The Temple vaults had held lines of the dying. Men with bloodied handkerchiefs, women coughing themselves into unconsciousness, children—gods, the children. I had walked among them until I collapsed from exhaustion, and still theydied.
Only when I gave my own blood—phoenix blood, offered willingly in a desperate ritual that left me insensate for two days—did the tide turn. The Sun God answered. He always did.
But I still saw their faces.
I still knew their names.
Their bones were dust now. The plague was long past. And yet it lived inside me, that season of helplessness.
Next, I remembered the drought.
Not the current one. An older one—thirty years ago, before the portal was opened and trade eased our hunger. The wells went dry. The mountain’s icy runoff slowed to a trickle. Even the high cisterns, enchanted centuries ago, had run low.
We had had five days of rationed water. No more.
I’d stood on the city’s highest peak, arms outstretched, robes soaked in oil, the fire of the sun scorching my skin as I summoned rain from the heavens—pulling moisture from the air, sweat from my own pores, anything to coax the clouds into tears.
The people wept when it came. They thought it was a miracle.
They didn’t know I’d nearly died to do it.
And then there were the wars.
The city of Solaris sat atop a plateau on the tallest mountain in the Osomeda mountain range, situated smack dab in the middle of the border between Telluria and the eastern reaches of Drakazov, two countries that had a history of warring with each other.
Forty years ago, when I was still new to my role as High Priestess and Solaris was still just a tiny hamlet, the army of the Tellurian king had attacked us, determined to seize the natural riches of the mountain where we had made our home.
They’d wanted our ores, our mines, but instead, they’d found resistance.
They’d tried to drive us out by the sword, but the people of my city had stood with me, and we had managed to drive off the Tellurians, instead.
And now—here I was.
Dozens of years later. Countless prayers answered. Thousands of lives saved.
And still... I felt the strain in my soul.
The strain of all those wars, all those skirmishes.
All those lives lost.
I’d sworn it would never happen again. Not on my watch.
Since then, we’d become stronger. I’d built up the priests of the Sun God into formidable warrior priests who would protect the city and its way of life: the Sun Paladins.
Solaris had grown into a thriving city, and if anyone came for us, they would find we were no longer an easy target.
Now, most of our problems wereinternal. The guilds in the city jockeyed for power, the mayor changed every five years, taxes went up and down, the people grumbled and the economy ebbed and flowed.
The best of the recent developments—well, Isayrecent, but it was twenty years ago—was when one of the mages in the city had developed a portal spell that let our people easily trade with the Four Kingdoms and the lands beyond our mountains, without risking our safety.
In the past decade, Solaris had been seeing an unprecedented time of peace and plenty.
But now, it seemed, there was cause for worry.
“We have received troubling news from the outer districts,” Aeldrin said now. “The rains have been bad this year, as you know. There have been reports of food shortages, and the people are growing restless.”
I nodded solemnly, my gaze sweeping across the assembled priests. “I see. And what is being done to help them?”
