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[color=OrangeRed][h3]'Rhaetia[/h3][/color][/center]

[b]Il-Belt[/b]

She stood on the edge of the Western Wall, staring out over the sea. The wind, whipped into a fury by the onset of a spring storm, tore at her hair and her dress, causing them both to billow and snap about her. Her face was turned toward the sky, pale white arms held straight out on either side, her body unbending in the teeth of the storm that was bearing down on her. 

From horizon to horizon the Western sky appeared like a great black wall advancing toward the city. Below it, almost as dark as the sky itself, was the wall of rain that would soon consume the island in a deluge of fresh water, long awaited after a dry winter that had brought the cities cisterns lower than ever before.

It never ceased to amaze her how beautiful the sea could be. One minute calm, glassy, tranquil blue, and the next a heaving mass of white caps and water turned as black as the soil of her homeland. No matter what its condition, it never failed to elicit a sense of adventure and desire to go beyond the edge of the horizon, to seek those places that no one had been before, to find new peoples, new lands, to learn, to discover. 

A crack of lightening shattered the darkening sky and a moment the boom of thunder hammered into her, so close was the strike that she could feel the concussion of the thunder in her chest and right down into the stones beneath her feet. Away to her right the tall conical roof of a took a direct strike, the burst of energy absorbed by a metal rod fixed to the roof and channeled away into the ground below. It was an ingenious invention and one that scholars constantly attempted to find a use for. So much power being lost. If only they could harness its strength.

The rain raced ever closer, the lightening intensified, and she knew that the storm was about to envelope the city. Below her, in the streets, windows were being barred, doors pulled closed, awnings hurriedly rolled up and tucked away. Beyond those streets, protected by the Grand Harbour, the hundreds of ships, including her own [i]Storm Reaver[/i] would be ensuring sails were secure and swing cables placed on their anchors. Storms such as this one often fought the tide and ships not properly secured could become adrift and smash in to their fellows. 

A final crack of lightening and the rain hit, soaking her to the bone in an instant, her hair and dress plastered to her slim frame like a second skin. Still she gazed upward. She was praying. Praying to the Defini that her ship might come home safe for they would leave that evening tide should the storm abate. First to the South where they would deliver Paladins to the great fortress of Sikkina, the heart of all Rhaetian operations against the Sorcerer Kings. Then they would turn West, in to the open ocean, into the empty vastness of the West and their hunt for the distant homeland would begin anew. Already one ship had been lost this season, vanished without a trace. 

It was possible, she had concluded some time ago, that the land her ancestors had called their own, had long sunk under the waves. Those pure-blooded Elves like herself, who had actually been there, knew that it was possibly the land was now hidden from them. It had no name anymore, they simply called it the Lost Land. It was painful to think of for she had had family there but there was no doubting it was gone, even if you followed the secret star charts, it was still gone.

Slowly she lowered her arms as the storm front past beyond her and the thunder became a dull boom until only the rain itself made any noise, pounding down on the stones and tiles shingles, a never ending drumbeat reminding men and elf alike that they were ants in the greater wide world. The Gods always laughed last.