CHAPTER 174: STAY OR GO

"Bestowing a blessing is even simpler than casting a spell since you don’t need incantations – just power and intention in mind. I’d even go as far as to say that practicing it is pointless, as it’ll come naturally once you try."

"That sounds fantastic – but it begs a question why isn’t everyone everywhere blessed?"

"Good catch." Sylara smiled. "Personally I bestow a minor blessing of good health on all my citizens, but it’s not that impactful – care to guess why?"

"We are somehow limited in how much power we can spend on blessings...?"

"Correct. The power used for blessings comes out of our renewable reserves, which means that every blessing you bestow lowers the amount of power available to you at any given moment."

"Now it doesn’t seem so good..."

"Giving out blessings can be tricky, as the cost grows exponentially with the power of the blessing – for example, I have enough power to give a small blessing to thirty thousand people and not really feel a difference, but if I made the blessing strong enough to let’s say... prevent any illnesses, then I could only give it to around hundred people while maintaining the same balance."

"So from what I gathered so far, it doesn’t seem like putting blessings on my friends would be a wise move yet."

"Yes, I’d wait with that until you’re at least an elemental." Sylara agreed. "Since we covered everything we needed to and it’s still quite early, would you mind if we went on a walk? I’d like to discuss a few more things."

"Not at all, but what about the altar, should we just leave it like that?"

"If you don’t have anything against it – it might even help you, teleportation to it might not be possible yet but if someone wants to tell you something they could just come to this room and say it, pretty convinient if you ask me."

"Alright."

***

"Have you decided on your next steps yet?" Sylara casually asked as they strolled through the sleepy streets.

"I mean, we have to go for the next temples, no?"

"Not yet necessarily – you helped restore the Order, don’t you want to see who becomes their new leaders? The tournament is only one week off, you might as well stick around and watch it. It’s not like the Enlightened know when exactly you will be arriving and you’ve already cleared one sixth of your goal. You can rest a bit."

"I don’t know, I’m sure Cass would be thrilled to watch a tournament but Ellie and Isa might not be as enthusiastic about the idea."

"Elira can stay here for the time if she’s wants to, I have plenty more things to teach her anyway – as for Isara, I’m sure she’ll find something interesting in my grandfather’s notes to occupy herself."

"That’s true I suppose..."

Calen could use that additional time to get even better at forging, he wouldn’t have much time to do so in the future and he hasn’t even worked with armour so far.

However there was one more problem:

"If we go back to the Fortress of Giants we would double the travel time, Damien will get us there but we would need to go back on foot and spending two weeks in underground tunnels doesn’t sound very fun."

"I can guarantee Damien will be thrilled to help you if you ask him. He didn’t get to go out of the Order this much since his time as an ambassador here."

"I will discuss it with the others, personally I’m leaning towards staying but I need to consider everybody’s opinion."

Sylara smiled faintly and looked at him for a bit.

"You’re different."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Different? Different from who and how?"

"...the other Flamebearers." Sylara’s voice sounded a bit strange, but Calen dismissed it as his imagination.

"Have you met many?"

"Yes, most of them in fact." She nodded. "All of them were so... self-absorbed. Even when they had companions and loved ones they always discarded any opinions they didn’t agree with. Perhaps it’s a personality trait the Sun God likes, or maybe it’s just a coincidence, who knows."

"Is it a part of why I am an anomaly?"

"Not exactly, but it might be an indirect result of the reason why you were labelled as such." She answered cryptically. "Unfortunately we can’t go any deeper into this topic, as the restrictions still apply."

"Which of my predecessors you remember the most then?" He attempted to steer the conversation in another direction."

"Oh, that’s quite a difficult question actually – they were all quite influential after all." She rubbed her chin and went silent for a bit. "I think Anatos left the biggest impression on me, but that was mostly because he because he was called a great hero and I was just a teenage girl during his conquest."

Sylara pondered the question in silence for a bit more.

"If I truly consider who deserves recognition the most, it would be Ethan the Kind." She finally decided.

That was not the choice Calen expected – in the book about Flamebearers he read Ethan’s entry was one of the shortest, and it didn’t paint him in a particularly positive light, but then again there was so little information on there that it could be easily twisted to make him look bad.

"Didn’t he fail to fulfill the task given to him by the Sun God?"

"That’s the narrative the church spun afterwards – in reality he simply refused to resolve the conflict in the cruel way the church wanted to."

"It was something about a tribe from the Eastern Nomads wanting to settle in the Kingdom if I remember correctly."

"You do, a tribe was banished from the great caravan for breaking one of the sacred customs and they came to settle on the border of the Sun Kingdom. The entire story is slightly complicated, but the point is that the immigration caused some very violent... disagreements."

"And Ethan was sent to ’take care of it’, wasn’t he?"

"Precisely – the church wanted the immigrants gone, killed preferably, but he refused to spill blood if there was no need. Instead of slaughtering the tribe, he helped them settle their differencs with the locals and built a magnificent city on the border."

"You mean that the Eastern citadel...?"

"It was built with the help of Nomads, not as a defence against them."