image [https://i.imgur.com/r7k3wDM.png]

Before I continue with my tale, I wish to pause to, with the greatest respect towards both the urgency of my task of documenting the events of the Year of the Twin Manes and also the wisdom of my audience, in order to respond to several complaints on the manner of my writing, which can, fairly or not, be described as a lacking in brevity.

Certainly for a document such as this, produced completely willingly but as part of my agreement with the very just and fair Imperial legal system, a judge may reasonably have expected to receive a single page length list of bulleted points of known and unknown facts, rather than several tens of thousands of words across several of chapters being sent to his residence at the rate at which I have produced them, laboring late into the night.

Despite the accusations of some naysayers within the court, this deeper documentation is, far from being malicious compliance, in fact a necessary enumeration on the situation I found myself in, with only the most required facts and aspects of my person and the world captured. Allow me to offer a rebuttal.

Some say language should be simple, clear, explicit and rapid in its explanation — claiming anything to the contrary is ostentatious or “highbrow”, and limited in its ability to convey information. This worldview asserts, or perhaps unknowingly presumes, that language itself originated as a means to communicate simple facts — a way for one club wielding savage to call dibs on a banana before his berry picking friend might.

I’d argue the opposite is true, that language begins with poetry — that is to say the attempt at musicality and greater meaning — and was eventually winnowed into a means of transferring crude information.

Consider the songbird, who can and often does screech, but so often prefers to “sing”. The hoots and howls of the other beasts of our world, even the insects, are of similar complexity. The natural world is filled with such complimentary orders — which we sapient beings struggle to capture with mathematical formulae, only to find them expressed again and again without the aid of our hand (as can be seen in the case of seashells). All of this suggests a kind of divine symmetry.

But what drives this pursuit of beauty in language which we find in nearly all living things? In your mind, separate completely the concept that language is a tool, something completely separate from your person like a hammer or chisel, which can be picked up and disposed of as needed. Instead, recognize that your language, as a product of your body (and more significantly your soul), is so intimately connected to your person as to be a part of you so, put another way, your language is a mirror of you.

By this line of reasoning, the ego in my voice is a reflection of myself for the world to see, and therefore strives to appear in its most flattering form, yet is incapable of being too unlike me since a reflection, even with the strangest of mirrors, can only be distorted so far beyond its original dimensions. As such, there is always art in every voice, be it a baker crying out for more yeast, a child crying for its mother, or a master singer’s performance. Each is a realization in miniature of the being which made it.

And so I ask you, my dear reader who may be skeptical of my writerly as well as fate craft: if a bell is struck and left to vibrate so that it plays one note, is it not followed by another lower note and then another in a sort of logarithmic decline?

Why then should my writing to document my life be any different? And for that matter, why should fate be any different? It follows in my mind that the courses of man, mer, and beastfolk — complex as they may be — must have equivalents to the percussive strike of the bell, and gradual decline on the throughline of their own mortality.

Thunder must necessarily follow lightning, attraction (love) or repulsion (hate) can only follow an encounter of oppositional forces, and stasis must precede change.

A song as confessional.

Every stutter is a treasure.

As swift as the words are said they will be gone, and only remain to you as a memory. And like the imperfect people who bear them, memories are short lived things.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

And so it is that I try to capture the entirety of my journey, for every experience is a manifestation of the whole. To merely state the who, what, where, and why would be to miss the essence of the journey, and the reasons which drove the world to become what it now is.

May my words be conveyed to you, and remain with you, as my truest expression of myself.

* * *

That time of my life was full of anxiety. The Rajhin eclipse was one night away and I possessed only three assets to face it which the wider the world did not: the Treatise of Lunar Causality, the Miser’s Mirror (in my deviator brother’s room), and — not insignificantly — mine very own self.

I physically locked the door to my apartments so that only Percy could come and go, and had him inform everyone that I was to be in deep meditation and not to be disturbed under any circumstances until the following evening's banquet in Prince Findulain’s honor (set to take place in parallel with the eclipse).

My first plan to identify some means to broker peace was to hit the treatise. I read, and I read, and I read some more. There was perhaps a brief nap as the morning wine cooled my fervor, followed by a burst of subvocalization as I hurled myself bodily back into the world of Eophicles. I recalled, for the first time in a very long while, the queer bookseller who had given me the thing — his ravings about the book's obsessive possession over him. Frankly, I did not understand his attraction to the thing.

In brief, the text did mirror my own journey in an unnerving way. Eophicles had been summoned from the Psijic Order in order to aid the people of Elsweyr when their Mane had died unexpectedly, and several successors had been put forward by opposing powers. This was all back in the Second Era, a period I admit to not being especially literate in. However, it lacked a certain panache and rambled on incessantly about his meeting with various tribes and spirits in his many failed attempts to prove a single candidate as the clear victor, thereby averting a civil war.

Percy appeared besides, a steaming cup of tea perfuming the air a bitter green.

“Master reads so very much. Should it not be preparing for the event?”

I winced at this womanly chiding from a beastman whose unobtrusive nature I had found to be his noblest of virtues. “Percy, this is how I prepare.”

“But books… it must forgive this one, a humble servant, but books cannot protect our Mane from his many enemies.”

“Not directly, no. But do you not ever feel, dear Percy, that all of these decisions that our leaders make are not their own? That they’re merely responding to predetermined factors? Well somewhere in this book, I believe there is an answer I must find. The way a very similar issue of two simultaneous Manes being peacefully resolved many centuries ago.”

Something shifted in those over-large cat eyes of his, a sort of sincerity I had not seen before. “The Berry is a good man.”

A bit confused (and shaken by his earnestness) I thanked him and he slipped away. Realizing I had already wasted half the day and was none the wiser, cursed my laziness to not read the damn thing earlier and flipped ahead to the end. Just prior to the much bemoaned blank pages there was just a simple note stating that Eophecles was considering implementing a one-on-one “lunar duel” to kill all the unneeded aspiring Manes. Not very helpful!

In frustration I went upstairs to my brother’s apartment. That hideous mirror spangled ceiling of his like so many glassy arachnid horrors eying us as I gratefully accepted a glass of imperial brandy. We sat upon the oversized cushions of his low table and he asked me what my concern was.

I gently cleared my throat. “I’m freaking out!”

“Why?”

“Because the the Lunar Priestess is going to kill the Mane tomorrow night if we don’t offer them a deal, and it’s a make or break moment with our tentative alliance with the Bosmer!”

“My word, have a breath man!”

I did, and felt no better for it. My deviator brother continued, “And we’ve already discussed the Lunar Priest issue, the Mane just agreed to amnesty. He’ll announce it at tomorrow’s lunar ball. That said however, we should be ready to deal with that shape shifting priestess if she doesn’t hold up her end of the deal.”

“And how can we do that?”

My brother leaned back on his cushion, mirrors winking into existence where his head had once stood. “By confusing its ability to shape shift. By using the mirror.”

I knew exactly which mirror he meant.

“I want you to carry it tomorrow.” he continued, and I realized his face looked gaunter than usual — colorless. “But you need to understand how powerful it is—”

“You think I don’t know?”

“Calm down, brother. Calm down. I know you understand it better than anyone in the world but me, who was foolish enough to continue experimenting with it,” he looked about conspiratorially. “But if my theory of it is correct, then if both of us are caught in its reflection at the same time it could… reintegrate us both. But there it should be very powerful against the shape changer, based on your description.”

I turned to the black sheathed mirror mounted on the wall and hated him for suggesting I take it. The thought of turning it on someone else, even the most vile of person (which I knew from my brief encounter the Priestess was not), was reprehensible to me. However I eventually nodded.

“I’ll take it. Just in case.”