A laboratory of invention, a home for stream of consciousness scribbles, passages of undetermined length, and discombobulated story fragments.
Updated Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
The storm appeared on the horizon like an invading army. Black clouds spread across the shimmering sapphire skies to thundering drums of war, and shadows filled the outstretched plains like ink spilled over paper. The storms came yearly from the east, somewhere far beyond the plains, like clockwork, like an outpouring of rage tempered only by eight days of relentless rain, towering displays of lightning, and unyielding, shrieking winds. It was under the cover of this particular storm that the Outari Empire attacked, and the Ankari people were vanquished.
The month of this particular passage is Aphostat's Embrace. There are numerous accounts of these yearly storms in volumes from that cycle, but the year of this particular attack will take a little more research to narrow down.
Middiv lay bare on the ground, gasping for air. The wind tempered and stilled, the songbirds dulled their songs, it was as if the world itself had held its breath. Her blood soaked the stones beneath her, yet she smiled as her eyes fell upon mine one last time, then fell away somewhere unseen. I felt numb. The dagger slipped from my hand but I did not hear it hit the ground. Why had I let her talk me into this? Where was the justice in this? What use was redemption when this was the cost? The questions rattled like crows circling carrion in my mind but I had to push them aside. Middiv had done her part, now it was time to do mine.
This is it! This is what started the war. Euclen and Middiv were playing their own game, but their machinations put into motion something even they couldn't foresee.
They entered the palace as thespians calling their troupe The Pecking Crows. They boasted of a wide array of plays they performed in grand cities like Dernhxal, Kallabran, and Singhis. They listed their most famous acts as The Lure of the Lie, The Antiquary's Lot, The Triumph of the Golden Dawn, and The Miser's Demise. They were comedies and tragedies both, they claimed. No one had heard of them, or their plays, yet in the rush to organise the abrupt royal nuptials, they were given the stage at the reception.
The Pecking Crows were not performers, not truly, but they performed their roles flawlessly, turning a comedy deftly to tragedy. By the end of the show, there was no one left to bow to.
This war was orchestrated. Years of planning and manipulation yet to what gain? The fragments are scattered, and the answer eludes me. The mystery may never be solved.
The rock carved a deep, smouldering chasm in the plains. The smoke rose thick and high back into the heavens, as if to signal someone that it had landed. The arrival changed everything. Our core concepts and perceptions. We thought the heavens empty, a glimmering sheen, a celestial veil, a curtain for the afterlife, but if stones could fall from that space, then we'd fundamentally misunderstood our very existence.
Many didn't take this revelation lightly.
There was more. The rock was composed of metals and minerals no one had seen before, and none could agree who the rock belonged to. None could agree on what should be done with it. Some advocated destruction, some advocated adulation. None could even agree on what to name it. It wasn't long before blood was spilled. Something as simple a rock falling from the sky, plunged us all into chaos.
Could a meteor have been the trigger for the thousand year war? It's a stretch, but the script, the location of this scrap of paper—as disorganised as this library is—places it in the right century, and an event like this could certainly bring empires, and beliefs, to a head, if the knowledge of astronomy and the heavens was very nascent.
I study magic. Some people call me a wizard or a sorcerer, but I am foremost a scholar. My particular trade sometimes necessitates casting spells, but I prefer to have test subjects I can observe. There are few like me, and none as advanced. Most learn magic to use it for their own personal gain, for the power and wealth it can bring if you can withstand its sometimes deadly side effects. I seek to understand it, to tease out its secrets.
I've already observed some inconsistencies to popular teachings. There is one absolute rule that pertains to magic: it is constant. The same spell will behave in an identical manner between casters. Like simple arithmetics, the same equation will always result in the same answer, no matter who is doing the calculation. I have seen this to be wrong. Under very specific circumstances, magic can be bent. Its mood and response can be altered by the right stimuli.
I've spent many sleepless nights pouring over my notes, trying to reproduce these effects with consistency. If I'm right, and there is an unpredictability to magic, then we are using something that holds extreme power without truly understanding it. I will be called a heretic for speaking of this amongst my peers, so for now, so I will simply continue my research in secret, for now, until I have something that cannot be denied.
Try as I might to piece together these events there are just too many disjointed fragments. I'm trying to build one coherent story from the pieces of many separate stories, told by different people, who spoke different languages, spread across centuries. But the reward is great. If I can can find out where we came from, I can find out why we're here.
I'm including this entry in my notes for this because it maybe related to the upheavals of magic that happened during the thousand year war.
The walls were bare and made of an odd alien substance that was silver in colour. They were transparent, yet we could not see through them, and they were cold to the touch. The walls were triangular in shape, like shards of a broken window, and they leaned against each other to form the interior. We named this place the Prism.
It began with a reflection. Not of thought, but the physical kind. A mirror image, yet we were not the cause of the reflection. The walls did not reflect anything from our reality. We were like ghosts passing through its unblemished halls.
The reflection was of a woman crouched, working a field, wearing simple summer clothes. We tried calling out to her but she did not respond. We tried knocking against the wall beyond which she worked, but the wall made no noise.
The woman leapt to her feet, looking somewhere we could not see. Her eyes betrayed uncertainty and fear.
"Eldrinn!" she shouted. "Eldrinn!"
The voice was detached from the image we saw. Instead, it echoed down the halls from deep within the Prism. She ran and we gave chase. Her image flickered between the shards that comprised the walls of the structure, in no apparent logical progression. Soon we lost her, and we found ourselves lost.
The Prism? I've heard rumours of this place. Is it real? I know little of it, but... yes. This alien structure might have played a part in The Storm.
She was sometimes called the Sister of All. She had no origin, and her past was shrouded in mystery. The Church of the Sovereign proclaimed in a Blessed Edict that this woman had no father, no mother, and that she had never known childhood.
They hadn't given out any official statements about where she had come from, or what her purpose was, or would be.
Cendreia lived in the Basilica of Lakrad, and onlookers, and pilgrims, often spent days praying in the square at its gates, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Sister.
I began to have my doubts about Cendreia the very same day I joined the priesthood. She had an unnatural gait to her. I couldn't quite explain it, or even identify what it had been. Sometimes, she didn't look real, as insane as that might sound.
She also had a hold and control over the priests, over the highest orders of the Church. Who was she? She had appeared at our doorsteps two years prior, and she was simply ushered in, and immediately revered.
I looked into her eyes once, and I felt the power she held. Her eyes stripped me bare, and I could only hold her gaze for a single heartbeat. I lowered my eyes, and I apologised. I don't know why, I didn't have anything to be sorry for.
Some texts put the Church of the Sovereign at the centre of the Storm. This fragment is likely from the correct time period, and if so, this Cendreia might have played a big part in the events that followed.
After all the dust settled, it became apparent that the cause of the Emergence was a family affair; a feud between a brother, a sister, and another brother whom the mother had kept secret for nineteen years, whom she only revealed when her husband had died. Such is the cost of arrogance. Such is the cost of placing incredible powers into the hands of creatures as fickle as the wind. Creatures whose mood can change with the phases of the moons. Creatures who are at the mercy of their emotions. Who in a moment of passion can lose all sense of reason.
Why are we here? To be witness to our own immaturity, to be witness to the great heights we can achieve, to see ourselves fall, and have it all mean nothing.
The Emergence was the natural disaster that swallowed Halderh. The massive city simply sank one day beneath the sand of Cairnen. It happened during the Eye of the Storm. Was it a man made natural disaster? That seems hard to believe. I'll try to find more fragments that match this handwriting. This could be important.