Editing Site 1: Firewander (section)

==Treacherous Ground==

Hachimaru Kotai kept pressed his index fingers together.  His lips drawn tight, a bead of perspiration trickling down his temple, he began to whisper in old realm a short mantra.  Over and over it droned, while Rivers waited beside him with his head bowed.  The words meant little to either of them.  “Heaven and Creation defies thy trespass.  Heaven and Creation defies thy trespass.”

A drop of gold fell from between his fingers.

The gold struck the ground and splashed like a raindrop, throwing spidery lines in five directions.  Each of the lines pulsed and glowed, faintly, like cracks in a wall revealing the sun shining behind it.  Then each line grew legs, and the lines extended, their branches intertwining and swirling around one another in ecstatic fits.

A dozen squalid children gathered to watch as the arcane sigil grew, spreading beneath Kotai’s and Rivers’ feet, until they were standing in the sign of the Sun Triumphant, a seal of authority and promise.  As they stood in the seal a flock of glass birds rushed at them, startled, but when they crossed the boundary of the seal they fell from the sky like so many glass figurines, smashing on the paving stones.  The children watched in dread and wonder, one tugging at his rags as though in embarrassment, another itching between the small pair of wings on his own back.

Rivers nodded to his amalgamated servant.  “The library is two hundred yards deeper than where we went last time.  Allegedly Brigid herself once donated a set of seven books containing her abridged experiments in developing the solar circle.  Let’s hope that legends don’t lie.”