[center][color=red]The Ruins of Iddin-Mar, Old Omestris[/color][/center][hr]


Rose had been silent as the inquisitor spoke. Every truth cutting deeper into her. 

The stories her mother and grandmother had told her; of the grand courtyards, the dancing in the streets, the benevolent Goddess and the love she gifted to her people. The truth Rose had seen with her own eyes had dashed that image of Omestris and the land named after Her into pieces. This place was nothing but a scorched cemetery, the bones of a carcass left on the snow. The buildings and streets, every inch of it, blasted to hell. It wasn't like in the stories. Rose had kept her disappointment and anguish over this realization to herself, hiding her hurt so that the children wouldn't notice her moment of hesitation and weakness, but there the inquisitor stood, prying open the wound.


"And where is their god?"

[i]Gods[/i], Rose amended the words silently. The people of the Hand prayed to two deities. One of them was gone. The other, according to Essa, still lived. Once more, the seed within her mind, choked by the thorn and foliage of a lifetime's faith, began to crack open. 

Rose had heard Essa speak of the Forgotten One once before, but it was only when the elder showed the two inquisitors His wounding at the hands of Omestris and her conspirators that she realized the gravity of what awaited her and her people. The inquisitor's words only added to her burdens.

"You asked what would happen if I made a mistake and my warsiblings paid the price?  I have made many, and nearly always, they were the ones to pay for it."  The inquisitor tossed her spear aside and shrugged her shield onto her shoulder, a precise burst of force pushing the steel box from under the bed.  "I was never strong enough.  I was only stubborn.  Stubborn and destructive." 

Rose watched the box slide across the floor and then shatter as the inquisitor destroyed it with a blast of concussive force. Rose flinched as the shattered remnants of the steel box exploded throughout the room, embedding themselves into the walls and destroying the old wooden frame of her bed. Rose prepared for the worst and tried to shield herself in vain with her arms, but when she lowered them she found that the inquisitor had summoned a thin paling around them both.

"I destroy whatever comes near.  Friend, foe, it doesn't matter.  That is what Omestris means to me.  Do you understand?  Abandonment and destruction.  I will give no loyalty to something like that."

Rose tried to understand the woman's resentment. Omestris was said to be the most destructive of the Gods, Her people being able to summon dread miracles that could lay waste to the world. These ruins were evident of that. The power to annihilate slept in their blood. It was a part of them, and by the inquisitor's own words, and through her demonstrating of her power, she was damned good at it. Rose would've killed to have even a fraction of her abilities.

But then... Abandonment. 

She was right. The Goddess her bloodline once served had given up without even fighting and cursed their descendants to suffer in slavery with no hope of salvation. Omestris herself had slain her twin brother through treachery and deceit. If the legends were to be believed, Asherahn's fire still raged within her veins-- No, even now, it burned within the blood of all Omestrians. 

Essa had warned of Asherahn's cruelty, of His vestigial hatred and His desire for nothing else beyond destruction, but could the truth of it all be so simple? Nothing ever was. One day, Rose would have to decide what would be best for her people. Continue to pray to an absent goddess who surrendered unconditionally to the future oppressor of Her flock, or seek out the one God who appeared to be doing the one thing that all the other Gods weren't. Fighting.

Something hot seemed to be burning her face. She didn't know what it was. Shame. Anger. Sadness. Fear. She couldn't be sure, and she didn't care. The time to let down her silly "warrior's" facade had long passed, and thus for the first time, Rose allowed herself to act like who she truly was. A twelve-year old child.

"All my life. Omestris was there. Every morning, the whispered prayers rang out from the beds around me. Every night, those who remained echoed those prayers. My own voice was among them. Always."

The thin paling summoned by the inquisitor began to fade around them. Rose turned to face the inquisitor's spear as it lay on one of the beds. Her thin but strong shoulders slumped in response to her deep breathing.

"You say you cannot offer your loyalty to a God who abandoned you. Before coming here, I would have argued against you. But, now, seeing what I have, I am not so certain."

It took a moment for her to realize that she was fighting back tears.

"I'm confused. I don't know what to do. What to believe."

Rose clenched her fists, the jagged edges of her false fingers digging painfully into her palms.

"Asherahn," the girl spoke hesitantly, the name sitting on her tongue like a sharp stone.

A long silence hung in the air.

"Omestris has abandoned us. But He hasn't."