“Uh, no, we aren’t just going to move on from that.” Fin says, polite but firm. “This weird jabbering has been bugging me ever since we met them. I would like an explanation.”

“Understandable,” The old man nods, “but unfortunately, I’m not going to be much help at explaining the discrepancy between words they say, and words we hear. You see, I don’t have the vocabulary or indeed the in-depth knowledge to be comfortable sharing what I know. However, I’ve already taken the liberty of summoning a Chronicler. He’ll probably want to hear your story again, and he’ll be a lot better at explaining that sort of thing than I’d be.”

“Wait, how long ago did you ask him to come?” Faladel queries him, “You’ve been with us this whole time.”

“Once I knew you had arrived in the city, I knew you’d have a tale to tell.” The old Tadhiel stands up and stretches his wings and arms with a yawn and multiple muscle pops. “These sort of intuitions come with age, you understand?” He looks down at us, almost patronizingly.

Faladel hesitates, clearly slightly unnerved by his attitude and not sure how to respond. “How old are you?” I ask the Chairholder, taking up his defense. “I’m sorry if I come across as rude,” I add on, trying to take a more diplomatic route so Faladel will quit the dismayed stare he just gave me. “But I highly doubt you are in a position to patronize either of us based on age at least. Knowledge of culture, sure, politics, unlikely, but age?” I chuckle. He looks like a dwarf who never took the immortality serum. I would highly doubt anyone immortal could look that old, so what– he could be seventy? Eighty? Unless Tadhiel are extremely long lived, I could be wrong but…

The man frowns, unused to being challenged. “Fifty-Eight.”

I lean back in my chair, looking up at him in triumph. “I’m ninety-one, and Faladel is over a hundred and fifty.”

“No way.” Elen exclaims, “You don’t look like the half-mechs. How the hell are you still alive?”

“And with all your limbs still working?” Fin adds on.

“We’re immortal, so stop with your blabbering about how things come with age.” I scold the Chairholder, who looks properly flummoxed. Slowly he sits down in his chair again. “I’m sure Prince Faladel just meant to ask why that had hit your list of priorities, instead of, oh, I don’t know, getting ready to refill our ship with rations for our next trip.” I continue, putting the emphasis on Faladel’s title to really drive home that he isn’t just any elf. This dude should respect him.

I think I’ve got this diplomat thing down pat. Faladel doesn’t like to pull rank, but as his subordinate I’m totally allowed to pull his rank. In fact, it would be weird of me not to. I shoot the confused looking Chairholder a glance, wondering if he had in fact set this up, counting on Faladel to not stand up for himself and thereby lose some sort of political influence.

Considering how he’s still reeling from the age thing, it’s unlikely. But then again, Silv, Fin, and Elen all look shaken too.

“So you, like, never die?” Fin asks, clearly trying to wrap his head around it.

“Not naturally, although once we’re older than five-hundred, we do start to go a little insane.” Faladel says, and takes a cup of tea from a young, wide eyed Tadhiel servant boy’s platter. “Thank you Gilfri.” He says, and sips it. “Mint?” He asks, and the kid nods mutely.

Helios-Lime III laughs to himself, head in his hands. Gilfri looks from me to Faladel with big blue eyes. “Is there a way for people like us to become immortal?” He asks, still holding his tray of gently steaming teacups.

Faladel hesitates slightly, but then tells the truth, “Yes, but only one person is capable of making the serum, and he’s famously finicky.” I snort, finicky is an understatement. I was utterly stunned when HeadMaster Morthose Haulding had revealed that he knew how to make people immortal, and even more stunned when, as part of peace treaty negotiations, he had offered to freely distribute the serum all across Dwarven Territories.

Hearing a knock, I turn around and see a Kashan– or what I think is a Kashan– standing in the doorway. His hair is white, much whiter than the Chairholder’s short silver locks, and a lot longer too. His wings are also white, but they are the same leathery texture of a Kashan, not the feathers of a Tadhiel, and his skin has the same eerie colouration as Fin’s. His eyes are as red as his lips which creases into a smile at my glance. He stands in the doorway just waiting to be called in. His robes are different from those of the Helios-Lime household, and he wears a strange insignia embroidered into the left shoulder– a four pointed star, surrounding a book with a gear on the cover, and a quill lying next to it.

Glancing at him, Chairholder Helios-Lime III stands up and tells Gilfri to put away the maps. “We should move to a larger room, and perhaps have a midday lunch.” He says, ushering us out. Glancing back at the maps, the strange looking Kashan raises a playful eyebrow at me.

Once we reach the lunchroom, the Kashan turns to us with a smile. “I’m afraid I couldn’t help hearing the last snippets of conversation in the map room, Honorable Chairholder, praytell, might I ask your guests a few questions? Immortality sounds like a story I’m sure many would be quite interested to hear, and from what the rumor-mill says, one of your not-so-young friends has had quite the riveting adventure, riding away on dragons and whatnot.”

The Chairholder sighs, not even trying to keep the annoyed look from his face. “Please, everyone, meet Mattias Habernloch, Librarian and Chronicler from the Citadel of Travelers.” Mattias sweeps himself into an elaborate and elegant bow, pulling a snow white hat with a bloodred feather from his head and flaring it beautifully out to his side. A cheery grin splits his face, and I realize that either he is way over the top, or Silv, Fin, and Elen, who are acting like this sort of thing is completely normal, are actually quite flippant to the Chairholder.

It takes the entire afternoon and most of the evening to tell Faladel and my tale in its entirety to Mattias Habernloch. He is an avid listener, and gasps at all the right points, but also pauses me constantly to ask for more details or to define a buzz-producing word as best I can. When I finally bring us up to the present, he insists on running it back past me twice to ensure he’s gotten most of the details down in his memory, and then requests an inkpot, and, taking a large empty book out of his bag, and his feather from his hat– which apparently doubles as a quill– begins to write everything down in a neat, swirling script that looks nothing like the letters I know. As he starts writing he says, “Please, feel free to ask me any questions you have, I can focus on two things at once.”

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Silv pounces immediately. “What’s up with those words? The ones that mean nothing, and only result in headaches?”

“Oh, we have a language barrier, the magic is trying its hardest, but some words are just impossible because we have no concept of them.” Mattias smiles his thin red smile, tiny fangs showing through.

“You have magic?” Faladel looks perplexed.

Mattias dips his bloodred quill back into the bottle of black ink. “Not to the same extent you have of course. But some remnants, time differentiation and language merging mainly, seem to remain. We probably knew more about magic before the flood, back in the days when knowledge and sweetwater flowed throughout these lands. Yet now, some deny those times ever existed, that there are any worlds outside this one. But us Chroniclers remember, for it is our job to keep the knowledge. Woe will be the day when they take things a step further and name us liars and our truths only children’s tales.” He shakes his head sadly, “But I digress now. Please, continue with your questions.”

“Why are you so… White?” Elen asks in untactful yet fascinated horror, her own white wings fluttering “You’re not a half-breed, right?”

Mattias laughs, flaring his white, featherless wings to properly display them. “A mythical half-breed? Oh no, although I did get teased for these wings quite a lot as a child. My parents were coloured like this, and their parents before them, and so on. It comes down in the family tree, and so it came to me.”

Fin stares at Mattias, a slightly hostile look on his face, but the other Kashan’s eyes just dance right over him and land on me. “You look like you have a lot of questions, Sir Briareth.” He invites me into the conversation, “Would you like to see if I have any answers for you?” His red eyes sparkle with mirth and gaiety, and, on a whim I decide to test him.

“Why is Fin pissed at you?” My question is just as tactlessly phrased as Elen’s, and I almost instantly regret it as Fin’s eyes widen. But the question is already out, and Mattias only blinks once before answering.

“Well, this is just conjecture, as he hasn’t come out and said anything about it, but he probably wonders if I have any ties to his family. It’s quite reasonable, Habernloch does sound a lot like Habbernach after all, and the Habbernach are his cousins if I have his family tree correct. But rest assured, we are unrelated, and his parents as far as I’m aware don’t yet know he is in town, but I don’t think that can possibly last much longer. Anything else?”

Faladel cuts in at this point, “How long can you stay? And are there limits to the amounts of questions we are allowed to ask?”

“Ahh, finally, the Princeling who wants to know everything emerges!” I’m not quite sure I understand, as Faladel already asked him a question earlier, but the Chronicler continues without explaining any further. “I can stay up till midnight, but then I simply must bid your merry company adieu and retreat back to the Citadel to share the stories I have collected. Of course, between now and then, you may and simply must share any questions you have.”

And so our conversation continues, with Faladel taking point, all throughout the evening and into supper, and then after supper when all the questions have been answered, Elen begs for a fireside story, and claims the Chroniclers are the only ones who can tell the tales of history properly. Mattias seems flattered by her words, and in his now-normal eloquence, he urges us into the sitting room, takes a seat himself, and then expounds on the histories of the time immediately after the flood that covered this land. His voice lends rhythm and cadence to the words, letting the line of the story flow forth and catching us on his hook, reeling us in and not letting go.

His tale grips us, and I know I’m not the only one with baited breath as he tells of the wars between the survivors, of Kashan driven away at spearpoint from communities of Zytherlings and Tadhiels who they had helped to safety when the waters had come, simply because there was barely any cattle in the new settlement, and thus, nothing except their neighbors on which to feed.

Faladel and I exchange wide eyed glances. It had been clear from our previous experiences that Kashan didn’t exactly eat, but I hadn’t suspected that the bottle Fin always carries by his side held blood. However, I quickly turned my mind back to the story. Unfortunately I’d already missed some.

Some Kashan believed they owed nothing to those who had cast them out, and others wished to do whatever they could to rejoin their slowly rebuilding society. Some wanted to continue drinking the blood of sentients, claiming there were health benefits, and since they didn’t kill anyone, there wasn’t anything wrong with it. Others considered that barbaric, and only wanted a good supply of cattle from which to drink. They warred amongst each other, and eventually the cattle-drinkers won, which was for the good of all future generations, or else the Triumvirate would have failed before it began. However, that was not an end to the troubles, for shadows of their opposition remained on the outskirts of society, and the fear of Kashan was well integrated into the minds of those who had suffered during the Drinkers of Sentience reign of terror.

Mattias goes on to describe numerous detailed encounters of times cults of Kashan had been found to be feeding on members of society thought to be dead. Then he delves deep into the flip side, when Kashan were accused and outcast– forced to become forever travelers never to own land on which to raise cattle and thrive– or worse, tied down and stoned for mysterious deaths in their communities that had no connection to them. He doesn’t shy away from the details, despite being a Kashan himself, and Silv, Elen, and Gilfri seem fascinated. Fin looks like he might be sick. And the Chairholder just looks like he’d rather be doing other things, but is staying because he is the host. When I turn my attention away from the other audience members and back to Mattias, he is wrapping up, giving a bit more information on the other groups, and a wider picture of their world at this point.

The Tadhiel and Zytherlings had their own troubles during this time, of course. Zytherlings, as the only non-flying race amongst the tribes, had by far suffered the most in population decline when the flood came. They were nearly wiped out twice in the coming years, diseases, famine, and war, always a hair's breadth from their doors. And of course, it had been a Tadhiel named Kythe who had opened up this world to the flood in the first place, so many Tadhiel were forbidden from being taught the histories and any of the surviving stories from this period. Hatred and distrust laced the relationships between the species. Tadhiel and Zytherling against Kashan, Kashan and Zytherling against Tadhiel, and all the world against the few remaining Zytherling.

It was only through great good fortune and the actions of one charismatic man that any peace was to be had, and any hope of surviving society. “But that,” Mattias finishes with a flourish as he places his quill back in his hat, “Is a tale for another time.” Smiling, he unfolds his long legs and gets up from his chair by the fire. He tips his hat to us. “It is nearly midnight, my genteel friends, and I must be off now. As always, if you wish to hear more, to learn and to explore true stories, come visit the Citadels. I will be at Citadel of the Travelers, but any Citadel door is open to those who ask with a yearning for knowledge in their heart.”