“____” speaking

‘____’ thoughts

*____* telepathy

translated from Eldritch

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I never thought I would ever learn to read or write given the family I came from. It’s comical, the son of a farmer learning something once reserved for noblemen and priests. But those times are behind me; they have been for a very long time.

My life started out simply and without complications or hard choices. Each day the same task was done and I grew into a skilled laborer with no thoughts of trying to step outside the boundary that society had placed around me. I was of the working class and the lower end of it to boot. Nobles and clergymen would always hold a higher position than I did no matter the circumstance.

It’s hard to forget the day my life changed; for the better of worse all these years later I cannot say, but one thing remains certain. Light fell from the sky like a bolt of thunder and struck me. I knew I wasn’t the only one; it was an instinctual knowledge that I gained upon being hit. The light changed me into what I am today, though I won’t be around for much longer if my predictions are correct.

When I look back, I have to ask myself when it was that things started to sour. It wasn’t when the light fell from the sky or the strange feelings and powers that resulted from it. Life was fine after that and my family and the rest of the villagers though I had merely survived a freak accident. No, it was the longevity that caused my old and peaceful life to devolve into chaos and ruin.

At the time I thought I was immortal, invincible even, as my injuries healed far faster than should have ever been possible, and it was my downfall. I started to outlive my brothers and sisters and before I knew it I had outlived their children and their children’s children. The entire time I stayed young and in my prime though that too faded if my grey hair and creaking joints are any indication. Nowadays injuries stay for far too long and I find that my health deteriorates faster with each passing year.

Eternal youth turned people against me and I was ostracized by my peers and those who I had loved. Worse was when the current ruling kingdom found out about me and tried to take my life in an attempt to take my youth for themselves. It was poetic really that the very people who turned me in got death as their reward since news of immortality was not to be spread. That was the start of the long chain of death and destruction that followed me for years until I grew a brain between my ears.

After I was captured for the first, and sadly not the final time, the king’s “holymen” tried to use barbaric rituals to impart my strength onto him. I learned just as quickly as they did that this power couldn’t leave my body; it ripped the king apart from the inside out, liquidating him in a matter of minutes before the blood that had been taken from me returned of its own accord.

I was let free after the ‘holymen’ could do nothing to restrain or kill me while being called a demon and a monster or one of the Eldritch. The names didn’t bother me and they still don’t although I wish that the populace had called us something other than the Ancients. We’re not that old after all, only a few thousand years at most.

I moved around after that, not that I had a choice in the matter if I wanted to keep from arousing suspicion, and spent the next three hundred years exploring the Vesper Continent for new knowledge and ideas to try and figure out what had happened to me. Many a day was spent learning something new or fighting in the various areas that dotted the more populated towns in order to secure food and money.

Somewhere in that time I decided to learn how to read and write so I could start a journal of what was going on and to keep track of everything. It’s funny really when I look at the dog-eared book and think of how long it lasted. That book served its purpose and now, like the notes I consult of my studies, I find myself writing this book in my last days before I am finally killed by time.

There was a strange compulsion to keep my story and other information down as solid data, as if there was someone telling me that this would be important and I should do it. It’s the same force that got me to where I am today; in the middle of an uninhabited forest though I can still remember when it was full of the life of me and those I would come to call friends and then sadly enemies.

It took me thirty years to make my way to the middle of the forest when I first found it and I did so while following the pull to where the driving force that has pushed me to do so many things both good and bad wanted me to go. All of us once though that the push was a part of the power that was given to us like the ability to sense others like ourselves; I wish we had been right.

There are thirteen others that I could feel once I got a solid grasp on my powers and a few grouped and move together. They had had the same issues that I had in the past, though some had it much worse than I did. How they crossed the sea that divided the three continents of this planet I do now know and by the time I needed to do the same I didn’t have to rely on ships.

But I’m digressing to less important matters. I need to focus on the here and the now, on this god forsaken forest that I’ve brought up. There is nothing here, no spirit, no Eldritch, and no humans; just a lake and guilt. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing here that I felt the pull to come here again since, as much as I hate to admit it, it’s safe here; no peeping eyes, no questioning neighbors, and no hungry looks when people figure out what and who I am.

I wouldn’t have thought knowing how to build a house would be useful but, if it weren’t for the fact that I had to build a few when I was younger, I would have had to suffer through thousands of years worth of rainy seasons. Instead, I can rest in the one-person cabin I built next to the lake that, like myself, used to carry with it the same strange power that all of us did. To say that it is the only house by the lake is a lie, but it’s the only house that matters as the others have been devoid of life for far too long.

Ignorance is bliss and to this day wish that I had never set foot in here as so many regrets can be traced back to a single stupid decision I made. I do not, however, regret the time I spent here. The lake will always be calming and there were, are, many a night when looking into it is the only way to clear my head.

Of course I wasn’t always alone here when I first found the area and shortly after building the log cabin I now reside in I was visited by an Eldritch.

The Eldritch have always been a strange bunch. They have a hierarchy, the strongest Eldritch at the top and their spawn underneath them. No one knows how long the higher ups have been on this planet but they can’t really be said to be on the planet since they’re confined in individual pocket dimensions. The gods, the few that were left, saw fit to imprison them for some reason and they were thought be confined indefinitely.

As a child, I was told that the Eldritch were evil, things of nightmare, but the few I encountered in my travels and youth were nothing but civil despite their sometimes gruesome looks. If only that remained true. The one that first stayed with me didn’t have a name, only the trapped Eldritch do, at least that’s what I was told. As for how the Eldritch got themselves bodies, well, let’s just say that there used to be rituals and ceremonies that could be used to make deals with them. They don’t need them anymore though and a once helpful force became a poison on the world due to one idiots selfish desires.

At the time I learned of the trapped Eldritch and will list their names, as I know at least one of them has been scrubbed out by the annals of time. These Eldritch are Nix, Kal, Volm, and Akhan; the Eldritch that stayed with me was one of Nix’s; most of the ones that stayed with me over the years belonged to her. It was nice to have some company but sadly it wasn’t for long. Eldritch are, were, short lived since they had no way to sustain themselves once they had left the pocket dimension they were assigned to.

My sight changed during that time and I was able to see small fires that represented the others like me; the lake had the fire to but alas that didn’t last. I think it best at this time to leave my past self to tell of that time and I shall end my rant here and copy the text I wrote during those days even if a few pages are too worn to read.

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Year 368

Some seem to be heading towards me either they too are feeling the pull or they’ve noticed I haven’t moved in a while. I’ve talked to my Eldritch guest about what they see and from what I can tell it seems to be a lesser version of the vision I have. They can see how much life something has but, unlike me, they cannot see souls or, at least, I think they’re souls. More there later once I’ve looked into it. I want to talk with the others who are like me. It’s possible but it will take time. Fortunately I have a lot of it.

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Year 369

The Eldritch that was staying with me passed away yesterday. He will be missed. To live knowing your time is limited is no way to exist especially when you’re brought into this world against your will. I want to do something to stop that kind of fate or at least prolong their life if possible, something to work for I guess.

Some of the others like myself have gotten closer, one of the pairs. My guess is that they’ll be here within the next three years if they hurry, if not maybe half a dozen years. I’ll be able to stave off boredom that long; after all, I’ve done it for the last three centuries for the most part. Perhaps I’ll build another house for them.

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Year 375

I’m unsure how to deal with the pair that came here. I was, admittedly, happy to meet them at first and introductions went well after we got past the initial language barrier. It was pleasant to have the company. Both are fairly normal looking, if not attractive, women and they go by the names Saskia and Sølvi. The thing that threw me though, was that both of them have the same last name, Habicht, but they’re not siblings.

Although it is not the first time I have heard of women being in a relationship, it is the first time I have seen it be for true feeling and not for the entertainment of depraved men. It makes me uncomfortable and I know that bias is clouding my mind. There’s some part of me that doesn’t like that they’re together, but I’ll ignore it since I shouldn’t hate them for being who they are. I know that feeling too much.

In truth, whenever I see them acting as a couple it makes me sick and in turn I feel disgusted at my own actions and thoughts. It’s caused me to fall into a pattern of avoidance. I should talk to them and see if I can get them to limit the affection they display towards each other until I am able to come to terms with it; a year at most.

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Year 375

My talk with Saskia and Sølvi went okay from a certain point of view. They took the news from me quite well, but still seemed a little disappointed even if they understood. We’ve been interacting more to do small things like card games and we’ve shared stories of our travels and childhoods.

Saskia is from the Dolderik Desert on the Ushas Continent, the one to my east as I write this as I know not how the landscape will change in time. As one would expect she wears their lightweight, baggy, and overly colorful garb. I’ve never been there but for what she’s told me it does not seem to be a pleasant place. The people there allow and actively practice slavery, something that is reserved for only witches on this continent. She was, as expected from the venom she carried when she talked about the slave trade, one of those that had been a part of it due to a debt that was forced upon her after her father was killed. What part of the trade she belonged to she will not say and the look on both of their faces when I asked has dissuaded me from asking again.

Sadly there was no daring escape, no valiant rescue, and no perfectly timed coincidence to remover her from the situation she had found herself in. She was bought and sold several times before being sent far north for some nobleman with more coin than he knew how to use that wanted some amusement. Saskia skirted the travel and the arrival and simply said that she hadn’t met the standards the noble wanted and her ankles were cut and she was left in the snowy wilderness to bleed out, freeze, or be eaten by wolves.

Sølvi, who was a native of the northern part of the same continent, had found Saskia after she spent three days in the cold and nearly frozen. I was incredibly surprised to find out that Sølvi was a witch and the only reason she found Saskia was due to her inability to live with the rest of the populace because of routine witch hunts. She had taken in the other woman as the rest, as they say, was history.

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Looking back at myself I was a deplorable creature. Today I can’t imagine Saskia and Sølvi being separate and the sight of one without the other causes me to panic slightly, even now they stay together in the lingering death we have locked ourselves in. I spent a few centuries with them and they were and are to this day my best friends. They understand the actions I took even if they find them as vile as I do.

I cannot remember how long we were acquainted until I learned of why Saskia lasted so long in the cold and at the time I remember being shocked. She had formed a contract with a spirit; I hadn’t ever seen one at the time and they were a thing of myth as far as I had been concerned. Rin was a spirit representing cold and anything you could derive from that. For some reason I seemed to encounter my largest roadblocks with open mindedness early in my life as Rin was also with another female, a spirit named Atsuko.

If Rin was cold then Atsuko was warmth; they are opposites and are perfect together because of that. It was from them that I learned of what spirits were and what spirits could do. Rin claimed, much to Atsuko’s embarrassment, to be in the longest lasting relationship on the planet and since they are concept spirits it is easy to believe this. They had already been together and linked with Seelenehe for a few hundred years before I was even born.

But as fascinating as my time with them was it would be best to tell of the others that joined us over the course of the next few years; few of course being relative. Again I will turn to the notes I wrote at that time, as there is no need to double my work by straining myself to remember what I already have written down.

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Year 434

Language has become an issue and I’ve made it my personal goal to make the world a single language to ease conversations with those of different locations. Veit Kjetil, I still can’t pronounce his last name right, spoke seven different languages none of which Saskia, Sølvi, or I spoke. It took us three weeks to finally hold a decent conversation and since then I have developed an intense dislike for them man.

He was, or at least claims to have been, a man of the church and I have never seen someone more rotten or corrupt in my life. From what he would tell us, and what we later forced out of him, he had risen to the position of high priest and kept the job for a few centuries. The power made him grow complacent and he tried to overthrow the Hunpri kingdom as a living god. Needless to say that plan didn’t work.

As a former citizen of the Hunpri kingdom I know that the hidden forces that reside behind the ‘holymen’ are enough to fight off the entire continent should it decide to attack. It was a simple case of the man not taking into account the strength his enemies possessed.

Even if the man is scum I must say that he is faithful, though to what is debatable, and he does have faith in the gods that resided in the church he belonged to. From the few times he has tried to preach to use about his ‘god’ I was able to find out he belonged to the Church of the Radiant Sun. The church itself was fairly open-minded but it seems that Veit has turned it into a reflection of his own incredibly bigoted views. May the man burn in whatever hell he believes in.

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Year 437

Veit has found a reluctant friend in Eadric Rainer another to join us in the middle of this god forsaken forest. The man is larger than any I have ever seen and was a nomad till he settled down with us. He’s a jolly fellow and enjoys talk of religion and myth, though he finds my Eldritch guests to be a bit unnerving at times. The man has more stories than I have patience to listen to and I’ve always thought myself to be endlessly patient.

He, like Veit and I, is from the Vesper Continent and it is endlessly satisfying to share information with him about his travels as I too explored the lands before stopping where I am now. Regardless of this connection I find myself spending more time with Saskia and Sølvi then with Veit and Eadric. There’s no single reason for it; I just find the company of those I have known longer easier. Eadric is too easy to get along with and I find myself slipping into his rhythm and it scares me that I’m not in control. I have no words to waste on Veit.

My time recently has been spent staring at the lake; the same flame I see in the other around me that it has is dying. I don’t want it to die as selfish as that may seem and have started to talk with the Eldritch I know in order to search for a way to possibly save it as it did me all those years ago as the only reason I found this veritable safe haven was because of it.

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Year 475

It has been too long since I have written in this book but I have been busy and after much searching found a way to get the information I need. I had to scour every library on the continent in order to find a possible way to see one of the higher Eldritch and the amount of false and erroneous information I had to sift through in order to piece together the location of the pocket dimensions.

Stories and myth normally have some truth to them but I didn’t think that they would serve as the main reason for my success. Akhan is the first I will find as the others can wait till I no longer have a time limit. The only question is how do I get to the bottom of the ocean?

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Year 599

My return from my travels greeted me with many new faces that I need to learn. Zella Vídgís, Ealdgyd Miervaldis, Ernestine Hummel, Severin Gro, Zsóka Vinter, and Dagfinnr Boer; too many people all at once for me to put anything solid down on them right now.

The main thing to note is that my travels were a success and I was able to talk with Akhan in person. It also seems as though I was not the only one to begin research as I learned that Saskia and Sølvi have started to study spirits and life respectively. I asked why and was told that it was a “secret” and that “if you needed to know you would know”.

Only two of our kind have yet to join us in the secluded forest that seems to keep everyone else out. I should spend some time preparing for what I’ll need to do to save the flame. The hope is that it’s a soul but I’m not sure what it is that is in the lake. Getting to know the others wouldn’t hurt either.

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Where to begin when talking about the rest of the Ancients that had gathered while I was away learning about souls, life energy and so many other things from Akhan.

Zsóka was the last woman on the planet you would want to cross. She was shrewd and willing to go to any lengths to get what she wanted regardless of the cost to others. I always had the impression that Veit and her should have gotten along like two peas in a pod but they hated each other to the point of continuous sabotage and to this day I’m sure they each had something to do with the others death.

The words femme fatale suit her perfectly and it’s evident at a glance that she knows how to use her charms and assets through copious amounts of experience despite being the youngest of us. Most of what I learned about her was second hand information from the others as I never talked to her after she tried to coerce me into activities that I was not comfortable pursuing.

She had been the daughter of a lower end noble from the southern part of the Ushas Continent and had been living life happily until she found out that she couldn’t bear children and thus became trash in the eyes of her parents and arranged husband. Her departure from her home was in part due to an assassination attempt and also from an overheard discussion about making her part of a higher up nobles a concubine for a few favors.

Sterility was something that I hadn’t considered and it wouldn’t be until years later that I discovered through extensive questioning and testing that everyone hit with the light had been affected. It seemed to be a cruel twist of fate. Thirteen individuals blessed with eternal life, at least one of which was going to spend that time without another in a more than friendly relationship and no way to have any lasting recognition of our existence aside from our actions. Though my action will probably never be forgotten even if the fact that they were caused by me is.

I always used to wonder about companionship in the early years of my immortality and the question of finding someone who could also live forever was one I pondered continuously. It’s a question I eventually found the answer to and is in turn part of the chaos I wrought upon this poor planet. Not that I would change anything; a different past would have led to a different future.

Ealdgyd and Zella were like birds of a feather; both liked to fight and seeing them dueling or sparring over anything and everything was always a highlight to any dull day. They had a good dynamic between them, always there for the other when it was needed and even though they never expressed it the two were basically a couple in every way except name.

The two were laughably different, Ealdgyd standing at half of Zella’s height with the latter proudly displaying expertly toned muscle while the former looked as if they would snap under the force of a stiff breeze. Both had come from the Sunnon Continent and each was from a distinctly different tribe.

Zella’s tribe worshiped fire and the clothing she wore were made to look like flames in pattern and color. There is no metal in her attire and it has always been made from thick hides and thicker plants. I learned from her that this was because it would have been considered blasphemous to tame fire for the use of melting rocks. This honor that she held fire in extended to other things like lighting, cooking, and protection as well. I still find some of the customers like creating a unique brand for a couple that was to be married or the act that Zella simply called “fire baths” to be destructive and wild in nature but fitting for the beliefs of her people.

The contrast here between Zella and Ealdgyd was that while the one worshiped a form of light the other honored dark. Ealdgyd’s tribe called themselves nightwalkers and sought to become one with the darkness and shadows. Her tribe would purposely blind themselves with either cloth or by removing their eyes in the case of priestess and live using their other senses. She wore skins that hugged her to the point of near constriction and covered her from head to toe leaving nothing but her hair exposed to the light during the day. Only when it was dark would she allow herself to use her eyesight and remove the clothing that covered her skin. These action had, over time, caused her people to develop vision that was suited for very low light levels and skin that could change and either be dark enough to hide in shadows or white to blend in with snow. Her tribe had few practices that I would consider to be strange, but the ingestion of raw meat, including people, was one I still can’t stomach.

Neither gave a reason for leaving their tribes and there isn’t an interesting story behind their choice since there were few rules about leaving and little concern for those who did so. Friendship was faster to form with them than the others, as I was already more accepting of strange things at this point and showed no visible signs of disgust towards them after they explained their unique cultures.

Severin was a small and quiet man whom I mistook for a woman for almost three decades; the fact that she wore women's clothing didn’t help. She, like myself, always stood back and watched what was going on and would go with the flow of what was happening unless she was highly against it. A very flexible and open person; one that I aspired to be like for many years in terms of insight and the ability to make good judgments.

Like myself, Severin is from the Vesper Continent though she constantly corrected me by telling me to call it the Avah Continent. She described her homeland as a never ending field of golden grass that stretched for as far as you could see. Most scholars would agree that she was one of the Ihoji plains people before they were wiped out due to a high rate birth rate of witches within their clans. They were a people prized for being fluid in everything they did especially their dances and music; an easy target for slavers due both this fact and the number of them that were witches. I know from the books I have consulted that Severin was likely to have been a child during the start of these events and was witness to most if not all of the slaughter.

As to why I am using the word ‘she’ to describe Severin is a matter you would have to take up with her; it was what she always insisted upon and I held her in high enough regards to follow an easy enough request. It was one of the few things that both Zsóka and Veit actually set aside their differences for in order to torment the poor man; though I have no doubt she would dislike me calling her such as she has been of the opposite gender in more than one way for a long time.

Every group has a troublemaker, one that wishes to see how chaos will unfold just for fun, and for our little gaggle of misfits that individual was Dagfinnr. He was the one you went to if you wanted to get drunk, get information of a less than savory nature, or blow something up. The man seemed to turn up everywhere in the strangest of places be it the ceiling or a third story window. I suppose he got to put his athleticism to good use even if the use was questionable, lord know how many times he was caught peeping; he never learned.

Dagfinnr was a man’s man as he used to claim and the number of times he tried to bed the others, including myself, put a different spin on the phrase. He was from the Sunnon Continent and had a very, and I stress very, loose system of morals by which he worked. His tribe was more advanced than those of Zella or Ealdgyd and they worked metal in very minor ways.

In his tribe strength was everything and the number of victories or conquests you had over others be it in individual combat, war, hunting, bed, and a myriad of other activities gave you your rank. Each victory was represented by a bangle to be worn on either the arms or legs and the more you had the higher in society you were. There were further rules as well such as the band’s color being worth different amounts of victories and all trade was done with them.

The man looked like a rainbow and was of very high rank and status from what I understand. Unlike the others, Dagfinnr’s tribe actually had a power that manifested in each of them in the ability to absorb the metal that made the bangles into their skin to keep them from being a hindrance. How this evolution came about I do not know, but Dagfinnr told me that according to the tribe’s history they were descendants of a scaled beast that could create armor for itself at will. I don’t have any faith in this tale obviously but I’ll let him have his way since I have no way to prove him wrong and have seen, and done, stranger things. My personal belief is that it is the metal they use and how it is smelted and smithed but I have never been able to find his tribe and he won’t tell me where it is.

The last of the people I have listed above was Ernestine. I never had much contact with him because I could never find him as if he was avoiding me at all costs. When I was able to meet him he wore clothes that concealed him to the point of being unable to know anything about him except his height, voice, and eye color. It took me a nearly a century before he opened up enough to actually talk to me face to face; though he didn’t have much of a face left.

He had been a soldier for the Hunpri Kingdom and I actually knew him by name. I knew stories of his time as a soldier and for his success he had eventually become one of the king’s royal guard. The answers he would give me were always quick and to the point whenever I questioned him about his time in the army and I never pressed when he refused to comment. It was always the talk about his family that seemed to loosen him up and let him relax. Unlike myself, Ernestine had figured out that he wasn’t going to be able to have a normal life within a year after the lights descended. He faked his death and left his family behind; though he still checks up on his descendants every five years or so.

I can’t imagine the pain of leaving behind someone who completes you and it explained why he remained so isolated from the rest of us. Though why he tormented himself by watching them if he knew he couldn’t be a part of their lives I will never know. Of all things I regret it was that he learned of my involvement with the Eldritch and it added a film of distrust to the decent relationship we had built over six decades.

Knowing whom these people are I can now move on to when things became bumpy for us.

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Year 623

My research on saving the lake’s soul has progressed nicely and I’m confident that within the next fifty years I can save it or at least put it into stasis to stop it’s death until I have a solution.

Tensions have been building between the different members of our group due to rumors spread by Veit if I had to take a guess. It’s bad enough that I have to leave the forest to talk with the Eldritch that I know but it’s gotten to the point were returning is almost not worth the effort.

I tried serving as a peacekeeper but that idea fell through when everyone focused their aggression on me. The problem is they’re getting bored and there is very little that they haven’t done at this point in terms of travel and adventure in the world.

There has to be a way to keep everyone from each other’s necks but I’m afraid that separation may be the only option. I’ll bide my time and decide.

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Year 630

Yesterday the tension rose to physical conflict and I had to step in and break everyone apart. I would be unable to do this if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m the best at controlling this power we’ve been given. The others respect and fear that and I seem to have been appointed the momentary leader in order to sort out this issue. It will not be easy to resolve but I haven’t spent the last seven years thinking about what to do for nothing.

The lake’s flame has shrunk from a fire the size of my head to one the size of my fist and I fear that my estimations on the time I had left to act were far to generous. I’ll propose my plan to the others and then seclude myself to increase my rate of progress in my studies.

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Year 630

Everyone has agreed to the plan and it’s really quite a simple one at that. Saskia, Sølvi, and I were already studying things for our own advancement and entertainment to some degree and I suggested that the others do the same.

I disagree with some of the choices, like Veit wanting to study light, but agree with other, such as Severin studying water. Some of the more volatile study subjects, Zsóka with death and Zella with fire mainly, have lead me to the decision that not everyone can stay here and that each person must find their own place to conduct their research and interaction should be limited to study related visits unless the people involved decide otherwise.

As the first resident and the one who built everything, I laid claim on the houses without any oppositions being voiced. Where the others go I don’t care but I’ve told them they are free to return and the area will serve as a no conflict zone which I would heavily enforce.

My speech about this was met with a few objections but it was easy enough to give rebuttals that helped increase the validity of my idea; I refused to see seven years of work go to waste over idiotic stubbornness.

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Year 632

I have made great strides in refining the things I was shown by Akhan and have begun to make them my own. The process is rather simple really; I’m moving around life energy from thing to thing and thus allowing some to live longer at the cost of others living less.

There needs to be rules and limits to this power as it can be used to destroy life as we know it in a matter of a few years if let loose upon the world. I also need to find a way to store the excess energy for later use since it currently dissipates once the target object is filled past its expected lifetime.

The lake’s fire has remained the same and I have little doubt that it has stabilized for the time being I’ll keep my eye on it just to be safe.

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Year 646

A breakthrough in my research has allowed me to finally store the excess energy inside the host without it overflowing. The energy condensed itself into a mass that resembles a heart and seems to locate itself wherever it wants within the object. There is a method to where the energy condenses I am sure of this but I have no entry point in which to further study the phenomena. It is only a matter of time now before I can further adapt this to help the dying flame.

Akhan’s knowledge was helpful and I will have to inform him on what I learned as a form of repayment for all the help he gave me. For now I’ll begin to work towards setting up a way to regulate the energy flow.

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Year 658

The lake’s flame decreased even more last night and it is now a flame the size of a candle’s. Time has become a valuable commodity that I do not have enough of.

Preliminary tests to try and give the flame more energy have failed and I’m at a loss as to why. The stasis idea seems to be the best I can work with for now and I will focus my efforts there.

I’ve included the notes to my studies below in hopes of getting a new idea while rewriting them.

Test one to draw energy was successful yet disheartening. The number of runes and space needed to create the area diagrams in which the energy would be taken from and delivered to are much too large and time consuming to write. The formula’s written into the diagrams use Eldritch as their base and it’s proven to be an extremely tedious and difficult language to work with. The fewer words that make a sentence, the more power each word contains but it can leave the interpretation of what is said up in that air if you’re not specific enough. In short the language limits itself by giving up strength for precision and vice versa. If I cannot overcome this roadblock I may have to create my own system of symbols and letters in which to use.

Test two through fifty to draw energy and deliver it ended the same as the first. The language is too limiting and I will have to start using other runes from different cultures in hopes of finding a better method. This seems to me to be a similar problem as the languages that are spoken around the world. I had thought of creating a new language based off of the origin of all the languages in hopes that the number of similarities would allow for a smooth transition but there are too many changes due to time and the effort I would have to make is not plausible at the moment.

There were no tests this year as I focused entirely on using different runes instead of the Eldritch ones. There have been no positive results though I have begun to notice a pattern in in each variation I try. There is always a limiting factor put in place by the precision of the words used. For example if I make a rune system that is supposed to ‘burn green’ it will either have a green flame of burn anything that is green. Similarities have appeared in structure and in some very rare cases symbols as well. I want to follow the symbols from language to language and see if they lead somewhere but time doesn’t permit that.

I was successful in creating a smaller more compact rune system today and it is half the size of the previous diagrams. Like its predecessors, it transfers the energy just fine and now can do so enough that I have discovered yet another problem; the energy leaks. There is no better way to state my observation at the moment and more testing is needed in order to locate the source of the problem and fix it. This new diagram contains runes from six other languages aside from Eldritch; it seems the gut feeling I had to follow shared symbols in the languages had some merit and I have placed it higher in priority.

Today I tested the stasis formulas that Akhan gave me and tried to simplify them with great success. However, it seems that I need a greater understanding of what time and space are as there is an aspect missing in my results with the new diagrams as opposed to the old ones. The object tested freezes in place but time still passes for it while the older diagrams stop whatever they hold from aging.

My testing today has been more successful than any other to date. The energy folded in on itself and condensed at a single point and I believe it was because of the restraints I added to keep the energy inside the target object without leaking. The energy has actually become a solid object and upon closer inspection it has the general shape of a human heart. I tried cutting into the energy heart and instead of returning to ambient energy in the form of heat it stayed solid and split into different parts. It seems there is a constraint on how much energy each piece can hold and further testing has proven that the initial whole is able to hold more than the sum of its parts.

More testing showed me that filling the individual parts of a heart to their capacity and then reassembling the whole increased the amount of energy that the heart could store at the cost of almost all the energy it had gathered. I am unsure if there is a practical application to this or if it is merely an organic way to increase the energy capacity.

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I was hopeful that the research I was doing would save the lake’s flame and that I could then focus my efforts on adapting it to the Eldritch. It was a power that I knew others would kill to get so I needed to limit it enough to make it seem inconvenient in the short run. Thankfully the eventual complexity of the rules and runes used eliminated this worry as modification was near impossible unless you recreated the entire process from scratch and without the base formulas from Akhan that was impossible.

Unfortunately while I was immersed in my work and thus blind to the outside world some of the others had begun to take sides and fight amongst themselves. The next time I set foot outside the forest that I had called home for five centuries I would be witness to a war that spanned two continents and the ocean in between them.

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AN: Hello readers! For those of you who thought the world was lacking some depth due to lack of lore here you go! As I stated last chapter, if you've read this far it means you've read enough of my writing to have picked out flaws in it. Anything you can tell me regarding what you think needs to be improved upon and what you think I do well would be greatly appreciated. Hope you enjoyed the chapter and until later I'll bid you adieu.

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