In the Days of Old
“I must say, ever since this ‘sun’ thing appeared, the mud-dwellers have really gotten their acts together.” Pointed out Yuita Calamia, one of the two aureun responsible for gathering materials for their manufacturing and research processes.
Her partner, Tiu Terrum, was considerably less impressed by the fishing hamlet they had arrived to. “Yes, they have indeed figured out how to stack flimsy hovels from planks, soon enough they’ll be rivaling our deeper laboratories.” He scoffed and pulled up his stone mask to have a better look at the settlement. “Lets just get this over with. I hate… whatever this is. It’s actually eating grass, for depth’s sake!” He groaned and pointed at a creature often called ‘a sheep’ according to the libraries on surface creatures the mud-dwellers housed.
“Oh… Look at that one go!” Yuita laughed and waved at a particularly stunted resident of the village, who appeared to be throwing rocks for reasons no higher being could understand, until it noticed the strange stone-masked creature beckoning it. “It’s coming here!”
“Great, just great.” Tiu pouted and pulled his mask back down. “Is that one of those ‘dwarves’?” He asked, not really interested in the answer.
As soon as the mud-dweller was close enough, Yuita grasped it by the head and lifted it up.
For a typical aureun, it was hardly a feat. Though their forms often appeared lanky compared to humans, their strength far outclassed the common surface-races. Yuita herself was on the upper end of the average height, and neared three meters, but both taller and shorter aureun existed, the taller ones almost reaching twice as high as average humans, and the shorter ones being virtually indistinguishable from some kind of a human-elf hybrid – that is, aside from the pitch-black eyes and nearly white skin that would darken within seconds of sunlight hitting it.
Much of the aureun physiology was perfectly suited for the considerably dimmer conditions of the primordial night, and because of that, the ones who came to the surface during the day were always clothed thoroughly in armor constructed from stone and metal.
“No, you ignoramus! It is a child, a human spawn.” Yuita lectured her companion.
Tiu wasn’t particularly interested in the surface creatures, but his duty as the security official often brought him to sunlight in Yuita’s company. “Okay? Is there a difference?” He asked.
Yuita scratched her chin. “I think dwarves have hair here.” She guessed and pointed at the child’s chin.
“Right, I’m sure that matters.” Tiu scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Why is it making a noise though, is there a leak or something?” He inquired, referring to the high-pitched whine the child had started to emit after being picked up.
“I think it might be a distress beacon. It’s a bit annoying, but you can stop it by just squeezing its throat – besides, it makes our job a whole lot easier.” Yuita said and pointed at the other humans rushing from the village, presumably to aid the smaller one.
A group of maybe a dozen humans had stopped what they were doing and rushed to the field outside of the village. Waving around their primitive tools and weapons while making an awful lot of noise, they were a moderately threatening sight and caused the pair’s security official to spring into action.
Tiu grabbed the child from his partner and tossed it towards the other humans, hoping to slow them.
As if prompted by his sudden burst of action, the ground itself began shaking violently. As the apparent center of the tremors quickly moved around below the surface, it knocked over some of the houses like they were nothing but bundles of sticks tied together.
With a deafening mechanical screech, an immense centipede-like machine rose from the dirt in the middle of the hamlet and destroyed what little buildings there were left. It towered over even the tallest trees around and was yet to even show most of its length. The countless metal spikes in its gaping mouth twitched and moved around as it stared down at the villagers.
From between the stone armor of the massive automaton, smaller spider-like machines emerged and immediately spread to the ruined village, cutting off any routes for escape and dragging the few survivors they could find from amongst the rubble of the houses to the group in front of the two aureun.
The nigh-immediate destruction of their homes had taken much of the fight out of the humans and pacified them enough to let Tiu step back, allowing Yuita to continue.
The aureun harvester specialist took the floor and cleared her throat. “Good day, creatures of the surface! On behalf of the Aureun empire, I am here to inform that you lot have been selected as the next batch of requisitions, and you will have the esteemed honor of having your souls power the great machines in the deep!” She declared with grand gestures to an obviously clueless audience. “Please, contain your excitement though, and allow the harvester patterns to escort you into the collector.”
“And by that she means ‘calmly get dragged into the giant worm’s mouth’” Tiu commented under his breath and received a stern look for it.
“From thereon, you will be taken to an appropriate chamber to separate your souls from the great cycle and your bodies, so that they can be safely distilled and ridden from whatever menial memories you’ve managed to gather. With that your souls will be ready to ascend to the utmost potential they can have.” Yuita continued after the interruption and held up a pair of small stone cylinders.
“… we’ll have a machine stab you the neck and leave you to bleed out in a glowing room. Then we’ll bottle what comes our and run a water pump with it.” The security official grumbled again as the spider-like machines began dragging away the helpless villagers.
Yuita put the stone cylinders into her pocket and kicked her partner in the shin for talking up. “You need to learn how to keep you mouth shut. That sort of thing is a quick way to get stuck as the mind of that water pump, and not every harvester specialist is as willing to listen to it as I am.” She scolded him in a hushed tone.
“Yeah, yeah… I just think that there’s such a thing as ‘comeuppance’.” Tiu sighed. “Don’t worry about it, let’s just leave.”
“Sure there is, it’s us.” The harvester specialist laughed. “And I don’t see the food chain flipping on us any time soon. Give the mythicists and machinists a while and they’ll find a way to blot out this ‘sun’ – we’ll have our night back in no time.”
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The One She Respects
On the final days of the age of myth, mere moments before the mortals would make their final push to rid their world of the lingering remnants of darkness that still stubbornly denied the end of the primordial night and the rising of the sun, Alabaster the White, nothing but a princeling of a valley of no particular importance to anyone at the time, rode to the south on his journey to gather what he needed for his grand plans.
Though he was barely past his seventeenth birthday, his immense powers as a necromancer had gathered much respect and fear wherever he rode on his undead steed – so much so that his entourage often consisted of world renowned mages, enchanters, tacticians and inventors who had had the foresight to align themselves with the to-be tyrant. Such allies would later prove invaluable and were the core reason for his travels before they turned into conquests, but at the time, he had yet to meet the most important one of them all.
Pale beyond comparison, with flowing white hair and sharp turquoise eyes that pierced both lies and souls with ease, just slightly lacking in physical stature and outwards always emotionless, he was often mistaken for more of a diplomat, and he certainly was when appropriate, but those who had witnessed him in action knew that within Alabaster there was no cowardice to speak of and the few silvery words he spared, were only to save the ones in his path from himself. It was often joked that he had the heart of a hero and the mind of a monster; ultimately, his goals tended to be admirable for those on his side of history, but his methods lacked most steps before massacre.
He had gained his nickname partly through his pasty appearance, but mostly because of the simple white robes he wore on top of his royal armor. He himself had taken a liking to the name because of a simple experiment shown to him by a crafty dwarven inventor; if light that appeared white was directed through a crystalline prism, it would reveal the colors hidden within. To him, white symbolized completeness, and it was this experiment that would later spark the idea for how to organize other necromancers he gathered from far and wide – and what would lead necromancers down the line to be rather obsessed with colors.
With his white robes and hair fluttering in the wind, he rode to south, oddly driven even for himself according to his followers, who struggled to keep up with him. Something in the southern horizon had set him off in a way none of them had witnessed before, enough to derail the entire operation they had been on.
Only Alabaster alone knew of the blinding beacon of necromancy he had caught a glimpse of and had begun to pursue – a beacon he worried surpassed the one he caused.
Unfortunately, the road they had been following came to an abrupt stop thanks to a rather hostile looking thicket. Yet, this barely discouraged the necromancer prince as he commanded his companions to halt and rest as they saw fit while he pressed onwards.
Carving a path through some bushes was a simple task for someone of his caliber, but so focused on the other necromancer he was that he simply trudged through it, tumbling over a couple of times and getting his robes snagged on branches. None of it caused him to lose his sight from his goal though, and eventually he emerged victoriously from the undergrowth by planting his face firmly into the ground for one final time.
Dexterously rolling back up to dust his outfit and pull off the bigger branches and burs, he took a quick look at the area before him, the area the other necromancer was supposed to be in.
What he saw was an adorable little garden staffed entirely by the undead husks of what looked to be bandits or other ruffians of some type. Slowly picking berries, planting potatoes and harvesting whatever else the tiny plot of land offered. As if the blinding presence wasn’t enough, this confirmed that there was another necromancer lurking somewhere.
The rotting carrions paid no attention to the guest, and simply carried on what they were doing as Alabaster walked past them. Even without testing his might against them, he could tell that whoever controlled the corpses could have probably kept him out for good.
Beyond the field was a matching adorable little hut, decorated with chalk drawings and dried flowers, and with the mouthwatering scent of fresh pastries wafting from its carelessly open door.
Without bothering to knock, the necromancer stepped in and gave a rather disapproving look at the humble abode. As one would think, one side of the cozy dwelling was a tightly packed kitchen with a small cast iron oven that appeared to be still holding a few embers while keeping a pie left to rest on top of it warm. Had his discipline been even slightly weaker, the smell of cinnamon and apple would have overcome him, and he would have considered cutting himself a slice.
More concerningly, the other side of the cabin held a table with a skillfully spliced open human corpse spread over it, which rather clashed with the kitchen side of things, but was nothing Alabaster hadn’t seen or done before. He quickly noted the high quality of the work done to it and moved on.
Since the hut was empty, he figured he would look around the area a bit more. A problem he had never before faced was that the locating this necromancer was impossible, like looking for the center of a wildfire while standing in it. The sheer power of this necromancer was at the same time worrying and exhilarating to him.
After a fair bit of looking around, from behind the cabin, he finally found what he was looking for: a living person.
A young man of roughly his age, with short but frizzy jet-black hair and a fairly tinted skin, either naturally or by the sun. His moderately pointed ears suggested that he had a hint of something besides human in his blood, but other than that, he appeared to be simply a rather small-framed human.
The boy sat on a rock in the shade of a large oak, swinging his bare feet and holding up a fishing rod, the other end of which had been tossed into a pond before him.
“Hoi!” The other necromancer cheerily greeted Alabaster and beckoned him to come over.
To a prince this greeting seemed rather uncouth, and probably punishable by something, but almost like he was enthralled himself, Alabaster couldn’t do anything besides walk over.
Taking a closer look at the one who rivaled him in strength, the necromancer prince was immediately caught in the gentle chocolate-colored eyes that were almost an exact opposite of his cold stare. Never once had he met someone who didn’t show an ounce of fear being so close to him, and even stranger yet, this person reached out to him and scratched a bit of grass off the crest on his chest armor.
Smiling warmly, the other necromancer licked his thumb and polished the emblem further. “Had a bit of a tumble on the lawn there, did ye? It’s all good though, as long as yer fine.” He laughed, likely unaware that he was toying with things that would have earned him an eternity in a cell, had Alabaster been in his senses.
Yet, the princeling wasn’t, still lost in the warmth of his host’s smile, all he could do was nod to admit his blunder and keep staring. Only through rigorous refocusing of his mind he was able to tear himself away from what he thought to be some kind of necromantic trick he didn’t know about yet and take a step back to improve his footing.
Startled and confused, Alabaster lashed out to take control of the other necromancer himself, only to find his necromancy barely opposed at all – either he was being welcomed, or this strange lad was completely and utterly unversed in defending himself from other necromancers. Unable to even fathom such defenselessness, Alabaster froze again.
“Yer a necromancer too?!” The boy exclaimed amazedly, put down his fishing gear and grabbed Alabaster’s hands to squeeze them.
The prince opened his mouth but couldn’t let out a peep. Every one of his words felt like it got caught up in his throat, something he hadn’t come across before. “I… I- Ala- ste… Yes.” He stuttered in defeat and gave up, ashamed of his clumsy behavior in front of this stranger whose opinion on him shouldn’t have mattered in the slightest, yet it seemed awfully important at the time.
“I’ve not seen another one of us in a couple of years now, it’s not a popular thing to be around these parts. Folks even keep sending these hired goons to rough me up… Fear even I have to move on soon or one of them might get lucky and catch me asleep.” The cheery necromancer explained and started picking off burs from Alabaster’s robes. “But that matters none right now. Would ye like some apple pie?”
“Please be mine and let me protect you!” Alabaster blurted out without giving himself a chance to think. Seconds later, once his head had caught up with his mouth, a rarely seen reddish hue grew on his face. Never mind the awkwardness of the entire suggestion, ‘please’ was not a word in his vocabulary, or at least hadn’t been.
With a delighted smirk, the other necromancer responded. “What are ye, a knight in shining armor now?”
Struggling to get more words out to explain his utterly inappropriate line, the necromancer prince simply voiced out a completely incoherent sting of incomplete sounds, immediately regretting each and every one of the phrases he constructed in his head. The overly proud young man who had convinced some of the wisest and powerful people to join him with his words, had been reduced to a blabbering mess by nothing more than a gentle smirk and a glance from a pair of deep brown eyes.
“Ye need to calm down. Here, hold this!” The one causing his confusion said and handed Alabaster his fishing rod. “Let me get us some pie and a comb, ye have burs in ye locks, sir knight.” He laughed merrily and headed towards his cabin. “Most people call me Ivory, by the by.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Petrified by everything that had happened, Alabaster could only stare at his own hands and hold out the fishing rod. “Ivory.” He muttered with a wary smile on his usually lifeless face and lifted his gaze to the surface of the pond – the pond that had absolutely no fish in it.
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HERE BE THE GORE DISCLAIMER. Like i said, not extreme, just not in the spirit of things. Next stories after it are fine again.
The One She Dethroned
“We have heard of you, pesky slayer of kings, or should I say ‘Alabaster the White’? Your pathetic band of necromancers and mages is barely worth drawing on a map, yet you’ve demanded the three kings of the west to meet you face to face.” Mockingly said an old elven man donning a golden crown on his head and dressed in bright colors. Sitting on a gilded throne with armrests carved to look like lions and holding a scepter of pure silver and jewels, he made it clear that he was nothing short of a ruler.
Vanarien, Bur and Richard; an elf, a dwarf and a human – otherwise known as the three kings of the west. The rulers of three vast empires that due to historical reasons shared a capital.
Vanarien, The Elven King of the Sky, valued opulence above all else. He was well known to demand high taxes from the human and dwarven citizens of his kingdom, and only using it to benefit the elves under his rule, most of all himself.
Bur, The Dwarven King of the Land, only cared about the size of the land he ruled. The massive swath of land he had conquered over his long life was only divided among the dwarven citizens, leaving the elves and humans to squat in densely populated slums on the edges of great dwarven cities.
Richard, The Human King of the Sea, desired nothing more than an army. His fleet of warships spanning far over the horizon, his wyvern riders blotting out the sun, and his soldiers shaking the earth as they marched. Naturally, two thirds of these soldiers were of the two ‘lesser’ races and far from being in their duty willingly, while the higher-ranking humans needn’t not risk their hides in wars.
However, these unforgivable injustices caused no friction between the kings. In their eyes, all was well since the misery was evenly distributed among the tree kingdoms, and their personal wants and needs far trumped what interest they had even in the well being of their own kind. The lack of infighting allowed the three to effectively rule as one when it came to nations outside of the alliance, but each doing what they wanted with their own kingdoms.
The hazy borders between the three nations allowed their capitals to eventually outgrow the meager distances between them and form the city of three crowns that over three million people called their home, though two thirds of them did so begrudgingly.
Before these three atrocious rulers, stood a young man of almost sickly pale complexion. Much like the three, he fancied himself to be a ruler as well and was there for politics. Yet, unlike the three, what he ruled was a comparably insignificant little valley of no importance to anyone.
Despite the meagre size of his land, he had quickly become famous after utterly decimating a neighboring nation that fancied expending their border into his valley, an act which caused that nation to swiftly lose their king.
“I have come to tell you that you’re sitting on my thrones.” Alabaster informed the kings without a hint of emotion on his face.
The kings looked at each other nervously, but slowly burst into laughter over such baseless claims.
“Is this the new jester we hired? What other reason could there be for someone like him making it to our chamber?” The human king laughed and wiped away a tear of joy. “Seriously, leave before we have you executed and grind your puny village to dust.”
Immediately upon saying those words, King Richard was punched through the backrest of his throne by some unseen force and slammed against the stone wall behind it. He screamed in agony as the splinters of his throne dug into his flesh while he slowly began to get dragged along the wall to the left. He quickly began to pick up speed and slide along the walls of the room in circles as the stone tiles began to tear into his skin and flesh below it. He screamed and wailed for a few seconds before most of his head had been pulverized into a paste that now lined the room, slowly dripping towards the floor.
It only took a moment longer for the wall to eat up the rest of his body and turn the whole king into mulch of something that didn’t look like it had ever been a human.
“Guards!” The remaining two kings screamed in panic.
Alabaster glanced at the ten fully armored men that had stood by the door ever since he had arrived at the throne chamber. “They’ve been dead ever since I stepped into this castle.” He sighed and adjusted the collar of the armor under his pearly white robes.
The dwarven king armed himself with his decorative axe-shaped scepter and spoke up. “Hogwash! They were the ones that escorted us here after you.” He bellowed.
The necromancer shrugged and stepped over to the nearest guard to rid him of his helmet. What he revealed from under it was a mangled foot instead of the guard’s head, suggesting that the rest of his body had been similarly displaced within the plate armor.
Seeing the gore their guards had become, the remaining kings screamed twice as loud and twice as helplessly as before.
Then, in a blink of an eye, the dwarven king was liquified and unceremoniously thrown as a splatter on the wall behind him.
“I’m sorry we mocked you! I’ll negotiate, we’ll talk!” The last king whimpered, scurried up from his throne and scrambled towards the nearest door, the door the balcony overseeing the entire city, the balcony where the three had enjoyed fine wines and food while marveling at the misery of their subjects.
Obviously, only because Alabaster allowed it, he made it to the balcony. However, once there, he wished that he had just met his end inside like the other two kings. He threw himself at the parapet and vomited at the sight of the giant orb of flesh that hovered over the castle and the now empty streets of the city.
Alabaster stepped out to the balcony as well and glanced at the writhing flesh of roughly three million people he had gathered as he walked from the city gates to the castle. “I didn’t come to negotiate. I just came to tell you that you were sitting on my thrones.” He said, sounding almost bored. “That, and to clean the slate I’ll build an empire on.”
Fearing for worse, the desperate elven king hurled himself over the edge, only to be held aloft by the same invisible force that had ended his friends.
As he was forced to look up at the ball of flesh and viscera, he could see the monsoon of blood that began to drip from it. The first few drops that hit his skin were nothing but disgustingly warm, the next few hit him at such force that it began to hurt, the next few punctured the skin, and within a couple more seconds, the rain of blood peeled the flesh off the elven king’s skeleton, washing it down to the streets below.
DISCLAIMER BE ENDING HERE PARTS.
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The One Who Sought Her Out
Hidden in the deepest reaches of a stone structure that would come to be known as a machine fortress in later ages, was a laboratory built for purposes beyond the comprehension of mortal and most divine minds. Its stone floor, walls and ceiling were covered in slowly changing patterns of light that activated and deactivated mind-bogglingly complex machinery that, on a cursory glance, appeared to do nothing. Perfectly tuned parts spun around, vibrated, oscillated and hummed in a mysterious manner that made no sense to anyone anymore – anyone but the lone aureun cooped within.
A tall humanoid form of the once proud race sat hunched over by a table, his head firmly buried in his hands and his shoulders slumped in defeat.
Scattered around him on the table and the floor, were various pieces of machines that would be come to be known as ‘simulacra’ and one such machine stood motionlessly in the corner of the laboratory.
The aureun grasped a pointy white crystal from his belt and placed it into a slot clearly meant for such crystals. He then sang out a tune that sounded more like a sigh than anything but caused the crystal to light up brilliantly.
“Personal and pointless log of the Head Machinist Zhur Maladia of Insincere Intention. Day seven hundred and eight of the lockdown: the tremors grow stronger. The white one has entered the factory and one by one, the departments fall.” He started yet another recording. At this point there was no reason to make further notes, at least nothing beyond a vain attempt to stay sane. There were no discoveries being made, no work that had progressed, and nothing that would change the fate looming just a few more halls beyond the doors of the laboratory.
He glanced at a large stone slate by his side, usually lit by countless little lights, but over the last couple of years, they had began dying off as the war had turned sour on the account of some very surprising alliances.
“No responses from Aberrant Philosophy, Biased Opinion, Callous Method, Demented Memory, Misspoken Lie, Erratic Judgement, Malevolent Plan, Tormented Mind, Wrongful- Why am I even listing these anymore? There is no one else.” He asked from himself and let out a joyless chuckle. “Every frequency is filled with never-ending screams of agony of unknown origin, I broke my last receiver to spare myself from it.”
Zhur straightened his back and glared at the activated but listless simulacrum that had been his only companion ever since the siege of his facility had begun.
“The venator remains unresponsive. I’ve dismantled and rebuilt it countless times, every time making sure to replace or repair everything that had the smallest of flaws in it, but the result is always the same. Just like the other patterns, it no longer listens to commands, pleads or even physical contact. I designed this damned pattern and can not for the life of me understand what is wrong with it, it’s almost like its just defying me out of spite. There’s no way any of the lesser races would have caused this either, so for the first time ever, I am without answers. The fault is not mechanical or magical and the only remaining component is the soul, but those were carefully distilled from the ether and should not be capable of rebelling – maybe in some rare cases where the process was shoddy from the beginning, but literally all of them at once? No.” He ranted about his countless failures to repair his only companion. “I’ve read the reports of the third ones being hateful and downright hostile, but we’ve had the first artificial children for ages and they’ve never caused an issue. It’s… it’s like they’ve just decided that our time is over.”
The lone aureun stood up and stretched his legs. Wherever he walked, the lights on the floor would become brighter to show him his path.
“Well, none of that matters anyway. Our days are numbered, the white one and these ‘gods’ have seen to that. I’m not sure I can gather much joy from their half-baked truce obviously failing the moment our pieces are cleaned from the board, nor am I sure who to bet on the oncoming scuffle.” He pondered while pacing back and forth across his workspace.
Suddenly the earth around the buried laboratory shook violently, but Zhur remained calm, it had been going on for days now. He wasn’t entirely sure what caused the tremors, but he knew that every time it happened, a hall was breached, it was only a matter of time the laboratory itself fell.
Deep in his thoughts, his eyes happened upon the motionless venator pattern construct he had worked on. He could feel it be awake and staring directly at him. The aureun walked up to his uncooperative companion and stared back at it with his pitch-black eyes.
“Curious thought isn’t it though? We made you conscious, able to think and solve problems, all to benefit us of course – but what if… What if that became our downfall? Within the scavenged souls stirring in each and everyone of you, you connected the dots and decided that we are not worthy.” He theorized half-jokingly. “Were our methods too cruel for your liking? What does that matter when we are objectively better than those we mistreated? Even after our fall, these mud-dwelling lessers are never going to reach the heights we stared down from even before the sun had risen for the first time. I know there is no vocal modules installed within you, but could you do your best to answer? Were we wrong?”
The simulacrum stood still for a few seconds, just long enough for Zhur to think that it wouldn’t bother giving him an answer, but then it suddenly nodded.
The aureun burst into laughter. “And there it is! Just as any other children are supposed to surpass their parents, you’ve done so to us, morally at least. This is not something you were built to do, but who am I to argue when my kind is on the brink of extinction?” He chuckled and walked off to a series of drawers.
With a flick of his wrist and a slight tap, he opened a few of them and gathered what he needed before returning to the simulacrum.
“I am installing some stealth modifications into you.” He explained and attached a metallic green cloak on the simulacrum’s shoulders and exchanged a few armor pieces to ones that didn’t have any glowing lights on them. “With these, you can still make it out of here, stick to the shadows and maintenance routes. I don’t see the white one being too kind to your kind either, but if you do make it out, I sincerely hope you enjoy the world you chose to snuff us out from. Maybe find something worthwhile and hold on to it with claws and teeth if you need to.”
When the modifications were done, Zhur touched the wall and opened a door at the other end of the laboratory.
The simulacrum shot past him and disappeared without so much as a glance back at the one who freed it.
As the door closed, Zhur returned to his table and leaned back to make one more log. “Personal and pointless log of the Head Machinist Zhur Maladia of Insincere Intention. Day seven hundred and eight of the lockdown: I have some hours left and copious amount of cleaning alcohol with me. Usually getting pointlessly intoxicated is a hobby of the lesser beings, but getting killed to extinction certainly isn’t something the truly superior ones do either, so maybe it was all for nothing after all and we were just mud-dwellers among many. Perhaps the children will do better...”
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The One She Pardoned.
Master Mikhail Grenn, the mentor and the closest advisor for the throne of Vassund, a well-aged dark elf and the prime curator of the royal collection, sat by his table in candlelight and intensely went through his notes regarding a book he had acquired from a certain adventurer some years ago.
He fancied himself as the world’s leading expert on the matters regarding the ancient simulacra and their builders, the Aureun, which he certainly may have been if one was to exclude one or two people with less academical basis for their knowledge.
Unfortunately, his health had began to weight on him recently and traveling had become a hassle, because of this, most of his days consisted of examining discarded pieces of simulacra brought to him by the countless assistants he sent out to scavenge the many ruins Vassund had within its borders.
He held the keys to what was unquestionably the largest collection of Aureun artifacts in the world, and had over the last hundred years examined, preserved and catalogued every single piece in it himself – not because he didn’t trust anyone else to do it, but because no one quite shared his enthusiasm.
With shaky hands, he flipped through the pages he had read dozens of times, just to make sure they were ready to be added to the grand library of the royal collection – after all, it was going to be his final addition to it.
Suddenly his concentration was shattered by a gentle thud on his leg, caused by a snow-white, amazingly fluffy cat bumping against it. The cat weaved between his feet for a while before hopping on his lap and laying down there.
“Ah, Lady Cottona.” Mikhail greeted the animal and scratched its chin. “Have you seen your mistress around? I have things to discuss with her.”
Just as he said that, hurried steps echoed from between the bookshelves as the cat’s owner followed in its tracks. A few moments later, a young human woman of maybe twenty-five to thirty years of age, with a loosely braided hazel hair that reached all the way to her lower back rushed into the study. She was clad in the same dull gray uniform all the researchers and assistants who worked with the royal collection wore, though hers came with a pair of shackle-like bracelets on her wrists.
“OH NO! Master Mikhail, please tell me she didn’t knock over the ink again!” She worried and quickly picked up the cat. “I’m so sorry… again.”
Mikhail smiled warmly. “Stel, if I minded her presence, I would not let her roam free here. She does wonders for the mouse situation as well – quite a hunter if I do say so myself.” He calmed the woman and reached to pet the cat a bit more. “How goes your research? I’ve gone through your writings on local history and I must say, your research is as diligent and meticulous as mine was in my heyday and far more so than the no-good senior researchers I keep around for whatever reason. It’ll make a fine addition to a far too underappreciated section of the library. Make sure to tell the assistants to copy them as well, so we may send them to other libraries.”
Stel smiled awkwardly and nodded. “Thank you, sir Prime Curator. I’m ecstatic to finally have them finished, but now I need to find something new to focus on and none of the theories I’ve come up with seem to yield easy answers.”
“That is actually one of the things I wished to talk about.” The dark elf remembered and ran his fingers along the backs of a stack of folders containing the suggested avenues of research the senior scholars wanted funding for. His hand stopped at a particularly thick one and he pulled it from the pile. “You submitted this one a while ago, I think it has merit.”
Slightly embarrassed, Stel snatched the folder and looked at the title. ‘Anastacia and Vilja, mere coincidence?’ Was a theory she had been come up with as a joke as she read about the first documented cases of the strange new deity. For whatever reason, the god’s actions reminded her of the oddball necromancer that she owed more or less everything to, and upon further looking, the correlation between reports about both in nearby locations was evident.
“You should visit Valor and maybe observe her in her natural habitat.” Mikhail suggested. “I’m willing to bet you have some things to say to her as well.”
Stel awkwardly laughed and struggled to hold both the wiggling cat and the folder. “If I could, I would have gone there years ago, but in case you have forgotten…” She said and tapped the metal bracelet on her left wrist – a magical shackle that kept her from passing some barriers created within the palace, though she had avoided the prison dungeons thanks to Anastacia, she was still a prisoner because of what she had allowed to happen. Of course, the ex-maid would never even dream of complaining about her current position, shackled or not, she had every other luxury afforded by the other scholars working under Mikhail and was even allowed to have a cat.
The dark elf chuckled to himself and mumbled. “That brings us to the second thing I’d like to talk to you about.” Suddenly he grasped both of Stel’s shackles and gave them a twist.
With a loud hum and a green flash, the shackles opened and limply fell onto the floor.
Stel was left without words, she could only stare at her bare wrists and confusedly glance at her superior.
“It has been eight years since you were delivered here – eight and a quarter, actually. I’ve spent many nights thinking about your case, and come to a conclusion that if I had been there that day, in your position and with your ambitions, I cannot on good conscience say that I wouldn’t be in those shackles as well.” Mikhail explained with a wily smirk on his face. “Both me and The Crown agree that you have served your sentence and have decided to grant you your freedom and the position of a senior scholar.”
The finally freed scholar fell on her knees and started bawling her eyes out into the fur of her pet. Her initial sentence had no end date and she had over time come to grips with never being able to leave again. Not even in her wildest dreams had she figured that she could be granted back her freedom, nor such an esteemed position in the library.
The Prime Curator gave Stel a proud pat on the shoulder before speaking up once more. “There is a third matter we must discuss. During those eight years, I’ve seen you adapt to the proper methods of research and reporting at a mind-boggling pace, produce results of stellar quality and quickly surpass the other senior scholars in every aspect of our duty.” He complimented her and scratched the cat again. “That is why I have chosen to immediately begin the transfer of my position as the Prime Curator of this collection to you.”
With that, Stel was far too stunned to even cry anymore.
“It is something that has been obvious to me for years now. Compared to you, my other senior scholars are lame and uninspired, and I worry that if I were to pass the title on to one of them, the collection would suffer from it. To put it simply, they lack the obsession we share; for me, it is the Aureun, and for you, the three hunters and mortal ascension to divinity.” Mikhail explained his reasoning. “It is most certainly going to upset a lot of people, but quite frankly, that’s their problem. My duty is to make sure the collection is safe and keeps growing, and in your hands, it most certainly will. My own health has become an obstacle to my duty as well, so there is no avoiding the issue anymore. The process itself will take some time, but I have more than enough years left in me to show you the ropes and then enjoy retirement.”