Interlude

Riakon took to the library like a kid in a candy store. As much as he hated studying for tests and other academic topics, he always enjoyed books of lore, especially monster lore. The Port Sept Library was a vast collection of knowledge that had survived the Dark Times. It was said that the Library itself was blessed by Aur, the God of Magic, himself to preserve its contents.

While Errrkkkk and Roden were off searching the stacks for information on sentient plants, Riakon took the opportunity to pursue topics of his own interest. He started by hunting down a book on garg, but was disappointed to find the tiniest bestiary of Transmogrified creatures that didn’t provide anything new other than gargs were created by a wizard who vanished near the end of the War of the Barons nearly one hundred years ago.

After that Riakon, turned his sights to researching other creatures common to the Wilds. Much of what he found was remarkably similar to the information he had read from Bo’s library. Just as he was about to abandon his search he ran across an old dusty tome tucked behind a stack of books on a shelf.

The cover was worn and barely hung on to the spine. It had two stylized dragons that were so faded their original colors were a mystery to him. The thing that stood out the most was that one of the dragons had five distinct heads.

Against his better judgment, Riakon opened the book and started perusing the table of contents. He quickly realized the text was written in draconic, a language he could speak conversationally, but had always struggled to read or write.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

When in doubt, he just flipped through the pages looking for pictures. He was relieved to see the author had included a generous amount of colorful illustrations detailing a story of some kind.

From what he could surmise, the five headed dragon was Tiamat. She ruled over some unnamed land before she was confronted by a warrior who fought her until he was bloodied and fell. Then another warrior stepped in, and fought Tiamat back until she could be sealed in some kind of prison deep underground by a radiant light that came out of the sun.

As neat as the story was, the artist seemed to put a negative connotation to the events. Riakon kept flipping through until he found the next series of pictures that depicted a group of robed figures that stood before the gate to Tiamat’s prison.

The next pages held diagrams of various geometrical shapes. At first, Riakon ignored them as he was no mage and as such understood nothing of arcane Symbology. It was the last such diagram that caught his attention.

Riakon recognized one of the words written in bold scarlet lettering within the title of the diagram. It read “Commune”. Riakon looked around to see if anyone was nearby, and when he saw he was alone, he sat down and studied the diagram.

It was quite simple. It required red lines to be drawn straight until they converged into the common point where the architect of the ritual was to stand during its use.

As much as he hated the idea of Tiamat being his mother, he had to admit, at least to himself , that she had answers to his questions that no one else had. If he could just talk to her again, maybe he could get some closure or peace of mind.

His whole life all he wanted was answers. At least before the gathering, he at least could still hope that some answers were out there, but now he had all, but lost hope that he would find answers anywhere by chance. If Tiamat was truly his mother only she could answer his most burning questions.

He discreetly tucked the book into his pack satisfied he had found something worth taking and set off to find his friends.