A few still looked keen on the idea of attacking, but the rest were nodding in agreement or understanding of whatever their leader was saying.
“Good thinking Etienne. I suppose your mind isn’t completely useless after all.” Meirin knelt to pick up her spear again as the group of rogues started to trickle past. How quickly that had turned around. How quickly it could have gone badly.
Delyth let her sword tip point towards the ground but didn’t sheath it until the bandits were well down the road. She was breathing hard, trying to regain some semblance of herself.
She had not even considered the option of peace, not even tried to find a way around the slaughter. Were it Calamity in her hand and not a mundane weapon, would she have even been able to refrain from the bloodshed? Or would she just have killed them all? Slaughtered them like they were meat rather than thinking, feeling human beings?
Bile rose in her throat, and she struggled not to lose it. When had Delyth become the monster she’d tried so long to prove she wasn’t?
Finally, Delyth put her sword away, turning to find Etienne smiling at Meirin. “That could have definitely gone worse,” he said. “It's a good thing you had that sigil.”
The warrior closed her eyes. She had been good before she had met Alphonse. Why was it so hard to escape the darkness now that she was gone?
How much worse would it be if she completely lost her freedom to Enyo?
When she opened them, the battle lust was gone, and in its wake, Delyth just felt tired. “We ought to get going again,” she said. “To keep from losing more time.”
⫸
For a long time, Meirin walked in silence. It had been strange how aggressively Delyth had reacted to the bandits. How ready she had been to attack without any attempt at negotiations. Meirin supposed they had been bandits—people who made a living preying on others. Perhaps that was enough reason for Delyth to draw her sword.
Meirin shook her head, squinting against the afternoon sun. Thank the Gods it had finally started to cool off—it had been such a warm fall in the lands below the mountains. The warpaint over her eyes helped reflect some of the light, and so she found herself without the splitting headache that generally came with walking for miles. Still, the warrior was ready for a rest when something large started to appear on the horizon. As they passed over the Afonneidr River, Meirin realized it was a building.
She had never seen something so tall that had been made by human hands. It rose up out of the plains in a perfectly symmetrical column, higher than any tree. Sandstone blocks climbing above the plains. Mynydd Gwyllt was considered a mighty clan, with many buildings and many resources, yet they had nothing close to the magnitude of the tower.
How had the people who constructed it gotten the stones piled up so high? How had they made it so sharp and square? Mynydd Gwyllt built along natural lines, following the curves of the earth.
She swallowed back her surprise and intimidation as Etienne and Delyth did not seem impressed. The runes Delyth had marked pointed towards the tower, and so that was where they would go. But after an hour of walking and the behemoth structure only looming larger and larger, Meirin had to ask. “What is it?” Why had the Gods come here? Why had they left such a magnificent creation?
✶
When Delyth did not immediately answer, Etienne considered the question. He had studied the maps of this region before he and Alphonse had left on their journey to Thloegr. Even the maps kept by the school of Moxous had marked this place, outdated as they were. It must have been standing exactly as it was for hundreds of years.
That thought was enough to cow him. The tower was not excessively impressive by the standards of Ingolan architecture, but the fact that it had stood so untouched by time when even Enyo’s temple had begun to fall to ruins… It was outstanding. Perhaps there were enchantments laid upon the very stone, sung into it at its quarrying, and whispered over the mortar to bind it tight for centuries.
If so, how much blood had been spilled to bind something so mighty?
When he spoke, it was in reverent tones. “The name of this tower has long been forgotten, but in the records still kept by Moxous, it was considered a place of worship and prayer.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “There was something else too, some connection to death. Perhaps a tomb. Or a God of Death.”
“A tomb? What, you mean the dead aren’t buried or burned here? Just put in a stone box?” For some reason, that idea seemed to unsettle Meirin more, her mouth tightening in displeasure.“Why would the Old Gods come here?”
Etienne shrugged. The idea wasn’t particularly strange to him. Above-ground tombs or mausoleums were particularly common in coastal Ingola, where frequent flooding made burial both inconvenient and dangerous to the water supply. “All of Thloegr belonged to the Old Gods
