Book 1 Chapter 26: End in Sight

Vero quietly walked through the stone halls of the palace and watched as a couple servants hurriedly lit the torches. It was during the tween hours of the early morning that he loved the most.

He knew that the master and his wife were not super early morning risers as of late, so it left time for him to think and ponder and most importantly, he found that he enjoyed reading from the scriptures as they were being compiled. Despite his protests, Ylva had him oversee the development of making the scriptures, saying something to the effect that it would be good practice to becoming a leader.

It also allowed her to have more time with the master much to his ’surprise’. But after seeing how much she missed him when he was away, it was no wonder that she had suddenly gone to the gates of the city when she realized that he was returning from the war.

Sure Filtiarn was bit rough in appearance, having not had much time to keep his hair combed and he now had a beard, to which she had made him promise to take care of that, but she had also embraced him, which was both startling to the master, as it was to Vero.

He recalled when the master had looked at him for an explanation, to which Vero had only shrugged before quickly leaving.

Vero hummed to himself and slipped into the study. As usual he was the first one here and his other cohorts, as he had termed them, had yet to arrive. He walked over to where the newest section of the document was and found a spot by a window where he could enjoy the rising sun as he read.

As his eyes skimmed through it, he felt a profound peace and comfort, something he attributed to Veles’s approval in the words. He smiled and began to thoroughly look through it. There were a few spots where he noted that a comma or period should exist, and slight variation of a word and he took a quill and paper and made note to talk to the others about it.

His ears flicked at the sound of footsteps in the hall and he waited till after the door opened to look up. He was more than a little surprised to see Ylva who was dressed in neat clothes with some attire that reflected her soldier attitude.

“Good morning,” she said and Vero looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Good morning? What are you doing up so early?” he asked. Ylva shrugged and looked at the papers that were strewn on the desks.

“What a mess,” she muttered softly and Vero chuckled.

“Unlike your time when you were translating?” he asked sarcastically in a jest. Ylva scoffed but smiled at him. Vero looked down at the piece he was reading and listened to Ylva as she wandered the room, looking around at the different parts of the compiled manuscript.

“We’re nearly finished,” Vero said, not looking up from his reading.

“Good,” Ylva replied, looking back at him. “How much longer?”

“A few more weeks would be my guess, then again you helped with quite a bit already so it’s going faster than I thought,” Vero said with a shrug. Ylva nodded and then looked around for a bit before leaving. Vero sighed when he realized she was gone. He stood and sought out a nearby servant and asked them to bring his food to the study so he could continue his work. The servant bowed and quickly did as he was asked. With that Vero returned to the study and groaned.

It really was too much of a mess. He took a deep breath before beginning to tackle the tedious task of organizing it. As the day progressed, Vero listened to the others who were diligently working with him on the project, while he began the organization. As the others conversed about the changes that he had noted from earlier they also discussed about the finalizing, which was where they were at.

Hopefully it would be done shortly. Vero was getting impatient and something nagged at him that he needed to be elsewhere. He couldn’t place his finger on it, but he was certain that somewhere out there, something or someone was calling to him.