Page 38 of The Ballad of a Bard

“Down the corridor, to your left.” He gestured her in the correct direction.

She thanked him and followed his instructions, stopping before two doors. If she thought the amount of novels in West’s chambers were massive, it was nothing compared to what awaited her when she flung open the doors and stepped inside the library.

Everywhere.

There were books,everywhere.

Which she should have expected, as this was a library. Butthis was aproperlibrary, not the tiny one below the Bronze Gate that was a single room of literature. She was always welcomed to borrow them as long as she returned them, and Crimson had read every book the man who ran the shoppe had to offer her.

She wouldn’t be able to get through this in her lifespan, even if it was prolonged.

Here would be a good place to start searching for Heartache. To see if she could find any paragraphs that contained information about his whereabouts, or where he might have gone. The Saints had been around for centuries, there had to be research available to her here of all places.

If there wasn’t, then there wouldn’t be anywhere.

Crimson began at the first shelf, scanning the spines for any bit of the title that could indicate the topic of Saints. The first three shelves held nothing but books regarding food and recipes. The fourth and fifth were about gardening and florals, and the sixth held information about animals.

It took her two full hours before she even found things within the realm of possibility regarding Saints and their immortal habits. Within the very back corner of the room, there was a dusty shelf that looked as though no one had ever touched it. Each tome was covered in a thin layer of dust particles which led her to cough as she started to pull them out, one by one.

Still, she found nothing.

These were all fairytales, legends, myths. They didn’t contain anything actually real concerning the Saints. Not even the name of a single one. Then she spotted a rather fat book, at the very end of the shelf. One that held the word Saints in the title.

Crimson pulled it out with a grunt as the weight slammed into her. There was a podium nearby for reading, and she angled the massive thing towards it. When she set it down, a plume ofdust followed. She swatted her hand back and forth to clear the air before grabbing the cover and splitting the book in half.

The Six Saints of Hisaith

By Rapscallion Voss

Sixteen

Crimson let her hands run over the time bitten pages, moths feasting with delight over the ink and parchment that lay open before her. She saw the imaginations that were painstakingly detailed, drawn with the idea of what each of the Saints looked like.

There were six total.

The first image was of a woman more lovely than any other before her, clearly a deity with floor length hair that pooled around her feet in yards of the whitest silver to have ever existed. Her skin gleamed like the moon with pale spots of grey that appeared where a red blush would normally arise. She was draped in nothing more than an ivory bolt of fabric, thrown across her shoulder with a grey belt made of the several moon phases.

The Dreamer.

Said to represent the line between life and death, the space where all mortals went at night when they experienced a tiny bit of death, when their life floated away in the darkness. She bore the most amount of curves compared to the other Saints,stunning in every way. There was a faint paragraph under it that held a sketching of a six-pointed star, a moon trapped within the clear crystal.

Each of the Saints had a magical artefact that allowed them to be summoned whenever their relic was touched in just the right way. The crystal star needed to be placed in one’s forefinger and thumb, spinning it delicately three times and thinking of their last dream as an offering.

The Dreamer roamed through the blank minds, sprinkling sparkling sands of shimmering visions for those who could not find slumber or dreams. The one that West claimed turned his glory down to an imaginable mortality.

She turned the page to see a familiar face.

Grimm.

Also known as the Warrior, with his infernal strength and rippling muscles that seemed to never end. The image depicted by his drawing barely did anything to cover the indecent parts. He wore chestnut leather that fitted over him like a vest and ran down into a pleated skirt of sorts. Thick hair covered the upper portion of his chest, curling and it made her shudder. Sandals rose to his huge calves. He bore a helmet under his left arm and a short sword in his right. His eyes were red, bloodshot instead of the brown hue they appeared in his mortal form. The description under the image read as such,

The Warrior is known for his brute strength and inconceivable bloodlust. With the rage of every mortal man who thirsts for something more, he carries the weight of war on his shoulders. The Warrior’s token is his helmet, seen above. In order to summon him, one must prick their finger and let the blood spill onto themetal.

The Muse followed after the short shiver that ran down her spine at the godlike form of the description of the Warrior.

The Muse was said to have straight golden hair that plummeted to her backside, with a middle part and eyes of strong white that stood out. The illustration had a music note at the corners of Muse’s eyes, golden lashes that looked like the cords of a harp. A turquoise dress wrapped around the dark brown skin, leaving the hips bare and falling just before her anklet clad feet. She wore no shoes but held a harp in her strumming fingers, her item. One had to simply strum the strings of the pocket sized harp and hum their favourite tune to summon her.

There was a paragraph underneath that warned the readers of her pied piper-like abilities, able to capture men’s minds, hearts and souls with a single song. Her music enslaved them if they weren’t careful enough to stuff their ears full of cotton before calling upon her.

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