Daughter of Wreath, ch.8

Author's Note: Nowa's story continues, and we get a closer look at more of her background and character! There's also an art commission of Nowa underway that's coming along nicely, so keep your eyes peeled for that in the coming weeks!

In addition, you can find more of The Territory over on Ao3 for free, as well as another single-player type story set in a version of the Marvel universe, Start Wearing Purple. Find them through my Linktree!

[story]

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“Nowa!”

Euh…?

“Nowa, come on, wake up!”

I groan, squeeze my teeth shut, stretch, whine – then try to pull my foot back as a cramp strains the muscles in my calf. “What i’it, Missa…?”

“Uwyn’s home!”

All at once, my senses rush to me, and I sit up sharply in bed – my thin wool blanket falling from me as I do, exposing my bare, flat chest for an instant before I can cover it back up. “What the – nngh – what do you mean he’s home?”

The blurring of my vision clears enough to show my sister, Missa Jarren, crouched at the edge of my bed. Her thick red hair’s a terrible mess, her wide, winter-blue eyes bright with excitement. “For the Burning of Adwyn! I didn’t think he’d make it, but he’s here – and he brought a horse!”

A horse! “Get out so I can get dressed!” I bark at her, only for her to shoot a full-lipped smirk back at me.

“Like you’ve anything I’ve not seen, Nowa,” she chuckles, but stands and makes her way out of my room. “Don’t take too long! Mom’s already got tea on, and bacon getting crisp!” Damn, I was hoping some of it would still be soft and floppy. Best way to eat bacon. Better rush.

Once Missa’s left, I toss the blanket completely and sit up, slipping into a pair of soft undershorts, white stockings, and a corn-yellow dress with thin, cream-colored sleeves, a high neckline, and laces forming a V on their way down to my waist, creating an illusion of topside curves I don’t provide myself. The floorboards creak under even my incredibly light weight as I search around the room for my shoes – the Jarren house may be large, but it’s in worse and worse need of some good, dedicated repair, before bits of it start coming loose. Doubt the roof will survive another rainy season.

Finally slipping into my short, soft-soled boots, I scurry out of my room and down the hall – past Missa’s room, then the washroom – and turn into the main living space, a large room dominated by an enormous beeknut table, ancient blue couch, and a few rickety chairs, used as much for taking meals as it was for chatting, drinking, smoking pipes, or playing games. The ceiling is high but quite bare, making the place drafty in wintertime or when cold winds rush along the bluffs. Indeed, the only room on the second story is my mother’s bedroom, and the rest is just smoky rafters.

Sitting around that table are three people. My sister Missa, who’s jogged ahead of me and tucked against the edge of the couch, two years older than me and now taking up dad’s old forge, her thin frame already starting to fill out from the hard work of… well, mostly making nails, shears, hinges, and that sort of thing. In the center of the couch is Sianulen Jarren, my mother, beautiful as a sunny day in early Sast’owain, or the fresh growth of green grass on the bluffs after a few cold, dark months. She’s sipping tea from a large clay mug, and doesn’t notice me as I enter – her attention’s fully focused on the man sitting opposite her, in one of those rickety chairs.

The man is none other than Uwyn Jarren, my brother, the oldest of us three, and I’ve not seen him since I was a child, though I’m not so much more than one now. “I promise, ma, there hasn’t been so much fighting as you’d think,” I hear him saying as I come in, sipping from a short glass filled with a conspicuous reddish-violet liquid, likely dramacha, a brandy-like spirit made with pear, damson, and spices, largely unknown and un-drunk outside the bluffs. Why he’s drinking so early in the morning I’m unsure, though the weariness around his eyes suggests it may not be morning for him. “Southerners know we’ve nothing to steal, and the wayward sheep or crab-trap isn’t worth losing one of their own. Any proper conflict’s so far west we barely hear whispers of it. Elves burning down buildings around Minoury and out-of-work Seizurist paidmen turning to banditry isn’t really something the Knights have to worry about. More small-time highwaymen, local disturbances, or the rare lost bogge,” he chuckles, though I can hear the tiredness in his voice. These last few years – two? three? – have aged him five at least, and the boy who left home to be one of the Knights of the Crocus has returned very much a man.

Uwyn most resembles my mother, sharing her lighter complexion and dark auburn hair tousled around his ears, though his eyes are gray, rather than blue. A scruff of dark beard on his chin and upper lip decorate a notoriously handsome face, though one that has grown hardened since I last saw it. That he has yet to remove the lightweight, segmented metal armor or the pale purple tabard that covers it suggests he has only just arrived, as does the long, heavy pollaxe and smaller falchion tucked into the living room’s corner.

“Brother,” I say pointedly, folding my arms across my chest, drawing my lips into a tight line.

He looks my way, and our eyes lock. “Nowa. I thought mother’d had the good sense to be rid of you by now.”

“She keeps me around to remind her of her only more wretched child,” I parry, the corner of my mouth threatening to flicker into a smirk.

“And yet Missa is right there!” Uwyn replies, now flashing an open smile at Missa’s exclamation.

“Oy! You two keep me outta this!” she cries, but Uwyn and I are both laughing now. I rush over to him, giving him a hug, nearly as tall standing as he is sitting down.

“I missed you, Uwyn. I’m glad you’re here for the festival.” I gently punch his armored shoulder, immediately regretting it, shaking the pain out of my hand.

“Festival is a promise I’m not sure we can keep,” our mother offers a soft laugh, “it’s to be us and only a few other families; the LaKarrans, the Monnets, and Ms. Anbory and her boy might show if the weather holds up, as well. Enough to get the pyre up, at least.”

Uwyn nods, and drains the rest of his drink, letting out a groan of exhaustion. “Still, good to be home a while. If you don’t mind, I’ll get some sleep – want to be at my best for tonight.”

“Your bedroom’s still empty,” I point out. “We didn’t move anything.”

“Then Sast blesses me,” he chuckles, heaving himself up out of the chair and waving a brown-gloved hand. “See you all in some hours, then.” He heads for his room, unfastening buckles of his armor as he goes, and a moment later I hear the door click shut.

Glancing back to mom, I offer a sheepish smile. “Missa said there was bacon?”

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Bacon, tea, crusty bread, and oil-fried eggs see fit to fuel Missa and I for quite a lot of work, as the day unfolds. The Burning of Adwyn is observed each year on the bluffs, just as the air begins to grow bitter, a great pyre built and burned to remember Adwyn the Mad Saint, a ‘prophet’ who claimed Thoph had shown him a future where the bluffs were choked in the smoke and ash of a great burning, wool and sheep’s fat used to make enough torches to burn every home of every town. His prophecy gained him many followers… but not so many that the townsfolk could not rally and stand against him, mounting the Mad Saint on the pyre he himself had built, and burning it along with him and whatever followers wouldn’t lay down their arms. It was some two-hundred years ago, now, but still, we remind ourselves that we’re strong – that we can band together in the face of madness.

Hours pass of dragging dry straw and twigs to the site of the pyre, while the LaKarran brothers nail together thick branches until they roughly resemble the shape of a man. The branches are ‘dressed’ in clothes of scrap leather, stuffed with straw and rubbed down with oil, an effigy to the Mad Saint that’s eventually heaved onto a huge platform of logs and smaller branches, filled and covered with more straw, doused in oil, and surrounded by heavy rocks to keep the fire from spreading. It’s past high-sun when Missa and I are done working, the effigy standing high and glistening in the daylight.

“All this work just to set the bloody thing aflame,” Missa chuckles, nudging me. “I thought holidays were supposed to remember heroes, not villains.”

“The hero in this story is us, I think,” I say, chewing my lip and heading for an outdoor table where water and fruit were provided for those putting up the pyre, taking a single shiny red apple and heading back towards the house. “All of us. Bluffsiders.”

“Yeah, yeah. I just hope Ms. Anbory brings those tarts she brought last year!”

“With the gallerberry cream inside?”

Missa nearly squeals. “Yes! Ugh, they crumbled in your mouth, I bet she used so much butter!” She follows along behind me as I move around to the side of the house, where Uwyn left his horse – a leggy, long-maned dun with a calm temperament. I extend the apple to him, smiling as the horse gently cronches it out of my hand. Beautiful creature.

“Maybe I can try some dramacha this year!” I chuckle, petting the horse’s mane.

“Mm, you’re pretty young,” my sister frowns, “and still so little! When are you gonna get some meat on those bones?” Admittedly, Missa was bigger than me even when she was my age. Uwyn’s well over six feet, too – I didn’t inherit mom’s height, I guess.

“Whenever I… get around to it,” I blush, but my tone turns from bashful to playfully accusatory, “maybe if you gave me some dramacha I’d finally get bigger, ever think about that?”

Missa scoffs, “Hey, mom’s the one who says you can’t–”

“Mom says what?” a calm, smooth voice comes from behind me, making me startle and whirl around, though the horse seems largely unperturbed. Behind us, arms folded across her chest, is our mother, an almost imperceptible smile on her face. “I thought I’d find at least one of you back here. Making friends with your brother’s ‘mighty steed’ I see?”

“It’s so pretty!” Missa smiles. “We should get one, someday. Make it easier to go in and out of town.”

“Mm, well, it’s quite a large beast to feed,” mom says thoughtfully, “but perhaps we could get some use out of one. I’ll put some thought to it. For now,” she changes the subject before either of us can press it, “I’ve a light lunch waiting inside for you two, and everyone else should arrive before too long. Get some rest while you’ve a chance to.”

Missa runs by without another word, but I stop for a moment, wrapping my arms around my mother in a tight hug. “Thanks, mom,” I say softly, nuzzling into her shoulder – but a moment later I feel her hand on my chin, holding me still and planting a gentle kiss on my forehead.

“No need to thank me, little Nowa,” she whispers back, tilting my head upward a little more, then pressing her lips tenderly against my own – a soft, sweet kiss, unfamiliar, but not unwelcome. Something about it is strange, though not in a way I find unpleasant, a little chill rolling up my back. The kiss breaks nearly as quickly as it is made, and my mom gives me a gentle pat on the back, ushering me off after Missa. “Go eat, love. But not too much! Ms. Anbory’s bringing tarts, and there will be some fresh-smoked sausages, as well!”

A little confused by the exchange, I rush off after Missa, heading back into the house and sharing a light meal with her – a salad of honeygreens with salted cream, and a single egg, boiled soft and robed in ground pheasant and wheatmeal, then skillet-fried.

Evening begins to fall in only a few hours more, the vast blue sky fading from blazing pale cerulean into a rich, moody shade of midnight, stars beginning to peek out amidst the gloom, not a moon to be seen. Such as it is during the Burning of Adwyn – the darkest night, so that the pyre burns brightest.

Everyone from the nearby homes and farms soon arrive. Mr. and Mrs. LaKarran, their two sons and baby girl, along with Mrs. LaKarran’s elderly father. Messrs. Monnet, their daughter, and Hon Monnet’s widowed sister. Ms. Anbory, herself now a widow as well, and her son. Even the Elder Feith and a traveling salesman by the name of Jannoc Bant arrive, the latter bringing his wares and a few fireworks to set off during the main event. Once the sun has passed behind the bluffs completely, the pyre is lit, and the Mad Saint Adwyn begins to burn. It will burn for hours and hours, at this size, and some of us will likely have to stand vigil ‘til near morning before its embers can safely be put out.

I barely notice the reverence with which the other families treat my mother, and indeed, I barely get an opportunity to see her the entire night. They come to her with questions, sometimes seeking poultices made from foreign herbs but often seeking only wisdom, sharing their stories and their woes, desperate for input from someone who’d lived a life other than theirs. It doesn’t occur to me, here at the Burning, that Sianulen Jarren is not from here. A bluffsider in blood, maybe, but not in the life she’s lived. She’s seen things, knows things, been places we can only imagine. We’re simple, to her. The things she teaches me are not merely things ‘everyone knows,’ but strange secrets of a world none of these people have ever lived in. Tales of Selesriee and the bogge, of the far-off Teshan Sea, of monsters like the horrendous Grazzoth, of the hulking shokari deep beneath Wreath’s surface. I don’t notice, now, how different she is, how special. Later, I think, I’ll wish I had.

“Psst, Ivy,” I feel a nudge at my side, stirring me away from dwelling on the enormous, fiery effigy set in the center of a cleared field. Glancing to my side, I see Uwyn, though more as I remember him – armor exchanged for a warm gray tunic, his scruff of beard shaved clean, his auburn hair washed. In each hand, he holds a clear glass filled with that same reddish-violet liquor, extending one towards me. “Here.”

“Dramacha? Do you think mom would…” I ask, hesitantly taking the squat cup, holding it to my nose and sniffing it. It smells sweet but very sour, too, heady from its potency.

“You’re not a kid,” Uwyn chuckles, “even if everybody still treats you like one. You’ve to start living your own life eventually. Part of living is gonna be making mistakes. So…” he holds up his glass, feigning a toast toward me, then taking a sip, “...let’s start tonight.”

I nod, then take a sip of the powerful drink; reeling at first, but then intrigued. It’s quite tart! I find I rather like it, though, so fruity and strange, bringing a warm tingle immediately to my lips and the tips of my fingers. “It’s good,” I say, stifling a cough, which makes my brother laugh.

“You get used to it,” he says, then is thoughtful for a moment, his gaze focusing on the pyre, the people around it. My gaze follows his – one of the LaKarran brothers has pantsed the other, who now chases bare-assed after his counterpart. Missa flirts shamelessly with Jannoc, the trader, but a more genuine sort of romantic connection seems to be blossoming between the two widows, Ms. Anbory sitting next to Ms. Monnet, holding hands while they watch the Burning. Simple lives. Little lives. “What do you think you’ll do, Ivy?”

“You’ve to stop calling me that,” I chuckle, gently punching his shoulder with the very hand he’s nicknamed me for, the one with the ivy-like birthmark, crawling its way up to my elbow. “What do you mean, ‘what will I do’? See if any of those tarts are left, I suppose.”

“Not tonight,” Uwyn clarifies. “I joined the Knights of the Crocus, however dung-brained an idea that may have been. Missa’s taken up the forge, and she’s getting quite good, too – she showed me some of her newer pieces.”

“Those beyond, you mean what will I do with my life? What an awful question.” My nostrils flare, and I take another sip of the dramacha, quickly adapting to its sourness and coming to rather like it. “I’ve time, yet, to think about it. Don’t I?”

“Don’t you?” Uwyn arches a brow. “As I said, you’re not a kid. And you’re the only one of us who got ma’s brains, rather than dad’s. Shame to waste them.”

“Can I not stay on the bluffs? I can help mom, I’m good at that. Identifying herbs and mushrooms, stitching wounds, and I remember all the stories she tells us….”

“And what if she’s not always here?” he says, his voice and expression uncharacteristically grave.

I take his meaning quickly. What if she died? She’s so old, after all, certainly nearing or eclipsing forty years of life. If all I ever do is live in her shadow, recreate myself in her image, I’ll be lost without her. The question is bitter and meaningful, moreso when I recall the strange kiss from earlier, the questions it, too, had raised and left unanswered. I try to make a joke of it. “I’ll chase after her, I suppose. As long, and as far, as I have to.”

“That’s not what I meant,” my brother lets out another soft laugh, but relents. “You’ve time still, I suppose. I don’t mean to put too much on you too quickly. You’re young, yet.”

The way his language changes, withdraws what had been previously given, does more than simply rankle. He’s reduced me to juvenile terms again, as if I’ve failed some sort of test I didn’t realize I was taking. I frown, taking another sip of my fruity drink, staring into the great, burning ‘saint’ as scorched leather sloughs off of him as if it were real charring skin, leaving more and more of his woody skeleton silhouetted against so much flame.

Finally, after a long moment, I speak up. “I don’t want to leave the bluffs, I don’t think.”

Uwyn doesn’t answer, but he does nod, and grunt. We stare into the fire a while longer before our paths seperate. While I go to bed long before Adwyn has fully burned, my brother, I think, stays up ‘til morning to put out the coals. Two days later, once all the cleaning has been done and the leftovers eaten, he leaves again.

I haven’t seen him since then. I wonder if I ever will.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

I dart up in bed, wet with sweat, sunlight from the window peering in to settle directly over where my closed eyes had been a moment ago. The problem with a dream that is more recollection than fantasy, is that it does not fade from memory upon awakening – images of Saint Adwyn, of the bluffs, of my family, linger behind my eyes, incapable of being shaken from my thoughts.

The far more unsettling sensation of Vexa’s ice-cold foot rubbing up along my thigh, though, draws me away from my thoughts. “Eugh,” I shudder aloud, looking down at the lanky elf laying beside me, eyes still shut and mouth agape, a thin trail of drool making its lazy journey down her lip, chin, and throat, all the way to the pillow beneath her. At least I didn’t wake her up.

“You okay, Nowa?” comes a voice that is growing familiar to me, though I am nonetheless startled by it. Gelyn Ul-Shan, the shokari strongwoman and much needed ray of light in our makeshift ‘party,’ appears to have awoken before any of us, her bandages removed and a very light overshirt donned in their stead, clinging to her mouth-watering labyrinth of muscles and curves. She sits now with her tip-toes planted to the floor, and one hand holding up the rest of her weight, her powerful figure forming a bridge between the two points – not moving up and down, nor back and forth, but simply holding the position for as long as she’s able. It’s still terribly impressive, especially since I have no knowing of how long she’s already been there.

“Bad dream,” I say softly. “Eh, not bad. Strange. And… much of a dream either, I suppose.”

“A not-bad, not-dream?” the horned woman ponders. “So just… sleeping?”

I let out a quiet sigh. “A memory, that’s all; from a few years ago.”

“You don’t talk much about it,” Gelyn says, putting one knee beneath her and using it to sit up. There’s a bit of sweat on her horned brow, too, though more healthfully earned than mine. I swear to Rul I can see her muscles throb, and were I not feeling so ill at ease, I would find the urge to touch her quite irresistible. Actually, perhaps I still might. “Where you’re from, and all that.”

I let out a soft chuckle, throwing the sheets off and climbing out of the second of the room’s two beds, going over to sit on Gelyn’s. “I talked to Vexa a bit about it when we first met, but she got bored rather quickly,” I offer a thin smile, checking underneath my own bandages to see if my wounds have healed. Welts, a little bruising, but the worst of the damage seems to have healed, and my ribs no longer hurt when I simply breathe. Beginning to unwrap them, I continue. “I figured you’d find it quite boring as well. I feel like Vexa’s been all sorts of exciting places; and you lived in Khxendrol if for however short a time, got to travel with the circus, all that. The west isn’t too exciting a place. A lot of sheep, and… wind.”

She sits down beside me, and I reflexively lean against her, feeling the warmth of her impressive muscles. My hands, as if of their own volition, reach out to gently cling to her shoulder and upper arm, and I study her expression as it shifts from thoughtful, to charmed, a small smile touching her lips. “I like sheep,” she says simply, and I can’t help but let out a soft chuckle. She looks down at my hand on her shoulder, at the ivy-like pattern crawling along it, a shade of brown so dark as to be nearly black. “You never told me how you got your tattoo. Did it hurt a lot? Braull always said they didn’t hurt much, but I figured he was just acting tough, y’know?”

I let out another quiet laugh, taking my marked hand from her shoulder and holding it out where she can see it. “It’s not a tattoo. It’s just a… mark, I guess. I was born with it. I think it has something to with my, uh, ability, but I don’t really know how or… what, or anything.”

“I wanted to ask about that, but I thought it’d be really rude,” Gelyn frowns slightly, “your power, I mean. You did something to that golem, took it right out, when it didn’t seem like any of us were gonna be able to put it down. And… you used it at the circus too, right? Did something to those Kou cultists?” She scoots back onto the bed, sitting up with her back against the headboard and drawing my naked body closer to her, letting me lay my head on the warm, firm muscles of her belly – something I didn’t realize I needed as extremely as I clearly do. A sense of peace washes over me, and I quickly snuggle into place.

“I can take on the… properties… of monsters, if I touch them,” I explain tentatively, though with the obvious challenge that I myself don’t understand this ability very well. “Creatures from old stories, things that aren’t part of the natural world, I guess. I don’t really know what makes a monster different from an animal – is a shark a monster, or a spider?

“My mom used to tell me these stories of a young boy named Verraic, a sort of trickster-hero, there were a lot of stories about him. In one of them, he lost his favorite crystal bowl, and turned out it had ended up in a dragon’s lair. Well, Verraic goes right to that lair and finds the bowl, and the dragon sees him right away – he rises up on top of this huge hoard of coins and gemstones and other pretty things, but he’s all black and slimy and covered with spines, with eyes like two great, round lanterns, red as blood. He sees Verraic, and he says ‘Ah, a young boy for me to eat, just as I was getting hungry,’” I try to do a deep, gruff ‘dragon’ voice, contrasted by a softer one for the boy. “But Verraic is like ‘No, no, Mr. Dragon, you don’t understand! I’ve brought you a fine lunch as a gift, something so much more delicious than myself, for I’m small and stringy and drink far too much milk!’ Not sure what milk had to do with anything, but that’s what he said.”

I glance up at Gelyn, who, to my surprise, is listening raptly, her silver eyes wide and focused. “And then what?” she says, almost breathless. I almost forgot how obsessed she is with castles and princesses and whatnot, no wonder she’s invested.

I take a deep breath, and continue. “Well, the dragon was curious. ‘What could you bring me that is more sumptuous than a delicious child?’ he said, but Verraic had a plan. He held up this little creature, wrapped in a cloth, a little orange and blue thing–”

“A mebbinath!” Gelyn exclaims, beaming. There’s a sudden snort from a still-slumbering Vexa, one that causes both Gelyn and I to stifle giggles.

“That’s right! Verraic holds it up to the dragon and says ‘I brought you this, O Mighty Dragon, eat it all in one bite, and if you’re still hungry, you can eat me right after!’ Well, the dragon hadn’t seen a creature like this before, so he leans in, and a long tongue like a great serpent shoots out and takes the mebbinath, swallowing it in one bite, just like Verraic said. The dragon goes ‘Gah! That tastes terrible! And it’s so small! This makes for a terrible meal indeed, so I’ll eat you up as well!’ His eyes light up like forest fires, and he leans in, teeth like swords dripping with hot saliva, maw opening wide to gobble up Verraic… and the dragon drops down, wheezing, bleeding from his nose and his eyes. Only a moment later he had died, killed by the mebbinath’s potent poison.”

“What happened to Verraic?” the shokari asks, slightly mispronouncing the trickster’s name.

“Well, he got his crystal bowl back, of course, but he also had the rest of the dragon’s treasure. He became the boy-king of the bluffs – this was a few hundreds of years ago, of course, back when there were dragons – and got into a lot more adventures after that.” I chuckle, pulling up a little to lay on Gelyn’s chest, letting my fingertips caress up and down along her belly.

“So that’s how you knew about the mebbinath, that it wasn’t just an animal, but some kind of… um, magical creature, I guess?”

“I always just say ‘monster,’ maybe magical creature’s better.” I shrug. “I used to love stories about Verraic. I wanted to be like him, go on adventures and the like. I didn’t know how… hard… they’d be.” My fingers grow a little more bold, teasing down Gelyn’s belly, along her thigh, then just slightly beneath her undershirt. My actions are more idle than intentional, simply intoxicated by her figure and wanting to touch it, now that my health is returned to me.

“Hard, yes,” Gelyn smiles, “but wounds heal, yes? And we get stronger over time, and… well, we all have each other, too. You and me and Vex, I mean. That helps a lot.”

“Paize was fun to have around too, for as long as that lasted,” I chuckle.

“Can I kiss you?”

I blink, looking up at Gelyn once more, the way her soft, sweet eyes contrast her noble features and twisted horns. I note how uncommon it is for me to see her without her makeup, how defiantly pretty she is, with or without it. In her pale eyes, though, I see her question is earnest. “Of course you can.” I whisper back, letting my lips part slightly, and she closes the distance between us to plant a soft kiss on my mouth. I return the kiss, gently but eagerly, letting myself melt into the tender exchange. It’s been some time since I’ve been kissed, I find myself thinking as my eyes drift shut, considering Vexa’s refusal, and those thoughts make me consider my mother once again. The kiss we shared, at the Burning of Adwyn. An odd kiss.

Part of me expects Gelyn to make a further move, but she doesn’t. She holds the kiss a moment, continues it, savors it, then lets it naturally part. “Th-… thanks,” she whispers, one arm coiling around my waist, tightening slightly. “I liked that.”

“I liked it too,” I smile at her.

A moment later, another abrupt, prolonged snore from the room’s other bed leads to Vexabeth sharply sitting up, the elf’s hair in disarray and her expression disoriented. “Ahh!” she gasps. “Feauuhh… fuhh… hrmmm.” Blinking a few times, she glances over to Gelyn and I, looking more confused than annoyed. “Fuck’re you two doing over there?”

I glance at Gelyn and giggle, starting to sit up. Well, if we’re both rested and healed, I suppose it’s finally time to resume our search for the Shrine of the Second. Tague’s a big, big place.