"Marilynth, you know what you must do!" Holy Mother Glaruda had screamed, from
beneath the Pool of Stars.

Above, Emperor Ladantine reached towards his daughter with a vicious snarl.

"I am sorry, my people," Marilynth had cried, "I must do this final thing to
protect the future of the Light. Forgive me."

And she had jumped into the Pool of Stars.

"We must go, Jonah. There is nothing but death here." Glaruda had said, and
Jonah had gone with her, winding in and out of strange secret passages, pushing
their way through the others who were fleeing.

Jonah, Servant of Shakiniel, had never been so terrified in his life.

"Where are we going, Holy Mother?" he asked, bewildered.

"Marilynth is destroying the Pool of Stars, and Celest along with it."

"WHAT?"

"Keep quiet, boy, and try to keep up if you want to live. We're going to the
docks, where we can try to find a ship. Tell those who are willing to follow
us."

And he had kept up, following the elderly woman at the breakneck pace she had
set, the two of them telling any who were willing to listen to head for the
docks on the east side of the city.

Luckily, he was wearing his official robes, displaying his rank within the
order of Shakiniel, and enough had followed to fill four ships.

Command of the other ships had been given to Faorian, of the Aquamancers, Petra
of the Paladins, and a younger Celestine named Damian, who had pledged himself
to Elohora.

Jonah had given the order to set sail with tears streaming freely down his
face.

Tears for what had become of his Emperor, tears for Marilynth, but mostly,
tears for Celest.

In the end, men had killed each other in their madness to board. Men had died,
drowning in the sea as they tried to climb the ropes that tied the ships to the
docks. Others had lay down in the streets awaiting their deaths, praying to
whatever gods would answer for swift deaths. So much death, he had thought, and
all for Ladantine's folly.

Curse the Taint, he thought. Foolish of Celest to recklessly attempt to harness
the unknown, yes, but the devastation of the Taint was too much of a punishment
for the pride of mortals.

The death that had come for some, and the deformity that had come for the
others - the cost of Ladantine's folly in lives was beyond count.

The Taint must be fought. It must be purged from the Basin of Life along with
the foul creatures it had created. Rowena Nightshade, the Emperor's ur'Guard,
the twisted spirits of Night and Crow: the light within them had been
extinguished, replaced with the murky blackness of the Taint.

Safely away at sea, Jonah had watched the death throes of the Pool of Stars
from his vantage point aboard the deck of the Swift Dawn. As the nexus of power
crumbled in upon itself, a ring of white energy had shot across island city,
destroying everything in its path.

The light had been so bright that for several minutes afterwards all he could
see were fields of swirling colors, and for a while, he had worried that he had
escaped with his life only to lose his eyes.

Jonah's vision was still ringed with a bright, multi-colored halo, and it was
still difficult to tell the colors apart, but at least he was slowly regaining
his sight.

The Dawn had been the fastest ship he could find. She has a fast name, he had
thought, wondering if he dared to trust his luck on a day so ill fated.

The wind from the sea dried his tears, and Jonah was able to take solace in the
fact that each gust of wind carried them further away from the death that lay
behind them.

They sailed eastwards, to the lands untouched by the Taint of Kethuru, where
they would start new lives, but never again as the same people they had been.

When evening drew near, the other captains boarded the Swift Dawn, greeting
Jonah and Holy Mother Glaruda.

Over a sparse dinner of bread and dried fruit found amongst the stores of the
ships they had taken, the captains and the Holy Mother held council on board
the Swift Dawn.

"Now that we're safe," began Jonah, "We have to figure out a course of action."

"I think we should sail to Magnagora and reclaim the Tainted city," said Petra,
sword arm slamming down on the table.

"How very Paladin-like," sneered Damian. "No. I think what we need to do first
is to get the women and children to safety, and build a new home."

"But we must strike at the Taint before it can take root," argued Petra.

"I agree with the Paladin," said Faorian. "We must cleanse the Taint while it
is new."

The two sides argued back and forth, one for the immediate cleansing of the
Taint, and the other for rebuilding a new city in the east. Jonah listened to
both sides in silence.

"What do you think, Jonah?" asked the Holy Mother.

After a brief pause, Jonah had agreed with those who wanted to rebuild.

"We have to leave the past behind, and we cannot wander forever. The Taint must
be cleansed, I agree, but now is not the time. We are still unsure how to even
do such a thing.

"Right now, we need to find a new place to settle. We need to build a New
Celest. Without a home, what are we saving from the Taint? We will build a new
city, and re-establish the order of Paladins. Re-establish the Holy Order of
the Celestines, and reform the Aquamancers among the surviving mages. Only then
can we begin to fight back."

As he finished, Jonah waited in the silence that ensued for someone to speak
up. Of course the Taint needed to be dealt with - he wasn't an idiot, but it
seemed to him that at present, there were more important matters to deal with.

"I think Jonah has a good grasp of the situation," said Glaruda, the first to
speak after a long silence. "We are not the only survivors of Celest. There are
others who were in Ackleberry; others who had been dispatched to help the other
parts of the Basin after the Taint spread. There are the Merians who will want
to return, and there are survivors from of the Empire's protectorates who also
stayed untouched."

"I'll never live with the Merian again," said Damian. "He brought the end of
Celest, and destroyed all of our homes."

"It was Ladantine's folly, yes, but I doubt all of the Merians share his
foolishness. We should remember that it was Princess Marilynth that saved us
from Ladantine at the end," said Jonah.

"Now that Ladantine is gone, who will lead us?" asked Petra.

"We have Mother Glaruda," said Jonah, "she was the one who was responsible for
getting all of us out alive, and the people already naturally look to her for
guidance."

"I agree," said Petra. "I can't think of anyone who would be a better choice."

But Mother Glaruda disagreed.

"No. I am old, and dying soon. The people need someone young. Someone strong.
It must be one of you. I had been hoping, Jonah, that it might be you."

The others looked at Jonah expectantly, who shrugged.

One by one, the council members gave Jonah their support. None dared question
the decision of the Holy Mother; nor did they have a reason to. The most
competent administrator (Jonah had served for several years as Celest's
Minister of Culture), the oldest among the young captains, and considered the
wisest (after Glaruda), choosing Jonah made sense to everyone else.

The makeshift council made plans far into the night, discussing the past, and
their responsibilities for the future. The five emerged from the captain's
cabin exhausted, while the survivors gathered on deck, anxiously waiting for
news of their heading.

As the old capitol faded from view, and the immediacy of the danger had passed,
those on the deck had begun to mill about restlessly, whispering amongst
themselves. As Jonah paced the deck, tending to the wounds of the injured, he
sensed the deference the survivors gave to him. He had given them life, and
they expected them to lead them.

Standing on a slightly raised portion of the deck, Jonah addressed the
survivors early on the second morning, the brightness of the new dawn at his
back.

"Fellow Celestians, I am as confused as you are. All that we have known and
loved is destroyed - consumed by some nameless evil no one understands. Some
have named it Taint, and the name seems fitting enough for me.

"I do know that however few of us have survived the tragedy of Celest, we have
nonetheless survived, and we must take comfort in that small kindness, at
least. By the grace of Elohora, we were spared for Ladantine's folly, while our
brethren paid with their lives.

"We must remake Celest. Celest as it should have been - filled with Light,
guided by the wisdom of the Holy Supernals, and work together to cleanse the
land of the Taint, which has come forth to chaste us.

"I know that the cleansing of the Taint must be the work set before us by the
gods as our penance for our vanity.

"We will raise up a New Celest to set it apart from the old, but we will not
forget who we are. Nor will we forget the price paid by Marilynth and the
others who died. I swear that we will make things right again in the eyes of
the gods."

"There will be a New Celest, which will be twice as glorious as the old. An
outpost against the darkness of the Taint, and a light to all life in the
Basin. Will you let me lead you to this end?"

The cheer that answered him was loud enough to rob Jonah of his hearing as
well.

Sails billowing, the small flotilla of ships sailed to the eastern shore of the
Inner Sea, where they built the city we know as New Celest today.