Our wagon train pulled up to the small encampment outside the gates of Silvercrest. There were two Sculpted members on guard duty, one made of stone and the other made of iron, both male in shape. They had been watching us for a while as we crossed the desert plain towards them but straightened up when we finally stopped. Beyond the two guards, I saw many other Sculpted soldiers milling about and watching us in curiosity as well.

All of them reacted in shock though, when Woodrick hopped out of the back of Grey’s lead wagon. The eyes of the stone guard nearly bulged out of their sockets at the sight of their leader, while the iron one immediately sprinted off further into the camp, abandoning his post. Meanwhile, cheers began to echo out of the onlooking crow of Sculpted soldiers, as a number of them began to stream out of the camp to surround Woodrick. The wooden man staggered under the weight of the back slaps he was receiving, but he was laughing all the same.

I was standing off to the side, watching the scene with Grey. Azarus and Sylvia were behind us and helping the former prisoners exit the wagons.

“He seems well-liked,” I said to my mentor.

“Oh, he is,” Grey answered wryly. “Very much so. There’s a reason he was elected the leader of the Sculpted over my Sylvia. She may have seniority, but Woodrick has the sheer force of personality needed to run a rebellion.”

From the camp, I saw the iron soldier return at a sprint, this time leading another Sculpted. This one looked female and shaped from what looked to be obsidian. She looked to be wearing the kind of fancier tabard over her chainmail that I had seen on officers in the past, over a suit of leather armor. With a laugh, she pushed her way through the celebrating crowd to embrace Woodrick. He returned it fiercely.

Grey nodded in the direction of the Sculpted officer. “That’s Nyx, second in command of the combined Sculpted forces. The Uprising is lucky that she took an interest in military tactics shortly after gaining her sapience. Likely a result of her having been an attendant of a Herztalian officer before her awakening. Excuse me, Nathan.” Grey walked off to join Woodrick and Nyx, catching their attention with a raised hand. He and Woodrick exchanged nods, while Nyx saluted Grey. The three of them wandered off into camp, no doubt to discuss the next steps. The crowd of celebrating Sculpted followed after them.

A harsh punch to my shoulder knocked me out of my lollygagging. I hissed in pain and clutched it in surprise, turning to face the person who had done it. It was Honoka of course, smirking at me.

“Oh, man up,” She said in amusement. “You can take it.”

“Hi, Honoka,” I said between grit teeth. “I’m fine, thanks for asking. How are you?”

Honoka snorted at me and then jerked her head in the direction of Silvercrest. “C’mon, boy. It’s time to pay my debt with you.”

I raised an eyebrow at her, rolling my shoulder as I did so. “What do you mean?”

She rolled her sunset-colored eyes at me and nodded at my stump. “I’m talking about getting your arm back. Silvercrest is more than big enough to have a Preceptor who can do the ritual for you.”

I felt a bolt of excitement race down my spine. A smile crept its way onto my face, before I paused. “Isn’t it supposed to be expe-”

Honoka cut me off, raising a pouch held in her left hand. She jangled it at me. “I already bothered the reprobate for a loan. Let’s go. I know where the Church is here.”

Ah. Grey had said that he would finance a replacement arm for me.

“Lead the way, then,” I said to her, my smile coming back in force.

Honoka started swiftly walking away in the direction of the Silvercrest gates, while I jogged to catch up eagerly.

Soon, I would have both of my arms back.

The gates of Silvercrest surprisingly weren’t guarded. I guess they didn’t feel the need, with a military encampment just outside their walls, no matter how small it was. Once inside, Silvercrest was pretty much how I had expected it to be. The air was thick with coal smoke from the foundries smelting iron and steel all around us.

Honoka explained a little bit about the town to me as we made our way through Silvercrest. Silvercrest was one of, if not the biggest supplier of raw and smelted metal in the Kingdom of Herztal. The surrounding mountains, especially the peak of Helgar above the town, were packed full of ore. The town was so prosperous that they had even been able to construct the needed facilities to process the ore after generations of toil and saving. This had been a somewhat new development in the history of the Duchy of Helstein though. It had apparently caused some friction with the Duke of the area, as he had previously owned the largest foundries in the area from his seat in the city of Helstein. From what Honoka told me, it was the hostility that the Duke had shown to the town over the last few decades that driven them away from the cause of the Loyalists, and into the arms of the Uprising.

Good for the Uprising, bad for the Loyalists. They’d lost one of the foremost suppliers of iron and steel on the continent, due to the jealousy of one shitty noble. That seemed to be pretty consistent with my views on nobility.

Eventually, Honoka led me to the local church. This was my first time visiting a Church belonging to the Gyreites, and even through my excitement, I was curious about it. I had never gotten a good explanation about what they believed in. To be fair, I had never really asked though. The only thing I really knew about them was that they had a ‘special relationship’ with the System and had some unique classes because of it.

The Church itself was…different than I was expecting. When I thought of Churches, what came to my mind were familiar buildings from back home, long halls with tall steeples reaching high into the sky. This very much so wasn’t like that.

The Gyreite Church was a large, squat, cylindrical-shaped building with a dome overhead. Set into the walls of the Church every few feet were stained glass murals, depicting scenes that I assumed were important to the history of the church. I sure didn’t understand them. The one to the right of the door seemed to be depicting a large group of people stepping out of a dark cave and into the light of the sun. The left one looked to be a night sky with fourteen stars on it.

The building materials for the Church were different, as well. Silvercrest as a whole seemed to be constructed of large, plain grey stone blocks, likely quarried from the surrounding mountains. The Church, however, seemed to be built from a rough golden tan stone of some kind that sparkled in the light of Tarus overhead. As we drew close enough to touch the walls of the Church, I ran my hand over them. They were almost gritty, as if made of sand.

“Rorician sandstone,” I heard Honoka say. Turning to her, I found the older women was watching me with a smirk on her face. Unbothered, I removed my hand from the wall and shrugged at her.

“Roricia, huh. Where’s that?”

“Rorica is the southernmost province of Herztal,” Honoka corrected me. “The area is known for two things. Dense, impenetrable jungle not seen anywhere else on Vereden, and its beautiful beaches that cap the southern tip of the continent. The Gyreites insist that a Church can’t be properly consecrated unless it’s built out of sandstone from the area. Damn waste of gold and manpower in my opinion, but what do I know? I’m not particularly religious.”

Our conversation was interrupted when the doors of the Church near us opened, and a stream of people began to flow out. These must be the Church’s faithful, as they definitely weren’t Preceptors. Looked to be tradesmen, miners, and families to my eyes.

I guess we had arrived at the tail end of a service.

Several of them eyed Honoka and me strangely, but I didn’t pay it any mind. Instead, the two of us waited until the Church had been cleared out, and slipped in through the now empty doors. Inside, the church looked more familiar to me. It was pretty much an auditorium with a raised pulpit on one end, with benches arranged out before it on either side of an aisle. There were doors along the walls of the hall that presumably led to other rooms, but it was the roof that caught my attention.

There was another stained-glass panel up there. This time, it was of the more familiar symbol I’d come to expect of the Church. A large, golden, seven-armed spiral, curling inward. The light of Tarus shone through it from overhead, casting the hall in a golden hue.

There was a man up on the pulpit, likely the Preceptor we had come for. He was speaking to a man and a woman as we stepped into the hall, but his conversation stalled when he caught sight of us. He said a quick word to the two of them, and then all three made the sign of the Gyre with their hands, two fingers laid over their upheld right palm. The couple left the pulpit and walked past Honoka and I, dutifully not paying us any mind, while the Preceptor approached the two of us.

I got a better look at him as he drew closer. Like the only other Preceptor I had ever met, he was dark of skin, with a completely shaven head and face. The man didn't even have any eyebrows. He was shorter than Eduard had been, though he had a similar set of green and white robes draped over his muscular form. He seemed completely unconcerned, merely watching the two of us with calm blue eyes.

“Blessings of the Gyre upon you, wayfarers,” He said in a low, deep voice. “I am Preceptor Josha. Do you require assistance?” From the way his gaze lingered on my stump, I could tell that ‘Josha’ most likely already knew what kind of assistance I wanted.

I could be polite though. I smiled at the Preceptor. “Ah, yeah. You see-”

Honoka cut me off, underhand tossing the bag of gold she held at the Preceptor. Josha didn’t even blink as he caught the jingling sack, merely raising an eyebrow at Honoka. “This young fool needs his arm grown back after playing the hero,” She said, jerking a thumb my way.

I felt an eyebrow twitch. This irritating old biddy…

Preceptor Josha hummed and nodded. “I see,” He said calmly. “I have time to perform the ritual. I assume you wish to draw from the Church's stores of reagents for it, and this is your payment?”

“Yes, obviously,” Honoka said, rolling her eyes impatiently. “Let’s get on with it. I’m not getting any younger standing around like this.”

I smiled weakly at the Preceptor. “Sorry about her. I’m Nate. I’m not sure granny Honoka here-”

I didn’t get another word out before Honoka slammed another punch into my arm, in the exact same spot she had earlier. I yelped at the sudden violence, clutching my now throbbing shoulder. I glowered at Honoka. “What does Sylvia see in you, woman?!”

“I’m not your granny, you young punk,” Honoka snorted at me. “And she sees my sparkling personality, of course.”

I rubbed my shoulder. “More like sulfurous,” I muttered under my breath. I cringed back when Honoka raised her fist again at me threateningly, apparently not quiet enough.

Our back and forth was interrupted by the sound of low laughter from the Preceptor still in front of us. I flushed, having forgotten about him briefly. Josha had a small smile on his face as he spoke. “Come. The ritual room is this way. We must prepare the young man for the rigors of the Rite.”

Josha walked away in the direction of a door in the back. With one last glower at each other, Honoka and I followed him.

Around half an hour later, I was kneeling in the center of a small, candle-lit room. I was shirtless, having been stripped to my waist so the Preceptor could paint my entire upper torso in runes. He had used a golden paint of some kind that was so mystically potent that even now my skin was tingling.

On the stone below me was a large, golden engraving of the Gyreite spiral. Resting on each of its seven arms were what must be the mysterious ‘reagents’ I’d heard referred to. I didn’t really recognize all of them. There were a handful of different kinds of metal and stone, a bone of some kind, and some glass jars filled with what looked like blood and a kind of potion. I think there was also what looked to be some sort of…dehydrated scaly tail the size of my forearm.

I…kind of didn’t want to know.

Honoka was standing with her arms crossed along the back wall, while Josha was standing in front of me. He nodded in satisfaction. “As I said, please be aware that this will hurt. Do your best to bear with the pain during the ritual.”

“If you scream, I’m telling Sylvia,” Honoka said in a mocking voice from behind me.

Die in a fire, you old bat.

I ignored Honoka and nodded at the Preceptor. “I’m ready.”

He nodded back at me and clasped his hands before him. Slowly, he closed his eyes and began to chant in a language that I didn’t understand. It wasn’t being picked up by Language Adaptation, which meant he had either turned it off, or whatever he was speaking in was really old.

A breeze began to pick up in the isolated room, as if from nowhere. The candles in the small room flickered, and a weight of power began to grow all around us. The air was so thick with Aether that it was almost hard to breathe. I still kept my breath steady though, through the use of my middle ring. I was tense, waiting for the blow that I was sure was about to fall.

At some unseen signal, Josha’s snapped open, glowing a bright gold. He unclasped his hands and thrust them, open palm, in my direction. I felt the heavy Aether in the room surge inwards at me. I closed my eyes and braced for the pain.

But…

Nothing happened.

The Aether merely washed over my form.

After a moment where nothing further happened, I cracked open an eye. In front of me, Josha was blinking rapidly in shock. Honoka had left her spot on the back wall to stand before me as well, with a frown etched on her face. I looked between the two of them, confused. “Is that…it?”

“No, boy,” Honoka said seriously. “That was most definitely not ‘it’.”

“I don’t understand,” Josha said, clearly baffled. “I performed the ritual correctly, I know I did. I’ve done this hundreds of times. Why didn’t it work?” He shook his head, suddenly determined. “Let me try again. The reagents are still fine. Please step back, madam.”

Preceptor Josha proceeded to try the regrowth ritual three more times. It failed, again and again. While the Preceptor was growing visibly more frustrated each time, I grew more and more despondent.

Eventually, he gave up.

The ritual to regrow my arm…

Was a failure.