(cross posted to the Dry Stein)

...in the last age of the last king, the dying days of gold, new peoples entered our Britannia, and the Britannians abandoned the old...

Shunned we were, those who stayed. Those who sang and those who prayed. We wore our cloak as time before, and when we spoke, it was from Britannian lore.

We maintained the Virtues, the Principles. We kept the cities alive. We knew the stories, the history of things nearly past.

Nearly past...

It was dawn in Britain, Felucca growing large in the sky and Trammel nearly below the horizon. The sun arose behind Castle Britannia, like a great golden pendulum keeping a clockwork heaven above working. This analogy passed through Terrance's mind as he stood, alone, atop the highest rooftop of the castle against the battlements. There he leaned, relaxed and silent, as the sun rays spilled over his armor like a warm, golden wash. Scents of the morning..dew, cool earth..did not reach this height. Only the pleasant, clean and warming air.

He had spent the night atop the castle, searching. Searching the heavens above. Not for portents or signs. Not for an arrangement of lights in the sea of stars overhead. He had searched for something in particular. One, single bright point of light.

As he did, every night.

He thought about what this new day would bring to Britannia. Hope, always hope preceded his expectations.

"Something is coming..." he thought silently to himself. "Something dark...but in what way! What form or shape will it take! Noises of the early morning began to filter up from the streets of the city sprawled out beyond the castle wall. Still, he contemplated a bit longer. Of the crazy old crone who had come to Britain from the feudal lands, partly..but also of the grip such other lands tightened over the people of Britannia. How the elven society had spread overnight and how so many of his own people now called Malas home, and Luna their capital.

"Things were simpler, once..." he bemused himself with.

With that, he pushed off from the stone and walked back to the stairwell leading down, into the castle beneath, but high above him, beyond the sister moons and even the sun...a distant, bright point of light still refused to surrender to the blue sky.

Like a guardian, it twinkled, unmoving while the great clock of Sosaria moved beneath it. Not a spyglass or telescope in all of Britannia could see it, save for the great telescope of Moonglow.

And it just so happened, another soul had been watching that distant light throughout the night as Terrance had, but from the telescope of Moonglow. They had left the telescope at the same time Terrance had left the rooftop view of the castle a continent away, yet the massive collection of lenses and focal tubes remained fixed on the guardian light above:



Will be continued...

cool