I think that a lot of us, after watching the city fall, thought it was over. I had never been taken in by the allure of the storm, but the Carver had known. I don't understand why he let me follow along for as long as he did, but there in the city he found me as the storm raged. He placed a ragged, withered hand upon my shoulder as I watched my home burn, as if he were a proud father passing the secrets of devastation along to his progeny. After the building in front of us finally collapsed under flame and lightning, and my choked gasps finally gave way to pained cries, his hand lifted and I watched him drift away through the streets, paying no mind to his surroundings. I watched hundreds of my people pour from the side streets and push past me in waves to follow him.
There were others who had broken free of the Carver's pull. I cannot say that they were within my own unspoken circle of protection, however. Many were swept into the storm violently, or went careening into the ocean from midair, tossed like a doll by a powerful wind. In my haste to escape, I witnessed many of the survivors flee into the forests we had traversed, and their screams were louder than the waves and the wind.
Many of us followed the Carver for one reason or another, but I alone traced his steps for as long as I could until it seemed as if he had truly escaped his pursuers and floated up into the clouds that had razed our home.
What I don't understand is how some of the others, freshly exiled from a burning line of former homes and vivid memories, were able to follow the Carver. Many of the footsteps that I found took on that same, tiptoed imprint in the sands that the Carver's did, as if they were stretching their bodies toward the sky, and looking up into the storm, I could swear that the rain cascading down around me was failing to hit certain spots in the air. It was as if some invisible body was fighting its way over the droplets, running a gauntlet to enter the storm.
We weren't free. We were availed of an evil we did not know existed, but who of us could say what the Carver's true intentions were?
Not I.
Perhaps, illuminated in the storm that broke their chains, the true believers know now.
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