Alethia followed her sister through the advancing day, and as the afternoon reached its peak of heat, the merchant town of Eaglemont appeared in the distance, nestled in the great shadow of the Eagle Mountains. The treacherous ridges and peaks of that mountain range were a constant presence no matter where you roamed in the lower lands, spreading across the entire southern perimeter of Atria and curving up to the east where the mountains devolved into cliffs and the foothills that bordered Darkling Wood. Alethia cast her eye on Black Mountain, a monstrous formation of rock to the southwest, higher than any other in the range, and gave a cursory nod in the direction of her father’s home within the heart of that stone beast.
Alethia was dreading setting foot in the merchant town. It was not fear that made her hesitant, but a form of disgust that she could not control, no matter how she tried. It was the thought of being amongst mortals that made her stomach turn. She had never had much patience for them, finding each and every one tiresome in their own peculiar way, though of late every mortal she had come across appeared to be doing their best to press her to the limit. If there had not been so many of them interfering with her life’s work, perhaps she could have granted them the same apathy she gave most creatures in the world, but alas, they insisted on putting their noses where they did not belong, and Alethia was not one to stand by while the history of her kind was tainted by their profane explorations.
Alethia had spent the last one hundred years of her life in the temple of Tel Anath, a vast ruin of the Ancient Witches from the era before the Witchward and one of the few remaining treasures of the past. So much of what they had been two thousand years ago when all witches were High and ruled by the Ancient Council had been destroyed or sealed away. Despite the long-lived nature of Witches much of the wealth of that age had been forgotten, and Alethia had devoted her life to uncovering all that she could of her ancestors, piecing together their forgotten past with a fervour bordering on obsession.
It was the mortal professors and students, the archaeologists and raiders looking for loot that bothered her more than anything else. Some came to her for opinions on their worthless findings, or to ask inane questions that had nothing to do with anything. Sometimes she would run into a group of hoarders trying to escape with artefacts, and though her violent reactions meant that hardly anyone dared to loot any more, she had been reprimanded in a humiliating fashion that made her blood boil just thinking about it.
She had been accused on several occasions of being an advocate for the Old Way, of Witches dominating and enslaving mortals as those who had dwelled within Tel Anath had millennia ago. The walls of the temple were carved with many scenes showing mortals in slavery, some of them wholly unpleasant and nothing to be proud of.
Although she had petitioned the site manager repeatedly to have the mortals removed, she was offended by the insinuation that she was concealing a cruel tyrant beneath her cold words and curt manner. All she wanted from life was quiet and privacy in which to study the past of her people. Not that her mother had any respect for her wishes, of course. She seemed to think Alethia was of better use watching over her mentally unstable sister rather than making important discoveries that furthered knowledge.
Swallowing her resentment was a bitter pill, but Alethia did it just the same, and resigned herself to spending some quality time with her least favourite kind of people: normal people.
From the air the town below appeared long and narrow, and the division of the small stalls and squat little buildings of the Open Market could be clearly seen, marked by a wide stone arch before the Merchant’s Sect began in earnest, full of tall, boxy structures with many windows where the merchants kept homes or offices. All of these buildings were arranged on the side of one long road that cut straight down the middle to a great gaping chasm in the side of the mountain, now spewing forth carts or accepting people into the well-lit space within.
