{-Llewel-}
Haris quickly rearranged the tablets to what must’ve been the chronological order, then cleared his throat and began his story. “All of this started with a boy. He was nothing significant, not like the world around him—he was not as mighty as the trees, nor as grand as the land he lived on. He was, perhaps, satisfied with his life. It wasn’t one of heroics, but at least it was his, after all. But his own trip into the unknown started with something seemingly inconsequential… with him finding a small, injured bird, and deciding to help it recover.
“The boy considered himself friends with the bird. He’d imagine them playing in the forest, an inseparable duo to make his life a little less mundane. This wasn’t something that lasted forever, though. As soon as the bird recovered, it had to leave—meaning the boy was once again left alone. Years passed, as the boy thought that it had been the only exciting thing to happen in his life. Then the unimaginable happened. He was chosen to spread a message, forever embarking on a journey of the borderline supernatural. And it was a journey he had to do alone, even if he now wandered far from those forests where he’d first met the bird…”
He jotted down a few more things, then nodded. “That must be what all of this meant from the very beginning. With your help, I was able to decipher it—thank you for that.” After a moment, he continued, “There are a few more ruins around Anseshara that I could use some help looking over, too. Would you like me to guide you to those now?”
“Wait, you mean that’s it?” Tinath asked. “You’re not going to mention how old the story is or something? Or connect it to some more recent part of your folklore?”
“There isn’t any more to it,” Haris answered simply. “There are many things we don’t understand about our earliest ancestors. Perhaps one day we’ll understand what all of this means—give names to these characters—but until then, this is it.”
“I don’t know,” Myr remarked thoughtfully, “I kinda felt like there was something familiar about it. It kind of reminds me of Mazel.”
Llewel shrugged. “Yeah, I really don’t know where you got that connection from. The only thing they have in common is that they’re both birds.”
“Well, I like imagining that it’s one of her however-many-greats grandparent,” she decided with a playful defiance.
Haris got them back on track by repeating, “There’s several other ruins around here. Would you like me to show you to them? You could meet me there later if there’s other things you’d like to do, and they’re not far, but you won’t get your rewards until you’ve done all of them.”
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Casrane took a step closer to him and asked, “Can I see where they all are? Or at least the one we’re going to next? We’ve got some… reasons… for wanting to avoid a few of the places.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough. Some of these ruins have rather dark things in them, too—other players sometimes like to avoid them. I could give you an overview of what we might come across in each of them, as well, if you’d like?”
“No, I think I’ll just need the locations.”
“Alright. Here—I’ll show them all to you.” He gestured her a little closer, then pulled up a map for her. He pointed to a couple of seemingly random locations before he mumbled something to her, she thanked him, and she walked back to the others.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to go to most of them,” she announced. “There’s a lot of runes growing in the area and we don’t want to run into any trouble.”
Zetai sighed. “Yeah, that might be a problem…” She glanced at Haris. “Do all six of us need to be there in order to complete those quests?”
He shook his head. “It’s the same as nearly every other quest—it could be all of you, it could just be one, it doesn’t matter. I can’t be in two locations at once, though.”
“That’s fine, we aren’t really going to split up like that.” She turned her attention back to the others. “I think Anseshara City isn’t too far from here. Casrane, can you walk the twins back there? Reynneak, Tinath, and I can complete all these quests.”
Reynneak nodded after a moment. “It probably won’t take us any more than an hour or so. Right, Haris?”
“No, there’s only a couple more, and they’re all more or less the same length. Including the traveling, it takes most players an average of an hour,” Haris responded.
Myr shuffled and mumbled something—Llewel was pretty sure she said “I was kind of looking forward to seeing what the rest of them were…”
“They can probably take pictures of it,” he offered in hopes of making her feel better. “We all have access to the party chat, too. Between the two of those, it can probably be like we didn’t need to split up at all.”
She mumbled something else that didn’t really sound like an agreement.
Casrane sighed and, gently, said, “Like it or not, I think we’ll all feel better if we did this. We don’t want to be caught off-guard or end up with another unpleasant situation. It… probably doesn’t seem like it, but it’s ultimately for the best.”
“I know…” Myr responded quietly.
“We’ll meet back up with you as soon as possible,” Zetai promised. “And we should be able to use the party chat like what Llewel suggested. We’re just going to finish up this questline and head right back. While you’re waiting, Casrane can mark down some other areas we should avoid so we don’t run into this problem again.”
A whispered response was about as good as any of them were going to get.
“Why don’t we head to the city now?” Casrane prompted after another moment. “Then the players can get started and finish quickly.”
The twins both nodded. They said goodbye to the players—including the fact they were all going to meet up at the inn when they were done—and started towards the city.