the darkest nights produce the brightest stars
The Ascended disappear, but the Temple is still crumbling.
Amalia watches Wessex and Amun vanish. She hears Jigano call out to her. She knows she has to leave, and yet---
---Safrin touching her on the cheek, the face of Vi, an undying flower---
Gods, she grew up beneath these walls. She prayed at these shrines and was answered; she gained new meaning, new purpose, a new form. How can she abandon this place in its final moments? Who is she to deserve the sunlight, when the Gods and their shrines are about to be buried, cast beneath the rubble and dust?
Her world has been crumbling for so long, and this feels like the final blow. She can feel her resolution, her determination, the final pieces of her own tremulous soul; the splintered and wounded parts of her she has worked so long to keep from shattering finally, finally giving way. Wessex is out and Jigano is out and Ronin is out and they will all live.
But this place? Her youth, and the girl she was?
That, she fears, will not survive.
Jyoti is with her still, urging her to rise, to escape- and it is only that gentle chiding, the knowledge that she is tethered to another soul, that forces Amalia to stand. Tears in her eyes, the Shield casts one last look at the shrine of Safrin, the place where her life forever changed. "I'm so sorry," the girl whispers hoarsely.
Then she shifts and flies out toward the window, perhaps a second too late.
Ama hesitates longer than she probably should before trying to fly out the window. Jyoti is ahead of her.
Amalia watches Wessex and Amun vanish. She hears Jigano call out to her. She knows she has to leave, and yet---
---Safrin touching her on the cheek, the face of Vi, an undying flower---
Gods, she grew up beneath these walls. She prayed at these shrines and was answered; she gained new meaning, new purpose, a new form. How can she abandon this place in its final moments? Who is she to deserve the sunlight, when the Gods and their shrines are about to be buried, cast beneath the rubble and dust?
Her world has been crumbling for so long, and this feels like the final blow. She can feel her resolution, her determination, the final pieces of her own tremulous soul; the splintered and wounded parts of her she has worked so long to keep from shattering finally, finally giving way. Wessex is out and Jigano is out and Ronin is out and they will all live.
But this place? Her youth, and the girl she was?
That, she fears, will not survive.
Jyoti is with her still, urging her to rise, to escape- and it is only that gentle chiding, the knowledge that she is tethered to another soul, that forces Amalia to stand. Tears in her eyes, the Shield casts one last look at the shrine of Safrin, the place where her life forever changed. "I'm so sorry," the girl whispers hoarsely.
Then she shifts and flies out toward the window, perhaps a second too late.
Ama hesitates longer than she probably should before trying to fly out the window. Jyoti is ahead of her.
