The world had gone to shit. Between the wildfires of Delumine and the southern floods or the rumors of a freakish snowstorm in the desert to the north-east, it seemed as though the entire world had lost its mind. Was it winter? Was it spring? No one really knew anymore, despite the sages insisting that it was, by right, winter. Israfel thought it was a load of shit. Nothing made sense, and it was becoming far too much to handle.
 
Round and around we go, a dark little voice whispered in her head, dangerous and foreboding, Where do we stop? No one knows.
 
A moment. That was all she had needed. A single moment. A desperately snatched afternoon of solitary respite, secluded out among the Praistigia Cliffs. Solaris lingered upon her shoulders, the massive ivory and gold phoenix roosting with her eyes shut. It appeared as though she were napping, but the Sun Daughter knew better. Resting, yes. Asleep? No.
 
Clouds loomed and lingered overhead, the afternoon sky a dark and depressing collection of inky black storm clouds that promised more rain. She was so, so tired of rain… The grass beneath golden hooves lay flat and lackluster like a matted rug, the soil squishy and sodden. Everything was saturated in rain water, and in turn, everything felt far too damp to be comfortable. Terrastella had seemed to reshape overnight, the familiar landscape becoming a scraggly graveyard for the land they had once known, a burial ground for those that they could not save.
 
When would it stop? It needed to stop. They could not survive this perpetual rainfall, freezing and terrible. They were all exhausted and waterlogged, weakened from weeks of unrelenting flood and rainfall alike.
 
Vermilion eyes lifted upwards towards the dark, billowing clouds overhead. Slowly her wings outstretched, the tips of her feathers spreading outwards, reaching, reaching. A cold breeze buffeted against the Warden’s damp body, frigid and unwelcome, seeming to inch and coil beneath muscle and settle within her very bones. Israfel’s eyes narrowed, her lips twitched downwards, and a sharp inhalation was the world’s only warning before she shouted, deep and valiant and desperate, teeth bared against the white-capped ocean tops and the endless horizon stretching out before her, “STOP!”
 
Stop the rain. Stop the floods. Stop it. Stop it. STOP IT.
 
Yet the breeze remained. The clouds still churned within the sky. Here, in this world, in this life, she held no dominion. Despite the blood of Gods and Saints that still filled her veins, mighty and mysterious though they may have been, her powers had still forsaken her. Without them, she had begun to rely upon brute strength alone… But brute strength alone would not help the citizens she had sworn to protect. How many rulers had she seen now, in that life and this one?
 
Mirage. Rannveig, Florentine, Asterion.
 
How many Gods, full or half, had she seen, in that life and this one?
 
Sun, Earth, Moon, Time. Mesec, Hototo, Roskuld. Had any come after her death? And the ones here, the Gods of Novus; Vespera, Caligo, Oriens, Solis, and their mighty Father, Tempus.
 
To whom did she owe her communion? Her conviction? Her loyalty? Why did she owe them anything, when it was they who fought for their very lives, every day against the storms?
 
Sacrilegious thoughts, indeed. Blasphemous… Yet Israfel’s only God had been silent. The proof of his existence gone without a trace. She mourned, she cried, and she prayed, yet no answers came. And thus, she was on her own.
 
’Peace,’ Solaris stated, large violet eyes sliding open to gaze passively upon her conflicted bonded, ’Your mind is running far too fast. Calm your heart, child. Peace.’
 
If only Israfel knew the true meaning of the word, or how to achieve it.