The girl in white runs along the stream in a misty glen. Her feet and legs are in acute need for rest. No, it’s still not the time to rest. Something is in her rear. Something huge. Something undefeatable. She hasn’t even taken a second to look at it.
The monster is chasing after her. It’s not the time to rest.
It is a cloudless midlight, and a dim beam of moonlight leaks onto the misty glen from above. Without this light, it would be unable to go anywhere. But there is no place to go even in sunlight, either. She knows no more about the Wilds than it being dangerous, man-eating, and a place to go for criminals like her. To make matters worse, she finds herself driven by irrational optimism, aside by her primitive instinct to avoid being devoured by that very monster she hasn’t looked at.
Where could this stream lead me to?
Probably nothing more than a waterfall or a rockbed, and I would be at the mercy of that nasty creature.
The bank is moist and slippery. She has to carefully pick where she sets foot on.
But what if it leads to something else?
Could there be a hidden city in these large mountains that lies before me?
Those magecraft cannons can blow up a monster in a single shot.
The days when she stayed in the city of Eaglefort now seem like gold. There are high walls and powerful cannons to shoot every intruding monster into blood and flesh. But those days are gone. She can’t understand why she had been deemed sinful for being the daughter of a god-serving noble. She didn’t perform ceremonies, nor did she raise taxes or suppress the people. She was a playful girl, just like other girls in the city. She used to have a lot of friends, but on a single day all of them turned their back on her.
“Get away from me, you bloodsucker.”
Why is someone a bloodsucker for enjoying cheesecake?
Too many questions. Only gods can answer them. But she received the punishment of exile before any question was answered. With zero knowledge of the Wilds, she made the largest mistake possible for an adventurer: trying to take shelter in a ruin. These places are no less dangerous than natural dungeons. Monsters reside in them. Fortunately she is agile enough to smell any scent of danger, and chose to flee instead of trying to stay within the ruin walls - a mistake even larger than sheltering in ruins - which bought her the chance for a narrow escape.
But she didn’t expect the monster to chase her for so long.
She hardly escaped being trapped by a fallen branch. The glen is dark. The forest is thick. She heard a horrible groan a hundred feet behind her.
Only gods and their miracles could save her now, which does not exist.
But what if there are miracles?
Elthyris, the god that provides protection, has left. There is no one to provide miracles to mortals - this is what she learned.
I don’t believe.
Even till the last moment she must stay with hope in her heart.
There is no despair that is untranscendable.
She starts to feel her feet occasionally halting, refusing to execute her command to move herself forward.
I am here! I am not dead yet!
Every step forward adds a pebble’s weight on her feet.
At least let me see what is at the end of the vale.
She moves a step forward, then another step, with the monster behind her. Catching her scent, the monster unleashed an earth-shaking groan.
Let…
What is that!
At the edge of collapse, she catches a glimpse of what lies ahead in this thin night mist:
A beam of light.
Like a beam of starlight that passes through between the clouds.
Move… Move!
She has to get there. She has to, at least, take a look at the source of the light. Thoughts of the monster begins to fade. Like a moth to a flame, she is attracted to that sole beam of light. She hears no monster’s breath, touches no river’s coldness, sees no mist in the dark glen. The glen before her narrows down into a pass, and what she focuses on has unveiled itself beyond it.
There is a loch surrounded by mountains on all sides. Above the loch there stand four rows of marble pillars, each of them is as tall as two monsters combined and as wide as the biggest spruce tree she has ever seen. Beyond the loch is where the light comes from: a néméton, a shrine made of stone walls, spires, verandas and courtyards. From the top of the néméton there runs two waterfalls. That is where the stream comes from. All the néméton glows in a dim night-blue aura. Every pillar, every spire and every roof is surrounded by countless luminiscent particles, flocking, ascending, vanishing.
Wow…
Grrrrruuuuuhhhh!
“Ahhhhhhhhh!”
There is no time to wow. She dashes forward with all her remaining stamina, the monster chasing. Without consideration she steps into the lake - she doesn’t realize herself trying to walk on water until her ankles are soaked up - but after a few unconscious steps forward she finds her feet touching an invisible ground, solid and smooth, instead of the coarse lakebed. She hears the monster stops moving, so she looks back:
What lies beneath and around her changed from “pillars on a lake” to a solid square in the water, sacred and marvellous, surrounded by a huge colonnade. Between her and the monster there lies an archway, that’s where the monster stops.
She falls to the ground, and for the first time takes a look at the monster.
An oak-tall creature with multiple limbs.
Such a disgraceful being in this place of sacredness.
<Elimination required>
All the pain acumulated in her lower body starts to unleash, as if she fell under a wicked paralyzing spell. The monster ceases to hesitate and rushes towards her.
No…
Divines that reside here, please help…
>|AC… IT… !|<
What is that?
>|SELF-INVIGORATION COMPLETE|<
This message seems to be sent into my head directly. What is that? Who is there?
>|ALVA TERRIMÁTTA… COMPOSED|<
Al… what?
>|UNLEASH|<
>|IN THE NAME OF THE TWO HEAVENS, THOSE WHO TARNISH THE LAND ENSHRINED MUST PERISH|<
From the pinnacles of the pillars and spires there descend a web of metal-black chains, on which glow the identical night-blue aura as the néméton itself. Some chains bind the monster in its limbs and torso, others pierce into its body like spears. Some has spiked three feet into the monster’s flesh, penetrating the hardened skin like a bullet breaking a piece of paper.
This must be a godly miracle.
>|FADE IN REMORSE, UNFORGIVABLE CREATURE|<
Paralyzed, she sees the bound monster howling and struggling, before being cut in half by a glowing azure blade that descends from above.
The girl in white focuses her attention and sees the owner of the blade: a lady in black dress, soaked in that same dark sapphire aura. The lady turns around. The glowing blade dissipates in the air. The girl catches the last beam of light leaked from the lady’s sapphire eyes.
Heavenly astounding.
Then she speaks, in a voice as cold and healing as the water beneath:
“Are you a believer, or a wanderer?”