The wind softly blew across Mono's pale face, rustling her raven locks.
Lord Emon gazed upon the still-lovely corpse, a mixture of feelings within him; he had not seen her since the night he sacrificed her.
Sacrifice, mercy-killing… the words did not ultimately matter; it was his hand that had held the knife, his hand that pushed the blade into her flesh, and prematurely ended her life.
Poor girl, thought he. So few years upon the earth, and those spent entirely in maiden childhood; never would she know of marital or maternal joy.
The timing could not have been worse; for a child to be cut down on her wedding night was an unthinkable and unfortunate travesty.
Yet he had been given no choice: fate had dealt the cruel blow, not he.
The responsibility of the tribe's protection had been his to bear: it was a grim and thankless task, the cutting of a limb gone rotten to preserve the body whole, and he liked it not.
He felt pity for her, and for the boy who was to be her husband, and for the children that would never be born to them; but he harbored no guilt.
It needed to be done. The loss of one flower was better than the loss of many.
'Tis what made it sacrifice, and not unjust murder.
Indeed, had it been otherwise, perhaps he could have better sympathized with Wander's desperate and blasphemous deeds.
But the child of a great hunter should have had a better grasp of understanding, as to the nature of life and death.
Many an innocent beast was felled by hunter's bow, to keep the hunter's fellows fed and warm; to protect and preserve mankind by killing was no sin.
To disobey one's elders...
To steal that which is sacred and thus beyond price…
To seize power that does not belong to you, and to blacken your soul by trading it for selfish gain…
These were the true sins, according to the beliefs of Lord Emon.
A flurry of white feathers drifted down from the cathedral ceiling like snow, and snow-white doves five in number flocked to alight upon the dead girl's altar.
In the land beyond the Shrine of Worship, the five white pillars of light which marked the colossi's graves could be seen to connect the earth and sky.
"...That foolish apostate," the wroth Lord Emon growled. "He will doom us all."
He turned to his men, who stood behind him in the hall… a hall once lined with statues of colossi numbering ten.
Now half that number remained standing, with the rest reduced to five piles of formless and broken stone.
"We are too late to stop him from unsealing the vessels," said he to the men, " It has already begun. But he has not unsealed them all, not yet. He may yet fall to the remaining guardians, but we cannot leave it to chance. Make haste, and ready my horse."
"But where shall he go next, so that we may overtake him in time?" asked one cleric from behind his carved wooden mask.
Lord Emon considered, looking out past the pillars of the Shrine at the land beyond, and at a dark storm brewing over the mountains.
"I know where he will be at the very last, if he should prevail," said Lord Emon. "And that is all that matters."
The light dimmed upon the grasses.
It dimmed upon the stone steps of the Shrine.
A shadow passed even over the pale and lifeless face of Mono.
Though none heard the sound of her voice, Mono's shade in the Great Beyond whispered the name of Wander.
XXXXX
She had been left atop the cliffs, when first Wander descended into the lake.
When the sun began to fall near the horizon and still he did not come back for her, Agro began to worry.
The horse circled for miles along the water's edge in search of him, until at last she came within earshot of his calling whistle.
A broken pathway spiraled from shore to stone table, and this is the path Agro walked to find her rider.
The boy she found was pale, and exhausted; he had done battle with four titan monsters since she had seen him last.
This fact the horse can hardly be expected to have comprehended, even had she seen it with her own dark eyes.
All she knew was that he needed her, and she would oblige to render aid.
Wander reached out weakly to the diamond-shaped patch of white upon her brow as she nuzzled him, kneeling so that he could better pull himself upon her saddle.
Pelagia's bolts of energy had done considerable damage to the shore ramp; Agro was to jump over a gap in the masonry.
Wander, slumped forward in the saddle, thought he saw Mono, standing in the shallows of the placid lake.
She turned to him, sadly. "Wander... hurry…" she said in a ghostly whisper, carried to his ears upon the wind. It was the first time he had heard her speak since she passed.
The jump of Agro nearly caused him to fall from the saddle, though he caught himself in time to avoid mishap.
Mono's ghostly apparition was gone.
Dormin's voice returned; its male voice had grown in strength, with the female one receding:
"Thy next foe is... deep within the forest... a shadow that crawls upon the walls…"
Old shade, have you no pity? Thought Wander. I am mortal only. Give me but a moment's peace...
He tried to lift the sword to the light, fails. He has almost no strength left, and sunset approaches.
He saw an umbral glade, trusted that this was where he was meant to go, and weakly spurred Agro on with his heel.