it was a sign of worse to come. As far as she could see nothing else appeared. The slow materialisation of the temple seemed to have stopped. The bustle of excited passers-by were intermittent with quieter, passive people who seemed to try and stay out of the excitement. Nemori lingered a few more ticks, wondering if anything else of interest would happen before finally turning away. The streets were still busy as she attempted to make her way back to the inn, this time sticking to the outer edges in order to avoid being swept up by a crowd once more. She still had not worked out where the source of the bell chime was from, or what it means. But she had definitely found one of the cities aspects in her wander.




Common
Vani

[Kaleidoscope]

~Friendly Reminder~

Hello Nemori!

I'm glad to see you have deducted your seasonal expenses. However, you are not allowed to be in minus money. This leads to either slavery or death. Complete your job threads and submit them for wages, and then I can grade this thread for you. If you didn't already know, your job threads do not have to be graded to be awarded wages, these are two separate things. Wage requests go in my office, please.

~Kal