A ray broke through the morning's horizon.
Bells rang marking the first arrival of light.
Cities across the length and breadth of Ashtrim rang at the same time. Irrespective of the mountains that stood between, the grasslands that crawled against the earth, or the streams that were burned as per Monarch of Riga.
But the bells have been rung over the night in Rigac.
First from the outer city borough. That marked the first instance for the attack.
An attack on the capital of the strongest kingdom on Ashtrim the continent.
The second bell that rang before dawn, was from the castle. The attack within had been delivered.
Cheal was back on the street, with his scapegoat party. His night raid through the castle went unhitched even when the starlight had burned through three different decoy parties of his.
All according to his plan. And he wondered will he meet his first partner today.
Would he be stood up by such a mysterious boy?
Only time knew. But Cheal would also know of the question before its answer walked.
"Hmm, opening huh?" Cheal blessed his words into the wind. Every single one was tinged with steam and smoke.
The outer city borough wasn't ruined but the Skyact Guards had been cut down by a third of its ranks.
A wandering boy walked back to the Rigac Assembly. He wondered if the second partner of his life will forgive him for being just a bit late.
To get to the Rigac Assembly, he had to go through Assembly market streets. There were four different market streets all led to the Rigac Assembly.
He could've walked straight back, but he did not want to draw attention to his travels.
So the boy chose the paths that meandered similar to the ashen marks on his brown overcoat. Each one going over a crucial detail of the whole once and wandering away from it.
Sights of the inner city boroughs were marvelous.
Rigac rose in vaults purely cut out of a mountain. Any building inside the inner city boroughs always gave that feeling, as if they were made not outside but inside of a larger chamber.
Only to be put here for display and the rust of ages.
Cheal agreed to the wanderer's conjecture as he quipped into his first partner's dawn walk.
"Truly fit to be put in a vault!"
He didn't glance at Cheal.
"Did you know of the massacre on the sixth library street?" the boy inquired Cheal.
Cheal rejected the implications. He affirmed, "I only was there for the night. I climbed back up during it too."
He flapped his hands around, "It was too tiring." Imitating the way he climbed up out of Cleaving.
The boy took notice of the fact that Cheal did not ask of which city he was talking of.
He knew from the book's provided by Rinet that there once was a Sixth Library Street in Rigac. But it was discontinued since renaming of the capital.
'Why was the capital renamed?' A question that jumped around his other thoughts lit itself.
He repeated it to Cheal who had magically chosen to appear by his side from where ever he had led his inconspicuous party.
"Oh, about Rigac being named Rigac? It was earlier called The Key of Skies."
The boy incredulously glanced for a minute.
"That can not be the name." He countered.
Whistling tune was Cheal's response. He himself was quiet joyous at meeting him.
Cheal's party however kept back from the two.
"What did you learn?"
"Nothing more than what is in the vaults."
"And what is in it?" The boy continued, keeping his pace to reach Rigac Assembly before the full rise of the morning.
Bells echoed over them and the city.
"The kidnapped people. All of them performing an action of—"
"Don't tell me further. And whatever you did, get more people and do it again within three hours." The boy cut in flat.
He sped away. He wished to not know of things he shouldn't know.
'Let Cheal deal with the repercussions. This city reeks. And I want it cleansed.' The wanderer was clear in his thoughts.
His earlier directionlessness dying.
Crystal boots in his brown overcoat wanted to shine, but the overcoat held against the winds of the mountains.
Boy in brown overcoat was a running sight for several more people in the capital Rigac. Many were confused why were there so many bells ringing.
The ones who did step out. They saw the reason well and clear.
The castle had a tower missing. When did it fell? Only the people in the castle knew.
But what astonished more was the smoke stagnating above the outer city borough.
A father of a girl who worked on the local dictionary, quivered as he told his daughter to go back to sleep. He soothed her that it is of no importance why the bells were ringing.
The girl wanted to take a peek outside, but she saw her father's fearful face. She hadn't seen her hero to be under duress. Not once. But today she learned there was something that even scared her monster-hunter.
There were other girls of older age, ones who were in the middle of ages of twenty and thirty. Every single one saw the morning light after ages of confinement. The tower above them was gone.
Girls, men, women, and boys. Several hundreds and thousands of them were locked under similar towers all across the castle borough of Rigac.
The towers and the hollowed chambers under it were made to distract the people.
Maze.
All of it was just a maze. Every single one had a selected knight guarding a few keypoints in it.
And Cheal had revealed one of such towers basement vault to the monarchy of light. The wisdom of morning.
The girls of that tower's vault were being led away once again to another different vault. One made with another fake sky in it.
How was there another sky within Ashtrim? No one knew. Not one from the normal citizenry.
Maybe the Monarch of Riga knew. After all it was well established in the city and all of Kingdom of Riga's war achievements and victory stories.
The valiance that the armies of Kingdom of Riga showed while fighting and conquering the cities across Ashtrim in the night and day. Bringing the divine punishment that it bestowed with the will and command of its Monarch.
So why would there be vaults filled with people? None would believe so. Nor would the slaves and servants within the castle.
But not today.
Today an entire borough was shackled and ruptured from within. The castle's tower was gone.
What could have happened within the dead of the night? Why were bells only ringing in the beginning of the day?
Questions that only two could answer. The wanderer in the brown overcoat, and Cheal from the outskirts.
The queries on the tower will have to raised and asked by someone competent. Maybe someone like Skyact Guard Leous.
She had delivered justice with procedure upon twenty different cases with extreme neutrality.
Her praises were being sung in the cries of the criminals who suffered their consequences.
Leous however, suddenly felt sick. Sick of her position as a guard.
"I just want to die," she repeated as she hugged her legs in a corner of the street she had decimated over poor cooking area maintenance.
It was well within procedure to protect the nearby citizenry against the possible hazard due to flames.
Her desire and weakness fought against the imbalance created by the steams of the enhancing mix. She still hadn't figured out how to counteract.
But her mind and heart had already done so after witnessing the horrors she as a person could deliver.
"Child, cover yourself," a pleasant rustle washed over her. She looked up.
It was the same artist who she beat up because his design of the temple was not aligning with the street's decorum. 'Was it truly a good enough reason? Of course not! You stupid idiot!' She cursed herself inside.
"If cursing helps you, do so. But curse before the time to remedy has arrived," the artist offered his hand.
She didn't take it.
Leous was beyond embarrassed. 'How could a person she nearly killed be so forgiving? I am horr—horrible' She knew her place, she had learned where she truly stood among the people of Ashtrim.
She felt she wasn't worthy of the truths of the vaults of Monarch of Riga.
She had known it ever since she started using the bestowment action. It was an important truth to be told.
The people there were treated as slaves for the kingdom. But not the same way as the worst treatment of slavery you see.
They were slaves of the throne of the Monarch. He needed them to perform his bestowment action as many times as needed.
And she knew the why. 'To solidify his throne among the thrones of the elements. To make the four elements become five.' She remembered the reason.
The vaults were the fastest way to get the number of times the actions for an element has been performed to increase. The true truth may be more hideous, or more divine. She won't know until she asked.
For the Monarch also decreed one more statement, "The Skyact Guards are free to question the Monarch."