It was the chimes of the Augurs that Dalliance noticed first as Miss Wimple’s wagon rattled up to the Green on Remembrance Day, chimes on the chests of serious old men with tasseled, embroidered robes, filigree on the hoods in place of the antlers their forebears would have worn, but still making the clacking, chiming sounds marking the most sacred of traditions. Hollow wooden pipes set with little bells, with the teardrop striker ends somewhere within, they lay over bright-colored robes in ostentatious display—but this was an ornament to catch the eye for the purpose of visibility, rather than for impressing the peasantry. One didn’t touch an Augur, lest one reach unexpected communion with the divine and risk being changed by it. The chimes were a warning, as were the robes.

  Da had been very clear on the subject.

  The Temple had set up great big crates covered in bright red blankets at the four corners of the Green, with a raised stage made from last-minute carpentry for which his brother had probably charged them a good deal. It didn’t creak when the head of the Augurs stepped forward and released the first dove, which flew directly north and into a chill morning breeze.

  Classes were, of course, canceled. It was Remembrance Day.

  Miss Wimple’s cart drew to a halt beside grass which, in the spring, boasted dances around the maypole, and in the summer, Remembrance and the games. In the fall, after the harvest festival, anything they couldn't process away to bins, barrels, or stocks was fair game for a fit of largesse and community gluttony, and the fragments sprinkled trodden grass, which in the winter, shrivelled to a depressing beige, leaving the horses unsatisfied with the graze. Children would run and their feet kick up clumps of dead grass which would grow back, unmarred, in the spring. And that was all it was to him.

  Not all priests were talkers. The master of ceremonies today—although Dalliance didn’t know his type of priest—was clearly not. He was allied too closely with divinity, Dalliance supposed. Earnest gave him a wicked grin when he commented on it, but if there was one thing that Da believed in religiously, it was that when it came to matters of the spirit, his children were not to embarrass him. And they never had. Priests passed through murmuring, “Do you know why? Do you remember why?” to the little children. Dalliance could remember when they had done it to him, when he had answered perfectly, to startled appreciation and talk of a future in the clergy. He had known better, even then.

  Da and his uncle were here already, in their cups as much as Da allowed himself to ever be, which was to say, red-faced but in full control of his faculties as always. His uncles had never shared that position, each of them in their own way emphasizing the finding of the shortest path between vertical and horizontal. Early as it was, today wouldn’t be an exception.

  Rows of log benches had been set up in front of the stage, and it was to these the children—including the twelve-year-olds—were herded. There, they were abandoned to fend for themselves through the festivities. It was what it always was, and what it always would be: deathly boring.

  Earnest’s notes were a breath of fresh air. Today’s entertainment, apparently, would consist of vying with Cordy to see who could first convince a portion of the class that Sterling was secretly engaged. Effluvia was Cordy's pick for his mystery bride, while Charity was Earnest's. And the games were on.

  Dalliance tried to tell Earnest he was on the wrong side. No knight would arrange something like that with an artificer. But then again, who was he to know? And picking Charity . . . .

  The priest extolled the virtues of the Northern Wind, and its many good characteristics for the future, for the weather, for the crops. The wind would pass over the works of humanity, bound toward the Wall and then out over their foes, lest they forget who they were fighting and what they were facing. The blood of the gods on the earth, he declaimed. Charity winced. Where they really were was expounded on with great verbosity. The divine mystery of the gods above was carefully chronicled, each noted for their deeds, insomuch as such were even remembered. The Sun-with-Arms, the Interlocking Triangles, the Twin Moons—whatever a "moon" was meant to represent. The organization of them in the sky was pronounced fortuitous . . . no, wait, what was the word? Auspicious.

  The auspices were good. A steer would be slaughtered in memory of their sacrifice for humanity in carving the gateway between worlds, in memory of their having created this one whole cloth, from scratch. Scooping out the great sphere, through which, now empty and cold, the winds blew. And the islands whirled forever over the inverted bowl of the oceans and mountains above and below and blasted plains of the earth below, where first mankind had found himself set, and which had already been irrevocably destroyed. Or such was what he had been told. And so they had retreated to the heavens, each group to a whirling island, the emblem of their god who saved them from whatever befell them before. And here they were.

  There was no mention in the liturgy at all of the earth below, or its spoiled status. But his mom had occasionally allowed herself to be convinced, when he was younger, to look up at the continents passing and label them, and point out the craters, which were, she had explained, the battle scars of the New World, of imminent deity and demi-divinity. Perhaps that was why they had left. It looked green enough from all the way up here, however many thousands of miles that was. Sometimes Dalliance wondered if they could go back, if they all had to live on a rock in the heavens forever, or if they could put their feet on the soil where they were designed to be in the first place. But then, nobody had asked what he thought.

  Earnest’s game was shut down twice during the duration of the first proclamation of the auspices. It was going to be a long day.

  After the conclusion came the good part. The cloth was ripped away from the four boxes, releasing clouds of sacred doves. The feathers, resplendent white edged with gold and cream: must be a sweet gig being a sacred dove, all the seeds you want, just have to fly sometimes, he thought idly. The flock headed north, an ‘omen of weal!’ proclaimed the priest. “and on that note, let’s eat!”

  Liturgical duties performed, the cleric, who to Dalliance was looking somewhat portly, scurried, rather like a hedgehog, over to the front of the group that was even now abandoning the benches for trenchers and stew.

  The old time-y dish, back from before plates were considered essential, was always served to bring remembrance—another way to look back on the times of their fathers, and of the gods’ rescue.

  The stew would be spicy, and gamy, and probably goat.

  "It stands to reason," said Earnest, "that a man unattached but with means should be in want of a wife. And soon enough, Sterling will be that gentleman."

  His audience was sparse, consisting of Dalliance, a grinning Sterling who had not commented as of yet but was nevertheless keeping a weather eye out on the conversation while enjoying a heavily loaded trencher, and the two Matters siblings.

  "Think about it," Earnest continued. "Who could be a better fit than Charity Troubles? The Troubles family is old and highly regarded."

  "There's Potency—" Prudence began.

  "—other than her father," Earnest cut in smoothly, "I think in the grand dynastic scheme of things, he could do worse."

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  "Than whom?" asked Civility, walking up. The rough boy, having not been satisfied with one trencher, had filled three.

  "Than Charity," explained Earnest.

  "Well, yes," said the rough boy. "Basically, anyone would be worse. Why? Why are we . . . "

  "No reason!" said Earnest hurriedly.

  Dalliance stepped in to the rescue, but promptly decided on treason instead. "Earnest doesn't have a betrothal yet, so he's projecting his fears on everybody else."

  His friend yelped at the joke, but there was general laughter.

  "Rampant speculation," commented Sterling, "but actually kind of encouraging. I'm not the only one thinking about it."

  "About Charity?" asked Earnest brightly.

  "We're going into our second hunt," he said, not directly responding. "And . . . last time it was Pants that fell. This time it could be me. I'm the last of my surname, because it was assigned to my father in the heat of battle. So . . . I don't know. Yeah. I've been . . . I've been wondering, if I make it, what's on the other side."

  He didn't sound exactly confident, but the simple honesty somehow resonated better for it.

  The secret, Dalliance thought, was probably Charm. That might be the knightly build—stack Charm to counterbalance your physical enhancements.

  "Well," said Earnest, "I'm certainly not going to go in as undefended as last time. This time, I'm bringing a glove."

  There was a little bit of laughter, but mostly interest. "See, I'm thinking . . . blacksmiths . . . and I went and bothered the blacksmith until he lent me his extra glove. They have to handle hot metal and sharp things all the time, so maybe it's not armor—"

  "—I think it qualifies," said Dalliance.

  "—Maybe it qualifies," admitted Earnest, "but the important part is that I've never used a short sword before. I could cut myself. But then I thought, what am I going to cut while holding it in one hand? My other hand is the answer. So, if I got a glove that I can't cut through . . . "

  "That is the most depressing reason for a reasonable equipment set I could think of," said Sterling. "If you'd said, 'I want to be able to grab things that have claws and hold them in place while I stab them,' I would have been thinking, 'Hey, our chances just improved.' But no."

  "What about you?" asked Prudence, turning to Dalliance. He didn't feel comfortable speaking to Sterling, but the boy had been unusually friendly, and it didn't feel right to leave him out. And besides, he was curious. "You've still got your sword, but you don't seem worried. What gives?"

  "An enchantment," said Sterling shortly. But then he paused and looked deeply tired. "And you are likely to reprise your role as spotter."

  "Yes, that's the idea," admitted Dalliance.

  "You’ll be standing near me, so you need to know: this is going to start fires."

  That was not exciting information for Dalliance to hear, but at least, he reasoned, the progression of a fire should be fairly predictable, and he shouldn't be seeing a whole bunch of duplicate fires filling his vision or anything.

  "An enchanted sword," he said instead. "Pulled out all the stops."

  "I'm hardly the one," he demurred. "Charity's crossbow—"

  "—yeah," winced Dalliance. He had been rethinking having stepped in and argued on the crossbow's behalf ever since he did it.

  "It was probably the right choice," said Earnest, reading his face, "but she's going to be hard to outcompete."

  "What's even the difference?" asked Prudence. "A bow's a bow, right?"

  Sterling cleared his throat. "A crossbow," he explained, "shoots like a bow if my father were the one pulling that bow back. It's not a fast weapon. And if her aim doesn't improve . . . picture her shooting through my armor, both going in and on the way out . . . ."

  Not quite fair, Dalliance thought. She’d only hit him once for real life. Though Sterling had no idea how close he’d come to the girl killing him, either.

  Dalliance kicked himself again. He’d have to nursemaid Charity to keep Sterling alive, how was that fair?

  Earnest nodded. "I'll keep her aimed at something else." He nudged Dalliance, who took it good-naturedly. "Though I'll be spread thin shepherding this galoot as it is."

  "Dalliance?"

  It was his sister. She looked . . . disheveled. Red-eyed.

  "Excuse me," he said, and left the group at a quick trot.

  "What's wrong?" he asked, already dreading the worst. They passed the open grills, leaving the bulk of the festival behind them.

  She looked like she'd been crying, but her gaze was steady despite the fact that she was ducking down behind the now-empty dove box. "It's the Mason."

  "Durance?" asked Dalliance. He wasn't certain.

  "Yes," she said sadly. "Durance Pants. The Pants are having a bad time lately." She paused. "He caught me reading," she said. The non sequitur threw Dalliance for a loop, and she reluctantly passed over a chapbook to him. The lurid couple on the cover was enough to tell him that this was one of his mother's books. "I wanted to know what I was in for," she said. "But the look on his face . . . when he gave me the book back . . . and now he's talking with Father."

  Da was, in fact, talking to the elder Pants man.

  "You don't have to talk to him now," said Dalliance. "We can avoid him. I'm sure we'll think of something."

  "Maybe the kitchen," she said. "One of the storage tents."

  They moved without any great caution, the press of bodies sufficient to shield them from view, and in moments, found themselves seated at the base of the large, rough, splintery wooden boxes which had once contained the ingredients for the trenchers.

  It also gave them a front-row seat to the sacrifice of the steer.

  Dalliance watched her face go through disgust, fright, and then turn pale. But looking back, all he felt was a little hungry at the sight of all that beef.

  Thinking about it, he hadn't really reacted to the head of his classmate, either.

  "What are you thinking about?" she asked eventually.

  "I'm worried I'm not normal," he said.

  "I don't think you're worried," she said, not teasing, either. "I think you're considering it, but I don't think you're worried. You're always up there in your head. Always careful about what you say, even if you're not good at saying it."

  "So?"

  "I don't think you're normal," she told him. "But you're my brother."

  The meat was doled out to one patriarch after another. Soon enough, it would be Cadence's turn, so the two shifted, moving their line of sight elsewhere, to behind the tent where an outhouse and the storage tents made a sort of U-shape, with the only open side facing the woods.

  There was already someone there. Dalliance didn't quite turn the corner before he became aware of this. His hand shot out, stopping his sister cold. He pulled her back around the corner. "It's Mom," he said. "Look."

  She peeked around the corner and pulled back, a look of horror on her young face.

  "She's kissing that man," she said. And it was true. Chastity Rather was deeply immersed and liquidly leaning in the arms of someone Dalliance couldn't quite see, other than that his hair was blonde.

  Dalliance shivered. He didn’t care what the omens said, this didn’t seem like a good sign.

  If you're here, I'll assume you're a reader. And readers like words: so you can't go wrong with the works of the inimitable rainyliquid, which contain many.

  ? Phoenix Flight [Lite LitRPG - Dungeon Diving - Slow Romance] ?

  by RainyLiquid

  Weak to Strong, gathering of powers, skills, and spells.