As the New Year drew near, Minas Tirith grew colder and colder.
Fabian stood on the second floor of the hastily built wooden bell tower, looking down over his "masterpiece."
The winding line of people stretched from the soup kitchen outside the church construction site to the edge of his vision, like a giant python devouring the favors he scattered.
The workers who had been sweating away at the construction site only yesterday now craned their necks, their faces humble and hungry.
All for a loaf of bread.
Fabian put on a warm smile.
He savored yesterday's clash with the young lord.
A pioneer brimming with arrogance and naïveté.
Did he think he could conjure order and loyalty out of thin air with a system of "merit points"?
How laughable.
Veylin was not the first lord to attempt to reform traditional rule, but all the others had eventually compromised with the Church.
Human desire had never been as simple as filling an empty stomach.
It needed to be guided, shaped, and given a higher meaning.
And this was precisely the domain the Church had cultivated for a thousand years.
Veylin was furious, yet powerless.
That gave Fabian a pleasure that welled up from the depths of his soul.
Not because doctrine had triumphed, but because he, Fabian, had personally dragged a lofty ruler onto a board of his own design and watched him struggle.
That feeling fascinated him more than any increase in his Divine Arts.
He gathered his thoughts, preparing to begin the morning prayers.
Just then, a small, thin figure caught his eye.
At the edge of the noisy crowd, near a pile of discarded stone, stood a child.
A girl.
She looked no older than eleven or twelve, filthy from head to toe, her hair a tangle