Worst of yesterday came today,

Strangeness of our reality

Little by little

Reminded me

Invisible Truth

Unveiled by infinite clues

The curtain rose slowly.

Why did I answer those questions now?

Cruel destiny? Hazardous repetition? Proof of the divine?

Others would have asked, “In what way did I deserve this?”

While I, in my madness, wish that the wind

Would carry a shout I have not shouted.

But in the end,

I forget what matters most.

I am not the one who is dead.

I just prophesized her death.

And the anguish of this poem.

Simply means that I love you.

Today, Unknown Bard.

“You can’t blame yourself Nay. Even Sage Jormun wasn’t able to help him.”

“From what I gathered, he made it worse.”

“I believe anyone tries to help Carle will make it worse. We cannot do anything, the things hurting him comes from deeper than blood.”

Nay held her tongue. She knew Magdalena was not the one who said those hurtful words to Carle the day before, but part of herself still blamed him for it.

The old man stood in front of the tent, looking at the eastern dunes.

“What are you doing?” Finally asked Nay.

“We’re waiting for Achid. You have to bring me shopping.”

“He came yesterday morning; I don’t believe he’ll be…”

And the young Legio shut up, as she felt new Rreico beyond the dune.

“How did you…”

“Jormun knew he would come. The city is in disarray, and that brave boy is coming to ask for advice. It is the last opportunity for me to enjoy the bazaar, you know?”

“Makaka is in disarray? Why would it…” Nay stopped. Partly because Pattie and Achid had just appeared from behind the eastern dune, but more because she just realised that it was most likely her, the cause of the problems in the city. But how? She had done nothing!

Her questions would wait, as Achid dismounted and walked towards them in large, hurried steps. He was wearing the traditional Vanni guard armour this time. Ochre red plate mail and beautifully ornamented, it seemed robust and of even better quality than the virnyle armours of the Ducal guards.

“Master! I am so happy to see…”

The old man raised his hand. “Sorry my boy, but the master won’t speak with you again. Still, he left a message for you. But before I give it, you have to carry me and Nay to the city.”

The Vanni guard seemed taken aback but quickly recomposed himself. “Master, you don’t understand. A High Priest was murdered last night, and two others killed each other during a duel. The people are restless, they speak of Vanni coming to punish us.”

The old man listened patiently, then put a strand of his long hair back behind his ears.

“I know all this.” He said. “Sage Jormun told me last night. That Vanni had taken a most hasty decision. I will explain it to you. Tonight.”

“We don’t have time to…”

Nay only saw Magdalena’s back, but she felt the Rreico. Nostalgia.

So strong even Achid, unable to consciously perceive it, forgot what he wanted to say.

“My boy.” Said the old man. “I would like to visit the bazaar. Please.”

There was a long silence.

“Fine, Master. But I only have two saddles I…”

The old man pulled out a large leather saddle from his bag.

“Oh, I took my old one, don’t worry. He asked for Nay to come with me, I’ve seen to it that it happens so.”

Achid nodded but Nay was hesitant.

“Magdalena, I would prefer to stay here. I am worried about Carle. His Rreico…”

“Of course, Nay. I will not force you to come.” The old man turned around to her with a smile.

Nay felt relieved. As if the choice she had made was the right one, but Achid intervened while he was putting on the saddle on Pattie’s lower back.

“Nay, if I may. I thought you being there would make things go worse, but I believe it was a mistake. If you could come to tell of your meet with Vanni, maybe the guards and the priests would calm down.”

Nay raised an eyebrow. “You told me I could be made prisoner. Why should I…”

“Nay. I came here to seek counselling, but more than that I came for you. I was wrong, letting you leave without speaking of your miracle caused much more problems than I anticipated. I will give you my word, in Vanni’s name, that whatever happens, you will be back here, with master, tonight. Could you take that risk? For the good of my city, of the city that birthed Marke?”

Nay grimaced. He knew perfectly well what he was doing using Marke’s name like that.

“I…fine.” This was obvious manipulation but if her presence could fix things, how could she say no?

Achid gave her a big smile. “Thank you.”

Nay rubbed her head. “Just…let me say goodbye to Carle.”

She entered the house, went through the main room and into the boy’s room. He was sleeping in some sort of large closet, dark and filled with a variety of objects and tools. It was roomier than what Nay thought. There was even a little boat with ropes, paddles, and an anchor on the ground. The boat had a mattress and sheets inside and was Carle’s bed. He was currently sleeping inside. Or at least, acting like he was sleeping in it.

Nay felt his anguish, and she knelt next to him.

“Carle…there is something going on in Makaka, and I’m leaving with master and Achid to try to resolve the situation. I…I’m sorry. I’d really like to stay, I… Carle, you are my friend, whether woman or man, feminine or masculine, it does not matter. When you come back, I will show you that you matter, not just for me. Wait for me, will you?”

He did not answer, his silhouette in the shadows was showing her his back.

The silence was heavy.

Nay did not know what else to say. She stood back up and went to re-join the two other men.

They were already on Pattie. Vestigio had taken the place she had used two days prior.

“Sorry Nay, you won’t be sitting down comfortably I’m afraid. You’re on the lower side of Pattie, and the seasickness is way worse there.” Achid informed her while she was climbing on Pattie’s back.

Nay did not say anything back to him. She was still worried about Carle.

Once set up, Achid shouted something to his mount, and they started moving.

Where she stood, Nay was bounced around left from right, and had to hold on firmly not to be projected in the sand. All of her body was following the serpentine movements of the Lesardo, which was very far from being pleasant.

“Biach.” She swore as they climbed down the second dune.

Achid answered while laughing.

“It’s Gish around here.”

Nay did not retort anything. She could feel that the Vanni’s guard apparent humour was fake. Anxiety was gripping their guide.

Ten minutes or so passed before Magdalena addressed Nay again.

“Nay, look, there, see the rise in the sand?”

The young Legio could not see the old man’s finger, but she noticed what he was talking about fast.

“Is that a Jivynn?” She spotted.

“Where!?” Achid’s voice trembled.

“Calm down boy, it is behind us.”

“I see it.” Nay said.

The Vanni guard sighed. “How? I crossed this desert thousand of times, and never understood how the master could spot their hiding places so easily.”

“She is a Legio, Achid, she sees what I see.”

The guard grumbled and did not say anything more.

Already, the rise in the sand, identical to many others if not for the Rreico, disappeared to the horizon.

“Don’t try to fight them anymore. Their poison is not deadly, but in the middle of the desert, that is not so true.”

“I got that the first time.”

Achid jumped at that, which Pattie understood as an order. The Lesardo turned violently to the right.

Nay felt her stomach reach her throat.

“Urgh…”

“Sorry.” Said their guide after pulling Pattie back on the right path. “But you fought a Jivynn? Wait, is that why you’re bandaged everywhere? I thought it was the m…” He ceased his chatter promptly.

“She did not just fight one, she killed one, bare-handed.” Magdalena added.

Achid whistled in admiration. “Such a feat would have given you the right to enter the guards.”

“I almost died, I’m not proud. How do you know I killed it barehanded?” She asked the master Legio.

“Someone needed to bury the dead animal, or other Jivynns would have been attracted by the corpse’s smell. I buried it while you slept. Marke trained you well.”

Nay sighed. Which was not the thing to do, as it accentuated her seasickness.

“Clearly, I’m understanding much better why Vanni showed herself to you then!” Achid seemed convinced.

Nay did not think it was her fighting prowess that had granted her a vision from the “Goddess”. In truth, the more she thought about it, the more she felt like a pawn in a game of Comptoy.

And that kind of behaviour did not suit the divine in her opinion. Or then Trinne would have been the most divine of them all.

Thinking about her friend made her grit her teeth.

She stayed silent, throat clenched, until they arrived in Makaka.

“Master, this is really not the time!” Achid was getting angry. He had led Pattie back to her enclosure, then had come back to them hoping to bring Magdalena and Nay to Vanni’s Keep. Except that the old man wanted to go to the market first.

They were currently in one of the bazaar’s street. The atmosphere here had radically changed compared to the previous day. Even this place of thousand colours could not hide the anguish of its inhabitants. They stayed silent, morose, and worried.

Only Magdalena smiled, buying herbs and trinkets. He did not seem worried at all about the state of his coin pouch and was spending money with no afterthought.

Those wasted gold coins were bothering Nay to the utmost.

She was not so worried about the future of the city, more so about the young boy she had abandoned at the oasis.

Every twenty minutes, Achid was losing his cool and asking the old man to come with him to Vanni’s plaza. Then the old man said something like “A few more shops” and left the guard behind while he went to buy another silk scarf.

Two awfully long hours passed. It had put Nay’s and Achid’s patience to the test, but this unbridled shopping spree finally ended when Magdalena’s hands became full and his coin pouch empty.

“Can we go now, Master!?” Almost shouted Achid in the middle of the grand avenue.

Magdalena gave a sad smile. “Yes, it is soon now.” He turned around to face them, then moved back a few steps. Nay tried to warn him. For some time, there were Rreicos all around them, coveting the many things the old man had bought. But as she opened her mouth, the old man just let everything he was carrying fall on the ground.

Instantly, a dozen of children leapt from the darkened alleyways.

Nay and Achid tried to intervene, but they were too far away, and the Master Legio stopped them: “Let them be. They will need this.”

The street kids did not listen nor care, trying their best to steal it all as fast as possible.

Nay gazed upon the master Legio. She was surprised, but in a way, had had her doubts since the beginning. Something felt too weird about him. Like he was hiding some kind of plan.

Achid though was close to a rageful explosion.

“Master, what in Trayx’s hell!? What have you done? All of this, all this lost time while the city is on the verge of…” He stopped himself from continuing, seeing the stares of the onlookers on him. Finishing his sentence would have brough panic, and he had noticed just in time.

“I just wanted to have a bit of fun. I didn’t need all any of this.” Magdalena explained.

Nay looked at one of the children disappear behind a roof.

“You wanted to help them. You wanted to help the merchants too.” She understood.

The old man smiled. “I did it because the Sage asked me to, and well, shopping was one of my favourite hobby, a very long time ago.”

“Well, good! Now that this is done, could we take care of everyone by preventing…everything going to Lesardo gish?” Achid had whispered the end of his sentence, but his patience was really reaching its end.

“My boy.” The master Legio began. “There is nothing me, you, or Nay can do. Vanni decided.”

Nay stayed silent.

Achid raged. “What!? What does that mean?”

A far-away explosion answered him.

“W…what?” He said.

Nay turned to face the origin of the sound. At the top of the hill, a large column of black smoke was rising to the sky.

“By Lebe.” She said.

Then the people around them began shouting and screaming.

“Vanni’s wrath is upon us!”

“What is going on?”

“Seremi! Seremi! Come here.”

Merchants closed their shops; women took their children in their arms.

A second explosion crackled and broke the chaos. A second column of smoke joined the first.

Panic became complete.

“Himura! Liura! Pattie! I need to…” Achid too was succumbing to fear.

“You can leave, my boy. Go save your family and your friend. Nothing will befall on them if you hurry.” Magdalena announced.

The Vanni guard looked at him. Nay felt his rage subside.

“Master? You knew? You protected me?”

“I am not your master, I told you that. But yes, you are a good man, you did not deserve to die for the sins of the fake priests’ greed.”

“So Vanni is punishing us?”

“No. Despite what you think, she has no right to judge you all. What she does is evil.” The old man’s expression was disdain, and he spoke of Vanni as if he knew her personally. He did not seem to like the so-called goddess.

“You should not say something like th…” Achin started.

“My boy, you have no time. I say goodbye. You will have sacrificed a lot for us, and I free you.”

“Master, I don’t understand.”

“Leave I say! Save those you love!” And on those words, Achid walked away, trying to go through the frenzied crowd the best he could. He turned around one last time, then ran towards the hill’s summit.

Nay was standing there, the crowd avoiding her. She was unmoving.

She looked at Magdalena.

It was the young Legio who was angry now.

Like two pillars standing straight in the middle of a diluvian storm, the old man inhabited by a woman and a young Legio inhabited by nightmares were facing each other.

“You knew. Why not prevent it?” Nay asked.

“I did what I could. But your anger is justified. I understand it. I trust the Sage’s word, what I did, what we have done, is an act of good. But you have no reason to believe that, so I understand your anger.”

“What will pass afterwards then? What is the next horrible future you are going to let happen?”

Magdalena lowered her head.

“I…I don’t know. The Sage he…he hid what came next. I know he saw further. He saw until tonight but…he did not tell me.”

“You lie.”

“I…maybe. I don’t know.”

Nay did not say more.

The street was empty. Everyone had fled inside or away. Only the Legio and the Master remained.

“I’m going back.” Nay announced.

Magdalena nodded. “I will follow you.”

They left the empty bazaar, but the slums at the bottom of the hill were far from deserted.

A crowd of emaciated men and women had gathered at the entrance of the commercial district.

“My god.” Magdalena used a very uncommon expression to express his fear.

“Stay behind me.” Nay unsheathed her dagger and sword.

“Look up top! Vanni has given us a sign! We must listen to the Goddess and destroy the infidels that treated us like flies!” A man in his forties, quite dirty looking, was standing on a wooden box, and was chanting what had to be despair transformed in hatred to hundreds of individuals feeling the same way.

“We should avoid them…” Magdalena whispered.

The Legio and the Master were ten yards or so away from the crowd, and there were plenty passageways that would have let them do what Magdalena proposed.

Despite this, the young Legio decided otherwise: “No, they saw us. Trying to leave now will worsen things.”

Nay had seen the stares. They were alone in the middle of a large avenue, after all.

They walked towards the crows. Everyone was looking at them now, and the man on his wooden box turned around to face them.

“Stop there! You and the armed woman, are you trying to flee Vanni’s justice!?”

“I am a stranger of these lands.” Nay simply said.

“That is true! But your friend in robes is clearly Stravien! A priest, to make matter worse!”

“He is not a priest of Van…” Nay began.

It was useless, as the crowd did not listen to her anymore. Whispers became shouts.

“Death to them!”

“False prophets!”

“Imposter!”

Nay gripped her weapons harder. She now knew she was going to have to defend herself. Slaughtering those desperate people would soon become her only way out.

She met the man on the box’s gaze. He seemed to suddenly recognize her, which was absurd, as she had never seen him before.

“No! Let them through! Those are not the ones that need to be judged!” He announced suddenly.

“What!?” Shouted the mob.

“Let them through, I said!”

The angry crowd obeyed him, and a corridor opened for them.

Nay and Magdalena stepped forwards.

“A just act is always rewarded, it is Vanni’s word.” The man on the box recited one of Vanni’s rules when Nay passed next to him.

She didn’t understand what he meant by that but didn’t want to dilly-dally any longer than necessary.

They left Makaka without any more trouble. When she turned to look at the city from up top the first dune, Nay saw Vanni’s Keep, on the hill’s summit, overtaken by flames.

“By Lebe.”

Magdalena also peered at the iconoclastic act, a deep sadness inside.

“No, Lebe would never have done something like that. Her mistakes were fuelled by compassion and too much love. I respected her wrongdoings. What Vanni did here…I cannot condone it.”

“You speak of the gods like you knew them.”

“Of course.”

Nay sighed. The old man was losing it and walking through the desert under the sun would be arduous. She had no energy to lose at trying to debate him right now.

It took them two hours to reach the oasis. Nay’s flask was empty, and her throat was dry. She could feel a terrible headache arrive, and it would definitely come if she did not drink water soon. Magdalena seemed even more exhausted, breathing hard and trembling like a leaf.

As she climbed the last dune, Nay peered down on the oasis. The sun was setting, and the orange light was covering the site with a colour that felt almost oppressive. There was no sound. No Rreico. The tent was shut, and the campfire was not lit. There were no lights coming from inside the house.

Nat forgot all about the banging in her head. She forgot about the heat and her sweat. She forgot about her tiredness.

She felt an emotion grow so big it shadowed all the others.

Horror.

She did not understand why, but she was horrified.

“Oh no. No. What have you hidden?” Magdalena seemed overtaken by the same feeling as Nay’s.

“What’s going on?”

“I…I can’t…” The old man was trying to catch his breath, as if he were panicking. “Carle…quick…”

Nay’s hairs stood up on her arms. She was reminded of something. The memory of a cliff and a storm.

She ran towards the house.

Never had she ran so fast. She almost stumbled, her right foot stuck in sand. Her ankle hurt, but she did not stop.

“Carle!” She shouted.

She crossed right through her camp, crushing the cold embers of her campfire. The darkened dust flew through the light of the setting sun.

“Carle!”

She came in front of the house.

She still felt no Rreico.

“Carle!?”

She opened the front door.

It was dark inside, only the amber light going through the windows was illuminating the main room.

“Carle?” Nay took one step forwards.

On the table in the middle of the room was a letter, ink, and a writing plume.

“…Carle?”

She avoided the letter carefully, slowly going towards the closet door.

Her eyes were fixed upon the piece of paper, until she noticed something else.

The storeroom’s door was slightly ajar.

Her hand stopped over the handle.

The young boy could not be there.

There was no Rreico beyond that door.

“Carle?” She whispered.

She pushed on the door.

Obscurity was almost complete inside.

Only a shadow above the ground.

Nay got out of the house and felt her knees getting weak. She fell in the sand and started to vomit.

“Caaaarle…” She said in a broken, raspy voice, before being overtaken by another retch.

Her eyes filled themselves with tears.

She heard footsteps coming closer.

She recognized the Rreico.

She raised her head.

Nay had never felt such hatred before.

“You…”

The Sage Jormun was standing in front of her, with an expression of absolute compassion in his eyes.

“You are ready. Right now, you cannot fall deeper than this.”