Myka nodded when Sid said she was going to go back to work. She understood that all too well. When the healer went back inside, the pirate’s shoulders sagged, and her expression turned serious. With a groan, she sat down on the ground, cross-legged, fingering one of her knives. [i]Gods. How does Kire deal with this shit? I’m barely keeping up.[/i]
“Hey.”
Myka looked up just as Daryll joined her, sitting beside her, a thoughtful expression on his face. “[i]What did I miss?[/I]” the scholar asked. After the captain filled him in, Daryll nodded in understanding. 
“[i]Did you find any leads?[/i]” she asked.
Daryll huffed. “[i]I need more information. There are archives I need to visit. But here’s the thing: though that forest certainly wasn’t there before, there have been instances where this town has had supernatural occurrences before. They just weren’t as obvious, or were dismissed as coming from the imagination of the superstitious. Folktales, things of that sort. There have been fragments of what used to be an older structure that would get unearthed now and then, though this would be the first time they’d seen a statuette like that.[/i]”

“Amria is an old land. I’d expect ruins everywhere,” Myka muttered. “And folktales are hard to pin down. They’ve been passed on from generation to generation, and place to place. That’s the nature of these stories.”
“Fair enough,” Daryll replied. “There are ways to track down which strain of stories come from which region. And to verify them alongside old records. That can be done with this town; I’ve already taken a look at some old records they have here, and asked around about the stories they’d tell. The same could be done for the town where Lyta came from. There’s lots of texts back at the Capital, at the Tower, and in certain libraries here.” He paused, sinking back into that pensive expression. “But did you know that the oldest libraries used to be in Gemini territory?” 
Myka turned sharply towards him. “[i]Daryll. When you begin a sentence like that…[/i]” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you up to something?” 
“Many of them would be likely destroyed by now. And I’m sure their contents have been raided, taken somewhere else. I know we’ve probably got some locked away at the Palace, too,” Daryll said, as if he didn’t hear the question. “But somewhere deep in Gemini country is, purportedly, the oldest library in the continent.” 

Myka was still looking at him with a frown. Then, shaking her head, she sighed. “Good luck bringing that up with Kire and the Wyverns.”
“I’m a Wyvern, too,” Daryll pointed out. “And if Kire is serious about rethinking the old Wyvern distrust of spreading knowledge about sorcery in the face of the return of magic to the continent, we can’t disregard these sources of knowledge.” 
“Oh, I know. I’m just saying you will probably have an uphill battle there, convincing them,” she said. “And with the urgent matters at hand, sending you, or anyone, to yet another potentially dangerous place isn’t going to go down well with everybody concerned.”
Daryll sighed, nodding in agreement. “There is something we could do here, while we wait for the others. The people the Goddess selected here,” he said, gesturing at the tents, “and people like Lyta and that Holly woman. Much like how their respective hometowns might have had dormant magic all this time, they could similarly have been born attuned to the magic. There are signs for that; magic doesn’t just manifest at random.”
“We hope,” Myka butted in, scowling.
“We hope,” Daryll replied, nodding. “Maybe through blood, or through constant exposure to the land and the elements. Maybe have the healers gather information about their health before this happened, family histories, how they fared with injury or disease, that sort of thing. If they inherited other physical peculiarities.”
“Like how Wyverns are either crazy or ill-tempered?” Myka said, to which Daryll rolled his eyes. With a grunt, Myka stood up. “Alright, alright. On it. Will relay this to the healers. Don’t do anything stupid,” she said, her gaze stern while pointing a finger at him before heading back towards the healers' tents.

--

Kire watched as Zeltzin handled the hot tea cup with ease, her mind on the Amrians scalded by the fire they had suddenly begun to wield. Will they eventually control it, then? Will they be safe? The fingers of her scarred hand twitched, remembering the way they had burned when she tried overexerting herself through the Ring. And again, at the memory of the boy on fire. [i]Solaralai has no right putting a child through that.[/i] 

She nodded at Zeltzin’s answer, then glanced at Risa’s explanation about the temple, biting back a reply. If the Kartaians had really revered the Goddess, they would have left Ziad alone entirely. Kire pursed her lips. What would they say if she told them what she had done? While a part of her was grateful for the information the priestess and Risa relayed, another part of her distrusted their word. Kire didn’t believe, at least not yet, that they would knowingly deceive her about Solaralai, but ardent believers of a religion certainly would talk only of the righteousness of a god’s motivations. 

The Paladin let Risa continue, then looked to Zeltzin again as she bade Kire erect a temple in Solaralai’s honor in Amria. Though the priestess had a warm, benevolent smile on her face, or perhaps because of it, her last words sent a chill down Kire’s spine. Amria, a home for some foreign god? She barely had any faith in her native deities. “The temple…” she began, looking at the statuette. “Part of it was damaged in a fight. When I was hunting the murderers who destroyed Ziad.” She stared at Zeltzin. “Are my people being punished for my—sin? And has the Goddess ever—taken people that have displeased her?” She took a deep breath. “If I build her this temple, will she rescind her punishments? What does a temple to the Goddess require?”