She had not slept for the past twenty hours.
Skyact Guard Leous was ever deployed before the today's generals briefing with the Monarch. She had watched Rigac Assembly as closely a hawk would. Then went around and circled three different main streets.
Her friend from the Tribulations Sqaudron had been called back due to some future preparations in the castle. It did not fit well with Leous.
She was quite vocal about it to her. Yet her friend only promised her that she'd keep a lookout and let her commanding officer know of Leous's instincts.
Skyact Guard Leous was among the few people in the Kingdom of Riga whose instincts were paramount to their employer more than what their job related skills brought. It was an asset of unbound potential.
The outskirts borough, or the outer city borough, or outskirt borough, whichever the name will be decided later on, was currently having a slow rise of supernatural feats.
First a building was constructed three days prior to its set date, normal and within expectations. The construction peasants and slaves quoted to the local administering officer to tell them of more work since they were being paid and fed by the hour.
And so a Temple of The Repenter being built through passion was demolished.
Nothing much.
Scuffle between the artist and the administering officer broke out. The artist and priest, the same man, was brimming with remorse. His pledge broken before him opening his own temple.
She resolved it by her mere presence. She felt pride that it worked. A worker offered her the water from the local reservoir, they have been drinking this and wanted to share it with her for resolving their problem. She obliged, only to drink a small gulp.
Another street had a family's cottage attacked by flying furniture. She used her will revelation on it, and turned out it came from the two storey home the next door. Leous exacted the correct procedure as dictated for breaking and entering.
Several lashes on the parents of a three month old baby. She let the baby watch its parents be lashed.
She merely followed the stated procedures. It was the duty of the Skyact Guards to perform and uphold righteous behavior within the society. It was a newly added squadron under the direct command of the Monarch.
Every act by a Skyact Guard is equivalent to an announcement or judgment by the Monarch.
Her will revelation did imply that the baby had thrown the furniture. But it was against the procedures to criminalize any child under five years old. Their punishment had to be given to the parents.
A strong reminder into the child's memory was embedded. The child cried for it did not understand. Leous did find the child's cry to be louder than the normal children.
'Maybe the child has already crafted it unconsciously', she thought to herself as she left that house.
A street was flooded due to a leakage from a water reservoir. This was her third assignment within twenty minutes since stepping into the outskirts borough.
Several other Skyact Guards had been going around stopping and fixing problems they understood about.
She did not understand anything about how to stop the flooding, and she was under direct orders not to rely on the actions of the elements unless the Monarch's throne had been solidified.
She did not know what that meant. She only knew she was crucial to the Monarch, and so she performed a bestowment action she had learned from the Monarch.
Starlight flooded the street, and the water shimmered first. Its shimmering increased becoming chaotic until the water became steam.
"A bestowment action is equal to the action of the elements." She reminded herself. Another loud crash.
Leous walked into the steam and across the street. The origin of the sound was just a baffled artisan working to use that same floodwater to cement his illegal underground building.
"That's a nice imprisonment cell for this street. How many could fit in there?" Leous asked triumphantly.
The artisan glanced at the underground open chamber and then back to her. He started crawling away. Leous took a step toward him.
He kept crawling, he was tired. He did not know how but he screamed as best he could, "I—I don't know madam Knight. I just don't know. Why I started it! Let me go!"
He crawled like the helpless bug that had dug its own grave before realizing where it dug it.
Leous's drawn weapon slashed at his feet ligaments. His legs gave way. He wanted to crawl, yet he couldn't.
And thus began his large breaths of breathing and gulping down the starlit steam. He inhaled as many as he could. His ligaments showed a slow regeneration.
She cut it again. The stated procedure in her mind flashed, 'incase of fleeing on illegal building in the newly merged borough, the Skyact Guards hold authority to perform healable cuts on the perpetrator. In the situation the perpetrator escapes, report it to the closest Tribulations Squadron member.'
She was drunk on her power. She had just resolved three different cases, and a fourth presented itself. Leous would not let it slide. Her blade thirsts for the blood today.
But all it met most was steam of a closed water reservoir's leakage.
Many more similar incidents had begun as noticed by Leous. Some had started larger flames to destroy the buildings assigned for two or four weeks later destruction with all its occupants still inside.
The construction workers just made the new building on top of the burnt ashes, like a gravestone of the owners.
Not all the water reservoirs had leakage. Only a few in select few districts did. And they were already reported not once, but several times. Even today when the wandering boy in the brown overcoat reported them, the people in Rigac Assembly slid it under the table.
"Water shortages? Who cares of these frivolous abundant things." One of Rinet's coworkers provided this perspective.
The wanderer was still forceful on having Rigac send someone to fix them. They didn't listen. And now, in the dead of the night when the starlight had twice graced Rigac in its beautiful gaze.
A wandering boy left the Rigac Assembly to walk among the silent streets of the inner Rigac city. He left a note to his leafy partner.
"My friend, if I come back tomorrow morning. Then I will take you to the best place where you could grow best.
-Your partner."
And if that leafy plant had any mouth he would be asked by it to take it with him that was his belief.
"The clouds had ungraciously left the skies of Rigac, maybe even more," the wandering boy quipped to himself.
His hands inside his overcoat's pockets fiddling with a rope, and the other traced quite a few small action of earth, inside the left pocket, on a piece of paper he took from the pile he was given.
"The Rigac Assembly is quite gracious," a voice called out to the boy. He didn't turn. He knew that voice.
It was the same one as this morning's.
Priest Noria in her holy garb, her luscious black hair with streaks of natural red, and her vivid pale blue eyes, same as the boy's eyes, walked forward along the boy.
"The Monarch has been serious since the ….crowning." She double checked to see if there was any reaction from the boy.
None.
The boy walked forward, making small two circles side by side and drawing a line through the middle vertical space on the hidden paper. The paper had a simple circle drawn on it. But not once, dozens of time traced ever so gently.
It thickened the ink used on that exact shape.
And the boy's left hand never stopped, while the right stopped fidgeting with the rope and adjusted the rings a bit each time he performed the action of earth with his left hand.
After a couple of steps he stopped. And looked at the Priest Noria, "The Assembly is gracious, but the Cathedral is more….cunning."
He stopped drawing imaginary shapes of the action of earth, his left pocket was filled to the most it could hide.
Drawing out a bottle from an upper pocket, to sip its contents. "Priest Noria, what does the servant of messenger delivers?"
Priest Noria had the answer ready, "The servant of—"
"You can think more thoroughly, and if you want we could walk to the outer city borough. Maybe you could point an example there." He gazed at the skies above the outer city borough, there were several dark smoke clouds now gathering.
But no guards were on the street. It was empty. The night in its darkest hour.
"We could do so, but the servant of messenger does not only deliver messages of worded kind. They sometimes deliver emotions." Her eyes went up to be mesmerized by the stars.
They twinkled like she remembered.
The boy's bottle emptied, went back into the same pocket. "It seems we understand."
She looked back at the boy. She saw his hollowed pale blue eyes, not the emotions he had in the cathedral but the ones that Rigac reflected on him.
Noria shook her head, understanding her position.
As she walked away she noticed a few of her staff. They were worried where she went. One of them shouted irrespective of the time, "Priest Noria! The Temple of The Repenter in the outskirts been destroyed!"
The boy stopped.
'Did I? Did I? No, I didn't plan so. So how there?' He considered. The words that plagued him the most haven't plagued him since coming to Rigac except when he was reminded by Cheal's message.
The boy re-chose his next destination rather than turning back completely, he walked into a side alley by the Rigac Assembly. To trail the steps of a certain Skyact Guard he had heard of the most. He had made sure the temple was in her territory. So why was it attacked?