Originally Posted by
grampagen
Not a day had yet passed by since the forceful abdication of Auroc, yet the smoke over the Threshlings' ruined Capital seemed thinner. The shattered images of the Majin god lined the ashen streets, leaving the remaining visage of their people engraved in so many ancient facets around the foundations standing in worship of something absent.
As Zaofan wandered the old roads on a restless dawn walk, across what he supposed was a former high street he'd passed by many marbled statues arrayed at the side of the roads. The stilled, dust-clad figures stood reclining behind their raised hands, couched in fear and awe of something that was no longer there, and the gracile fingers pooling into long shadows that stretched across their faces as the sun and sky bore down upon them.
They'll be going it alone from now on for the first time, aren't they?
The martial chef stood there in the sunrise, brushing a few stray hairs out of his face as he watched the sky flood in; Periwinkle, red, blue. On Baradur they worshipped the sun, until the Threshlings taught them to hold Auroc above even that.
The very thing that yoked them to isolation, the very source of their intense fear for everything outside of this corner of the universe had been the exact same thing that had shielded their people from the horrors that awaited.
A Guardian by any other name? No, not quite, he pondered. A hollow pang rising within him, stretching his stomach thin. He hadn't slept well, nor had he eaten after the previous day's labour. He was so set upon staying back and making sure things were taken care of he hadn't the strength to support the others, and he was already beginning to regret that decision on top of all of this. Suppose that wasn't much of a direction to go in, guided by the worst parts of yourself. But where do they go from here?
Pick up the pieces and move forward. Day by day, that's all they could do, and in the face of all this injustice, there may not be something, someone, to hold all this to account. Often, the best thing that could be done was to persevere.
Just then, the shearing of starship engine blowback against reentry followed by a stiff landing sounded out not a half-mile away. They must've returned! Cresting over the hill he saw the dispatch party that had left for Cortis II, and Zaofan moved to meet them...and by the look of them, despite their retreival of Maiz, they'd been through something serious. Ochazuke in particular had seemed to be in one of his contemplative moods as the martial brothers reuinited.
"What did you find out there?"
"Koorimaru...and the Remnant, Inda'ren." A brief accounting of what had transpired followed. "Diminished though he may be, he is still a God of Destruction enhanced with the Power of Creation."
"This is heavy...does anybody know where Asha'rah went?"
"If he can't find her, assuredly he will find fragments of her power. It's only a matter of time."