Her stellar eyes blazed brighter.
"Do you know how many women across these Lands of Stone are treated unfairly by countless men every single day? Do you know how many women die because they said no to a man who believed himself entitled to their compliance? Do you know how many mothers have wept for daughters stolen in the night, how many sisters have buried sisters who chose death over dishonor, how many wives have been beaten for the crime of existing in a world that sees them as property rather than people?"
Her voice grew harder, colder.
"The grievances of women dead and alive could fill countless pages across stones that do not talk. The injustices committed against our kind are so numerous, so constant, so utterly mundane in their cruelty that most have simply accepted them as the natural order of things."
She turned her burning gaze back to her disciple.
"And my job is to mold you into an ideal candidate fit to take over the empire that has been ruled by men for generations beyond counting. You do not just have to be better than all others out there, my disciple. You have to be overwhelmingly better. So superior that no man can claim you rose through favoritism or beauty or manipulation. So powerful that your enemies must acknowledge your strength even as they despise your existence."
Her voice dropped to something almost reverent.
"If I do not fail in this task, these Lands of Stone may just see their first Anointed Empress yet."
BOOM!
Her words were heavy enough to make the very air tremble, and around them, the women guarding the four pathways remained stoic and unmoving, their metal weapons gleaming in the light of the crackling lightning that surrounded their floating sanctuary.
The Saint turned her gaze back to her disciple, her expression shifting from the grand to the practical.
"Your Physique made all of this possible. The Wings of The Radiant Dawn have not manifested in a woman for seventeen generations, and their appearance in your eyes marked you from birth as someone destined for greatness. The prophecies spoke of your coming. The Hallowed Voice himself declared that your existence was the will of the Ancestors made flesh."
Her voice hardened.
"But it is also the same thing that put your life in great peril. Your mere existence is a curse on many who already thought the Throne of Stones was promised to them, men who had schemed and killed and positioned themselves for decades to claim what they believed was rightfully theirs. They will not accept a woman taking what they covet, no matter how clearly the Ancestors have spoken."
She reached out and touched her disciple’s cheek with surprising gentleness.
"Keeping you alive is also my task. So while I do all of this, while I train you and protect you and prepare you for the battles to come, I brought you out here to learn. To teach you what cannot be taught in the safe palace halls where assassins cannot reach and enemies wear smiling faces."
Her hand withdrew.
"Maybe one day, these will be the lessons that save your life when no one else is there to save it for you."
She settled back into her throne, her posture shifting from teacher to examiner.
"Where do you think we will get started first in our observation? Who will we be observing?"
The disciple only thought for a second before she replied, her wing-shaped pupils flickering with the light of concentrated thought.
"The Unbound Tribes. You wish to show me how others of different status live, how those at the bottom of the Great Hierarchy exist day to day while we sit atop our floating temples and concern ourselves with politics and prophecy."
The Saint smiled, but it was not entirely a smile of approval.
"Right and wrong."
She leaned forward slightly.
"I do wish to show you how they live, yes. But more than that, I wish to show you all the injustices that go on day to day in places where no one with power bothers to look. You will see Tribesmen butchered by those stronger than themselves. You may see women defiled by men who view them as nothing more than objects to be used and discarded. You may see children orphaned and elders abandoned and entire families consumed in the jaws of Primal Beasts while their neighbors watch and do nothing because helping would mean risking their own survival."
Her stellar eyes burned into her disciple’s wing-shaped pupils.
"I want to see what my disciple would do in each instance. Will you intervene? If you do intervene, why? This is just one place with a few scattered Tribes, a tiny corner of the Lands of Stone that most maps don’t even bother to mark. What you see here is occurring in many other places at this very moment, countless injustices happening simultaneously across territories so vast that no single person could witness them all in a thousand lifetimes."
She spread her hands.
"So what about all those injustices in other places? If you save one woman here, what about the ten thousand women being harmed elsewhere? If you protect one tribe, what about the countless tribes you cannot reach? I want to measure your mindset, O Holy Daughter of Stone. I want to see what lies under your soft upbringing, what steel exists beneath the silk they wrapped you in since birth."
...!
The Saint said such words, and the Holy Daughter looked at her seriously, her dark hair stirring slightly in the wind that flowed through the open temple, her wing-shaped pupils steady and unblinking despite the weight of the questions being laid upon her shoulders.
She never planned to back down.
"Understood, Master."
The words were simple, but they held a conviction that made even the Saint of Stone nod.
Far below them, many miles away, the Purple Stone Tribe continued its preparations.
And a young man with a heavy heartbeat climbed toward a mountain.
The Lands of Stone were vast.
But they were growing smaller every day.
And paths that seemed impossibly distant had a way of converging.