Isis’ Champion Destroys the Glaive

Od 27-30, 22nd year of Emperor Itomas II (PA 111)
The sulfur stink of the volcano beneath us rises up and engulfs the party as we stand atop the cinder cone. I watched as Jidian Kulder tossed the case where we’d been carrying the Glaive of the Old Ones into the burning rock below and I felt more than a little sense of unease.

“Are you sure that this is the best place to put it?”

“Of course, Champion, you worry too much.” Was Jidian’s gleeful response to my sour grapes.

“But, Chip took a swim in lava when he was with CrIsis, why shouldn’t a giant, especially one of the leaders here in the Old Kingdom, not be able to retrieve it?”

“Retrieve what? It’s destroyed. You worry too much,” Jidian replied, again laughing.

He had been a pleasant companion for the short time that I’d been with him. We’d snuck across the breadth of the kingdom. Moving at night and hiding during the day, we’d made relatively good time, and had avoided conflict. It now felt anti-climactic…

“I’m probably just borrowing trouble, but didn’t this seem easy to you?”

“Sneaking across a country was easy?”

“Easier than I expected it to be. Someone always sees you. You never have a perfect camouflage, never have a perfect run. I have spent my entire life knowing that something was going to go wrong. If nothing else, the basilisk taught me that.”

“You had a basilisk for a teacher? You never told me that,” Jidian said with a surprised look on his face.

“Of a sort. I can always tell you later. The point is, though, that no matter how good your plans are, dumb luck can get you. There’s always a chance that your enemy will just happen to be looking in the right place at the right time and see your sorry behind.”

“But we won,” Jidian said, almost crowing.

“Fine, we won,” I said with a grin and a little giggle. I hated to be that girl, but I’d never been able to cure myself of giggling.

On our trip out of the Old Kingdom, on the 28th of Od, Jidian disappeared on us for a couple of days. He spent time with CrIsis again, and I wondered if it would ever be my turn. Since I am the personal champion of Isis, I figure I have a different path to tread, and I shall walk that path to the end, wherever it takes me.

Isis has told me to hold tight and lay low. There will be a place I need to be, and I will be told when to be there. It should be an interesting appointment to make, because it is the first time that my goddess has ever asked me to go anywhere. I wonder, what I will find when I get there? I have a feeling that the moment that I was created for and shaped toward will meet me at that destination.

Will I come out of it alive? I certainly hope so, but only time will tell if I have prepared myself properly for this confrontation.

I know it will be a confrontation because I am a warrior, not a scholar or diplomat. I will fight for my goddess, and at the end of the day, she will be victorious.

Thus concludes the Penultimate chapter in the story of Alouette.

Image from wallpapers.com with minor editing by AZ_RUNE