----------------------------------------
Avan looked thoughtfully at Elisa while he ran his right hand over his chin and his three-day beard.
He stood up, and contrary to what the excited researcher suspected, was preoccupied with completely different thoughts concerning himself personally. He gestured to Yue and the now vacant chair thoughtfully and slightly absently as he crossed his arms in front of his chest and walked over to the middle of the three windows with leisurely steps.
The young archivist only now noticed that something was bothering him and followed him a little more quietly, kneading her hands in front of her, wondering if she might have done something wrong. "Avan? Are you okay?"
He looked absentmindedly to his right diagonally across his shoulder as he turned partially to face her briefly. "Huh? Ah... yes... all good." And looked ahead again out the window and at the almost completely set sun.
Elisa stood next to him on the right and looked up worriedly, which he didn't seem to notice in his thoughts.
With a slight bob of his head, he let his thoughts run free.
Was this person, this Akkalon, perhaps responsible for why I ended up in this world? There are too many coincidences that are accumulating more and more. Too much luck, some would say, but I don't believe in it anymore. Or do I? I don't know what to think anymore...
And then my potential ability, with which I landed on Eos. I, who stumbled upon the temple ruins as if it was the most normal thing in the world, while no one else had found them in oh so many years. And THEN, in addition, this ominous sphere, which could be a symbol of Akkalon and... the dungeons?
What am I thinking! It IS a symbol that stands for dungeons. After all, this sphere imposed the dungeon class on me, didn't it...?
And as if all that wasn't enough and more than borderline, right after that I stumble upon Akkalon's own dungeon, which an old order of healers had used as their training facility and base. Which had apparently worshipped him. And here, too, only I could find the dungeon entrance? I smell bullshit...
I'm just too confused... What am I supposed to do with this?
Avan shook his head gently and stared at the bright red line on the horizon, behind which the sun had just disappeared.
He sighed noticeably and loudly, and ran his right hand over his shiny silver hair, when he felt a warm hand resting on his right upper arm and looked down to the right at the young woman to whom the hand belonged.
"Sorry..." He said, still thoughtful, and sighed once more with a sudden heaviness and uncertainty that just seemed to be on his mind.
When suddenly she took a step closer to him and just hugged him from the side. "If you want to talk about it, I'm here for you. Whenever you're ready for it, whatever this information seems to have stirred up inside of you. I just want you to know that, Avan." She spoke softly as they looked at each other, and gave him another meaningful squeeze before giving him his space again and smiling slightly as she took a step back to her original position.
He looked at her, slightly surprised but heartwarmed, and smiled sadly at her, not yet sure if he should continue to share his experiences so far so openly. With Yue, it had already come over him just like that, and since then he had only become more cautious.
I've always had this tendency to want to confide in others.... However, in my situation this could perhaps become dangerous for me and also for others one day... Because if I am honest to myself, then I must stop comparing this world with the safe Earth... Here one can hunt me for it, imprison, kill, and perhaps also involve all the people who know about it...
She looked at him strangely with her head slightly tilted to the left and seemed to make her own assumptions.
With another grateful nod to her, he took a step toward her and returned the hug. "Thank you." He whispered into her brown hair, which smelled of books, resin and cedar, with a hint of ink.
Just at that moment, Yue also looked up from the book and caught sight of the two, jumped up, and was with them in quick strides. With a soft squeak, she joined in the embrace, and Avan was sure that the fox girl might have at least some idea of what was going on inside him. "I'm all for going to the dungeon together! Elisa and I to gather information and knowledge, and you, Avan, to do.... do whatever it is that keeps you busy. What do you say?" She happily explained to both of them, grinning conspiratorially at Avan as Elisa just looked back at the book on the small table with a thoughtful nod.
With an amicable and approving hum, the researcher looked first at Yue, returning the joyful smile, and then on to him, who nodded. "Yue! When I heard from Avan that he had found a dungeon here at Cyntha, I was already out of my mind anyway and wanted to come with him on his next visit! Especially when he told me about this bookworm! Can you imagine that, Yue? A bookworm! And apparently so old and long-lived that he must have accumulated incredible stories and knowledge over his lifetime!" She told Yue and took a prancing and dreamy step backwards, only to grab the girl's hands and beam at her with joy. "And since we're going to be working together in the future anyway, that would be a good start! Don't you think? Just imagine all the historical events, stories and things that have been forgotten over the years, and which we have learned from this... person... or creature!" She almost squealed now, bobbing left and right on her feet in anticipation, while holding Yue's hands and grinning at her.
Avan had already completely forgotten his own heavy thoughts during these farces and mischievously smiled at this performance of pure joy and Elisa forgetting the environment around her.
Clearing his throat to bring the enthusiastic researcher out of her thirsty-for-knowledge trance, he pointed his right palm in the direction of the book and then looked at Elisa and Yue. "Then I would suggest that we definitely bring Mr. Bookworm gifts." He agreed with the idea and tugged on his left earlobe. "And while you, I would suggest, look for interesting books and manuscripts that we can bring him as a gift of good will, I'll do some more digging through the available gods."
With an expectant look at his idea in the direction of the two, he looked at them. "And then we'll all go out to dinner together!" He grinned and was just finishing his explanation when his stomach grumbled.
With a giggle from the two women, his left hand moved from his ear to the back of his head and he scratched himself. "Yeah, yeah... What can I help it if he comes forward right NOW!" He pronounced in feigned indignation and with one last would-be indignant look, sauntered over to the table with the two of them.
Elisa, who was immediately back in her element, pulled a briefly yelping Yue right along with her to the stack of books on her desk, muttering things half to herself and half to the fox girl about gifts and possible interesting books for a perhaps millennial librarian.
Avan watched the two of them merrily with a sideways glance, and with a relieved sigh, sat down again in front of the gods' collection.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Let's take a closer look at the other deities... If I could get it now perhaps already with the upper boss to do. Or already had to do... he whispered softly to himself and held his right thumb on the open page to look at the book from the front and back with the cover without losing the current page.
On the reddish leather cover, which was completely covered with indescribable runes and ornaments in gold and silvery threads, "The Chronicles of the Gods" was written in a bluish engraving in the center. The back did not reveal any further conclusions or special features of itself, and also had the same decorations to show, which surrounded the entire book volume.
With a grasp of his left hand, he pulled out a sheet of notepaper that had been lying at the far edge of the table and still contained nothing written, to place it between the pages in which they had been reading about Akkalon.
Satisfied with his precaution, he closed the book completely and placed it on the table in front of him to turn to the first page.
"Gods, or beings of unimaginable power, whether born of myth or legend, have been gathered here in this work."
"this collection is the life's work of myself and, magically amplified, should still give information many years from now about all the gods that have existed at the present time and what stories about these deities and beings existed at the time of this work."
These were the prefaces of the unknown author or authoress, which Avan got to read on the first page in a beautiful blue shimmering caligraphy. With awe and respect, he lightly ran his right thumb over the characters and could indeed sense a magically imbued ink here as well, which was probably where the glowing blue came from.
Silently, with only the rustling and whispering of the two women at his back, he turned the page and began his exploration of the possible gods and goddesses listed.
He read about every conceivable god, which was supposed to embody every aspect, no matter how difficult to explain, and many of the god beings described lacked images, and some of the descriptions made no sense in his eyes either.
So he found descriptions of the god of drunkenness, or the goddess of happiness. All things that people in an earlier period of development could not comprehend or understand, and could have attributed to a higher being. Avan did not believe that such gods could exist or had existed, in contrast to other descriptions, most of which actually showed more or less well preserved images here and there.
A female person, with a winged helmet and a shining armor that embraced the female contours and holding a spear majestically in the left hand, reminded him strongly of the valkyries of legends from his world. Or a bearded and bearish warrior, who held a two-handed sword with one hand, which was almost twice as big as himself.
With such images and the unspectacular descriptions, which the author sometimes even wrote with cynical remarks, he could well imagine that the theory about powerful mortals who were only worshipped as gods could be true here.
With completely different descriptions and partly with existing or missing images of other gods and goddesses, he did not really know what to do.
At one point there was talk of a god of towers, which actually had the same name as the river of Talamar that had been seen to the west of Cyntha earlier.
The god of storms was said to rule the seas and the waters and to have been responsible for all kinds of shipwrecks and at the same time for successful voyages to islands and the other continents.
He was depicted here in a vaguely recognizable painting as a large naked-breasted man wearing something similar to trousers, boots of an unknown material with scales, and holding a trident, like Poseidon, in his right hand and pointing to the sky.
On another page, Avan found a very well preserved image of a goddess lying in a silk robe on a richly decorated bench and looking directly at the viewer. In the background was a wheel with undefined runes, which somehow remotely resembled a lottery wheel from Earth, which one was allowed to spin from time to time or had seen in TV shows.
"Goddess Tur, also known as the Goddess of Fortune."
"This goddess was said to have been responsible for the bad luck of many an unfortunate person who had angered her or seemed to be otherwise pursued by misfortune. On the other hand, stories and legends have been told over the years that there have been persons of different races who were blessed with good fortune and somehow managed to gain the favor of the goddess of fortune."
Interesting... Hmm... Doesn't the Spirit attribute have something to do with luck, too?!
Spirit:
Increases your mental resistances.
Increases your magical resistances.
Increases your luck.
Bingo! If this goddess really exists, could she have something to do with this inexplicable attribute? Again, something to keep in mind.... Mental memo - done.
As he continued to browse and rummage through the book, he also read about many typical deities such as the god of war, the god of death, the goddess of fertility, and many gods also known to him in his world.
Here and there an instinct in him seemed to listen and told him that there was more to this being or person he found before him, but Avan was not sure if he was just imagining it and if this feeling corresponded to his inner desires.
Several times he stopped again, flipping back and forth through the pages of the book, at Akkalon and his wife Exitia on the opposite page. Even here, the author, whether consciously or unconsciously, had perfectly portrayed the opposites of both gods. While Akkalon on the right seemed to look to the left while holding his staff with the still disturbing dungeon sphere in his left hand, his wife Exitia on the left looked over at him with her head to the right.
It reminded Avan somehow of yin and yang, how both images of the deities harmonized with each other as if by design.
Finally, he took a closer look at Akkalon's supposed wife, Exitia. She was also depicted only in black and white, while her black dress was very well visible thanks to shading and ended with a blackest black cape behind her, which seemed to flow down her left side.
The goddess of destruction had no weapon or similar in her hand and simply stared directly at the viewer in her noble pose. Almost like those paintings that Avan had once seen in a castle in Europe, and which looked as if they had followed you with their eyes while you moved through the corridors.
With a slight creep at the thought that this woman was really looking at him, he turned to the description of the goddess. The texts underneath, however, merely confirmed the little that had already been read in Akkalon's description and had nothing new to tell.
With another sigh, which Avan seemed to have grown accustomed to this evening, he leaned back in the wooden chair and clasped his hands behind his neck, stretching his feet out under the table. He gazed at the ceiling, also scrawled with runes, processing the information about gods and myths while listening to the soothing sounds of leaves rustling and a pen scribbling on paper behind him.
I wonder what will await me on level ten in Akkalon's tower at the very bottom...?
----------------------------------------