Lights in the Sky

Knight of the Aurora

“Timbermere station, end of the line,” The train conductor called at the top of his lungs, “Everybody off!”

Elias shouldered his now well-worn blue duffel bag just as the train gave off another hiss from the steam escaping its engine. There weren’t many passengers this far down the line. He didn’t really stand out from the other practical travellers, not while wearing forest green pants, a blue sweater, and a dark grey overcoat. There were only five people in his passenger coach built for fifty. One businessman in all black, an overcompensating wizard with his staff and pointy hat. There was an old couple thickly dressed in sweaters and flannel, most likely returning home from a visit with their kids, and an salt-stained fisherman who thankfully had kept his raincoat packed away.

The rest of the station wasn’t any more packed. Elias only counted a few dozen other travellers in the other cars and barely half that in laborers unloading the cargo cars loaded with shipments of whatever the town lacked. Which seemed to be everything except timber, wool, and fish. That’s what they were loading on. Timbermere station itself wasn’t any less grand. Aside from the few booths and a gate - really more of a formality than a necessity - the building represented an upside-down ship’s hull roughly hewn from the local wood. Yet the place retained a simple elegance that put Elias’ mind at ease every time he took a breath. Yes, Timbermere was a quiet little town with quiet little people all neatly tucked away from the hustle and bustle of greater Fiore. Even being at the end of the line made it almost the perfect little hideaway. The place struck Elias as a nice place to retire. Maybe take up fishing as a hobby or just build a house along their rocky beaches. He wasn’t old enough for that, no. Elias was there to find a guild.


Aurora. He’d heard about it in rumors, a new guild in the peaks of Timbermere valley. Elias didn’t know about a word that conveyed mild surprise and disappointment, but that is exactly what Elias felt when he learned that there were no paths leading up the mountains of Timbermere valley. Nor did any one person in the town’s handful of family shops know where a guild might be. All he had to work off of now were rumors.

Thankfully, Elias was a wizard. He approached the base of a the mountain and whispered a word. Pale blue light coalesced around his shoulders and wafted to the ground, leaving behind a simple fur-lined coat. The cloak of the tundra. His body felt lighter, faster. A simple mental command and a small pillar of ice stretched from the side of the mountain and lifted him into the air. Same with the next step. Each pillar collapsed into shards as Elias’ foot left it as he slowly walked upwards to the peak of the world.

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Knight of the Aurora

The lights of Timbermere town slowly faded into tiny dots as Elias stepped his way up the mountain. The whole landscape felt so deep. So grand. A mid-sized smattering of glowing lights twinkled in the distance, clustered around a small fishing port and a little ways from the silent roar of what Elias took to be the Ivory Cascades the town was known for. He could swear the moon reflected off the waterfall’s tumbling ripples. Looking up, Elias saw the mountains surrounding the valley stretching beyond even the clouds themselves. Forested mountain sides began slowly giving way to grey rock.

Not even wind brought sound to Elias’ lonely climb, all that accompanied him was the faint crackle of ice as it crystallized beneath his feet. Beyond that, the silence seemed to press all over Elias’ body and squeeze his brain through the temples. It pressed even harder as he stepped up through the clouds. Elias almost started shivering by the time he poked his head through the highest cloud and stared upwards. A breath of relief became one of awe at the sight of the stars. Blazing bright, brighter than he could’ve ever imagined. Elias thought he could even see his way through the night by the stars alone. Even the best known constellations he had known as a child became lost in the infinite clusters twinkling in the sky.

The aurora waved around a giant castle ripped straight from a fairy tale. All soaring spires and elegant walls, more aesthetic than practical. The place seemed to glow in the reflection of the aurora’s pale light. Greens, purples, and blues slowly waved their way through the sky yet the stars blazed through even those lights.

Elias wasn’t the only one admiring the stars, though. As his gaze shifted downwards for a quick path to the castle's gates, a telescope and a girl with fluffy, pink hair furiously scribbling on a scroll caught his eye. No doubt a member of Aurora. A kind of insatiable curiosity washed over Elias and he started towards the girl. He had a plan to pleasantly introduce himself the moment he got within comfortable earshot, but walking straight up the side of a mountain probably wasn’t exactly the best way of approaching a lone girl in the night as she saw Elias, paused for a second, and seemed to panic and run back towards the fortress.

“Hey, wait!” Elias tried to shout, but his voice was lost in the night’s silence. It didn’t reach the girl as she ran. The only thing Elias could do was pick up his pace and hope that he didn’t get mistaken for an attacker.

He sprinted up the mountain now. Jumping from pillar to pillar in hopes of  catching up the girl. Only then did the wind decide to start acting up as if the top of the world itself were responding to this tiny conflict. Elias almost lost his balance and as panic shot through his chest, a bit of movement caught the corner of his eye. The girl’s scroll, or whatever it was she was scribbling on had been caught in the wind. It leaned precariously on the edge of a rock. Any sudden movement and it would tumble through the clouds and into the depths of the valley below. Most likely never to be found again.

The girl had looked like she was working hard on that scroll. Elias couldn't bear to see that kind of effort wasted so he redirected his movement. Instead of going straight after the girl he now aimed to grab her scroll as he climbed up. Just as he began reaching out for the paper, another gust of wind knocked the wizard off his balance and he tipped the scroll just too far. Time seemed to slow down as Elias slipped off his feet and barely caught the scroll’s edge. The parchment completely unravelled and he caught a glimpse of a starmap before Elias realized he was falling. He clutched the scroll to his chest and hoped he didn’t wrinkle it as he called for a pillar of ice to erupt from the mountainside.

Anyone within ten feet would’ve heard the exhale when the wind was knocked out of Elias. A few moments of recovery later and he finished his climb and began running towards the castle gates. He caught up with the girl just a second after she tripped over her own two feet and landed face first into the dirt.

“Uh, hey miss,” Elias said softly. He tried to sound pleasant but waves of concern crashed through. “Are you alright? I caught that scroll you were working on.” Elias held it out slightly wrinkled, but intact. He really hoped the girl was alright. That tumble she’d taken looked painful. Dirt dusted her obviously well-loved cardigan and her right cheek. She was panting heavily, too. “I’m really sorry I scared you. You’re really cute and I hate to scare nice people. I was just coming up to join the guild and I really try not to be a scary person but my magic can kind of seem like that sometimes.” Elias’ nerves acted up an he had started talking again. He could feel the mental facepalms coming even before he got himself to shut up and try to give a comforting smile even though his eyes twinkled with concern. Scaring someone had been on the exact bottom of Elias’ list of things he wanted to do that day yet that ended up being exactly what happened. Hopefully the girl was alright.

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Knight of the Aurora

Eilas’ attempt at a comforting smile had the exact opposite effect of scaring the girl. A high-pitched sound escaped the back of her throat, not unlike a squeal but something more vocal than that. She didn’t waste a moment in scooting the remaining three feet until her back hit the great castle doors with an echoing boom. Elias flinched, hoping the girl hadn’t hurt herself. She cleared her throat and readjusted her glasses, they’d threatened to fall off as she scrambled away, but fortunately hadn’t fallen to the ground. They were so big that Elias feared the glass would crack from even a short drop.

The girl finally found her composure and said to keep the scroll. Elias frowned and took a step back. Maybe he’d let it get too wrinkled? Either that or the girl was still afraid of him, though she did seem to start to warm up. She said the scroll was a chart of sorts, a map. Elias unrolled it to reveal a half-finished star chart with greater complexity and accuracy than any he’d seen in astrology class way back when he went to school. He could hardly make heads or tails of it from just a glance.

The place seemed even bigger up close. Pink stone bricks and a giant oaken door soared an easy seven stories into the sky. It’s sheer height made Elias dizzy. He imagined that one could see the very edges of earthland and maybe even the entire world from the top of those towers. Maybe all he would need is a telescope…

The girl mentioned something about wanting to get inside.A great clank interrupted Elias’ thoughts before he could say anything. The doors swung open in near-perfect silence before banging against the grand foyer’s inner walls and behind them stood another pink-haired girl, though much more womanly and a lot more familiar than the one who had stumbled to the ground. Luna. The fairy girl he’d met in Cedar so many months ago. It almost felt like a lifetime. She mentioned the name Sybil, Elias took it to be the name of the girl on the ground.

“Luna?!” Elias all but shouted in surprise. “I, uh, walked up the side of the mountain to join this Aurora guild I’d heard about but I really scared this girl here and I tried to apologize by saving her star chart from falling off the side of the mountain.” He took a breath and tucked the partly-wrinkled scroll in his duffel bag. He crouched down and outstretched a hand toward Sybil. Maybe he’d help her back to her feet. “Either way, I didn’t expect to meet you again. It’s nice to know there’s a familiar face around here. And once again, Sybil, I’m sorry I scared you. I hope it wasn’t too bad.”

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Knight of the Aurora

Elias pulled Sybil to her feet; circuits would have been popping in Elias’ brain if he had any. First he’d surprisingly surprised a girl and shocked her near to death and now a girl he’d met on his first godsforaken day in Fiore turned out to be a guild master. Not just of any guild, but the very one he’d travelled to almost every corner of the kingdom to find. That had been, what, six or seven months ago? The sheer coincidence boggled his mind and the sheer casual air Luna carried herself with only gave Elias more questions than answers. Anyone could have seen the gears working in his head if they looked close enough, though Sybil’s words quickly interrupted Elias’ already sporadic train of thought. Somehow he’d forgotten the Aurora’s castle sat on top of a mountain.

“Yeah, let’s get inside,” He said after Luna made the final decision. He followed Sybil and Luna into the castle’s golden foyer, his cloak evaporated into streams of white light the moment he crossed. Golden light seemed to spill from all directions. The place was so full of plush and shine that Elias almost found it gaudy. Even the hall’s chandelier - intricately chiselled from a giant glowing white lacrima - almost felt overdone. At the same time, however, everything seemed perfectly natural. As if Elias were the one who was out of place. His street clothes felt dirty in the face of all the castle’s polish.

Luna sat down and Elias awkwardly stood nearby, almost afraid to take a seat as she spoke. Long days and Sabertooth.

“I actually visited Sabertooth once,” He said, “I don’t know what it was but they felt pretentious, or maybe just too macho.” Elias shifted and took a breath. “It’s a guild full of fighters and it didn’t feel all that natural to me. Almost like they were trying too hard.”

Luna’s eyes looked bloodshot as she watched Elias finish his little story before asking if he wanted to join the guild.

“Yep, sure do,” He replied, “And I think I’ll fit in here just fine if everyone is like Sybil.” Elias gestured toward the pink-haired girl. “So do you have an entrance exam? Or should we wait until morning to get this all worked out? I kinda lost track of time while coming up here.” She really did look tired. Even though Elias had managed to hide the shaking of his nerves, it didn’t change the fact that he was way off schedule by walking up the side of a mountain. He’d taken a nap on the train when they got held up by railroad construction. That might have given him more energy than he deserved for the hour.

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Knight of the Aurora

A little pep popped into Elias’ step as he followed Luna deeper into Aurora’s castle. No tests, no battles, nothing that could theoretically (or actually) kill you, unlike every single one of the other guilds the man had come across. It made him excited but were but were it for all the gaud and gold. It only made him guess that Aurora had a test of some kind, or someone would have stolen all that gold by now.

In the meantime, Luna continued with her speech, basic introduction stuff. ILac numbers, mess halls, jobs, offices, rooms, and ease of access with a guild mark. All were pretty decent perks, but he felt an intrinsic disagreement with the dorms being so segregated. Hopefully no one there was a hormonal teenager anymore. Rules were rules, though, and Elias couldn’t be one to complain when a free room was on the line.

The trio walked through another door into a room Elias figured couldn’t be anything other than the mess hall. At least the walls there weren’t made out of golden bricks. Luna pulled out a stack of papers, a pen, and the guild stamper from a safe near the far wall and the job board.

“Oh, yeah,” Elias found himself a little startled after Luna asked about the guild stamp, he’d already started reaching for a pen. “Inside of my right forearm, kind of a lighter purple, like my voice.” Elias laughed a bit at himself, wondering where the absurd joke came from as he shrugged off his coat and rolled up his right sleeve. “Honestly, now I’m just waiting for whatever surprise you’ve got behind the next magic door.”

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