Chương 324: Purpose

"What is with plans falling apart in this kingdom?" Collector of Anima muttered as she made her way atop her spirit-borne palanquin through the prepared escape tunnel that she and her fellow adherents of Father Undeath had made sure to secretly arrange from their assigned domains beneath the city of Heavenward.

She had led several successful - albeit smaller-scale - operations for the church since her ignoble retreat from northern Hua-Xi a decade and a half ago, and she had felt decently prepared to claim Undeath's part in Discord's schemes even though the timetable had been somewhat rushed.

But as things stood in the city above, they had lost, and while the birthing pit had not yet been discovered, Anima did not intend to wait around for that moment even though she might technically have had the opportunity to rebuild a gold-ranked servant or three to send above once more. Tungar had not returned either, but of that Anima cared less. Let the blasted ghoul make his own way to safety.

At least the aura shielding of this tunnel should let her– The faint rattling of chains suddenly rang out in the tunnel before Anima's palanquin lurched to one side as two of the six semi-corporeal spirits carrying it were ripped apart.

Her gold-ranked body let her roll out of the ornate chair atop it with ease, but Anima was then forced to abandon such grace as she conjured a temporary, wailing summon whose screeching created a barrier which blocked the next set of chains that snaked in from the direction of their hidden sanctum. Or previously hidden, as it turned out.

"You. I recognize you," a flat voice stated from seemingly nowhere among the snaking chains until Anima caught it; a hint of aura that felt like the touch of a naked blade sliding along her spine. Then she caught a glimpse of an armored, masked form trailing hair so white it was almost translucent, and… Was that a person dragged along behind her, limp and unconscious?

"Wait, you're–" Anima began, but more incoming, barbed chains came for her, forcing her to bring forth her personal spiritual guard to shield her as the nine warrior-wraiths deflected the incoming links with some difficulty.

"You are her. From the north. Pain's people. Why are you coming after me? Shouldn't you be on our side?"

"Those holding your leash in the church of Discord are forever my foes. Ever since that day, and their betrayal," the flat voice replied even as she completed the process of crushing Anima's aura with her overwhelming spirit. Anima felt even more alone and exposed as she prepared her spells and started looking for a way out. While she was no slouch at fighting, Collector of Anima was more of a creator as she helped shape Undeath's newborn children to better perform their tasks.

And this metaphorical ghost of the past that had come to haunt her was obviously tempered in an enormous amount of violence.

"Father Undeath will be much displeased with your god if you strike me down. Let us make an accord instead. You know that my church can be great allies, do you not?" Anima rattled off as the acolyte of Pain started disassembling her spirits while dancing around them with ease even in the enclosed space and with her involuntary passenger. Contrary to her earlier sentiment, she found herself hoping that Tungar Boh might decide to return at just this moment, as the boisterous ghoul was much more preferable company.

"I have had allies for longer than I would have liked, and seeing that the shared goal that bound us together will soon be accomplished, I am not looking for more. You are one of the few threads remaining to cut. Then I will have my due from this high priestess. And once that is finished, I… That is not for you to know. You will have other troubles to occupy yourself with." Anima wanted to pounce upon the slight pause of insecurity there at the end, but found neither time nor opportunity as the pressure increased.

Then again. And then once more. A calamitous detonation - one in a long series unleashed recently - sent further cracks spreading along the interior of the Halls of Nothingness. The black floor was missing in places and most of the white pillars had crumbled, leaving cracks lingering in what seemed to be the very air itself.

Ardent Horizon Seeker did his best to keep it together, but that was a more momentous task than usual as he had to keep restoring his injured body with the potential he had stashed away in the void over the course of the duel. More arrays of white spread out around the faltering dimensional pocket and sent another volley of jagged reality tears to converge upon the form of Might of Inner Calamity, who was in turn forced to abort the next attack in order to defend himself.

Much like Ardent himself, the powerfully built man looked ragged, and yet he grinned as he spoke.

"Your little halls aren't long for this world now," Might of Inner Calamity stated rather than asked.

"I have never heard of them being broken before. Will I be the first to have the honor then?"

"Even if they fall, my path remains," Ardent replied coolly while flickering away along his arrays to avoid a cascade of rippling detonations, not giving the man the satisfaction of an answer.

"Oh, but it would be a shame for my allies to step in and interrupt our fun, would it not? I have been awaiting this day eagerly for so long, and wouldn't want that bitch Altessia stealing my glory. That's apparently all that she's good for."

"And that is why you seem to fear her, no? For her uselessness?" Ardent replied, easily picking out the slight hesitation and fear in the other man's aura which he had held under his firm control for some time now.

"Silence! The dead have no right to judge the living!" Ardent realized too late that his jibe had indeed had the intended effect of enraging the other man, but given how things currently stood, their actual conflict was still balanced on a knife's edge. Should Ardent lose his control and make a mistake, Sect Leader Calamity could pounce on it in an instant with his powers of cataclysmic destruction.

So when the other sect leader charged, Ardent found himself needing to rush his spellwork, leading to the prepared defenses not holding long enough. A compressed detonation of opposing force struck him straight in the chest, causing him to shoot away through his halls and crash through another crumbling pillar as Might of Inner Calamity followed.

While he once more took control and started harrying the other man with lashing void, part of Ardent's mind also couldn't drop what the other man had said earlier when he spoke of allies. A quick moment of focus confirmed his suspicions, and Ardent couldn't help but smile ever so slightly as he realized that he had been so focused on the battle that he had overlooked a single, rather important fact.

"Then if you would rather leave this place, I suppose it is high time we did." Then, with a moment of focus, the Halls of Nothingness crumbled, bursting apart into a cloud of void aspected mana and dumping the two fighting gold-rankers back out into the sky above the Tengu Clan compound.

Ardent made sure to keep his spiritual grip on the other man to buy himself a few more moments before Sect Leader Calamity realized the true state of things, and the man even obliged by spending a few seconds sending blasting attacks his way before he truly seemed to take in his surroundings.

"Altessia? Where–" Then a cage of crystals appeared around him, moving to lock into place. Might of Inner Calamity reacted, of course, but his attempted burst of cataclysmic force was swallowed by Ardent using one of his own spells to mostly nullify and suppress the man for the few moments it took for the cage to snap into place. Another fierce detonation from within sent cracks spreading along the bars, but more and more layers kept being added until the other sect leader was well and truly out of sight.

From behind the cage appeared an elven man clad in crystalline full-plate armor and carrying a magnificent scepter which he used to direct his restraining conjuration to the side.

"Given your reaction, I believe that I managed to incarcerate the correct sect leader," a deep, distinguished voice spoke from inside the helmet, which in turn vanished a moment later to reveal blonde hair and eyes that were solid orbs of deep azure.

"I do not know you, foreigner, but I believe I know of you. Sir Ilmaril Thenston, I presume," Ardent greeted somberly, bowing where he floated in the air while carried aloft by what remained of his array wings.

"Kite did provide me with a description."

"That is indeed me, present by virtue of a contract to help out one of our own," Ilmaril replied.

"You did a good job in weakening this one. I am confident in keeping him contained until I can ferry him back to the Adventure Society campus and the more stationary holding we've established there. Kite believed it best to keep a few key figures alive in order to have a chance of stopping the other golds of the kingdom from doing something foolish in outrage."

"He is wise beyond his years, that one," Ardent confirmed, seating himself in the air and sliding halfway into his meditation to start recovering. His aura had already confirmed that the conflicts around the city were gradually being smothered without his assistance, and he would not deny the warriors below their tempering unless absolutely needed.

"I must say that the two of you look quite alike. Are you perchance related?"

"It is so. Kite is my… son. Although it is only in recent years that bond was realized by either of us, and even more recently that it has become something we can share publicly. He is a gold now though, and should be able to stand the pressure it might bring."

"Power does give perspective, especially in a kingdom such as yours where there are few this close to the peak," Sir Ilmaril replied, but another shake from inside his crystal prison had him give the floating dodecahedron with an assessing gaze.

"I shall have to abide by the contract and move this one back now, but it was nice to meet you, Sect Leader. May we speak again under calmer circumstances." This left Ardent sitting alone in the air, his aura spreading wider than it had in years as he took it all in; the remaining conflicts, the gathering sects who had begun to stream into the city, some joining in defeating the undead while others waited and watched with less clear intentions.

And all around the city were the mixed emotions of the populace; fear, anger, grief, hope, confusion, relief, and many more. In the calm of the void that was Ardent's mind, he took it all in, giving special attention to the sects as their actions in the coming hours might shape the fate of the capital, the heartlands or even the whole kingdom.

But even subsumed in the chill of logic as he was, Ardent also found himself unable to ignore the relief and - to his surprise - pride that welled inside him as he touched upon Kite's aura, the younger man still remaining in the skies not far from the Heavenly Stairway, even though the intervention of him and his familiar was rarely needed at all now. He lived. He was recovering. He had been victorious.

As had Ardent, although he had to admit that the outcome without the outside assistance would have been still up in the air. This was proof that Ardent had been resting on his laurels for too long, too singular in his dedication to mastery over the void and spirit and less on the practicalities of a dangerous world or the people like Might of Inner Calamity who had apparently hid amongst them for so long. His approach would have to be adjusted in the upcoming years.

It was a good thing that a gold-ranker could live long enough to learn and relearn over several lifetimes, as long as one had the correct mindset.. But for now, he tried to recover and be ready for whatever came next. Because one thing was at least certain; Ardent Horizon Seeker was done hiding in the void that was his tower and sect.

"I thank you for your assistance in tempering my path," Soul, blessed of Warrior, said as she bowed deeply to the broken, armored form who lay in a crater before her in what had once been the opulent bathhouse complex of Hua-Xi's palace. It was a small miracle that the words came out as clearly as they did, given how broken Soul's body was inside, where discordant energies still lingered and turned her body against itself.

But control over her form was the cornerstone of Soul's path, after all, and she made sure to not let her focus waver for even a moment.

"I– You– Discord– evitable– No– victory–" The screeching words were garbled and low as the gold-ranker known as Altessia Sessante was dying, even her mighty body wrung dry of life force. Sure, she would recover if left alone, but dying could mean many things. In this case, Soul's own intent owned that definition, and that outcome had never been in question. In a burst of movement, Soul made a spinning leap before delivering a descending axe kick straight down into the armored face.

Her motions were erratic and whirling, seeming a bit at odds with the world, but as her Discordant Winds Style had just been born during this conflict, that was to be expected. Beneath the strike, Altessia's head burst apart in a flash of transcendent light, and as she felt the woman's aura wink out, Soul did not strike again.

This woman might have been some kind of mastermind behind the corruption of her kingdom's values - though Soul had cared little for such sentiments until a few years ago when Discord's plots were laid bare - but she had also been the best source of tempering Soul had experienced in her entire life.

"Warrior, I thank you for this blessed encounter. While teetering on the edge between life and death, my path has found the strength to reach new heights and climb towards the heavens. This adversary fought well, even though her heart lacked the conviction you bestow," Soul intoned, the words as much prayer as they were meditation to her.

Soul might be blessed by the god, but she was no priestess, and it was rare for her to pray to the god with anything but her fists, feet and the budding perfection of her martial form. Still, she did feel a slight touch upon her aura, carrying the faintest impression of steel meeting steel and a smile that reveled in tempering. It seemed that she had been heard and - more importantly - witnessed.

But this also left a slight sense of emptiness as she stood there in the ruined part of the palace, ignoring the auras of scared servants and functionaries who had not managed to flee. What was she supposed to do now? Finding no immediate threat to deal with, Soul simply sat down in place and started meditating. Her aura had been able to pick out the conflicts outside, but she would not deny any of the guild members their tempering. Some might die because of it, but that was the way of the warrior.

None who trained beneath her would be a greenhouse flower, coddled and protected. She would set the example, showing them the path, and then it was up to them to follow. Something it seemed that this whole kingdom needed to learn anew.

"Ahem…~""Yes, Wander?" Soul asked at the slight clearing of a tiny throat, not bothering to open her eyes. Not even Wander's feet were soft enough to escape her hearing, after all.

"You wouldn't have happened upon any other ritual sites, bad guys and other such stuff here in the palace while you were having your fun~?" Wander asked.

"I'm combing the place and coming up with nothing, so I thought that at least asking the gold-ranker present would be smart before I moved on. ~""Nothing of the sort."

"I see! Thanks! And… Uh… Good job? I guess~?"

"It was worthy tempering. Something to remember."

"I'll… Have to take your word for it. So… You don't seem like the type but I'll still ask: Are you gonna loot her~?"

"Loot?"

"Yeah. Take her stuff~?"

"No. It is of no use to me."

"So… mind if I…? I mean, the guild can always use things and–""Go ahead."

"Aw yeah! Great! Thanks! See you soon! Once again, great job and all that~!" Wander exclaimed cheerfully, dozens of rats spilling in from all directions to swiftly spirit away Altessia's body and vanishing along with it. This left Soul alone, and she sunk deeper into her meditation as the duel played out in her mind and she evaluated, corrected, noted and - most importantly of all - chose areas to improve. This new style of hers was still raw, but her body still ached to try it out further. And she would.

By Warrior, how she would. Soul's path had not been cut off this day, even though that had been a real risk. And so, she would continue. There were many more strong beings in this world to learn from. The path towards perfection and the heavens beckoned more strongly than ever. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Will, this would be much easier if you let go of the spear."

"I will not. She is my Lady, and I shall not–" Will's words were interrupted as Laevyeth shifted back into humanoid form and crouched to take Will's hand - the one that wasn't currently in the process of being reattached to his body after being cleaved more than halfway through at the wrist.

"My Lord, while I appreciate thy dedication, I already know thy heart. There is no need to prove it further," the outworlder gently chided, nodding to Fantina who continued applying her magic while returning a look that managed to convey 'Thank you for the distraction' most efficiently.

"Dedication is not something I would ever have you take for granted, my Lady. Every day, it needs to be proven anew. Such is the nature of choosing someone. You need to continue to strive for them to choose you each and every hour."

"My Lord, we just took on two of those gold-ranked undead on our own and held them until reinforcements came. Thy dedication remains most assured."

"But–""Please, no more," Laevyeth said, her aura shushing Will through where their hands were intertwined.

"The day is won. There has been much death and strife here. Do not feed the latter with thy needless protests."

"Indeed," Fantina chimed in.

"Many of the guild were spared injury or death thanks to the two of you. I have never seen such spearwork before as I did when I arrived. To say that the two of you are one is an understatement. But if you keep that up, you might not live to see gold rank, so I would advise a bit more restraint."

"When faced with the darkness, the Saint of Spears can never relent."

"But he can once said darkness is dead and gone, no?" Fantina countered.

"Now hold still like this and let the healing spread for a time. Fertility is better at growth and proliferation than pure healing, and her spells reflect that." Then Fantina left the two of them, moving off to see to other injured guild members and sect warriors alike gathered at a temporary base in the plaza.

There had been much death today among all those present, but she couldn't help but smile at the signs around her that life would move on and give rise to more of its kind, growing and fertile as the concept was. Some clashes still remained, but they were fading. And that would leave the cleanup, Fantina expecting that she would be most busy in the time to come.

But however busy she might be, it was impossible for Fantina not to freeze at the feel of a gold-ranked aura honing in on the plaza, a celestine woman with jade hair and eyes stepping out of a spatial fold a moment later. Fantina recognized the markings of the Pinnacle Zenith Sect, something the gold-ranker shared with many of the injured nearby.

"You. Foreigner," she spoke, aura locking onto Fantina as she flew closer.

"You are with the Autumn Wanderer's guild?"

"I am. Fantina LanCaire, priestess of Fertility," Fantina replied, her tone careful.

"Good. I am Tempest Throne, grand elder of the Pinnacle Zenith Sect. Our sect leader is demanding a meeting with the guild leadership, with many questions he will have answered as to what has transpired here today. You will take me to them."

"With all due respect, Grand Elder, I have injured to care for. You should be able to find them at the compound of the Tengu Clan. I would only slow down your journey." The grand elder looked as if she would very much liked to have found a reason to take offense at Fantina's words, but a glance around the plaza showed that the healer had treated the sect warriors with equal care as she had the guild members, and that was apparently enough to mollify the gold-ranker.

Without another word, she vanished again, Fantina sighing.

"Oh Fertility, grant me patience. And please extend some to Walker and Kite as well. They will surely need it in ample abundance." As River stood in the small, secluded courtyard up at the Adventure Society campus which had been made available to her, she found herself feeling… Rather confused as to what emotions churned inside her. Triumph? Surely. Glee? Not much. River rarely had such intense emotions. Trepidation? A bit, but not towards this. That was a grander, more amorphous concept.

All of those and more churned inside her, but River centered herself and deactivated the crackling red and purple magics of her chains that kept the priestess' - Ametrine's - stamina completely drained. Kite had already knocked her unconscious with his mana draining powers, and it had been a simple matter for River to drain the woman's stamina instead to keep her that way. But now it was time. Everything River had worked towards had been achieved. All except for this confrontation.

As a gold-ranker, Ametrine started recovering quickly, and River made sure to keep the other woman's aura in a spiritual vice from the moment she started coming to. Bismuth eyes eventually fluttered open, Ametrine looking up towards River from where she sat against one of the courtyard walls, the two women regarding one another for some time in silence.

"I should have had you killed long ago. You and the Pathbreaker both. It would have been worth the leeway it would have given the other churches," Ametrine eventually stated, outwardly calm even though River could feel the emotions kept in check inside her.

"You should have. But you did not," River replied flatly.

"And now you are here."

"Such is the price of failure in these games. I am more curious as to why I am not yet screaming in torment. I would imagine that is what you have in store for me. You and that simple-minded god of yours. It's–""Why did you abandon the Unbreakable Chains Sect?" River's question interrupted the other woman with a surge of aura, unrelenting and crushing enough to force even Ametrine into silence even though her words were flat and low.

"It… You were nothing more than a project which had outlived its usefulness, allowing us to test some concepts for wider scale implementation in the kingdom," Ametrine replied after a slight pause before seeming to decide that it cost her little to answer.

"With your might, you could have made sure we succeeded."

"You weren't worth the risk of revealing gold-ranked influences, let alone my allegiances. Too insignificant."

"A miscalculation on your part."

"Indeed. But what use would we even have had for your kind, even had you succeeded? Other sects would simply have banded together in time and taken you out. How could a mismatched group of shunned paths like yours ever survive in the open? Your return was doomed from the very start. You weren't fit for anything more."

"And my father?"

"One of the few competent ones among you. But much like your god, he was too narrow-minded in his focus to ever reach beyond silver rank and become truly useful on a grander scale. I am surprised that you care though. He did not seem like a pleasant man."

"He was not. But he made me strong."

"Or broken. I can feel that aura of yours. You will never be a real person after living like that, little whelp of Pain. Always a broken shell without any purpose since the man who made you died. It's what you deserve after what you've done here today. This kingdom could have become a haven for those like you; a garden where you could grow unchecked by the morality of the weak yet protected by Discord's divine domain. And yet you squandered it, and for what? A noble cause? Just vengeance?

Or perhaps it just gave your little empty puppet head a disguise which you could wrap yourself in and play pretend that you actually had a purpose and a place?" As she spoke, the vitriol in Ametrine's voice only grew, but to her surprise River found that she barely registered it, focused instead of what she could feel beneath; of her true focus and target. That was where she would stick the knife.

"The cause of Discord is ever-lasting," Ametrine went on, seeming unable to tell the reason for River's silence now that she was robbed of her aura senses.

"It shall move on. This nation remains fertile ground even after my failure, and I shall be discarded. So do what you came for. Show me this grand application of Pain you are no doubt waiting to rain upon me before I die. I shall care little." In response, River's let her chains tighten ever so slightly as she knelt before Ametrine, her own gray eyes meeting the shimmering color and defiance of the celestine's in silence for a few moments before she spoke, making a statement rather than a question.

"You loved him." For the first time in their conversation, Ametrine actually froze. Not in haughty silence, but more like a startled beast of prey who suddenly heard the sharp crack of a snapping twig in the previously silent forest. Then came the anger; the sweet confirmation of a blow struck true.

"You know nothing of–""I do not. Not by experience. But I do through observation. I have felt its many forms in the auras of those around me for years. Sweet, complex, afraid, devoted, passionate. Never felt it, but borne witness. And that grief of yours could not spring from anything else," River stated, her voice as flat and clinical like a surgeon's knife.

She waited for a moment as her words sank in, the other woman outwardly calm once more, but Ametrine could not hide her innermost feelings from River at that moment. Not caught and suppressed as she was, even in her stoic silence.

"And thanks to your choices, he is now dead," River continued.

"Because of your complacency, intrigue and machinations, your cause lies shattered with him. I have felt so many people in love who seemed to scheme and plan while telling themselves that their love was something else. Or used it as motivation and fuel to inflict pain on one another. You loved the King, and yet you made him into your puppet. And then you threw him away, arrogant and careless. I bet you never even told him.

Perhaps things would have gone differently if you had, at least once over these years you claim to have acted as one. Did you know I could sense his spirit as he died?"

"Stop."

"The moment when he realized that the Pathbreaker was about to slay him was distinct. Few could feel it, but I could. That was the gift my father left with me, earned through pain and torment. I do not believe that he did so out of love, but whatever his intentions, it gifted me strength. Thus, I could feel the King's aura in those moments."

"I said stop!"

"He was hurt, angry, defiant and oh so weary," River continued, ignoring Ametrine's pleas as she felt the emotions roiling more and more while the facade started cracking.

"But through all of that, he was resolute."

"Sto–""Because he loved you, even though he was also sure that it was an emotion you did not return. Not truly. That you were loyal to him? Yes. But not that you loved him," River pressed, using her chains to press the other woman into the wall to silence her.

"So he died thinking that you did not truly love him back. But he chose to die for you anyway." It was at that moment that River could feel it. The break. Deep inside, only reachable by pushing through the calculating facade and external causes to dig at something deeper. Of emotions suppressed and controlled, now broken free and adding to the grief the other woman seemed to want to pretend wasn't there so badly. Ametrine shed no tears as she sat there in mute silence, but inwardly she wept. And she bled.

"Your cause is lost. Your ambitions shattered. Your love discarded and dead. You took everything from me, and now? Live what little remains of your life knowing that I had part in taking all that from you." Then River turned and left, ignoring the occasional attempt at defiance and denial that came from where she let her chains drag Ametrine behind her. The words were inconsequential, as was the physical humiliation of literally being dragged through the dirt covering the stone tiles.

What mattered was what River could feel in the other woman's spirit, the anguish behind the bluster. The pain. After making a few turns, another set of walls came into view, from beyond which River could easily pick out tense voices and even tenser auras from those gathered in the main plaza of the Adventure Society campus. And atop one of the walls sat several familiar rats.

"Oh, uhm… Hey there, River," one of Wander's bodies squeaked softly as it hurried down to meet her.

"Done already? I… uh… expected you to take longer. And she's surprisingly intact~," the rat finished, looking over at the currently silent Ametrine, the gold-ranker having retreated into herself.

"I am finished. Can you tell Kite?"

"I can but… Oooo… I… Would you mind hold on for just a little longer and then…" Wander said, before whispering something to River softly enough that not even the nearby Ametrine would be able to pick it out.

"I believe that the perfect timing is just a minute or two away~."

"- and yet you keep speaking of Discord's plot when all I see are undead and foreigners where neither belong," Breach of Coral, the leader of the Auspicious Lightning Sect, replied tersely, his words causing some of the gathered gold- and silver-rankers of the impromptu council to nod along while others muttered their frustrations.

To say that the meeting had been a study in frustration for Anasta Temren was the understatement of the century, but at least it had been possible to gather all the present sects and other affluent gold-rankers there in short order and avoid what could have blossomed into a small civil war on the spot if too many of the fools had decided to use the sudden complications to really strike at their rivals beyond what they had already done.

"Unity preserve me," she muttered inwardly, and was about to repeat an attempt at a measured retort when Kite gently nudged her with his aura from where he stood with the guild and his allies from Gauntlet.

'Wait'," his eyes seemed to say, and the faintest of nods towards Wander which followed made Anasta catch on somewhat. So she made a show of pondering her reply, and just as the sect leader seemed to take that as a sign to press on, something changed.

A series of chains shot up from beyond a nearby wall, causing most present to shift and ready themselves as they felt a hint of the gold-ranked aura beyond, but before anyone else had time to act the chains slammed down between the position of the Adventure Society and the guild, leaving behind a small crater of shattered stone and a certain favored courtesan of the now slain King in a crumpled, disheveled form. And in her unsteady aura were the clear traces of divinity.

"I believe that we have a bit more to back up these claims, Sect Leader," Anasta said calmly, even as she ignored the various cries of surprise and outrage as well as demands for answers. The gold-rankers present would hear her anyway.

"And I formally invite each and every one of you to send your representatives to an interrogation I believe will be most… enlightening." As soon as River let her chains dissipate, she turned and left while ignoring Wander's calls as well as the silver-rankers and lone gold who leapt atop the wall not long after to try to find the source of her little delivery. She had already donned her mask, the artifact helping her aura to shield her from their gazes as River walked away." Fascinating, my child…"

Pain's voice purred in River's mind." Such a delicate offering to me you've made of this. The pain of walking away. The loss of purpose… Splendid. As well as that marvelous blend you left in the heart of your foe. But I do hope you know that I would not have been beyond appreciating a little more physical tribute as well."

"It would have been a hollow sacrifice to you, without purpose for me or her," River replied softly, fighting to keep her voice completely even as some kind of tremor wanted to worm itself in there now that her deity so rightly pointed out that her purpose was fulfilled.

"To understand my path and grow, I will need to see beyond that."" True, true… And do not misunderstand. I do appreciate the nuances you have shown me and so expertly brought forth. Physical pain is plentiful, but some of my followers tend to remain a bit… single-minded in that regard. I too need variety in my servants, where you, child, have performed most admirably."

River did not respond, knowing that her god would sense her gratitude for the praise, however faintly it echoed inside her as she was almost overwhelmed by the emptiness. Pain seemed to catch that as well, continuing in her stead." And now you have furthered your own experiences in my purview as well. The pain of letting go is one I am especially fond of."

"So, what would you have of me now, my god?"

"Do you think that I would strive to alleviate this gift for you, my child? No. No I shall not. Find your own way. Given the nuances you have learned and seem to crave further, I have no doubt that your further offerings will make me proud." Then the god's presence retreated, and River was alone again. Alone. It had been some time now, she realized, with her either working alongside the guild or Anasta Temren's people.

This too gave rise to further complicated feelings, but those were shoved down with all the discipline and self-control River could muster. Their compact was fulfilled. Discord had been brought down. The bonds between them severed. She would not wait around until the first one of them decided that they no longer tolerated her presence now that the unifying enemy was vanquished. The emptiness inside River would not go away however, but in the end she was forced to try and find acceptance in that.

Another pain to carry as she found purpose for herself and her growth in the future. The Kingdom felt small now that she had gotten a taste of the wider world. She would find what awaited her beyond its borders. The pain of letting go was a rather new concept after all, be it a former goal, bonds no longer serving their purpose or perhaps even the kingdom she had thought was all that mattered to her. She would have to practice it further, and meditate upon it.

That, and all other facets of pain the world had to offer. But not just pain itself, but its purpose. It had driven River to this point, helped her find strength and the conviction to persevere. She wanted to know more of this, a line of inquiry which had gradually grown alongside her for the last few years. And as she lived it, she would surely find other expressions of this concept that she could sample and understand. Of that, she was certain. Where there was life, there would be pain. And where there was pain?

There might be purpose. But in the end, no matter her thoughts and justifications, River still somehow found her steps gravitating in a certain direction as she made to leave the city, making sure that there was one person - whose familiar aura shone like a beacon - whom her path would cross.

Looking out over a plaza that once housed eateries and shops that had now been turned into an infirmary, River stood in silence and sampled the various pains of those present before she eventually - with great care and practiced control - unveiled her own aura just a bit to let one person present know that she was there.

Fantina's head shot up immediately, and the blonde healer rose as she cast a few more spells which River could feel like a warm, soothing wave through the aura of the injured warrior at her feet before heading over to where River stood at the mouth of an alleyway, unseen by everyone else.

"I thought you were here somewhere, River," Fantina greeted, and River could see her hand slightly twitch while feeling the older woman repress some kind of impulse in her aura.

"I heard that you were of great help. Thank you."

"It is… Was. My purpose. And now I'm leaving."

"You don't have to, you know."

"I do. This is not my path. It is out there."

"It does not have to be."

"Yes–" River said, a bit of heat almost leaking into her voice before she caught herself, surprised and not a little embarrassed.

"Yes, it does. Now you know. We will not meet again." Fantina was silent for a while, regarding River's masked face before nodding.

"I see…" she said, before stepping forward and - like before, in the crumbling pocket realm that was the Queen's Gate - patted River gently on the head. River could have avoided it, of course, but for some reason she did not.

"Then at least know that I shall remember you, Dancer on the Broken River," Fantina continued, letting her hand rest upon River's head for just a few more moments.

"I wish you luck on your lonely path." Then, without another word, River turned and left, continuing on a trajectory that would take her out of Heavenward, and into the world beyond.