Midmorning light cascaded through the trees and the scent of fresh baked bread wafted through the air from the village proper. I stood on the edge of what was, in truth, a slightly widened game trail surrounded by a semi-circle of my family and friends. A person’s first time leaving the Emerald Ocean was a big deal and became ritualized over the centuries.

  When the Cult first began, it was a way to keep people from leaving and involved a herd of spirit beasts being led to the path by other members. If the participant killed or harmed any of the beasts, the Cult dragged them back into the forest. Times had changed, and now the ritual simply involved being unable to receive any outside help or start any confrontations during the journey. Still, we were all dissuaded from leaving the forest, which was why the road out remained little more than a game trail while all the villages had properly cobbled roads between them.

  Through unspoken agreement, mom and Rebecca were the ones to say their goodbyes first. Mom held my pack and hammer in her hands while Rebecca carried both my shield and Helena. Rebecca was the first to reach me, after mom slowed down and allowed her to pull ahead. She stopped a foot in front of me, her head barely up to the top of my chest, and just stared at me for a long moment. Hazel eyes dug into my own as she hunted for something.

  “Come back.” Rebecca said, her normal joviality lost. She pressed my shield into my chest, the metal boss pressed painfully into my sternum.

  “Of course.”

  Rebecca nodded back at me and rather than push for a goodbye we’d already had, thrust the rim of my shield into the dirt next to me. Without a word, she handed Helena off to me. Who was fully awake now, all the sluggishness from this morning now gone as her eyes danced around the clearing and drank in the fresh sights.

  I tracked her eyes for a while and relished in the pure delight she had for the little things; the way her laugh bounced across the clearing as she watched a squirrel dash from branch to branch. Or the way her eyes snapped to the sound of a leaf being crushed underfoot. Her every reaction filled me with immense love and heartache; and it was with a borderline reverence that I spoke.

  “I love you, little sapling. Your papa loves you. So. So. Much.” Her attention drifted back to me as I spoke. Her purple and gold eyes scanned my own, much like her mother’s had. Unlike her mother, there was no solemnity in her eyes; just the innocent love of a child for their parent.

  Helena smiled. Then, with the strength only babies possess, she gripped a lock of my soot black hair and pulled. I went with the yank rather than resist, hoping to lose less hair, and Rebecca rushed over to extricate me from her grip. I could tell Rebecca wanted to scold her; the sight of her scrunched up nose and stormy expression, mixed with my sapling’s laughter as she waved a lock of my hair like a cat-o'-nine-tails was too much for me and I laughed. My voice rumbled from my chest and broke the solemn atmosphere of the tradition.

  Both Rebecca's and Helena’s attention returned to me. Helena’s giggles joined my laughter in a harmony I wouldn’t soon forget. Rebecca’s face relaxed and that sly, knowing grin that had so intoxicated me when we first met appeared on her face.

  It took me some time to compose myself. By the time I had, Helena had already calmed and resumed waving about the severed lock of my hair. I wiped a tear from my eye and looked to see that my mom had resumed her march to me. With great reluctance, I brought Helena up and kissed her on the forehead. When I pulled back, I took the time to admire the beautiful life Rebecca and I had brought into the world. There was something so beautifully contradictory to her regal eyes and chubby cheeks.

  When my mom pulled level with Rebecca, I gave Helena one last kiss and handed her back to her mother so I could say goodbye to my own. Without a word, mom circled me and guided my pack onto my shoulders. Heavy leather straps dug into my skin, which she adjusted so they wouldn’t pull me off balance. Normally, my pack would have only weighed thirty pounds, but with the addition of a block of soapstone, the pack now weighed close to ninety pounds.

  With my pack settled, she circled back around and poked me in the chest. Her finger impacted the same place Rebecca had pressed the boss of my shield into.

  “I won’t tell you to come back safe. I already know you’ll do that. Right Bran?” Her voice was subdued, like when she gave the speech at a mourning festival.

  “I will.” What went unsaid was that we both knew I’d either return safely or not at all.

  “Bran, hear me when I say this.” She switched to the High Grace Chant for that single word, as there were no proper words for what she wanted to say in the Low Chant. It meant to understand something so deeply that it becomes a part of your being. “No matter what comes from your time away from us. I am so incredibly proud of the man you’ve become.”

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  I hugged her. I tried desperately to convey both my love for her and my gratitude for everything she had done to help me get to where I was now. When I broke off the hug, tears had collected at the corners of her eyes and threatened to run rivers down her cheeks. In all my life, I’d never seen my mom this vulnerable.

  She let her tears fall as she handed me my hammer. The metal head gleamed in the morning sun. It’d been a gift from her after I passed the Culling. It was a one-handed war hammer made from the purest steel Ash’s Ember, one of the northernmost villages, could make and the handle was carved from one of the Grace Mother’s fallen branches. Veins of purple and gold opal spiraled out from beneath the hammer head and stopped at my haft. With one hand, I latched the hammer’s head to the specially made clip on my belt, picked up my shield, and leashed my arm into place. The leather straps pulled snug but not tight enough to constrict my arm.

  When I looked back up, mom had rejoined the crowd. She had Helena held tight to her chest as she sought comfort from her granddaughter. I spent the next twenty minutes saying my goodbyes to the various Black Hands, clergy members, and elders who saw me off. I spent most of that time with members of my Order and some of the [Paladins] who had trained me the most as a kid.

  After all the goodbyes, I looked back to the crowd and focused on my family. Rebecca and my mom stood next to one another. Mom had one hand around Rebecca’s shoulder while the other held Helena. Both of them looked at me like there were things left unsaid.

  I scanned the rest of the crowd and looked at all the people who said goodbye, and I wasn’t sure I could do them the same favor.

  A warm sensation suffused my chest, and I noticed some carvings on my armor glowed faintly golden. Ylena had announced that she was listening, which provided me with some much-needed comfort. I took solace in the maternal love that echoed down my bond with her, took a deep breath, calmed myself, and spoke.

  “I love you, and I’ll be home before you know it.” I flashed my family a smile and turned to follow the trail, hoping they hadn’t noticed the tears that streaked down my face.

  ~***~

  Rose watched as Bran moved through the dense foliage of the game trail like a snake amidst the undergrowth. His large shoulders swayed gracefully as he moved, careful to never disturb the surrounding flora. With her aura sense, she listened in as a group of [Propagandists] discussed amongst themselves how to deliver the news of the chosen’s departure from the forests

  “… the people mustn’t perceive him as fleeing the Sibling’s war.” The smallest of the group hissed.

  “You saw the manifestations. Whatever his purpose, we know he has the Grace Mother’s blessing.” Another countered.

  Rose tuned them out after that, not caring to listen to how they’d spin this. She already knew why her boy needed to leave and would see that her clergy had an appropriate tale to tell the masses.

  Rose stretched her aura’s perception field to its limits to follow Bran as he moved away from the clearing. She marveled briefly as she watched him move amongst the dense tree cover. Bran had always been large; and now at sixteen, not even done with his growth, he was built like a moose, and yet he moved through the forest with the grace of a serpent. In her mind, it was a testament not only to his own skill but also to Iona and Erik, who had been his primary teachers when he was young.

  Rose kept her focus on Bran, but listened as slowly all but one of the Cult’s power brokers left the clearing. Without a word, Rose took her hand from Rebecca’s shoulder and rubbed circles along her grandbaby’s back. Helena had watched her papa exiting the clearing and once he’d left her field of view, she’d started to sniffle. That was the thing with blessed children. As she’d found out, they developed faster than regular children.

  Rose studied the young woman for a moment longer while she debated if the girl was ready for this conversation. She didn’t know if the girl or her family had realized it yet, but Rebecca would be the one to hold the true reins of power.

  “I’ll have the guest room made up for you. A child shouldn’t be without her mother, especially not one so young.”

  Rose smiled slightly as she heard the girl take a deep breath in response. She’d known this was coming.

  “That is kind of you. I’m afraid my house doesn’t have the room for the both of us.”

  Rose’s smile widened. The girl had potential.

  “The Grace Mother will be pleased; she is quite fond of both her chosen and it is harder to visit those not within her inner circle.”

  Rose let the words hang in the air. It was both a reminder of her family’s power and of the true power within the Cult.

  With her aura, Rose spotted Bran leave the artificially dense section of the trail and step onto the true trail. She suppressed a smile as her son unconsciously untensed. It was subtle, but she knew her boy well enough to spot when he relaxed.

  Rose took her focus from Bran to Rebecca when the girl turned to look at her for the first time since the others had left.

  “Since we’re having this conversation, might I mention the Woldes have been embezzling from the Order of New Growth for years, and that the Anthols have been stockpiling arms and armor.”

  Rose sighed and focused on Helena; she’d fallen asleep again, Bran’s hair still clenched in her tiny grip. Rebecca had potential, but it was just that.

  “I’d hoped it would take longer for nobles to emerge.”

  Rebecca kept quiet and waited for Rose to continue. She’d spent enough time around the woman as of late to know when she finished speaking.

  “The Grace Mother is aware of both the Woldes and Anthol, just as she is aware of your ‘trade partners’. The ambitions of her mortal followers have not gone unnoticed.” Rose kept her eyes on her granddaughter. “She has seen fit to take advantage of that ambition occasionally.”

  Rose listened as the girl moved closer to her and reached to stroke the back of Helena’s head.

  “Ambition’s a funny thing.” Rebecca mused. “When my family first purposed their plan, it was all I concerned myself with. Yet with each new moon, I find myself less concerned with ambition itself and more with its targets.”

  Rose chuckled mirthlessly, both impressed and sickened by how similar Rebecca’s words were to the nobles she’d grown up around. She knew that eventually a power hierarchy had been bound to emerge. She’d simply hoped to have more time before houses arose.

  That hoped was dashed, when her son, the [High Priestess’] son, had been made chosen. It was too much power within a single family, and now with the birth of her granddaughter and the Cult’s second chosen, her family had been all but crowned as the royal family of the Cult of Weeping Grace.

  “I often find power to be more humorous than ambition. It comes in so many forms, and yet, so often, we restrict it merely to who is of the highest Tier.”

  “That is funny.” Rebecca agreed.

  Rose watched amused as hesitantly Rebecca reached to take Helena from her arms. The gesture was an offer. One Rose knew she had to accept, the girl before her would one day wield power within the Cult like another limb, and she needed to capitalize on that now before she came into her own.

  Helena squirmed deeper into her mother’s embrace and Rebecca smiled down at her daughter, then up at her mother-in-law.

  “Shall we go home?” Rebecca asked, her voice a touch hesitant.

  Rose smiled, wrapped her arm around the young woman, and pulled her into a side hug. Teaching her the skills required to wield power was another responsibility on Rose’s plate. However, she was glad Rebecca recognized the best place for her and Helena was within Bran’s house.

  “Lets.”