Skyact Guard Leous had led her escape party of hundreds away from the city of Rigac.
As she led them away, they came upon a mound of earth. It lay along the path to Rigac. From here only the top of a bastion tower was visible to the party.
Orna and Noria also spotted the mound and looked back at the top of the bastion tower. Orna screamed.
"No! No! We have to go back! We have to get more people!"
Noria grabbed his elbow. They knew what that mound of earth was by a look. Leous frowned, puzzled by Orna's outburst.
Noria cut in, "We can't, Orna. We are already too late." Her words had the finality that comes with cold. Orna knew what she meant, but his eyes darted to everyone.
He hoped for someone to agree, to support him. Leous's puzzlement at Orna's actions and Noria's acceptance only increased more. She took a step toward the mound.
Noria called out to her, "It is of no use Skyact Guard Leous. We—"
"I am no longer a Skyact Guard. I have forsaken that duty. If the monarch comes to take my life, let him do so in a battle to death." Leous declared.
She strode toward the mound and slashed at it. Her will revelation hadn't revealed anything, but what was uncovered beneath the mound proved to her how inferior she was in the matters of will compared to Orna and Noria.
A cart made of wood and metal was buried in the mound. She still couldn't discern further than what she could already see. Turning back, she was about to ask when a shockwave struck them.
Meanwhile, the knight Castroph had led thousands through the inner city's calm of Rigac. They had escaped the vaults of Gweren. The winds of freedom touched their souls and skin.
It called upon them to experience it. The steam and smoke of Rigac couldn't throttle the ambitions of thousands. Perhaps even millions.
Those who had repeated day after day the same action of sky for the Monarch Gweren.
All the honeycombed truths of the castle lay behind them. Castroph walked in the front.
"People, we are about to escape the city of Rigac. Stay together, for I will deliver you all to your cities and towns. I will always be by your side. For that is what my oath as a knight stands for." His words came from the heart. Each syllable touched and bolstered the strength of every escapee.
Everyone breathed in the steam of the outer city borough. The devastation of the outskirts did shake the wills of the masses.
However, Castroph kept calling on them. Reminding them of what can be achieved.
"Persevere, people. Perseverance always yields fruits." He chose his words carefully.
'I have to master Talia's element as well. Otherwise it will be hard. Stay focused.' He reminded of the realities he had faced before.
Several bunches of hundreds crossed the border of the new wall made for the outer city borough. 'Finally, we are free.' He relished the fact as he led the escapees through the destruction that had happened in the outer city borough.
He was terrified if what had caused it will come after them.
When they had escaped through the hole in the vault, he and others who led the escapees watched the castle. The top of the keep exploded while the last of the escapees stepped out of the vault. All watched the castle with eyes of a hawk. None in the escapees knew what a hawk truly was, but they had learned of it from the scriptures of The Lady of Repentance.
And the people were due for the repentance that hadn't been delivered for them and to them. None questioned if they had escaped the Monarch, perhaps they hadn't.
But there was nobody in the masses that followed Castroph who wanted to wait there for the Monarch Gweren to come down. Castroph's words were enough for them, and the strength people showed filled by his word's was more than enough for Castroph to focus on. 'I need this. I need their focus on my word for me to grasp the element.' He kept a stern reminder within.
The bunches of hundreds that crossed the border of Rigac's wall exasperated their held breaths. But Castroph turned back, he felt something was coming as what he saw held him where he stood. A wave of debris and smoke flying towards them. Massacring the last of the escapees, the shockwave crashed into the outer city borough's border wall breaking it apart.
Several minutes before when Castroph was leading people out of the vault using the stairs of sky and earth, a confrontation was unfolding atop the keep.
As the longsword fell from the wanderer's hands he pointed with the other towards the throne atop the keep of the castle.
A spear with its sharp end embedded itself in the backrest of the throne, a silver coin shone under the icy grip of the action of ice. The wanderer felt colour draining from his body, he had used the action of ice without the help of his four colored rings.
The rings were meant to create a sense of control within someone as they used the actions of the elements. This time, the boy had avoided them and used them to the full effect.
Spear's wood had become colder than ice as the throne gained sheets of frost. The air around the room began materializing ice flakes out of nowhere, while the daylight that went close to the spear was caught.
Those light rays became stalactites, within seconds falling over. This was the true effect of the action of ice. It freezes everything it could find.
Cheal's and Gweren's eyes had followed the boy's finger. If fear was supposed to be the effect he wanted to create, it had failed.
Cheal laughed. A maniacal echo of one spread over the keep, and even the waves of it were being frozen by the action of ice.
While Gweren shook his head, he had seen what the best effect from the boy could do. He voiced through his gutted lungs, "It was a valiant effort by both of you. I should have…huh, huh…gone to find you and bring you under my tutelage."
But the boy wasn't done. His trembling hands that was losing colour becoming paler than his skin ever was. He drew a bottle from the inside of his brown overcoat.
And drank it.
Gweren watched him do that. He smiled that the boy had planned further than just delivering a spear to a chair he sat on.
He wanted to find what drove the boy more. Was it the injustices that he did against the kingdom or something much deeper? His eyes followed him as his hands went to the longsword that the boy brought.
This particular longsword had landed right on the threads bound together through all the daggers. The same ones that acted as Cheal's totems to survive against the Monarch's magic.
Cheal's laughter died, he had followed his first partner's shenanigans. Now it was his partner's time to show what he could do. 'Go on, we are watching.'
The boy threw away the bottle he drank from. Before the bottle hit the ground a different glass's breaking resounded in the air. Gweren and Cheal spun their heads faster than what they had the strength for, and stared into the spear. 'Something broke there but how?' Both had the same thought.
While the wanderer's first bottle he had drawn shattered, he drew another and drank that. During the time he gulped down the contents of both bottles, the wanderer had been drawing the action of earth on his brown overcoat. His overcoat's open spaces were becoming filled with different materials following the structure of the coat.
Contents of the bottle known only to the wanderer was the enhancing mix he had made in Cleaving. He spoke still drawing the action of earth while his crystal boots scraped the rubble, "You have given reasons that explain what you wished to accomplish."
He walked around the circle and stood with his back to the mountains, "I haven't explained a bit to you. You should know that I placed an enhancing bottle each quarter of a league away around the several leti-leagues from Rigac."
Gweren spoke up, "I …know. I think Sance will be happy that you used them." He remembered how he let the starlight to help an ordinary traveller read the board of 'Pioneer Ramshackle' in Cleaving.
The boy was surprised within, but he willed himself to not show it. Proceeding further, "Then I believe, you know of—"
Gweren broke his speech again, "I know of Mina. She may judge you now. Considering the mess that she is dealing with." He was considering how much ago should he have stopped the rampage of this ordinary traveller.
A flicker of anger shown through his eyebrows, the wanderer held his silence. He glanced at Cheal and asked, "What is the action of sky?"