I DISCOVERED THE PATH to the Historian by a series of pattern-flashing lightning bugs guiding my way through the woods. I’d followed embers before: that gentle, wafting light that led me to the stone shrine, how could these be different? They worked together to create a sort of pathway. Their nature was not Agnistreyan, but something different entirely. I think they were actually just bugs. But why guide me? I followed them nonetheless, until I reached a mound of dirt. No snow covered it, strangely enough, and it was warm. Then a sort of hatch opened on the top, and a familiar, shivering, and exhausted white-haired gnome popped out.

“Efrit! You’re alive! Quickly, come in- it’s freezing out!”

I trudged up the mound and lowered myself into the hole. There was a steep ramping tunnel to the bottom, opening to a well-lit bigger room. Before My foot caught on a root and I tripped forward, luckily staying on my feet, but stood face to… possible face with a humanoid bug creature. Its face was comprised of multiple moving pieces, mandibles that curled around what might be a chin that flicked expectantly. The overall figure resembled a cricket, beetle, and ant all combined, staring at me and everything around me with massive latticed eyes.

“Ah! Corbal, what-”

“This is my friend, Historian!”

“Oh… H-hello,” I stammered, trying to salvage whatever impression I could. Corbal closed the opening and followed me, carefully navigating the root I didn’t see in time. He looked at me, beautiful green eyes meeting mine behind a growing well of tears, and wrapped his arms around me.

“I’m sorry, Efrit, for leaving you back there. Wesley lied; I’m no good in a fight, especially against creatures even taller than Nebrei. As it is, I… I shouldn’t have left you. There’s no excuse I can give you that would make it right; just know I did get lost when I tried to rejoin you and Nebrei, and too cold and exhausted from running to Scry. Historian led me here to her network where she promised to search for you by extension. Also…where is Nebrei if not with you?”

“She’s in good care.” It was the only thing I could think of on the spot.

“Interesting mammalian behavior,” a buzzing, clicking voice said. “Corbal, I thought you were without mate. Is this another?”

He turned toward the creature, wiping his eyes with his sleeves. “Yes, this is Efrit. Efrit, this is Historian. She’s a carapede recordkeeper.”

Mate? I guess that explains how he feels for me. Corbal had mentioned carapedes several times before now, but only now as I saw one before me did the word make sense.

As she spoke, her mandibles quivered, “Yes, my kin have long existed under Lyvik, far before mammals emigrated and populated the surface.” I looked to Corbal, and as a professor would, he whispered, “Emigrate means they came here from somewhere else.”

“Thanks.”

I turned back to Historian, who gracefully led us down a dirt-walled hallway. As we passed each light I saw a green shimmer on her shell. The layering reminded me of Nebrei. I watched her walk, moving her four buglike legs in patterns impossible for a bipedal humanoid. Every few feet was a light affixed to the ceiling, but no fuel line was to be found. I stopped to investigate one- the ceilings weren’t high- and I saw dozens of squirming lightning bugs in each dome of clear glassy-and-leaflike material. A giant network of tunnels beneath my feet? Maybe the carapedes had ties to Tellustraine? Another people to be wiped from my continent when I reclaim Lyvik.

“Keep up,” she said without facing me. I was about so speak when she continued, “They like the warmth. They are not prisoners. It is safe for them, and they are appreciated.”

“So you’ve always been here, hidden underground?”

“Hidden? Of course not – what reason have we to hide? The softer races prove no threat to us, as we don’t to them. We are in vaster numbers than you’d easily believe. We keep to ourselves, beneath the grass and roots, living humbly. It is far from exile – and preferable to the softer ones above. We are… unsightly to those with their skeletons on the inside.”

If she had eyelids, I’m certain she would be glaring at me.

“As for ‘always’, my species has thrived below the surface for a great many of your lifetimes. We require little, and we ask for less. The Divide brought death to many of us. Some vital records were lost in the chasms. Our tunnels were exposed for the first time in our history. Many were crushed beneath the weight of the collapse. But we rebuilt.”

She led us through a threshold into a much larger round room with wooden shelves lining the walls, all of them precisely organized. I thought to myself that such organization wasn’t humanly possible before noting Historian’s overall figure. Wesley’s office at the RASA was similarly organized, but not pristine like this.

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“I have accepted my role as Historian. I am fluent in those languages I am able to recreate, and I can read all those that exist on parchment. In my many years I have gathered what documents I could, made copies, and distributed them to other Historians in the network. We cannot afford to lose this massive collection of history again.”

As I wandered around the chamber, I regarded various books, scrolls, and artifacts on shelves leaning against the dirt walls. It reminded me of Corbal’s office, though her things were intricately organized into sections and labeled in an unfamiliar language. I lingered on one section containing a book bound in black leather with a symbol matching my brand and reached to touch it when the historian startled me, saying, “Please do not touch anything.” She was facing away from me, so how she knew exactly what I was doing was unclear. Her compound eyes could see with greater detail than I thought, and their surface reflected a static shine mirroring each lantern. They reminded me of cicadas and I wondered if they were distantly related.

“Historian, tell me, what is in this book? The one with the fire rune?”

She turned to focus on which one I meant. “Yes, a flame rune. You bear the same mark, the same glowing body. You appreciate fire, do you?”

“Glowing? What do you mean by glowing? You can see him?”

“I do not recognize ‘him.’ My eyes have evolved to greater utility than your human eyes. Yes. You give off a strong light. Stronger than nearly all I have seen. Please don’t touch the book.”

I put my hand in my waistband to avoid the temptation, opting to survey the things with my eyes. Meanwhile, Corbal asked her about any documents pertaining to the Elder’s stone. She fluidly navigated to a section of mud bricks in the corner and stretched her lengthy forelegs over to retrieve one from the back. How she knew which one of the unmarked bricks was beyond me. I thought again about her eyes – could she see things I couldn’t? I never thought about my gift giving off any light.

The sun echoes within you. I echo within you.

She lifted the block to the table and carefully engraved a line around the mid-point and struck the indention. The brick resounded less solidly than I would have guessed, and when she expertly removed the top half, I realized it was a hollow shell. I leaned close enough to smell the released air, though not close enough to warrant a warning, and found it smelled like old leather. The historian cradled the scroll with her claws and placed it gently on the table. Corbal dragged a stool over to see over the table.

The scroll was more leatherlike than the book I was expecting, but I couldn’t discern what hide it was made from. Faded ink lines dotted the edges of the sheet. It depicted people floating above a mountain, but with text outlining the drawing. What little reading I had learned was useless here; the symbols looked nothing like what I’d been taught, at least to me.

“Corbal, look over here. Can you read this? What does it say?” He scampered over from the other wall and looked over and an expression of wonder and excitement overtook his face. His ears perked with his usual academic excitement. He pointed at a rounded symbol that to me resembled a cloud.

“Efrit, see that marking there? That’s a symbol representing Air, I believe. It’s in a very old dialect. You may not know this one. See, the top part is rounded a bit, and the main line is slanted, which reminds me of my early history lessons at RASA. I don’t think anyone’s written it like this since…” In that moment his eyes shone brighter than I’d ever seen them. “This was written before the Great Divide!”

The Historian nodded. “That scroll is one of the oldest documents we retained. Others like it were lost when a great fire burned our northwestern tunnel system. Many were lost. It’s been kept in a hermetic vacuum until today. Since it has now opened, I will begin copying the text.” Corbal shifted toward me to make room for the historian, but she held up one claw, buzzing, “I can see fine from here, thank you,” before she readied her inkpot. She didn’t need any quill; her claw was more precise. It was clear from the structure of her hand that even holding a quill would be difficult.

With what little I understood of Lyvik’s history, from Corbal’s enthusiasm I deduced this to a major discovery. I anticipated his scholarly raving and let him speak uninterrupted. As a professor would, he pointed at several places on the sketch, and began thinking aloud: “What it reads on this side is ‘to float purposefully’, or ‘be lifted’.”

A sense of unease began to pulse with each heartbeat. I was acutely aware of the tension I held in my jaw- almost an ache that ground my teeth. I couldn’t release my fist. I wasn’t meant to hear this and my body was reacting on its own. I had no reason to be afraid. It was a document, nothing more- though it may as well have been watching Anna’s body burn before my eyes. Was I fearful, or angry?

“Next to it, based on that possessive letter there with the air symbol, ‘sky’s blessing’ follows. But ‘blessing’ in this context usually refers to a gift from a god or godlike entity, and as far as we know, there are only three elemental gods: fire for Agnistreya, water for Thaelossei, and earth for Tellustraine. If I’m reading it right, this…” Corbal tapped the air symbol a few times. Each tap was a deafening strike, every buzz of Historian’s mandibles a flurry of locusts, each shift in the air a cataclysmic storm.

I felt sick with new anger I couldn’t place, an unwelcomingly surreal experience. The Paranimatic rituals were different. This was an overwhelming force greater than any I knew existed- almost.

“…this implies the existence of a fourth elemental god… That’s the symbol for ‘air’ or ‘sky’, so I think it means a god of Air.”

It can’t be… This is what Elder Barne and Rhnull mentioned. I recognized something I never really understood, something I would have to erase from history.

My heart fluttered, each beat thumping harder, squeezing my blood into the back of my eyes. The edges of my vision wavered into a haze. This was never my fight. No, this was always your fight.

“There’s a name here.”

It doesn’t matter how you view this.

“It reads…”

The smothered god whose breath I stole, the nimbus made to ash-

“…Aeyturno.”