Author's Notes: Well, good news, I'm officially an uncle! Now if only my sister would get it together and throw out the baby's father and find someone who was actually more mature than her two day old son that would be swell.
Chapter Two: The Wind Shrine
After going through his usual morning routine, Sigurd chose to take his white chaps and white coat with blue trimmings. They couldn't afford to take spare clothing, and they had to look good when they arrived at the Wind Shrine. His uncle was already up and gone when he woke, finishing the numerous preparations needed before this trip.
Grabbing Heaven's Cloud and putting it to his hip, quiver on his back, bow in hand and a few extra waxed strings in his pocket, he left his house with a strange feeling. He felt the compulsion to turn around and drink in the image of his home; as if this would be the last in a long time he was going to see it, and not just five days.
Stop being foolish. Sigurd reprimanded himself. Just focus on finishing your preparations.
He sprinted across the village to the stables, the largest structure in Twin Peaks at a hundred feet end to end, the barn shaped structure held forty chocobos, from yellow to brown to green to a couple of blues. There, tethered at the far end, was Boko in front of a new wagon. The blacksmith must have just finished it.
Putting his bow in the wagon, Sigurd started harnessing the brown chocobo. Yellows were the most agile chocobos and second only in speed to the blacks, while browns were larger and stronger, much more suited to drafting and farm plowing.
Ten minutes later, he led his uncle's chocobo by the reigns to the Inn, where most of the villagers had gathered, taking their turns presenting their gifts to the Shrine. Hilda was watching the gathering from a few buildings away, leaning up against the structure. Apparently she caught on to how welcome strangers tended to be.
Sigurd stopped in the road and said to her, "I'm sorry if anyone was rude to you."
She looked at him in mild confusion before it hit her. With a laugh, she said, "Rhine, I've been in villages that were a lot more hostile than yours. It doesn't bother me." Looking back at the gathering of villagers with a playful smile on her face, Sigurd could've sworn he heard her murmur something along the lines of 'farm boy'.
For reasons that confused him, he took offense to that statement. Pushing those feelings aside, he parked Boko and the wagon just outside the Inn, and moved through the crowd to help inside.
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An hour later, everyone had presented their offerings, which were then loaded into the wagon. The villagers offered mostly food, but there were a few crafted trinkets among them. Sigurd, Siegfried, and Alden Frigg spent another thirty minutes using crumpled paper to make sure the food and other gifts were secured in place without them being damaged as the wagon bumped around.
It was a few hours before midday when the three humes reached the northern gate. As the sharpened wooden pillars slowly rose, Siegfried started explaining, "It's twenty miles to the Cardinal Road. We should be able to reach it by sundown."
When he got the nod of understanding from Sigurd and Hilda, he jumped on the wagon, grabbed the reins, and gave Boko a light giddy up.
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Three hours later, Sigurd and Hilda fell into an easy routine for protecting the wagon; the Lauserian was more accurate at long range with his bow, so he would shoot monsters from far off, she would shoot it with her pistols if it came within twenty meters of them, and Sigurd would use his sword at close range. The few times he was hurt by the encounters, they found out Hilda was far better with white magic than he was.
They took the northern trail out of the village, heading northeast, the shortest path toward the Road. They could arrive at the Wind Shrine a good six hours faster if they just went straight eastward, but on the Road they would have no fear of monster attacks. The trail slowly wound back and forth down the mountain, allowing the wagon to descend without rocketing down the steep mountainside. They reached the Gultan Basin, crossed the small countryside covered in grassy plains, and were on their way up the easternmost mountain in the Lauserian Mountain Range.
"So what's the Earth Shrine like?" Sigurd called out from his rising. The mountain path they were on was a twenty foot wide, fifteen foot deep rut. Supposedly it helped conceal both the sight and the smell of travelers on the trail. This part of the mountain was anything but even, with rises and dips that could hide any number of things, as well as a forest whose edge followed the trail for miles. The terrain consisted of dirt, grass, and mossy granite, but other than the hills and dips, the land was rather even.
"Boring." Hilda called back from the other side of the trail. "It's kinda cool to look at, but it's a real pain to get to. You ever heard of the Grand Gash?" When she saw him shaking his head, she explained, "It's a series of two hundred or so ravines in the Jorjin Providence. It's like a huge maze that takes days to navigate to reach the Shrine. It's about a thousand feet tall, carved right into the ravine wall, with sculptures of scenes of battles and creatures and the like. It's quite a place, but otherwise boring." She gave a little laugh. "I guess Saint Arte wanted to give a spectacle to whoever manages to find the place."
"You believe the Twelve Saints were real?" Sigurd asked, curious. In Twin Peaks, there were both believers and skeptics, as well as people in between like himself.
"No one disputes that the Warriors of Light are real." Hilda answered.
"What about the spirits and the gods?"
"Very possible." She answered, still scoping their surroundings.
"Even the Great Dragon and the Golden Tiger?" She wasn't looking at him when he asked, but he could still see a look of anger pass over her face. He doubted it was from his questioning, so he figured it must have been a sensitive subject for her.
He didn't press the subject, and waited a few more minutes before asking, "You've been to a couple of the Shrines before, ever wonder if you'll be there when the Warriors of Light arrive?"
She chortled. "Come on, it's only been twenty years since their last incarnation, I doubt something would happen in such a short time to cause the gods to reincarnate their disciples again."
He didn't know much about history, and even less about governments and factions that could draw the attention of the gods, but he could understand her point.
He took a few more steps forward before he felt a small tremor. He stopped instantly, and looked across the rutted path to Hilda. The alert look on her face told him she felt it too. Whatever it was, it must have been big. Sigurd gave his uncle the signal to stop, and saw Hilda putting her ear to the ground. He could feel the footsteps a little better now, and his female scout leapt over across the path and landed like a feather before putting her ear to the ground on Sigurd's side. After a few more light tremors, she stood up and nodded, pointing toward the small forest neighboring the trail.
Sigurd nodded, and stuck his head over the edge of the rut and said, quietly enough so only his uncle could hear him, "We're gonna check up on something. If anything attacks you in the mean time, just scream."
Siegfried gave him a dour look. "I planned to do that anyway."
Pulling out his sword, Sigurd followed Hilda into the woods, following the now audible sounds of the footsteps. Moving from tree to bush to granite crop, they moved through the forest, trying to stay out of sight. After a couple of minutes, they saw what they were chasing. At twenty feet high and thirty feet long, it was shaped somewhat like a mantis, standing on four spear-like legs, a small green thorax, large red abdomen, and a head that looked more like a torso connecting to a head. It had two one-jointed arms with a serrated blade on the inside of each arm. It was currently eating a now unidentifiable animal carcass off the ground with its huge mandibles.
"What's that?" Hilda quietly asked with her back against a tree.
"I think it's a plant spider." Sigurd asked, on his stomach peering through a bush. "Normally they're smaller than a man, but I think there's a recessive gene or something that allows them to grow like that."
"I'd rather not fight it." Hilda said. "I say we turn around and return to your uncle, only fight it if it attacks us."
Sigurd nodded. He started to crawl backwards, when his sheath hit a rock next to a small ledge, knocking it over and onto a small, fallen branch, breaking it with a loud crack. Looking back at the noise he made, he held back a curse, hoping the dire plant spider didn't hear that. He had his answer before he could even look back, as he felt the powerful tremors getting louder very quickly.
He quickly sprang to his feet, and dashed forward, under the spear-like arm that would've impaled him, and swung hard at the monster's leg. The blade barely managed to dig three inches into the foot wide leg. What the hell is this thing's exoskeleton made of? He tried to pull his sword out, only to find it stuck.
Suddenly, the monster started turning. Out of pure reflex, Sigurd kicked the plant spider's leg, pushing himself away violently, pulling his sword out in the process. Then he looked up and saw he was half a second away from the monster thrusting its arm through his chest, when suddenly there was a bang, and a spark flew off the thing's head, stunning it for a second. Sigurd took the opportunity to jump back and put some distance between him and the monster.
The plant spider turned its head to see Hilda put her pistol back in its holster, and slap her palms together. Suddenly, dozens of thorny vines blasted out of the ground under the monster, wrapping around its legs and body. She said she was as good with geomancy as she was with white magic, and he wondered if she was ever going to use it on this trip.
Sigurd took advantage of the situation and leapt at the monster's head. He thought he heard Hilda yell something, but the thought was gone as soon as he realized the monster still had control of its upper body, which promptly swatted him away with its arm.
He wasn't aware of how far he flew, probably fifty feet, before hitting a tree, and falling twenty feet onto a large slab of granite. Pain raced through his body as he tried to get back onto his feet, finding he could only move slowly due to a couple broken ribs and a concussion.
Suddenly, a hand was on his shoulder, and he felt the familiar warmth of healing magic race through his body, healing the broken bones and taking away the soreness. With the pain gone, he looked up and saw, behind Hilda, the monster was just breaking through its bonds and looked at the two of them like any predator would.
Sigurd took a step back to run, but Hilda grabbed his arm to hold him still. "Wait a second." She demanded. She slapped her palms together, and then the stone under their feet started to shift, as if it were molten, and climbed up their legs to make crude breast plates for the two of them.
Even though the process only took a few seconds, Sigurd had to force himself to stay put as the plant spider was gaining on them very fast. The instant the granite armor stopped, they both jumped out of the way as the monster spit a large glob of acid at them, burning the floor they stood on a moment earlier.
The monster turned and charged toward Sigurd. This time, however, he stood his ground as against the charge. At the last second, he formed a Protect spell in front of him, a five foot wide barrier of blue hexagons. The slight curve of the spell caused the stab attack to deflect to the side and into the ground.
With its arm momentarily out of the way, Sigurd launched himself at the monster's head, only to find the monster's torso quickly lean to one side, and violently swing toward the other, knocking him out of the air. He fell twenty feet away, and due to the extra weight of the granite armor, he had difficulty getting up quickly. Hilda was by his side in a moment, and was firing both of her pistols at its head, doing little more than annoying it due to its natural armor.
The plant spider seemed to finally have enough of Hilda shooting it, and charged at them again. Sigurd took a chance then and jumped at it, using both his and the monster's momentum to cut one of the plant spider's legs off. He had to jump back almost immediately as the large monster nearly crushed him with its bulk as it lost balance.
The two teenagers turned around and ran for it. Sigurd considered for a second asking Hilda to take the armor off of him so he could run faster, but quickly pushed aside that thought. He didn't have any kind of armor under it anyways; back at Twin Peaks, anything he couldn't handle without armor he just ran from.
"We'd better get back to the wagon." Sigurd said.
"What?" Hilda asked, incredulous. "No, we would be leading the monster right to the thing we're trying to protect! We have to deal with it or get it off our tails." She shook her head, trying to think. "My bullets aren't getting through, so it'll have to be your sword attacking a vital spot on it."
"It's too agile, I can't get close to it!" Sigurd stated. He really wished Yamasa was with them.
Something seemed to click in Hilda's mind right then. "Hey, wasn't there a lake nearby?"
Sigurd searched his memory. "Yeah, about a mile back down the trail," he was going to ask why she wanted to know, but didn't get the chance to as she turned and ran off toward the lake. It took them three minutes to make it, and when they got there, there was only a hundred feet or so between them and the stampeding, though hobbling plant spider.
Hilda quickly ran onto the lake, running across the water as if it were solid ground, and stopped twenty feet into it. She waited several seconds for the monster to get close, and then slapped her hands together. The entire area seemed to shift and change, as if reality had become a runny oil painting. The monster started shifting from side to side, off balance and dazed.
"Now, Sigurd!" Hilda yelled. "Finish it off!"
Not asking any questions, the silver haired youth leapt into the air, barely able to clear the twenty foot height of the monster's head, and using all his strength plunged his sword into its skull. Holding onto the hilt, he was swung around several times as the monster fought him off, suddenly out of its daze, before it fell onto the ground, dead.
Hilda walked back onto solid ground, panting, while he struggled to pull his sword out of the thing's skull. She pulled a book out of the satchel at her waist, and a small poaching kit, with shears, saws, scalpels and a hunting knife with skinning edge. She started flipping through the book as her male companion finally managed to free Heaven's Cloud.
"What's that?" Sigurd asked while wiping the blade off on the grass.
"Poacher's guide." She explained. "Wanderers who don't have them are those who don't want to make a profit on the monsters they kill." After flipping through several pages, she stopped and read on. "Apparently, plant spiders' livers are great for alchemical uses." She took the saw out from the kit, and plunged the sharp tipped tool into the monster's side. "This may take a while, so you might want to get back to your uncle. I'll meet up with you later."
A little tired from the ordeal, Sigurd nodded and jogged back to the trail to meet up with his uncle.
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Six hours later, the sun was only minutes away from the horizon, leaving the skies and clouds awash with crimson and rouge. Siegfried assured his two younger escorts they weren't far from the Cardinal Road. The dirt and rock path had a rise in it that forced Sigurd and Hilda to push on the wagon to help Boko pull it over. Once they were on top, they saw they had reached their destination.
On the other side of the rising, a hundred feet away laid the Road, a relic dating back to just after the collapse of the Dark Epoch. Two hundred feet wide of blue and black stone, its length stretching off into the horizons, it had been called by experts to be the greatest contribution to human civilization since the collapse of the Dark Epoch itself. On its edges, every three hundred feet, rose a tower as wide as two men abreast, a hundred feet high with hovering halo rings about their tops. The Saint Bestia built the Roads across all of Terra, while his brother Madator tamed all the fell beasts of the world, and together, forced them into a hereditary pact that forbids them from stepping foot onto the Roads, thus turning those animals into the progenitors of the monsters. All civilizations since have built themselves around the Roads.
When the three humes and one chocobo crossed the threshold onto the Road's edge, they passed from chilled evening air into warm air. Sigurd's head shot up at the sudden change in climate, and looked around in wonderment. After running out to the middle of the road, he knelt and felt the blue marble inlaid with obsidian lines to create circles and trigrams as small as a hand to as large as the Road was wide. It was all as smooth as glass. Feeling it all, Sigurd knew any who were skeptical of the Twelve Saints had never been on a Road, never felt its surface. If they had, they would've known no hume hand could've crafted it.
"Oi, Sigurd!" His uncle called out to him. "You can gawk all ya wan' after ya help me set up camp."
Scratching the back of his head in embarrassment over his wide-eyed display, he quickly started helping his uncle get the tents and blow-up mattresses out of the wagon to set up. He heard Hilda muttering under her breath, something about 'what a child' and 'chocobo boy'. When they were done, they had a small fire going, one they planned to clean up in the morning, cooking their stew.
"We made some goo' time today, kids." Siegfried said. "W'should make it to the Wind Shrine before even'en tomorrow."
"Are there a lot of airships at the Wind Shrine?" Hilda asked, tiredly. "I've been traveling on foot enough lately."
"Yeah, they gots trad'r ships, transport types, some f'r supplies, ports f'r refueling those passing by." Siegfried explained. "Y'probably heard th' Wind Shrine's th' only non-terrestrial based Airship dock in th' world."
"Yeah, that's what I heard, and I know it's not true." She said, lazily staring into the fire. "Aquta's got one too, though not nearly as large from what I've heard."
Sigurd thought he had heard the name Aquta before, though he couldn't quite remember what they were. He wanted to ask Hilda about airships, but he didn't want to act any more callow than he already made himself look. When they retreated into their tents, Sigurd's thoughts were filled with dreams of what he would find the next day. He had seen pictures of some of the Shrines and airships on the television back home, but he had the feeling the real thing wouldn't match up to the two dimensional images.
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Travel across the Cardinal Road was uneventful. The conversations were few and far between, with the only excitement being the occasional monster outside the Road's barrier, barking or clawing at the invisible wall protecting their prey only yards outside their grasp, Sigurd found himself staring out at the fields as they passed.
The hills in the field where they first got on the Road gradually became larger, turning into small mountains, covered with granite or grass. Around mid-day, they were in a new mountain range, and the Road rose up into a bridge suspended by giant blue arches, allowing for lesser grades to scale while moving from mountain to mountain. Off to the east, where they were heading, lay dark cumulonimbus's dancing above, around, and through the mountains, obscuring anything that might lie within that range. Clouds that big couldn't possibly move and shift that fast.
"Easy, m'boy." Siegfried said, apparently sensing his nephew's apprehension. "Tha's just the Wind Shrine. We'll be fine."
Sigurd nodded, relaxing a little. This would be his uncle's third trip to the Wind Shrine, so he trusted the older man's words. As the hours ticked by, the trio came closer and closer to the raging storm. Soon, the winds started to pick up, pressing on them as if it wished to throw them off the road. The wagon rocked frequently, and a few times the wheels on one side came a few inches off the Road, but it held steady.
Eventually, the road pressed against and curved around the side of the mountain. Soon after, the three humes and their chocobo walked into the twisting wall that was the cloud engulfing the mountain. Moisture instantly made their clothes cling to their skins, and the howling wind soon left their hair dripping wet. Water started to sprinkle off of Boko as the water streamed across his feathers, and Hilda and Sigurd made sure to hold the tarp flaps on the wagon to keep the gifts and food from getting sodden. As the caravan continued into the dark cloud, their visibility cut to twenty feet, the wind continued to howl.
After nearly an hour, the winds started to die down. The blinding mists around them eventually thinned out, and they walked out of a threshold into clear air, and saw the Wind Temple in the distance. It laid in the middle of a crater a mile wide, with four Roads leading straight to it in the form of suspension bridges. At the edges of the crater along side the Roads lay small towns; Inns and traders mostly, from what he had heard. All this, however, paled before the structure it was all built around.
Sigurd had heard the stories, heard the figured and seen illustrations, but those didn't do justice for the sheer magnitude of what he saw before him. Nearly two thousand feet wide, and rising three miles into the sky, the Elemental Shrine, made by the hands of Saint Giralda, was made out of white marble cut to a shimmering sheen. Every few hundred feet up the structure there would be an open air level; no walls or windows, simply a railing to show off the surrounding landscapes unobstructed. Tubes, barely perceivable at that distance, ran up the sides of the shrine, carting people and small vehicles to the various floors. There were five levels spaced evenly up the structure that were made to be airship docks. Flying transports of every shape and size flew in and out of the massive openings and into the shrine itself. Finally, at the top was the thousand foot wide, octagon-paneled sphere that housed the Deified Path, which lead directly to the Wind Crystal. It was there, after passing the trails in the Path that the Warriors of Light would receive one of their four blessings on their pilgrimage; after which they would fulfill whatever tasks the Gods imposed on them. It was some twenty years ago that the Warriors last visited the Shrines, and nearly two hundred years the time before that.
Sigurd had been staring at the Shrine with such focus that he didn't realize they had made it into the border town until the wagon stopped and his uncle started talking to the green-and-blue armored Customs Officer in charge. The young man knew about the process that had to take place before going into the Shrine proper. Since they were offering gifts and food, they would each get a night at the Inn on that Road free of charge, and be let into the Shrine once their entire luggage passed the inspection.
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Two hours later, Sigurd, Hilda, and Siegfried walked out of the Inn, freshly bathed and their clothed dried, after getting word the inspection was finished. After the last of the paper work was finished, the three humes along with their chocobo marched across the bridge to the Temple. It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach it, but when they did, they walked through an entryway a hundred feet wide into a lobby. There were over a dozen other caravans in the expansive room, with hawkers and peddlers aligning the white marble walls, their goods out on blankets or simple tables. There were several fountains around the room, all with water tornados coming out of them, which deposited into suspended tubs near the ceiling which decanted the water via an intricate series of small aqueducts that spiraled and swirled around each other until finally either emptying directly into the fountain, or converging together to create a waterfall back into a fountain.
Sigurd started to feel uncomfortable. The ceiling was almost perfectly arched a hundred feet over his head, but the thought of all that material, all those people directly above his head made him feel like he was in danger. He tried to calm himself, telling him it was only his nerves. Twenty minutes later, his uncle finished talking the details with one of the priests, and as the bald man in thick robes started to take Boko by the reigns, Siegfried walked over to his nephew and Hilda.
He nodded to his female escort first. "Thank you, Brynhilda, for your help. It is very much appreciated." He then turned to the silver haired swordsman. "Sig, it'll take some time to unload everything, and the priests prefer to do that themselves, so why don't you look around the Shrine. Just be back at the Inn before dark."
Sigurd nodded. "Okay. I'll see you later." He left and walked over to the nearest priest, and found Hilda following him. "Excuse me, your grace?" He waited until the green-and-blue robed, bald priest turned to greet him. "How do I get to the nearest airship dock?" He saw his companion wince next to him, and wondered why.
After the priest gave a long list of directions that Sigurd was sure he would need to be reminded of, the polite priest turned to Hilda, asking what services she required of him. "I'm just gonna make sure he doesn't get lost on the way there." She answered, with a mildly curt tone.
What's bothering her? He wondered. If she was going to the airship dock too, what difference would it make if I went along with? Am I annoying or something?
They followed the priest's directions and stepped into the nearest elevator. The round marble disk was inlaid with lines made of emerald, and as they stepped into the middle of it, the opening in the glass tube shifted and formed a solid wall, locking them in. A moment later, Sigurd felt his ears pop as air was suddenly sucked upwards, and the dais they stood on began raising; slowly at first, but gradually going faster and faster.
After a few more similar elevators, they arrived on a walkway lining a wall in the airship dock. Past the various walkways there stood a systematic labyrinth of scaffolding where the airships could dock and catwalks to get to them. Behind the walls were shops and other establishments of every kind, from bars and pubs to repair shops to restaurants to merchandise stores to entertainment clubs of every flavor.
This time, Hilda took the lead and walked through a series of stairs to a large commons area where there people could sit and relax. There was a small crowd over at one end, which Hilda ignored and quickly went to a large billboard with various 'help wanted' ads.
"What's that?" Sigurd asked, motioning toward the gathering, which was focusing on a man in black and silver robes.
Hilda took another glance at them and returned her eyes to the board while explaining, "That man's wearing the robes of the Aquta priesthood. They're a religious group. They believe that instead of just two Celestial Guardians, there are also the Omniscient Will, the Celestial Incarnation of Righteousness, and the Dark Cloud, the Celestial Incarnation of Evil. I believe their prophet's name was Zoroaster."
Sigurd was surprised by this. The idea of more than two Celestial Guardians was about as absurd as one could get. There was the Great Dragon, the Celestial Incarnation of Creation and Order, and its counterpart: the Golden Tiger, the Celestial Incarnation of Change and Chaos, and nothing else equal to them. "How do they explain why the Twelve Saints never mentioned those two?"
Hilda shrugged, not taking her eyes from the board. "I believe the best excuse I've heard was that the Saints were disciples of the Gods, and the Celestial Guardians are above the Gods, so it was possible they were told only of the Golden Tiger and the Great Dragon. Anyways, they believe there will be a day when all the forces of light and darkness will fight, and that the Dark Cloud will eventually be destroyed, and with the source of all evil extinguished, all life will live in bliss, or something like that. They preach a lot about fighting your inner evil and such, and they've got more money than most nations. There's occasionally some talk about them trying to get a little too much influence over some government or another." Hilda stopped there, apparently finding something on the board to catch her interest.
Curious what the man was preaching about, Sigurd crossed the grated floor to the small crowd listening to the man. He arrived to hear what was, apparently, the end of a story. "And Romulus cast his sword at Ramos, shouting, 'O Ramos, if there be any forgiveness in your heart, you will strike me down and end my suffering!'
"Picking up the sword, Remos thus spoke, 'Your death would not be merciful, t'would be cowardly. Stand and face your sins, traitor. My killing you would free you of your responsibility, and there would be no redemption. No, live and let your shame and guilt shield you from evil evermore; live and melt your sword, and from the scrap make plates to feed those you've left starving, live and let your war-forged body erect homes for those you left uncovered."
The sermon went on for a while, speaking of how no one was beyond redemption, and that death was never the answer. Thirty minutes later, Sigurd looked over and saw Hilda briskly walking across a catwalk toward a ramp leading to a large airship shaped like a boat with propellers. Realizing he hadn't said good-bye and thanks to her, he ran after her.
A minute later, he found himself in a large room filled with hundreds of crates. After a few minutes of searching, he called out, "Hilda?" He thought he heard a soft curse, and followed the sound. Behind a crate, Sigurd found Hilda sitting with her back against a wall, and a scowl that would make a rock back up in fear formed on her face at the sight of him.
"What are you doing in here?" She demanded.
"I just wanted to say-" He was cut off when he heard the large door to the cargo department close with a loud clang.
Hilda muttered several obscenities. "Great job, farm boy, looks like we're both stowaways now."
"W-what!" Sigurd shouted. He had though it was a little weird how fast she got a job, but it never crossed his mind how no one was around to see people going in or out of the airship, or that she would try and smuggle herself aboard.
"Official passage is expensive, and money is hard to come by for Wanderers." She curtly explained. "Now don't blame me if I don't walk up to them and say, 'hey, could you turn around and let a friend of mine off; oh me? I'm a stowaway, please don't arrest me!'" The last part was a shout.
"Y-yeah, but stowing away-" Sigurd fumbled with his words before Hilda interrupted him.
"Don't you dare talk to me about my way of life!" She yelled. "I don't need to justify myself to some farm boy from a safe, comfy village just like I don't need to justify to a king about being cheap!"
What the hell is her problem? Sigurd thought with anger in kind. "Well excuse me for being fallible!" He pulled off his quiver, unstrung his bow, and put Heaven's Cloud in his lap as he sat down across from her, trying to match her infuriated gaze with his own. It was going to be a long trip.
End of Chapter Two.
Author's Notes: Well, I still don't have a job. Oh well, if only I was being paid for this story. Well, now that we've got a little action out of the way, I might as well state, now, that Sigurd's Paladin job the traditional Paladin, and Hilda is a White Mage/Geomancer. I'll bet no one figured she was a Gemancer, did ya? Every time a new ability is introduced, I'll make a section at the end of the chapter explaining it in case it needs to be explained more.
Protect: White Magic Spell. The normal spell you find in any Final Fantasy, but instead of taking away the power behind strikes, it completely stops them, and can cover a wide area, as long as the user has the magic power to repel the attack. Every moment it's up it sucks magic out of the user, so it can't stay active for more than a few seconds at most, and that's across an entire fight, so usually they're only up for a split second. The amount of force it's able to stop depends on the user's magic power and skill.
Tumbleweed: Geomancy Spell. In forest areas, a geomancer can use this spell to cause vines to shoot up and ensnare an enemy. The amount of magic put into the spell affects how strong or large the vines are, thus how well it immobilized them.
Mirage: Geomancy Spell. When elemental components of water, earth, and forest are nearby, one can cause a powerful sensory overload in a target that can cause severe dementia (read: confuse) in lesser minded monsters or less focused sentient beings.
Also, each Saint's name is Spanish and has something to do with his or her deeds. I've heard Giralda means Baron of the Winds. If anyone can confirm this, I'd appreciate it. Also, Aquta is an interesting name I came up with (and in my personal, biased opinion, a rather brilliant play on words). It's a combination of Aquinas, (a Christian philosopher) and Laputa (not the Spanish word, the floating island in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, which was likely inspired by the Spanish word). If you dissect the word as Aku and Uta, you'd find it has an interesting meaning in Japanese.
Also, the idea of traveling outside the Roads and exploring the wilderness was heavily inspired by those "how to survive the wild" shows. The Lauserian mountain range was inspired by certain parts of New Zealand.
And last but not least (well, probably least), the Earth Shrine that Hilda described is based off that one ruin at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. That was a real historical ruin, but I can't find out what the place is called.