Heavy steps crunched against the snow.

The youth marched onward through the winter mountains.

Exhaustion claimed its due time and again, so he paused to catch his breath, what little he could get.

His static form at those time would stop to look upon the stone lanterns that guided the pilgrim’s path.

They led to his destination, which was a great stone settlement on the highest slop above the valley below.

Marble white buildings bathed in the light of a golden star hanging in the heavens low.

She was a paradise far removed from civilization, a verdant and fertile place protected from the snowy white world by that light from on high.

Eventually then he continued his climb.

Every step marched closer towards those emerald peaks.

He made this journey without a single companion at his side.

He’d lost everything, and it had in fact been for the second time.

The worn out black robes he wore beneath his equally decrepit shroud were his sole belongings, even his feet were bare and blue as they walked the winter road.

Yet through it all his eyes betrayed a certainty and firmness of will that said he would not yield to the trials ahead.

He made his way past the ivory gates.

From there many lantern lit buildings guided his path towards the cathedral located at the back of the settlement.

Crimson curtains waved in the wind, emblazoned with the Goddess’ golden brand.

The people of this place seemed to stand wholly separate from the secular world.

The men among them clad themselves in robes coloured crimson red, while the women matched their style in robes of honey gold.

Such were the trappings of the Orthodox Hertyrian Order.

They were the Goddess’ faithful and this city, Elysium, was her home.

His haggard state drew no sympathy from them.

They refused to hold a hand outstretched, for the climb up that mountain was a trial, the climax of any pilgrim’s journey.

Were the boy to die on that path, such was his fate, but to help him before the end was blasphemous to the Lady and insulting towards the Pilgrims who had succeeded.

The sight of them crowding around roused a sense of nostalgia in his heart.

That bygone feeling called him back to the very first time he’d lost what he loved…

 

O

 

That day, he remembered, he found himself waking up to the sounds of noisy bickering and bartering outside.

He himself sat up within an unfamiliar tent.

He had come upon the mercy of a crowded caravan filled to the horizon with twenty five hundred roaming merchants and their families.

These were the folk that had found him laying half dead on the dusty roadside.

He came to realize that it was only thanks to the basic decency and mercy of those common men that he was able to live through that frightful summer night.

He came to call them his second home…

The image of their burning carts and tents erased the peaceable sentiment.

He watched as soldiers stomped down upon the skulls of his caravaneer companions.

That image would never leave him.

Whenever he looked back upon his time in that convoy, the flames would always remind him of the massacre.

He was just a young man of fourteen when he lost this second home.

He was but a year beyond that age now.

 

O

 

The boy’s hood was seized by the wind.

He nigh collapsed, so great was the gale as to wrench him back from the land of his memories.

Pitch black head of hair, long and unkempt, was set to wave amidst the gales.

He could hardly catch a breath until the gale passed, even then his eyes stayed firm upon their goal.

He marched until the gates of the busy monastery.

He was noticed, obviously, but no man nor woman came to greet or bother him.

They had not spoken, not even to each other, in all the time since he’d been here.

The building towered high, such a marvel of man as like had never met his eye.

Golden edges on black stone blocks carved out a rune upon the bell tower.

The building to which it was connected was bordered by two more extensions each one large enough to house a hundred men and women in general comfort.

For one who walks the Pilgrim’s Path, this was the end, the place to be baptized in Hertyr’s doctrine and consume one of the fruits from her guarded golden tree.

His own destination lay beyond even this, however.

He passed the chapel by and sought the stone slabbed walkway towards the very peak of the mountain.

There beyond him lay the place known as The Goddess’ abode.

The walk up those steps was even more long and grueling than the pilgrim’s path.

Only the chosen were ever even able to cross the threshold.

Yet he endured, just as before.

Every step was as heavy as if the weight of the world had been brought to bear upon his shoulders anew.

Half a day soon passed, and at the very moment when he crossed the halfway mark the heavens bellowed with a resounding chime.

The star in the sky unleashed a thunderous echo, like a gong, out into the mountaintops.

He knew that sound.

He had heard it many times from afar.

The first chime struck at dawn, the second at midday, the third evening, fourth at bedtime, and then finally the first struck at dawn once again.

The echo stopped soon enough, but in its place he heard a bustling down below.

He looked back down towards the monastery to find children liberated from the burden of their daily chores.

He cracked a solemn smile.

The scene sparked in him a second bout of nostalgic sentiment.

 

O

 

Within that company of caravans, he was not the only youth.

There were many, some he would even call his friends, but it was one girl in particular who had made the greatest impression when she came to greet his sulky self.

Thanks to her, he stopped sitting by the wayside and started to join in with the crowd.

The girl was prone to wearing blue, but what really raised eyebrows was that she dressed herself in boy’s clothes, which would otherwise be a taboo.

She was by all accounts an extremely quirky person, and yet she proved to possess a mature personality that had in hindsight seized more than a little influence over the rest of them.

She introduced herself as Sahraha, which was consistent enough with her facade as the caravaneer leader’s daughter.

The boy wasn’t to be fooled for a moment however.

She couldn’t hide the way that she carried herself with the manners of a highborn noble’s daughter, but he never bid to say anything on the matter.

They were the same, after all: runaway scions of the loathsome upper class.

The price for his silence on that matter would in time prove to be a far heavier burden than any child could hope to bear.

He thought it to be none of his concern…

And so the soldiers came to burn.

The smell of burning returned to his nostrils.

He saw the girl, Sahraha, being seized by The Ashbourne who stood in service to a corpulent, pompous figure.

"Oh Cindra, My Dear Cindra," Said the Ashbourne Kingdom’s Duke of Viznador, "How you wound your father."

The Duke turned his gaze upon the lot of them, both the boy and the caravaneers who'd been his friends and family for five long years.

"Kill them. No rat may live who ‘kidnapped’ my daughter."

The girl did not scream nor protest, but even still he saw her horrified staring.

She was in shock.

Sahraha, no, Cindra of Viznadoor, could only watch, paralyzed as the blades of her father’s men wetted the grass was a crimson rain.

Thus it was so that death had come upon him once again, and the boy lost his second family.

 

O

 

The chime sounded again to stir him from his daydream.

Two resounds meant midday, three, as now occurred, meant it was the evening.

He turned his gaze from the earth unto the sky.

Even to this day he did not remember how it was that he had survived.

Cindra’s father’s men had hunted him, chased him down like a dog for a year’s length of time.

He learned from one of them that it was Cindra, who had recovered from her shock at just the right moment to plead for him to be spared, that had saved his life.

Half blinded by the golden star above then he vaguely saw a figure staring down on him from the cliffside overhead.

Cold piercing eyes void of emotion fell upon his shoulders.

He matched their gaze, then continued to walk the spiraling path until at last he had reached that waiting peak.