Dear Spellbook,

So, that’s how we met. I’m glad I finally got the opportunity to write it all down. It took far longer to recount than I expected; you reminded me of a lot of details I’d forgotten when I first told the story to Dagmar.

I guess it's time to get back to filling in the time we were apart. Dagmar went to salvage some equipment from the outposts, so I have the whole day alone in the Dahn. It reminds me of the times early in the resets when it was just me and you. I'll admit to looking back on those days a bit longingly at times. It's better now but sometimes Dagmar can be a bit much. At least he no longer resets to the stink of a fermented boot.

Riloth 19th the 69th

“My name is Dagmar Har’Tokar, and I am the only surviving member of the Hardune, the guardians of the Avatar, and I fear that Kaltis is doomed.”

"Wait," I interrupted him. "Can we not do this here?"

"Why not?" he asked, his voice full of suspicion.

"I'd rather not explain here," I emphasized the last word, hoping he'd take the hint. "It isn't a trick. I think you will agree when I tell you. Also, I need to pick up my potions. I won't be able to recount much without them."

"Aye, you do look like you spent the night down the waste shaft. You Waatin really can't hold your liquor. Get up, we’ll go— but no scheming, or we will repeat this whole ordeal tomorrow.”

I got out of bed and moved to dress. I stared at Dagmar, but he stood there oblivious. “Are you going to give me some privacy?”

“No,” he said, and took a seat at my desk and started flipping through the fake spellbook.

I dressed quickly, and we headed out of the Parlor. I wrote a note for Trish, which Dagmar insisted on reading, and left it on Simon’s desk.

Outside Levar’s I stopped to speak with Dagmar, “I am going to need the sword. I missed my chance this morning to make enough gold to cover the potions, but I’ve been able to use the sword as collateral.”

Dagmar looked from the sword, to me, and back to the sword, “Clever. Swear a Will oath of your good intention, and I agree.”

“I, uh,” I said, rubbing the back of my head, “I don’t know how to do that.”

“You don’t know how to swear a Will oath? What do they teach you at that tower?”

“Ha, no. My mother was a Stormcaller, and I,” I paused, thinking how to define myself, “try to emulate her.”

“Hmmm. Well, if that's true—and I’m not saying I believe you. Fauel, you might still be a demon. If that’s true, then I might not have to take this book from you.”

Choosing to ignore that last comment, I said, "So, the sword?"

He flipped it around and handed it to me hilt-first. Surprisingly, no one had seemed concerned about a dwarf following me around with a drawn sword. "I suppose there's not much you can do, since I know where you sleep. Ha!"

Well, that is reassuring.

I took the sword and exchanged it for four clarity and two forgone sleep potions. I was about to take my two when Dagmar stopped me. "Wait, take those two." He indicated the two set aside for him.

I let out a sigh and complied, grimacing at the foul taste. Dagmar took the two originally intended for myself and downed them without flinching.

After drinking the potions, he held the empty vials up to the light. “These aren’t too bad. Is that deep whale?”

“Let’s go. I want to get out of town before we talk.”

I tried to ignore him as I bought some food in the market for later and then led him to the clearing from my first benchmark training all those resets ago. How many days has it been? Without Spellbook, the days are starting to blur together.

As we walked through the woods, I activated Arcane Armor and took small pleasure in the branches springing off of it and slapping Dagmar as we passed—despite him not giving me the satisfaction of complaining about it

When I finally stopped in the clearing he said, “Alright, so are you going to explain why you led me out here into this bug infested roofless hellhole?”

This is something I learned from traveling with Dagmar—I don’t know if this is typical for dwarves or just him—he hates being outside. Everything about it: bugs, the sky, weather, the countless “angles of ambush,” the fact that people can spot you from afar, bears. Even with your help, I can't remember all his complaints about the outdoors.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be mysterious, but the proprietor of the Parlor killed me once. Somehow he read my memories of the resets and did not take the news well that he was trapped in an endless time prison doomed to relive the same day with no knowledge of his past days.”

“Hmm, sensible. Maybe I misjudged you. So, can I continue, or do you need to find more poisonous green plants to walk through before we can start?” he asked as he scratched his leg, which was turning bright red.

“Sure, go ahead. And maybe we buy you some pants tomorrow.”

Dagmar told me the tale. The events were the same as he wrote them down on your pages, but he told the story with a lot more mirth and deflections that first time. He did not mention that he had tried to end his life. His recounting filled in some of the questions I had been left with after interacting with Ludvik and Deshiv. From what I could tell, they were Hardune members tasked with manning the river flow, for some important but mysterious reason.

“So, now it’s your turn. Tell me where you got that book. If I believe your story, I might tell you what I know about it.” He left unsaid what would happen if he did not like my story, but I suspected it would involve me not waking up in future resets.

Where should I start? The fortress invasion? I don’t want to misrepresent myself as some adventurer who volunteers for quests. The attack on my parents? Sooner?

In the end, I started in much the way I started telling you about myself. I explained how I grew up on the road, and how my mother trained me. I told him how we were heading to Edgewater for a meeting, and I told him about the attack on the caravan before continuing on through the events of Edgewater.

Dagmar is a terrible audience. He had comments and questions on everything, as if this was a story and not my life.

He thought my father was boring, but he loved my mother. He didn't see what she saw in him. My mother's "training?” Hilarious. At least he shut up for a bit when I told him about their death. When I mentioned that the sword belonged to my father, he started to listen with more attention.

After that the events grew darker and his attention became more focused.

"Slag breathed cur lizard," was his response to the fall of Landing.

When I got to the dwarves' appearance, he began to pace in front of me as I spoke. “So, there we were preparing to search for this enemy army, when we heard a scream from near the well. Two dwarves—Ludvik and Deshiv—were attempting to climb out of the Torack, and using the town’s well as a ladder.”

Upon hearing the names, he halted his pacing to stare at me. "Tell me you speak the truth! Kenra Ludvik? High Priest Deshiv? They live? It can't be. Is this more demon trickery?"

“Uh, yeah, I mean no, not a trick. I think he said his title was Kenra, but we mostly called him General. Deshiv never gave a title, but I heard he was very impressive during the siege.”

“There was a siege?”

“Yeah, I was about to get to that, but that was after we took back the fortress.” I explained

“I need to sit, please continue. I will try not to interrupt further,” he said, his face now softened and his posture less aggressive.

To his credit, he really tried to keep his word. I could see him biting back remarks as I detailed our encounters with the Forsaken forces. With every redcap we took out, he sat a little taller. When I mentioned the note that set off Daulf, he grew still.

“Please,” he said quietly, “repeat that note as best you can remember.”

“Sure, It was something like ‘Mistress, we have the dwarven kids. Once we capture the town, we will send the human children as well. They were sent to the outpost.’” I recounted as best I could remember. As you can see, without you my memory is not perfect.

He jumped to his feet and let out a loud, “Whooop! My boy!” and then, he hugged me. Yeah, it shocked me too; I thought he was trying to kill me again, and I Blinked out of his grasp on instinct.

We spent a moment awkwardly staring at each other before he said, “Sorry about that, but my boy might be alive out there.”

I trudged back over to my sitting rock. “It’s alright, I’m glad. Can I finish? And maybe warn a person you recently murdered before you try to hug them.”

At the mention of the undead dwarves and dragon, his face grew grim, and he spat in the dirt, but he did not interrupt. His mood lightened when I told him of Daulf administering last rights.

Finally, I got to the end. “And then, Daulf handed me a book from a table and said, ‘You might find some use in this’ and I took it, because I was afraid he’d kill me if I looked at him funny.”

I paused, giving him a chance to say something, but he didn’t volunteer anything. “So, satisfied? Or are you going to try to steal Spellbo—my spellbook from me?”

“Please, finish the tale, I want to know the status of the fortress,” he said.

I tried to wrap it up quickly. “Alright, well, we went back to the town, and they had faced a battle, but the river had killed the bulk of the army. Deshiv and Ludvik—” he winced when I didn’t use their titles ”—were okay, and got some townspeople to head back and help secure the fortress. One of my companion’s ex-wives showed up, and Bearskin went missing, so we all ran off to find him. Oh, yeah! I forgot. When we got back to town, a massive gold dragon slew the white dragon from Landing, and flew off when he found out about the dead dragon in the fortress.”

Dagmar was stunned, he didn’t even blink. He tried to regain his voice, but was just gesturing in a tell-me-more gesture where he twirled his finger.

“Sorry, in hindsight, I maybe should have led with the dragon. Deshiv—High Priest Deshiv—called him Wyr Teshiv-something. He told us to call him Teshiv. He, wait a minute! Was my father the reason the dragon was there? That was the name my father had told my mother he was going to meet! I didn’t remember at the time, but Spellbook helped me recall the conversation!”

Dagmar stood suddenly, and held the fake spellbook up in my face. “This book helped you? You bonded it? Impossible.”

“Flood," I cursed, I wasn’t planning on letting that slip. “Yes. I have figured out it was an ensouled artifact. I bonded it a few days before all of this. I was beginning to think it was why I could remember the resets.”

"Aye, I think you're right. If this book bonded with you, I have no right to say it was wrong," he said as he threw fake-Spellbook into my lap.

Where it turned into a cloud of black dust on impact. Poor Dagmar had been through a lot today. At the sight of fake-Spellbook's destruction, he broke out into a manic laughter.

After he settled down, he said, "Who are you? You are, what, thirty years old? A child. You have become so wrapped up in events so far beyond your comprehension, you don't even realize the magnitude of your insignificance." He was quick to follow up, "Don't take it as an insult. On the scale of this war, I am no more significant than you, but if you are a blind mole in a vast cavern, at least I am a bat able to gauge my insignificance."

Slightly affronted, I snapped back, "Well please oh great and knowledgeable bat, enlighten me."

He sighed, “I don’t even know where to begin. Have you heard of the Hardune?”

“No.”

“Okay, what about the Primordials, the Avatar, or the Dragon’s pact with Bild?” he asked.

“Yes, I know about those.” I answered in the same tone I would if my mother had asked me if I knew of soap.

“Alright, sit back down. And don’t look like that, you aren’t supposed to know about the Hardune, and you seem to know more than most. The Hardune has existed since the gods left us. When it became clear that life on Kaltis was at risk, the people of Torc took it upon ourselves to protect the creations of the gods. As Torc stands watch over Faust, we stand watch over threats that threaten life. Sometimes these threats are caused by men or the servants of Faust, and other times they are just power run wild. When a Font becomes realized in the world as a Primordial, sometimes it is localized and harmless like your friend’s mountain top, but other times it wreaks destruction on the world.

The Hardune contains threats that are too big to be destroyed."

He paused to gather courage to speak the next part. "I'm not supposed to tell you this. Well, I wasn't supposed to say all that either."

He paused again and began to pace, "Alright, so when the Avatar of Faust broke free and destroyed pretty much everything, and the Tower—the idiots—summoned the massive water elemental to fight it, the Avatar burst it like a ripe melon, and it turned into an uncontrollable portal that flooded the world with pure water. You knew all that, right?"

I nodded.

"Well," he continued, "my people fixed all that. We sealed the portal so the flooding stopped, and we captured the Avatar at the center of the continent and set up a system of rivers to prevent the wards containing it from overheating. All the while protecting the Continent from flooding to give the races of men a refuge. You're welcome."

"Hold on a second," I interrupted. "You're saying that the Avatar, not only wasn't defeated by the Tower, but that it's been trapped under the Great Lake?"

He nodded in return. "I don't know what else you Waatin would think could cause a constant plume of steam to bubble from the center of a massive lake. Honestly, we expected you lot to figure it out by now. Somehow, the Forsaken discovered the Avatar was not destroyed, but contained. They must have been preparing for years to take us all by surprise. We’ve held them out of the Torack since the flood. It makes no sense that they could get through to our outposts now. I’m heartened that the Kenra and the High Priest made it. There's hope that they marshalled the dwarven army to retake the outposts while I wallowed in my own pity.”

He paused for me to take it all in.

Wow, this is a lot. The Avatar was alive, not only that, but it was residing next to the largest city on the Continent. And the dwarves have secretly been safeguarding mankind for thousands of years, and they haven’t been lording it over our heads? Was this the secret my father was looking for? It can’t be, he hardly spoke of the Avatar or focused his research on it. Oh, and my father! He was going to meet a flooding dragon!? What would a dragon want to talk to my father about? Could he have been involved in all of this?

“Ehem,” Dagmar coughed, deeming I’d had enough time to ponder it all. “I have some more questions. First, why did that book just crumble? Why did your father have a meeting with Wyr Teshivanido?”

“I don’t know why my father had a meeting with the dragon, but to answer the first question I think I should tell you what I’d been up to these last few months, and why I didn’t want to talk in the Parlor.”

I told him an abridged version of my time in the resets. Starting from when I started writing in you, and ending with our meeting. I chose to not mention some—alright, all—of the more embarrassing aspects of my experience.

When I told him about my experience with Tilavo in the library, he laughed. “Bah, I didn’t think that dandy had it in him.”

After settling down, he added, “Sorry. That was probably difficult for you. You were wise to meet out here in this, despite all the—” he looked around in disdain”—natures.”

“Thanks, I guess. So after I woke up the next day, I came out here, to this very clearing. I wandered aimlessly for hours until I stumbled on—of all things—a door sitting in the woods in a clearing with these interlocking ring symbols. It opened for me, and I was killed by a pair of golems. When I woke up the next day, my spellbook was a copy, and the real one was trapped in the door. I’ve been trying and failing to get it back for, weeks? I can’t even remember.”

I had been looking down while I spoke, and noticed that Dagmar had stopped his angry-stompy-pacing. When I looked up, he was staring at me, face showing more shock and awe than from any other time in our strange conversation.

“Torc’s mercy, who are you boy? You found the Dahn? Take me there at once!”