The entrance to the circle was clearly designed to impress and intimidate anyone visiting through it. Towering buildings stood on either side of the pathway, their steeply peaked roofs and the way they were arranged close to the people walking through making them seem even taller than they really were.

Of course, all of this had much less effect on us than it would someone from this era, as these buildings still paled in comparison to the height of my office building, for example. Or what I had thought was an office building. Apparently it had always had other uses as well. Amazing the things you could overlook just by having familiarity with them.

That said, we still all were 'oohing' and 'aahing' over these buildings because we'd never seen such ornate construction. Never mind anything built in the city during my life, I'd never seen someone with the money or time to build such gorgeous buildings. It was clear that magic aside, there was tons of effort put into constructing these edifices. I recalled Brother Cháo mentioning that the 'artisans are world class', and that was only reinforced by seeing this grandiose entranceway.

Each building had many ornate lanterns with intricate geometric patterns formed by short lengths of straight wood in different arrangements. They reminded me of the mazes I liked to doodle in a lined notebook I'd been given by Grandpa. I knew these sorts of things were fairly expensive, even then, so I'd used ever inch of every page, slowly, filling them up with tiny mazes and little drawings stuffed as finely as my little fingers had managed. At one point in our current house, the roof had sprung a leak and destroyed those drawings. I cried all night.

Of course, none of that was there anymore. I thought it'd hit me harder, but it hadn't been bothering me that much yet. I think part of it was having just recently lost my mother, but I think more of it was that as I'd grown up I increasingly had come to the realization that home was 'people' not places, and I had managed to take all my people with me, so effectively I was just as home here as anywhere. The thought made me smile. I covered my grin with my hands, trying to look like I was deep in thought.

Wouldn't do for the 'mysterious expert' to be grinning like the idiot she actually is, I teased myself.

At the long end of the street, up ahead of us, stood the tallest building by far. It stacked up floors with the steep slate roofs on each level to a point where it started to look almost structurally unsound. Not in the poorly constructed sense, but more the 'how the hell doesn't the wind blow that tall thing over' sense. I was guessing the answer to that was at least as much metaphysical as anything else.

Wind, I might add, that was really starting to pick up. I could hear the trees as it rushed through them. It was a very enjoyable sound, but one that did make me worried at the same time. What would a storm like this even be like? Would we be okay? None of the people around me seemed worried, so I kept my face impassive.

At first I thought that they were bringing us to the end building, but they surprised me by turning off half way down.

"Venerable One, please accept our apologies for not being able to receive you properly. We need to prepare for the storm, and it is late." Junior Lǐ said bowing 'profusely', if I were to describe it in a word. Probably a better way put it than saying he was bobbing like a bird.

Even if the latter captured the look better. And was more fun to think about.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

So while I was amusing myself with thinking of him picking up seed with his nose, he and the other disciples busied themselves finding accommodations for everyone. I noticed that they gave higher quality rooms to those I'd talked to the most during the trip, and Gran, Alessa, and Liam got the best room of all second to mine. Gran had been super polite to them the whole time, but they still seemed concerned just being around her, their eyes staring at her knitting needles as they clacked together, the metal making a crisp noise.

It occurred to me that they might think those were weapons or that she was some ancient expert of some kind.

I mean, she was, but not in the same kinds of things they were thinking. They also didn't need to know that her knitting was something she did to get rid of her nervous energy. I'd noticed that she'd only tend to knit when she was concerned about something, or completely relaxed and had nothing else to do. Since Liam had come along and mom had abandoned her motherly duties, it was rare that she had time for the latter.

That humanizing trait just made me love her more, though. When I was little I thought nothing could move her, and even though I knew that that to no longer be the case, she would always be my rock — steady in a storm.

Which seemed quite fitting, considering current circumstances.

Once the door closed behind us, I walked over and got my hugs from her. My hug supply was quite dry, between running around kicking bad guys in the face and then spending the entire trip in my 'Venerable One' persona.

"Thank you, my dear," Gran whispered into my ear. "I know this all is hard for you."

Damnit all Gran, mysterious experts aren't supposed to get all misty-eyed.

The thunderstorm hit like a freight train, with special emphasis on the thunder. There was so much of it that I thought it was trying to impress us by outdoing the huge void that had ended our previous world. Liam wound up getting scared, but I sat by the window and watched out through the glass at a world awash in flashes of light. They'd placed us fairly high up in this building, with everyone below us. It was great from the perspective of, well, the perspective — we could see a lot of the sect from here, but at the same time the whole building had a sway to it where it'd move with the wind. At first I thought it was my imagination, but as the wind increased I realized the whole structure was swaying like a tree.

We'd walked past this huge central pillar on the way to our rooms. I had thought it was decorative, but István had pulled me out of our room to show me it once the storm arrived.

Luckily no one had been around to see the 'Venerable' being towed around like so much baggage.

In the lantern light I could see the whole building was moving around it. It allowed everything to move naturally without worrying about the structure toppling. Of course, István was fascinated by pretty much any form of engineering, so he'd spent literally every second we weren't under direct observation going over the entire structure with a fine-toothed comb and figuring out how it worked.

He'd also discovered that the lanterns were in fact Motes, some form of Light Alignment Mote that had been persuaded to stay put inside the ornately crafted wood. I could see with my aura sight that there were subtle lines of Nebula coursing through specific points in the wall to power them.

I was quite tired at this point, so I told this information to István and left it to him to fangirl over the prowess of the artisans the Stormwind Circle employed, while I myself got some well-deserved rest.

Back in the room, everyone had gotten their entertainment from the storm, and Liam was out cold in Gran's lap while her and Alessa conversed quietly. They both looked at me when I entered.

"You should get some sleep, dear," Gran said, as Alessa nodded her agreement. "Tomorrow is going to be a new day."

Gran's statement might have sounded obvious to others, but to me it just sounded prophetic. Honestly she'd be much better suited to doing my role than I was. And if anyone disagreed with her, she could just 'hug them to death', as Liam had put it.

Oh well, I shrugged to myself, as I retreated to my room. I was already yawning and stretching out my arms over my head. Despite getting a great nap in the white space between worlds, I was already bushed. Playing my role was exhausting, always staying on my toes.

Hopefully I could do it all over again tomorrow. The role that is. I'd prefer not to do any more rift-related absurdity.

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