It was lunchtime. Cildorian was squatting on the ground just off the roadside, eating his. He was about an hour's march from the Gate of Beinost. The road from where he stood wound its way ever down, a gentle slope downwards from the foothills of the Emyn Naug to the coastal city. He tried not to look at it too much, so much of it was changed, so much lost, so much art and beauty vanished. The city was lively, in its own way, but only part of it. So much of it beyond the central district was nothing more but a graveyard, a quarry built of bones and rust and blasted stone. And the parts that could be repurposed and mined for materials were the best that could be said. He tried not to look at the part of the city where a charred husk was all that remained of the great library that once stood there, rival and peer of no library save perhaps the Great Archive in Ettermine. An eon's worth of knowledge, lost at a stroke.

Instead of looking towards the library, his eyes turned towards a ruined battlement where the fortress of Tel Megilindari had once stood. He remembered days spent in that yard, teaching the cadets, testing himself against the veterans. Good days. Hard, yes, but not his hardest. His hardest had taught him how good the days actually were when the most grievous thing he had to worry about was whether he or old Oronra would come out on top in the bouts. It was usually Oronra, but towards the end of his time there Cildorian won as much as he lost. Perhaps it had made him overconfident.

As he slowly bit off and swallowed morsels of journey-bread and dried goat jerky, with a few bites from a ditch onion he'd found growing a mile or so back, his eyes wandered at last to the portion of the city that was starting to come back to life and be rebuilt. For a moment, he regarded the distant Gate of Beinost with the air of an appraiser sizing up a gemstone.

He was not impressed.

Unbidden, words came to his mind he had not thought of in years. "Child, get a little older and you'll learn why the best myths of the humans are all about escaping death. Next you'll learn why our best myths are about escaping deathlessness." He could still hear Headmistress Séregon's voice echoing in his head. One of many voices that he could only hear any more as echoes in his head. He had certainly grown old enough to understand the first part of what she had to say.

And regarding the gate with an almost sullen gaze, he understood a bit of the second. The gate was massive, yes, and functional. It did its job, at least. But the old gate of Anebrilith had been a thing of beauty, a carved monument to the marriage of purpose and poetry. It had seemed to grow from the earth, like a tree of stone. It had seemed that if you watched it long enough, you might even see it breathing, churning the air through the delicately carved leaves on its many-faceted surfaces. If you weren't careful, you might walk right up to it and try to pluck a berry from the rock, only then realizing that you'd fallen prey to an art as old as the Endaralin-music woven into its masonry. It was, after all, just stone. But what a stone it was! Had the berry actually come off in your hand, you'd be forgiven if you went ahead and ate it anyway and didn't notice the chalky taste, so powerful was the illusion and the artifice of those who had built that lovely city.

This new gate, though...it was just a big block of rock with some bits of metal in it. It would keep enemies out, certainly. Physical ones. But it wouldn't drive them from your soul and mind, make them fade and make your heart ready for the day's trials. The old one could do that, simply by looking at it. And so he decided he didn't want to look at the new gate anymore. Doing so was starting to feel a bit like scratching at a scabbed-over wound. He quickly finished his lunch, only a few mouthfuls more, then bound the rest up into his traveling-pack, tightening the straps, and hoisting himself up to his full height.

He trudged along, the noonday sun starting to wax into the glorious, hot sun of the early afternoon. But as he walked towards the ocean, the growing heat of the furnace in the skies was ameliorated somewhat with every step he took towards the ocean. The seabreezes were starting to come in off the surf, and the smell of salt was in the air. Xem'zûnd might have destroyed much in Raiaera, but he had not destroyed the salt spray, at least, nor the wind that rises from the water.

Lost in thought, he put one foot in front of the other, the crowds of travelers and farmers and merchants around him steadily growing. Before he knew it, he was before the gates, the brutal slab of stone. A dwarf could have told him whether it was sandstone or limestone, or some sort of poured concrete, but he knew little of masonry himself. He kept walking, preparing himself to pass underneath the cool shade beneath the arch, when suddenly he stopped cold.

There, sitting on the side of the road along the stone fence...a gossamer wing, a glimmer, a glitter. His breath caught in his throat, and a word, a name, came unbidden to his lips. Could it be her?

"Nata..."

A second later, the spell passed. It wasn't her. The face, though lovely, was wrong. The wing was too colorful, and the wrong color at that, to be hers. The face was curious, reserved, cautious. Natamrael was bolder, less tentative.

And she was dead. It was unsettling. He had come to hunt ghosts, but he hadn't expected to see one before he even got started.

He stayed, staring at her for a moment, certainly long enough to be impolite. If she noticed him, she showed no sign, but finally he tore his eyes away and walked with newfound speed into the city, passing under the cold arches. He would need to find an inn tonight, and a hot meal. His business would begin in the morning.