Today the sky was grey and stale and humidity hung in the air. One could guess that rain was a likely possibility in the near future.

  It wasn’t something one would normally expect considering where we currently were in the seasonal cycle, but with Limani being a land with so many lakes and rivers and being bordered by the warmer climate of Praelia and the strange and inhospitable border region that it has with Sodom, it wasn’t out of the ordinary for border towns like ours to sometimes have strange weather patterns, even if we still followed the overall seasonal cycle about as much as the inner regions, in the grand scheme of things. We don’t exactly experience Cheim?n weather during Théros times.

  “Hey, stop staring at the clouds!”

  “Please walk faster. We don’t want to risk leaving you behind.”

  Beatrice and Jeanne shout admonishments at me from further down the street. Apparently I had started staring off into nothing again, just getting distracted remembering why the sky would be like that during the warmer times and it seems that I was just standing still in the middle of an increasingly crowded side street leading out from one of the plazas that were near the marketplace where we usually worked at.

  Due to a combination of the dreary weather, wanting to lay low to let people forget the commotion of two days back and wanting to sort a few of her things out, Madam Sophia had been generous enough to grant me the day off. Beatrice managed to butter up her own employer enough with arguments of needing to keep and eye on me and needing some “girl time” that she was allowed the same privilege.

  “Not like anyone will want to try out thin Théros clothes in this weather. A blessing in disguise, I say.”, she had told me just a few minutes ago.

  Jeanne had just coincidentally gotten off her shift and had something over an hour of free time before having to return to her post, so she decided to accompany the two of us.

  The three of us had been sitting down eating some carrots and talking in the corner of the plaza for a good bit, as a way to pass the time and enjoy the surprise reprieve from our work.

  Well, the two of them had been talking. I had mostly just listened and would occasionally drift off into my own little world, when I felt that I had enough of Beatrice talking about the newest social topic that had become prominent lately or Jeanne complaining about some uncomfortable particularities of working as a member of the guard.

  Anyway, that brings us to the present situation, where I have to snap into attention and quicken my pace.

  “What exactly did you want to show us anyway Beatrice?”, said Jeanne.

  “Show you?”, she replied.

  “Don’t play coy with me. You said just a while ago that there was has been something that you have been meaning to talk to us about for a few days now and that we needed to go somewhere to see something first. Fess up, what is it?”, retorted Jeanne.

  “Oh, that? Yeah, we are going there right now. According to some friends of mine, it should be a bit to the east of the main town gate, if we cut straight through the main market area.”

  “Why do you need to be so secretive about this all of a sudden?”, I inquired?

  Sophia gave me a look. A deep and meaningful look directly at my eyes that seemed to be trying to both tell me something and instill some fear in me.

  “We seldom get to show anything new to each other or make a surprise out of anything. Afford me this opportunity, if you may.”, she retorted.

  Wow, that was weird. She doesn’t usually use such high minded dialect when talking to the two of us.

  Did I make her angry somehow?

  We kept walking through the increasingly busy streets, until we reached the market area. We avoided the crowds and the stalls by going around the side of the square. For some reason, I felt as if someone was constantly directing their attention at us. It was just a hunch derived from feeling uncomfortable upon reaching that area, for some reason. No matter where I looked however, I couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from nor did I ever catch any individual red-handed in staring at me.

  Must have been either my imagination or just because of the hair.

  Praelia, the kingdom of battle.

  Among its natives, there exists a small segment of the population that are born with crimson hair.

  The condition doesn’t seem connected to bloodlines necessarily, as sometimes a couple at random that has never even seen a person with crimson hair will sire a Vermillion.

  Men and women with crimson hair whose raw strength and tenacity greatly exceed those of the average man. Because of this, they are prized as elite troops from birth and their value to the kingdom’s military is so obvious that it doesn’t even warrant being spelled out.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  As our kingdom of Limani closely borders this neighboring nation, it isn’t unreasonable to see some of these people in towns near the border like our own.

  We get extra attention because of this, so I am used to some people either staring or looking at me weird, but this feeling right now seems to be different. If anything, it feels as if someone that I cant place is trying to stare a hole through me.

  It just might be my imagination though.

  At that moment, Jeanne decided to speak up.

  “Anyone else feeling weird, or is it just me?”

  “No, not really. Are you worried about where I might be taking us?”, replied Beatrice.

  “Nothing of the sort. It just seems that someone can’t take their eyes off of me. Probably staring at you two as well. I am guessing goosebumps all over. Lets move faster.”

  With this, Jeanne quickened her pace and actually took over Beatrice’s spot as the head of the convo.

  “Oh… so have you guessed where we are going?”, commented Beatrice.

  “No, but you gave us the general directions already. Just say something when we need to make any unusual turns.”

  After several minutes of walking, I could see the main street that led straight into the main gate. The walls around it were about five times the height of a man, made of stone and all attended to by guards patrolling the uppermost part. The gate itself was made of wood that was reinforced by horizontal metal plates and bolts.

  Currently it stood open, welcoming the occasional traveler and merchant, but as expected, the amount of people coming in wasn’t exactly overwhelming. It was still a bit too soon for Limani to accept tourist seeking to flee the increasing heat. Our country was famed for its bountiful amount of water in all its forms, shapes and sizes, so it became an attractive destination for civilians when war wasn’t on their rulers’ agendas.

  We kept walking and walking, until I started to wonder if the place that we were going to was actually going to be in the shade of the wall itself.

  Did she want to show us a hole in the wall perhaps?

  “Ok, now we need to turn left here”, chimed in Beatrice.

  With her now taking the lead, we walked past a few more houses, going left, right, in front and sometimes even cutting in between buildings that had long been abandoned.

  Then suddenly, she made a motion that meant that we should stop. After that, we walked slowly for a few dozen paces, with Beatrice checking to see if no one was around, until we finally took the final turn and arrived at the front entrance of a house that had the face of a woman carved in its entrance.

  “Ok now. These people aren’t going to cause problems for us if we don’t speak out of line or start being rude, so relax and just do what I do”, Beatrice advised.

  What happened next was rather surreal.

  The interior of the house was all illuminated due to various candles and the entrance had multiple white robes all hanging from the walls.

  We put them on just as Beatrice did, but I could tell that Jeanne was uncomfortable with the whole thing as it went. I have to admit, so was I.

  It was no different in a lot of ways from what we did at the temple. It was simply prayer and gospel teaching. The sharp contrast however was that it wasn’t the faith that I was used to. Instead of our Sacred Ancestor or the Divine Stars, the speaker, a man, spoke only of someone that he called “The Ivory Lady”. It was a strange concept to worship considering what I was used to, but he spoke of a woman whose beauty and purity was otherworldly. Her features white as chalk and her form as ephemeral and transcendent as if she has been shaped by either sea foam or the morning mist.

  What seemed to be extremely odd about this figure is that according to this preacher, no one would fail to give their lives for her, even if she requested it or not. No one would be able to lay their eyes on her and not feel like their life’s meaning had been presented to them as if it had been obvious all along and their mortal desires granted, whether she did anything or not.

  In short, he described what can only be considered to be an alien beauty with a borderline messianic aura that enraptured the masses simply by existing.

  It was quite easy to envision it. After all, the man had behind him a tapestry describing this being. Someone that stood atop a circular structure, her form embroiled upon the cloth with strings made of silver. A crown was placed on her head and a strange veil was draped over her face. I say strange because the veil itself had what could only be described as “large hearing” dangling from it in multiple places. Despite the veil, the embroidery depicted two silver eyes, so vivid that one could think that whoever made the tapestry wanted to set the moon alight with silver flames, twice over. Below this circular pedestal, there stood the masses, their full attention in the palm of the hands of the silver figure.

  I looked around and recognized some faces here and there, but they were all people that I never talked to before. The white robes didn’t come with a hood, so no one covered their face. In fact, the preacher had mentioned that attendants shouldn’t, as soon as we entered, because this belief was nothing to be ashamed of nor was it something that one should be fearful of accepting without the safety of anonymity.

  By the end of it all, I was a bit dazed and taken aback, but we finally emerged out of the house and into the street below the cloudy sky.

  We had left the white robes inside as we left and back in our usual attires, we were guided by Beatrice into another street away from the house where the entire experience had taken place.

  After we had made sure that we were out of earshot, it was Jeanne that spoke up.

  “You think that this is some kind of joke?!”

  “What makes you say that?”, Beatrice replied.

  “I am a town guard. I am going to have to report this! You just asked me to show my face in a group of weirdos worshipping some strange foreign faith. I can’t stay quiet and wait for someone to rat my presence out and get me into trouble!”, she retorted.

  “Don’t worry so much about it. What exactly are they doing that is wrong? They aren’t incentivizing any sort of action that aims at either violence or destabilization. There aren’t any rules on belief or enforcing a one-faith system. We just all tend to follow the Faith of the Divine Stars because it is the most widely accepted belief system. Did anyone give you any orders when you joined the town guard to suppress any differing, non-political ideologies?”

  Jeanne gave her a hard look, but ultimately relented.

  “No, there weren’t any orders of the sort… Fine! I won’t bother reporting them if they are as small and as peaceful as they appear to be, but if they act up in any way, then that leniency is off the table!”.

  She added, “It just doesn't feel right to allow a belief system whose birthplace is Sodom of all places to remain here. If it was from the Empire I could at least understand how they arrived at this sort of a narrative, but for such a mindset to come from that ruinous war-crazed kingdom is downright outlandish to me.”

  “Would it not make the most sense for it to have started there? As you said, Sodom is a country that views conquest as we view wearing dresses. It is simply an inevitable part of everyday life. A desire for tranquility and respite of this sort could only have its birthplace in such a dreary and dark kingdom. The stronger the light, the darker the shadow, as they say. The reverse also seems to hold true. Perhaps they are finally tiring of war.”, retorted Beatrice.

  “Could it be instead that they want to use this new faith to get people to help them when they need it? Like opening some gates during sieges for example?”, I chimed in.

  Beatrice turned towards me, with a knowing smile.

  “I thought that that might be the case at first. It makes a world of difference if the god you worship is something that walks among the people compared to some faraway stars that you can see in the night sky… still, I doubt that this is any covert military tactic. This faith already has a long history and no one has ever brought up anything related to any Ivory Lady when the business of war is brought up. Besides, they don’t bother hiding their roots as being Sodom and everyone with a brain knows that that place isn’t all sunshine and rainbows”, she said.

  Then it was Jeanne’s time to chime in.

  “How much do you think that they are telling us? We just arrived. How much do you think of what they told us are lies or half truths?”

  At that, Beatrice raised her eyes towards the grey skies.

  “Lies? Not a single one. I could tell that much. There were no lies. Half-truths I can’t say, but nothing that seemed to be overtly missing to make his whole narrative fit together”

  At that, Jeanne decided to probe further.

  “How exactly are you so sure of that?”

  “Well, his story didn’t have any indirect logical contradictions that I could spot. Plus his posture and voice were pretty easy to read.”, replied Beatrice.

  “His voice?”, asked Jeanne.

  “Yes. Voice tones and inflections can give away a lot of things about a person. Their overall personalities, their feelings and even their state of mind. Got to admit, he was pretty funny to hear.”

  “Why is that?”, I asked.

  “Because you could tell that he was really getting off on talking about this woman. Such a vulgar mind, that one.”