12. Epiloge

The godess Maarifa, the primordial manifastation of knowledge, sat in her endless library and was clearly annoyed. You could even say pissed.

He had done it again!

She looked at two empty spots in her collection of knowledge of dead civilizations. It had taken her days to find the traces that proved that Karneol was to blame for the disappearance of two Darkelf Memory tablets. She had, of course, known immediately that he was to blame; who else had the audacity and skill to steal from her? But proof was important.

The theft was not what had her annoyed. Sooner or later every piece of knowledge finds its way into her library, and those two would come back somehow.

She was pissed, because her uncle clearly was up to something, and she had not the smallest clue what it might be.

And not knowing something, while exactly knowing she didn´t know it, was a terrible condition for her.

What was he up to this time? She hoped he didn´t get bored. Terrible things could happen if he was bored. She had thought she had the solution, as she and her brother Agizo, the primordial manifestion of order, started the regular game meetings. Her uncle hadn´t done as much mischief since they started them.

But now he had stolen those two memory accounts of two long-dead Darkelf Masters. Why those? They weren't the best in their field when they were alive, and their memory was copied in enchantments. One was a fighter; the other was a ritualist and enchanter. No one held secret or dangerous knowledge. It was lost knowledge, but only because of the extinction of their race and time. And even if someone could access those memories, there would be not much to learn that other experts of today could not teach, even perhaps with different methods.

She could see only two reasons why her uncle whould have stolen them. One, just because he whould know, that she whould sit here pondering and getting slowly crazy, or he was up to no good.

She shuddered, as she thought back to his last plot.

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There had been a world that had come out of its first Calamity with a let's say very rigid look on life.

Their people tried to make the truth unchangeable forever. When they decided something was the truth, they wrote it down, and after that, it was true. No matter what happened. When even one letter in a transcript was wrong, it had to be destroyed. And to write, say or think differently as it was written was those people's most heinous crime.

They had made no great progress, because everything had to be checked against what was already written.

They were boring people, but it worked at least for them.

But her uncle Karneol just couldn´t let them be.

Of course, it was just in his nature. As the primordial Truth of Change, they must have been like a thorn in his flesh for him.

And her problem with what happened was not that he acted to bring change to a civilization, that was so static. If he just could do it without acting out his strange sense of humor.

It started small.

A hunter goes hunting, finds some ruins, and finds something that contradicts what was written. A farmer finds some clay tablets of a well-known story, but one word is different.

Someone gets sentenced to death, some highly honored scribes bash each other heads to mush in scientific argument, a rebellion here, a war there and to make it clear, there was no progress either, but the civilization changed.

And that should have been the end of it.

He had brought chance, so a job well done.

But no! By that time Karneol was greatly amused.

And he keeps going. Those people weren't just like that because they were indoctrinated by a state or religion. They were simply hardwired to believe that there was only one true Truth. When they slaughtered each other because of a different word in a text, that was really their real motive. And they couldn't help themselves.

And Karneol just didn´t stop putting his forged clues and artifacts everywhere.

It was so bad, they stopped agriculture because every groundbreaking with a shovel could bring something to daylight, which started the next bloodshed.

The deaths were in the countless millions, and the survivers?

They got back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and until today, they had a deep fear of every form of writing and story-keeping. They don't even do cave art.

That was when she and her brother Agizo had started those game meetings.

They had saved the last survivers and peraps so many more since then.

She looked up as steps came near. It was Pangaweruh, her daughter and Godess of Knowledge of the Sulan people.

Her daugther said:

I couldn't find him, but he was seen in the spirit realm, where the Spirits of Knowledge dwell.

Some older Spirits say he asked the youngest Spirits a lot of questions and then made his way to the Well. Should I go there and look for him?

Maarifa shook her head and knocked her claws on the floor, nervous.

No! I go myself. I have to see what he is up to for myself.