FINAL CORE - Additional Content (Patreon)

New short scene added to the final chapter to close off some other characters and the crusade

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~ [Aurin, the Meek] ~

“All of us have committed grave sins in the past,” says Countess Avoria, looking out over the crowd of people dressed in light garments, their faces obscured by hoods and masks to hide their identities.

Now, after the events of the tower, the worship of Isaiah is prohibited by church law and is equal to witchcraft in the eyes of the state judiciary.

Her eyes wander over the great sea of bodies. They are bodies that belong to crusaders, repenting for their misdeeds against Isaiah in their corrupted states, and swayed priests of the Holy-Church. They are bodies that belong to silver-smiths and hunters, to scribes and to spellswords and to everything in between. Men and women; elves, humans, dwarves, orcs. People from the east and the west and the north, people from the south — all of them have gathered here now for the final time, before they disseminate, disbanding their secret church that they have been attending now for the weeks after the disaster.

- For their own safety.

To practice their faith in numbers like this is no longer safe. The Holy-Church will find out and send people to stop them and hunt them. In order to keep the faith safe on this continent, decentralization is needed, as is somebody in a secure, high position to manage things from above. That is her role in this. That is why Isaiah had chosen her all those weeks ago, in its foresight.

“But Isaiah has freed us from them,” she says. “We are unburdened – light. Isaiah’s wings lift us from our past so that we might go out into the world now,” says Countess Avoria. “So that we might spread the good word to those willing to listen.” She steps forward, looking at the crowd, as she reaches behind herself to pull up her own hood. “Go now, fly,” she instructs. “And wherever you go,” she says, covering her head. “- Make it good.”

“Hallow,” chant thousands of voices from the gathering.

“Hallow,” repeats Avoria, turning away from them to look at the man next to her as people begin to move to wherever it is that life has to take them, together with their secret faith. “And what about you?” she asks, looking at the person on the back of the improvised stage. Standing there, playing with a small, white feather, is a man with a broken greatsword strapped to his back.

Aurin the Meek, the dragonslayer, lifts his gaze to look at her.

“There are no dragons left anymore,” she says to him. “What place will you have now?” she asks, walking past him.

He watches her go, looking back down at the feather for a time, and then he lets it go, watching the wind carry it away into the distance.

“They remain,” he says. The woman turns her head, looking back at him over her shoulder. “But they walk in the shape of men,” says Aurin.

Avoria smiles. “I see,” replies the countess in exile, who had escaped from the palace she was trapped in and is still likely being hunted to be returned to. She holds out a gloved hand, her fingers draping downward. “Then I will need protection, good Sir Knight,” says the noblewoman to the swordsman, who takes her hand and bows his head, accepting her offer.