THIRD BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES OF FANTASILIA SERIES
𝘈 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴. 𝘈 𝘥𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘺𝘯𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘺. 𝘈 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳. 𝘈 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘴.
Two sides of the same coin are brought to the light...
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"By the great gods," Xanthy breathed as she stared at the expanse of destruction lying before her. They had been on a hill overlooking some part of Yin Alora and Xanthy didn't fail to see scorched farmlands and cubical houses missing huge chunks off their walls.
It became more evident as Xanthy and June drove their paulsaris down the hill and into the outer city. Xanthy gritted her teeth as they rode in silence through roads of destruction accentuated by dust and something that looked like dried blood painting the soil underneath their paulsaris' hooves.
Some fires hadn't even stopped burning.
Soon, Xanthy craned her neck towards a huge wall that spanned a huge part of Yin Alora. When Xanthy looked left and right, it seemed like the wall went on forever. A mountain peak loomed on the horizon, forming some sort of a dark silhouette in the distance. Was that Xai- Ren? Maybe. If Xanthy squinted enough, she could swear that she saw ruins on the mountain's peak already hidden by a thin layer of clouds.
A temple in the sky? Also maybe.
"Xanthy," she heard June call her name from somewhere beyond her. Xanthy craned her neck to the direction of his voice and froze. Her paulsare seemed to have sensed it because it paused, too.
Xanthy's eyes dragged towards what's supposed to be the most fortified wall in all of Umazure and at the humongous chip on its crenelations. It was like someone decided to slam a hammer against it except that the hammer was probably the size of twenty graspelis.
Xanthy shook her head. Move. She kicked her paulsare's flank lightly to spur the animal to move forward. June led through through the gray expanse of the wall with Xanthy noting its rough surface and the abandoned crossbows dangling in odd angles in the undamaged crenelations. The sun stung Xanthy's eyes as it shone against the wall as if stopping her from looking further.
Rightly so as they came to a stop in front of a trench that an object formed as it skidded and slammed into the wall. The evidence of such an object was obvious from a hole in the wall the size of twenty paulsaris across and about the same number high. Xanthy's stomach swirled. Whatever made this wasn't anything they've ever seen.
If they were going to face something like this from Cardovia, they wouldn't even survive. Xanthy urged her paulsare to catch up to June's who had started to go inside the city through the hole. Even the animal seemed to sense what happened and began buckling against Xanthy's reins. Xanthy pursed her lips and uttered soothing sounds to calm the beast down.
"Just a little more," she promised more to herself than to the paulsare. Just a little more.
Like the destruction outside the city, inside the walls of Yin Alora weren't spared. Xanthy lost count of how many cubical houses have chipped or cracked walls or roads that have had red splattered on them.
The smell of upturned dirt was heavy on Xanthy's nose as well as of burning coal, glass, and wood. Ash twirled with the soft and gentle breezes whistling through the city. The silence could have slammed into Xanthy upside the head with its strength.
