Night deepened the rhythm it knew while the teeth of the mountain range close to Rigac attempted to scrape the skies.
And Rigac? It was lit. With radiant starlight and covered by smoke of disasters.
The mania among the outskirts borough—or also referred as outskirt borough or outer city borough—rose along the scent of steam that burned the leaking water reservoirs.
None questioned how the water reservoirs that were closed and shut tight had leaked tonight. Yet somehow, all tied into the flood.
Not all streets had the leakage, only a few did. However, the Skyact Guards using the bestowment action caused the leakage to vaporize.
'It is just water.' All had thoughts similar to this.
The wanderer walked among the steam filled outskirt streets. Every direction he looked someone was either breaking a building or building a new one.
Mania loved them all.
It is within his idea's range. However, the only detail that bothered him was the news of destruction of an artist's temple.
"It just doesn't fit." The boy in the brown overcoat said under his scarf covered mouth.
His plan required the normal leakage to happen. He had even reported of it as the hunter of Rigac.
The other part was according to his plan. The water reservoirs were no more water reservoirs after his inspection in the day.
The wanderer back then had performed the same procedures on each one as how to make an enhancing mix from Cleaving. Back in Cleaving he had figured out how to make it just by purely using water.
Enhancing mix's important ingredient isn't mixing it with something. But of following the procedure, the actions of making such a mix. And the very last step, saying 'risening' while placing the lid back.
All the water reservoirs he had inspected had become enhancing mix reservoirs because he performed the procedure disguised as a hunter performing a test on the reservoir.
The lid placing back on all was crucial to be done alone. The wanderer had performed basic leakage covering by doing actions of earth that could fill those places.
Except he had learned in the city of Ashtrim, from that old couple in Regent's Palace, how to get an action of Earth's result to be temporary or permanent.
"It is dependent on whether there is a structure to be followed by the action's effect. If there is none, then the effect will stay only be a temporary one otherwise it could be permanent in the presence of a structure." The old couple's advice ringed within.
The same reason why the wanderer had a paper drawn with a circle in his left pocket. Courtesy of the Rigac Assembly.
The very thing he used to make several different kinds of rocks.
He was no artist, but whenever he remembered of the Regent's Palace he felt he had witnessed divinity.
That's why he was here. He knew of an artist making a Temple of The Repenter.
While the difference between a temple and cathedral in the hierarchy of the religious governance on the religion based on The Lady of Repentance was not known by him. He felt for the artist's vision.
To him, it felt as if his work was opening something.
Having walked through streets filled with smoke, cries, steam and rampaging Skyact Guards. Some did spot the boy, but then were hit by a random sling shot.
Where did the sling's attack came from, the guard would never find out. However the outskirts were now filled with a few dead Skyact Guards.
Rigac's outer city borough was a total mess.
The boy's stock of perfect oval rocks ran out.
If there was a way that someone could see how many died by someone's actions in a day, the wanderer's numbers would probably be in the three digits just for the night Rigac was covered in tonight.
He stood in front of the burned effigy of the artist's temple. The artist sat on the other side facing his ruined artwork.
"Oh, Lady forgive us. Forgive the sins we couldn't stop. Forgive us." He rambled through a dried throat.
His face had several streaks left by tears. The artist was in his early sixties, a man of pure devotion.
Everything about him spoke of the life he had, and it was an ordinary one.
Hair halfway through becoming gray, eyes of lakes that seek peace for the beaches it touched, and skin unfreckled but clear as the brightest cloud in the palest blue sky.
Man was ordinary. The wanderer, inconspicuous.
Both sat next to each other. The artist spoke to the deity he believed in while the wanderer sat among the ruins next to him, to listen.
"Oh, Lady of Repentance bless this city. Send us your messengers! Let them teach of your righteousness!" He whispered to the steam in the air.
It danced around him, as if mocking. The wanderer glared into the steam. It still didn't flicker under the gaze of its creator.
For why would the world dance as the creator wanted? If what the creator wanted to create was a free world.
"May your Servants reveal the truths, the ones that Master of the Realms never told his realms. Let them grace ours. Let them grace the realms you made my Lady!" The artist praised and begged the Lady.
He was an artist through and through. Albeit now an ordinary one, someone who can just claim to be such without an irrefutable proof to support.
The wanderer had waited enough. He wished to talk to him, let the man know of his guilt. 'But could I? Could I trust him?' a voice asked within the wanderer.
Another rose within him, an angry one at the world, 'where is your voice now world?! Why aren't you telling me of things I should run after!'
He knew of the ones that hadn't plagued him since arrival in Cleaving. Only 'poster' came to him.
The man turned to the wanderer in between the boy's wonderings. The ordinary artist asked him, "child, what do you wish?"
It didn't rattle the wanderer, he half-expected the artist to be melancholic and skipping over conversations. His masterpiece was destroyed. The man should have been furious. Just as the wanderer was.
Yet he wasn't.
And thus the question came, "why aren't you angry?"
"Who wouldn't be? But my anger will not bring back the church. It could at most bring the same harm to the home of the one who destroyed it." The artist spoke in whispering breaths.
Nodding to his answer, the wanderer stood up. The pew they both were sitting on collapsed and the man fell with it.
Brown overcoat wearing boy extended his arm in a snap and caught the man. "Should have saved yourself!"
The wanderer had enough of Rigac, he didn't want to waste his words more on this capital. The man however called into something deeper within the boy.
"I feel you have locked away memories you wish to not recall." The man had skipped several conversational cues and back and forth to be direct.
Precise.
As he pulled up the man, the boy nodded. It was his turn to look up at the skies, 'this artist is too jumping around, why can't he stay on the same conversation topic?'
Rubbing away his wonderings, he looked around the temple. Shambles would be unfitting for the damage it had.
The boy spotted crystal boots on one of the walls, and he spotted other creations of the artist for the temple. All singed a fair bit but not destroyed.
Starlight gracing the temple had been gentler than the ones the boy faced while walking through enhancing mix's steam.
"You can take the boots, it does seem to be made more for you than to stay in a ruin. May help you in opening its secrets?" The artist asked.
'He again jumped! Just stay on one, is he having conversation in future?' He wondered. The wanderer had met one such person before.
Mina in Ashtrim.
She was the last one who gave him a similar sensation every time he talked with her. As if she knew what the conversations were always going to be about. This artist however just skips over everything.
"I don't skip always, but I can help you in getting to learn another bestowment action. One of opening."
The man's reply suggested knowledge the boy hadn't known. Or was probably not meant to know.
Keeping his thoughts to himself, the wanderer in the brown overcoat approached the crystal boots. He checked if he could even fit them on.
They did.
He turned around, and the man had been writing something on a paper. He approached the boy while writing, and handed him that.
"This is how to use opening. Read it whenever you feel like it," the man folded the paper and put it into the boy's upper right pocket of his overcoat.
"I'll remember you." The wanderer answered, he understood the choices the man had made.