☀️ Arselia and Akonia

“What, excuse me?” Alaria thought to herself, barely believing her ears after the brief briefing from the commander. “An ancient dragon threatens Welfern, capable of leveling a significant portion of the empire in a couple of months, and a handful of mercenary outcasts are supposed to stop it? This isn’t exactly the kind of job I expected from ‘Carnelian.’ It’s more like I’ve stumbled into a tale of brave heroes defying fate, rather than an empire-sponsored mercenary squad.” The news evoked mixed emotions. On the one hand, she was somewhat relieved that the proposed task, at first glance, didn’t require compromising her principles. It was precisely the kind of fantastically heroic mission that idealistic warriors dreamed of – a noble cause without any unpleasant undercurrents. On the other hand, she couldn’t help but worry about the fate of the few people she had come to know over the past few months, particularly Klin and Sanex. The knight had begun to recover, deciding to live a peaceful life, and then this happened. Once, during their travels through Calcite, they and Kenshiro had protected her when she lost her abilities. It seemed it was time to repay that debt to her comrade. And also to Welfern, which had become her new home. Sitting idly by and waiting for disaster to strike when she knew it was coming was difficult. Running to the ends of the earth while Despair destroyed one city after another? Unthinkable, especially after all the promises she had made to herself. According to Erefir, the key to defeating the monster lay in seeking the favor of the elements. Only in this way could the elemental catastrophe incarnate, which was possibly already heading towards Margel, be stopped. And Alaria had no doubt about which element she would seek favor from – after all the choices she had made, choosing anything related to fire would be strange, almost a betrayal of herself and all her previous decisions. When the Tanarian had a free moment to talk to Erefir in private, she immediately took advantage of it. “Perhaps you already know, being a frequent visitor to the archive, but recently the collection of literature has been expanded to include biographies of the empire’s rulers. At first glance, this may not be particularly relevant to the upcoming task, but…” Alaria gathered her thoughts, trying to better express her premonitions in words. “…one of the emperors, Raidarck, among other things, was famous as a dragon slayer. There are no guarantees, but there is a chance that a description of his deeds may give us ideas on how to better deal with Despair. Even weakened by the elements, he is unlikely to be an easy opponent. Unfortunately, the archive only allows reading the biographies of the rulers in a strictly defined order, which means that it will not be possible to simply look and familiarize yourself with the history of the second emperor – it will take some time. Therefore, in the coming weeks, I plan to sit in the archive, like you, in the hope that my suspicions will be confirmed. Just in case, I wanted to let you know.”