A cool wind rustled through the trees, sending another cascade of flaming red falling to the ground. She crunched through fallen leaves, sighing heavily as she tried to find her focus. The rage inside still burned unrequited, and though she had received excellent advice here and there from do-gooders and the kind hearted, that did not fix what was fundamentally wrong. They were all living in a world of compromise, accepting the bad as it came without doing anything about it, and that frustrated her to no end. Where was the anger when she had been abandoned as a babe? Where was the demand to know who her mother was?

Where was the recognition of tragedy?

Instead, she was born into a world of lethargy. Acceptance. And she could not just accept. She would not lay down her head on the stone of the land to be crushed beneath hooves not shackled by morality. Unlike Roskuld, who definitely had reason to want to screw the world, Aithniel would not just run away. Unlike Iso, she would not just analytically observe and study. Aithniel had to act. She had to right the wrongs and create consequences. Enforceable consequences.

First, she must gain strength. Many battles and spars lay in her future, but every now and then, she wanted a moment to wander and observe. Sometimes the good was enough to give her hope, knocking back the inner fire to a simmer. However, the majority of the time? She wanted to crack skulls. Her magic could only do so much, impressive as it seemed at times. A conflagration in an unbridled plume was threatening, but no one had yet to take her seriously.

One day they would.

One day they would quiver in fear at the very sight of her might. The God of the Sun at her back, she would bring the dawn of pain, and at the noon's height, she would cast judgment. She would seek out the heretics and criminals of Helovia and shine light to all their shadows, exposing them for who they really were. Aithniel would hone her Inquisitive nature and burn it all.

"I need to start somewhere...." she murmured, looking up at the marble steps and the glass ceiling. Here would be good enough, she thought. Here could be her courthouse. Her hoof a gavel.

Here where Helovia's past met present.



[[[OPEN! ]]]