The truth was, Xavier, Gustave, and Camel had not come to celebrate the coronation. They were using the party as cover to take, without permission, a tome from their host's famous library. It was ironic that two months ago, they had been chasing after a gang of thieves in Drehana. Tonight, they were the thieves.
Somewhere there's an angel with hair as dark as midnight skies; just a little girl who could light the night with the starlight in her eyes. Somewhere she is waiting, because her heart beats all alone. She waits for the man who will take her to the place she's never known.
There are three vessels, alone in a black expanse of interplanetary space. The first vessel is maimed and broken; a once-dignified ship whose time has come too soon. The second vessel is dying; a violent, bloody ship whose time should have come sooner. The third vessel is a lifepod, a single tear shed from a failing machine. There is one man aboard the pod, and he will be the only survivor.
Zamorra blew out a long lungful of air, forcing herself to breathe slowly, even as her heart beat faster. A curl escaped her hairband and she brushed it away from her eyes in nervous excitement. She finally held the the last clue to the location of the treasure of Ahsakard.
I hear the mountains calling to my soul, as clear as if they called me by my name -- The shore-bound waves upon the lake do roll, reflecting peaks majestic and unchanged
The hand-drawn, coffee ring-stained map depicted a box canyon several miles away. A team of art thieves had made the canyon into their home. They had a painting that didn’t belong to them, and Xavier’s crew had ridden all the way to Drehana to relieve them of it.
Your chest burns, your breath comes in ragged gasps, your feet are bleeding, and your legs are soaked from splashing through puddles of street water. You don't care about any of those things. Your singular purpose is to keep running. You cannot stop, for you are being pursued by death.
I'll tell of the night in a small, peaceful town when the rivers ran red for miles around, and thousands of tears soaked into the ground -- Oh, what happened that night in that small, peaceful town?
As I sat upon a mountainside, with all the world before me, I observed the sun, high in the sky, running its daily course. And I thought to myself, Isn't this the way things are supposed to be? And the answer came easily, without any doubt, without remorse.
That had been Xavier’s dream. And then the dream had become reality. And then life had happened. A hundred things beyond Xavier’s control had come and punched hole after hole in his dream. And Xavier’s idyllic vision of being lord of an estate began to crumble, as slowly but surely as the deteriorating mortar between the stones of the castle walls.
