“____” speaking

‘____’ thoughts

*____* telepathy

translated from Eldritch

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I don’t know how long it took me but most of the facts about our first war are now either gone completely or have been relegated to myths and legends. It was a decision made in haste and one of many on a long list of regrets. Everything was going well for me. I was advancing at a good pace in my research and each new test I did opened up another direction that I could explore.

To say I did my best to create a peaceful resolution to the conflict would be dishonest to the many that died during the course of the fighting. I did not try hard and I did not act quickly. There was no need for me to as far as I was concerned at the time. I was simply unwilling to help and others paid for my hubris.

Six hundred thirty five different cultures destroyed during the first decade. By the time I took any sort of action over eight hundred distinct walks of life had vanished from the face of the planet with no way to ever bring them back. The final tally on the deaths was too high, but still the smallest out of all our wars.

Thirteen generations of every family on the Vesper and Ushas continent lost and for what? Half a century of solitude? I thought that by breaking us apart that I could stop the infighting but all I did was release the hounds of war onto an unsuspecting world.

I was livid when I found out what they were fighting over; a catacomb. Imagine if you would, you leave your house to find the town you live in gone all because someone found a hole in the ground with some bones in it. At the time I didn’t fully realize just what the catacombs were and what they would become. The main thing to take from all of this is that petty greed killed hundreds of millions. It is not the first time in history and it wouldn’t and won’t be the last but that doesn’t make the cause any less disheartening.

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Year 702

After extensive research on how this conflict that is consuming the people of this continent began I finally managed to trace it back to its source. The conflict started when Severin discovered the first of many entrances to a series of catacombs. I’ll have to go talk to him about why this war started and what his part in it is.

On a less disheartening note, I have managed to find more runes that seem to work better than Eldritch when used in the diagrams for transferring life around.

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Year 703

I spent the last month talking to Severin to find out what happened to create such a conflict as the one that now threatens all life on both of the civilized continents. Severin told me about the gate he found and that it lead to a catacomb. He could see I wasn’t impressed and decided that a trip inside would change my mind. He was right.

A simple excavation into the catacombs revealed that there was more to them than being a resting place for the dead. Once inside I was given the ability to sense the information that each of the people in the tomb had and some of them know much more than I ever thought possible. The further from the gate I traveled the more dangerous the catacombs became and the more information one could learn.

The dangers were both mental and physical and even with the impressive regeneration that I possess I was dealt several near fatal blows after overstepping my bounds. All of this knowledge is held in one easily accessible place and is a treasure trove of sorts. I can understand why there is a fight to covet it.

Severin has agreed to let me stay and study the gate for a few years to see if I can figure anything out what he himself has not.

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Year 705

To put it simply, the catacombs are not a part of this world. My understanding is that they exist outside our reach in another plane or realm similar to the area spirits inhabit. Any and all attempts to try and leave the catacombs ended in failure; the walls are impossible to get through. I decided to see if the gate was the same after my try at the walls and as was to be expected they proved indestructible after many tests and are truly the only way to get into the catacombs.

Unlike the others who entered before and after me, I have yet to try and actually learn any information from the catacomb and have instead been focusing on trying to figure out how the place works. It’s not surprising that the only piece of information that the catacomb doesn’t have is about itself.

The volunteers that went into the deeper parts of the catacombs informed me that there was a door very deep inside after several days of travel. I have yet to go and look at this door and I’m not looking forward to doing so since anyone who was entered has yet to exit.

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I eventually learned the name of the catacombs; Koldoth. A strange name for a strange place. Even with all my testing and toying the only thing I could do was modify, never create or destroy, different parts of the gates and the interior of the catacomb.

We later found out that there were thirteen of these gates and each led to a different part of the catacomb. Why they fought when there was more than one way to enter the damn thing they have never told me and I don’t think they ever will. Eventually after the conflict ended we opened the gates up to let others in if they passed a very brief background check and made a few contracts with us. In an attempt to see if the gates connected people ventured as deep as they could manage into the tomb, even braving the door inside. The results were damning at best.

I simply named the inner connecting parts of the catacombs The Maze of Lost Souls. None of the others ever personally ventured into those parts since they had no need to go that deep. There are only a few dozen first hand accounts from the very few who went in and made it out that there is something in there guarding it. Even to this day I haven’t the courage to share what I found out, what the guardian is and what it’s been guarding at the center of the catacombs.

After knowing what was being fought over I tried negotiate a peace. I was so foolish at the time and should have just used force to stop them.

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Year 705

I talked with Severin about what it would take for him to stop fighting with the others. His demands are easy and hopefully the others won’t be hard to deal with. All he wanted was the gate he had found to belong to him and to be left alone with it. Since he had never actually gone on the offensive and instead defended and remained entrenched near the gate it seems stupid to not at least consider him out of this conflict. I'm not looking forward to dealing with the others who are involved.

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Year 707

During my travels to see Zsóka I have seen fields of corpses caused by this conflict. I can’t help but feel somewhat responsible even if I was not the one who enlisted these men and sent them to their deaths. The squabbles that I found so annoying to deal with have become too large and it has become apparent that I can no longer remain uninvolved with the world like I had done prior to the others leaving the forest.

In ten days time I’ll reach the place Zsóka has declared to be the capital of her recently conquered empire. I pray that there is some sensibility left in her head.

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Year 708

One year of negotiations that made me feel like putting my fist through a wall at almost every waking moment and the best I have been able to do is make sure that Severin is left alone. Zsóka was willing to compromise on that front but refused to budge when it came to ending the war she started with Veit and leaving the empire she created to someone else. She’s become power hungry and I fear that this will be the road all of us walk down. It is just a matter of time until such an event occurs and there is no way to prepare for it.

In other news I managed to get some human test subjects for my experiments with diagrams and their runes. Zsóka sent a few assassins after me during my first month here before she realized that it wasn’t going to do anything to dissuade me from pursuing her to stop fighting. The results of my test were disastrous. None of the runes worked and most of the assassins died after I wrote the first rune on them. I feel I’ll need to start from a less complex base in order to avoid killing anyone who tries to use these runes.

I leave to talk with Veit in a week. Let’s hope he’s not a stubborn as Zsóka.

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Year 709

The bastard attacked me the second he realized who I was. Sent his whole damn army after me. He won’t be doing that again anytime soon not after what I did to them. At this point the armies of both Veit and Zsóka fear me more than they fear their leaders. I wish there was some way I could use this to my advantage but I am not charismatic enough to hold a constant sway over these people nor do I wish to do so. I’ll begin ‘negotiations’ with Veit in a fortnight when his throat recovers enough that he can talk.

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Year 710

Dealing with Zsóka was a piece of cake in comparison to Veit; our hate for each other doesn’t help placate the situation either. Just like I was able to do with Zsóka, Veit has tentatively agreed to leave Severin alone but won’t stop fighting. At this point I feel like it’s almost a show of strength to see who will back down first. Why do both of them have to be so pig headed?

Most of the conditions, if you can call crazed demands conditions, that Zsóka was willing to agree to were instantly rejected. Veit has given me his own list of equally bizarre requests in addition to a sealed letter to deliver before the conflict has even a chance of stopping and I set off to see Zsóka tomorrow.

There has to be a better way to do this.

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Year 710

The condition of the land Zsóka is in control of is poor to say the least and I’m worried that she will be doing nothing to fix the living condition of the people who are not fighting her useless war.

Zsóka’s reaction to the demands to demands Veit put forth were eye raising, her response to the letter even more so. She ripped the letter in half and then continued to do so while ripping the new pieces into smaller and smaller parts before burning them all while red in the face.

It didn’t take long for her to write up new demands accompanied by her own sealed letter and send me off. I feel like I’m a messenger and that my real intentions are being ignored for the amusement of others.

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Too much time was spent going from place to place trying to broker a peace between both side and with each passing year the conditions the other side requested became more and more farfetched. Neither wanted to give the other the satisfaction of bowing out first and after a very few pointed comments by the two of them I gave up trying to use a peaceful solution to fix what they had broken. It was at that point in time that I stepped into the war as a fighter instead of a diplomat. I had to singlehandedly stop two beings that, like myself, held powers that no one else could even fathom. Doing it alone would be stupid so I started looking for help.

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Year 725

After no small amount of tribulation, I have managed to gather twenty-five who are willing to help me. Their only request is that the are allowed to help me with my research and I see no reason why having extra people around could end badly. I’m not stupid however and the most they will be getting is the original set of runes and diagrams that Akhan gave me; anything they want to learn for there on is work they must do themselves.

I have managed to make the runes work with a living being without causing instant death but I have not had the time to see if there are any larger long-term effects. These new runes fade after about three days and must be reapplied by someone who can correctly structure them in order to make them work. This job has fallen to me as the others don't understand the in’s and out’s of using the runes yet. I do have a bit of an unfair advantage though.

We began basic training and with the use of the runes they will be able to stay in their prime for as long as need be. I can only hope that we work fast enough to avoid the annihilation of one of the continents.

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Year 730

Tomorrow we enter our first engagement. This is both a test of the resolve of those who have trained with me and of myself. I have never killed on purpose before, god help me if I come to enjoy it.

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Year 730

The fight was horrific; we were overwhelmed almost immediately. I was stupid to think that a group of twenty-six people could handle a group twice their size. Even with my help and the use of my powers we struggled for what seemed like hours. None of us died, so that’s a plus, but we are all now very aware that we lack the proper training to handle the fights we will be looking at in the future.

Most of us, aside from myself, would have ended up as cripples after this fight if it wasn’t for the runes that I had painted onto them. Even when near death it seems that as long as someone dies nearby then that energy can be transferred to the injured party. I’ll need to do more research into the other applications of this phenomenon.

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Year 731

After a full year of constant skirmishes and research on the use of my runes I feel that we are ready to begin our assault on a larger group than small warbands. I have relegated myself to the position of strategist and support since I can use runes to do more than heal now. There is still a lingering hesitance to use the weapon I have developed with my research; I cannot claim it to be anything other than a weapon sadly.

We, as a group, have changed an incredible amount, each of us learning what fits us best in battle and following that path no matter how brutal it may be. The swords and shields of some have been replaced by oversized meat cleaves almost the size of their wielder. Others have changed to using spears and overall the number of us that use armor is down to myself and three others, even if it is only to protect our heads.

The runes I place on their bodies now last for a week before fading and the more they're used the slower the decay. I am not the one who orchestrated this effect and it worries me. The runes are changing in ways they shouldn’t and I have no clues as to why new effects are being added even without the addition of new rules or processes for the runes to follow. Because of this I have stopped my forward research on the use of runes on living creatures until I am certain as to the outcome of their use over time and constant application.

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Year 735

Our assault on Fort Galivik was a one sided massacre. We had been planning the attack for months and every detail had fallen into place almost perfectly. The plan was simple; wait until the warbands left for the week and then take over the fort before they got back. What we did with the returning warbands would depend on each of the people leading them.

Everything started out fine and after we climbed the walls from different sides while killing the patrolling guards, it was easy enough to clean the fort of any other hostile inhabitants. It goes without saying that only the soldiers were targeted and the only time that changed was when we were attacked first and with the intent to kill.

We hadn’t foreseen that a warband would return earlier than planned or that it would happen within an hour of our capturing the fort. The question we were faced with was whether to stay put in the fort and let them try and siege us or to let them in and fight through their ranks. I don’t think that those men knew that when they entered what they thought to be a safe haven that instead they were walking through the gates of death.

There hadn’t been time to clean up the mess left behind by the bodies and any attempts to let the party in without incident was pointless. That’s not to say we didn’t try to get them to stand down and surrender but their leading officer’s reply before charging us was, and I quote, ‘Fuck you!’. It is very had to negotiate when profanities are the only thing you have to work with.

They were slaughtered. We had the high ground and they needed to force themselves through an opening that we could easily defend with half of our numbers. I was happy to know that not every officer in charge of a warband was like-minded to the first we encountered. Out of the seven other groups that were left, two of them were willing to give up without a fight and another two quickly joined them. I made a mental note to myself to never displease those that guarded my back when one of the soldiers slit his officer’s throat after the officer refused to stand down. A good move on his part and the other soldiers seemed to find the matter settled without need for further bloodshed.

This is sadly only the start but the faster I am able to take down one side of this fight the faster I can then focus on the other and reign in their rampant destruction.

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Year 736

Dozens of stronghold, forts, and other bastions have fallen to us at increasingly devastating speeds. Within the next year we will march to Veit’s capital and overthrow him.

I have had to resume my studies of using runes on living creatures.

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Year 737

If, at one point in time, you had told me that a group of less than ten thousand men could take over a heavily fortified city that held tens of thousands of soldiers I would have called you insane. What would I call you if you said it could, and would, be done by a group numbering just over twenty in a single day?

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Veit had used his standing as a former leader of faith to build his new empire. He had done so in a similar fashion to his first attempt but was successful in this one since he knew were the failures and dead ends lie. This new empire was not ruled by only religious faith this time and was instead ruled using shows of strength.

His capital served as the center of his kingdom and as a center for worship where only the most dedicated of his followers could live. There was not a single man, woman, or child that was not willing to give their life for him and in the end they did. All of them did.

Twenty-seven people exited that city each something both more than and less than human.

To this day the faces of those I had to kill in cold blood haunt me and, unlike the rest of those that fought alongside me, death is not an option to escape what is surely just the beginning of my punishment. I fear what waits for me beyond the grave more than I fear any other thing I have had to deal with.

At that point in time the twenty-five people who joined me had earned themselves many names and titles on the battlefield, but none of them stuck like the Knights of Death did. They became the first, but not the last, to use the power that I had refined and the results were both enthralling and devastating. It was as if legends had been brought to life. A small group taking down overwhelming forces would be called heroic, but one man taking down an entire fort would be called a monster and at the time we needed monsters, so monsters we became.

The knights have long since been disbanded and there are only a few stragglers left of their lineages who are threatening to die out without leaving behind any traces of a new generation. I understood at that time the reason that Ernestine went and checked on his descendants even if he could not be with them. It’s a connection that is hard to sever once you make it and it forms quickly and without notice.

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Year 737

With Veit finally under control I can now focus my efforts on Zsóka. Unlike Veit, she is clever and cunning to a degree that scares me and I’m inclined to think it will be a much harsher path to tread in order to remove her from power.

Veit is currently stuck inside a set of stasis runes that keep him from doing anything. I don’t have to worry about the passage of time since we are, from what we know, immortal. In order to solve this issue once and for all I have started to draft out an agreement I will force both of them to sign. The question is how to ensure they don’t or can’t break the contract and I think I know what I can use as a base for my research in that direction.

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Year 740

Today one of my knights approached me and asked for the runes that I use to be etched into his skin in either the form of a tattoo or through scar tissue. It was with great hesitance that I agreed and after I was done one more of my knights came forward and asked for the same thing to be done to them. I am worried as to what other side effect this will have as it steps outside the bounds of what my tests have covered and I’m not willing to make these people, or anyone for that matter, my test subject in an attempt to experiment.

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Year 752

We managed to finally stabilize the Vesper Continent and return it to a relatively peaceful state after decades of being ready for war. There is still a military and there are still fights but they are now much smaller in scale and between bandits and towns or villages.

I may dislike Veit but even I have to admit that he knew what he was doing when it came to infrastructure and keeping the populace fed. Farmers are a pain to work with when they know you can’t go elsewhere for food and that they are needed. It didn’t help that I wanted to avoid using violence or authority as a reason for them to listen to me, as that would put me on the same level as Veit and Zsóka.

The former capital city was broken down and the wealth that had accumulated inside was used to help rebuild the towns and road that would be needed to travel and trade properly. I don’t know how many building I had to help construct or make plans for but I’m not looking forward to doing the same with the Ushas Continent when the time comes.

We’ve been working on the boat that will take us there and I know the trip will be dangerous. The sea has always been unpredictable and with the addition of pirates and warships that are waiting for us we’re going to be hard pressed to get a foothold with which to start our operations. By this time next year we’ll either be on Ushas or at the bottom of the ocean. I don’t know which would be worse.

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Year 754

Getting a stable base of operations was more difficult that I thought it would be at first, and I was going into this with the impression that it would be near impossible. Zsóka is by far my better when it comes to strategies and tactics; the beach filled with a few thousand soldiers waiting for our boat was the first of many examples that proved this.

Zsóka took the idea of slavery and ran with it. Most if not all of the forces we’ve had to fight so far are doing so against their will and being begged to either kill them or not kill them while in the heat of battle is reducing our moral to the point I’m thinking of returning to Vesper. I hope that this is the worst it gets; I don’t think I could stomach more than this. It’s just too cruel.

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Year 755

Four more of my knights asked to have the runes etched onto them and I was less hesitant this time than the first. I don’t know if this is because my mind has been addled by the constant deaths that surround us or that I am more willing to take risks if it ends this fight faster. If there is a consequence to this it has yet to show itself and I fear for when it does.

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Year 756

Zsóka is no longer human in my eyes.

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Year 757

The side effects of engraving the runes finally showed themselves. The regeneration of the six that are engraved has gone out of control and their body is growing new cells even when they aren’t needed. Nothing I do stops these growths and I have yet to figure out how to put something that isn’t immortal into stasis without leaving them defenseless to the ravages of time.

I think our campaign may be put on hold for awhile.

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Year 757

Against my wishes we continue forward. This time some of us will not return from battle as the growths have become more and more rampant and invasive. The more they kill the slower the growths form but none of the engraved are willing to kill without end.

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Year 757

Those that are engraved have started to have difficulty in doing even the most basic of things. There is nothing I can do and it’s making me feel powerless as I watch people I have been with for thirty-two years rot from the inside out.

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Year 758

Today we buried Halgin. He was the fourth to join me and if wasn’t for him there would be half the number of us standing here today. Halgin was a great man who knew what to say at both the right time and the wrong time. I will miss him greatly as will the rest of us.

I wish I didn’t have to convince myself that he knew the risk of what he was getting into and that this isn’t fully my fault but I know no matter what I do I will always feel like I was the one to kill him.

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Year 758

We added Buire and Faskel to the number of our dead. They died while in battle and it wasn’t until the end of the fight that we even realized what had happened. There is half a continent left before we reach Zsóka. It can’t pass beneath our feet fast enough.

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Year 758

Kaia, Solfrid, and Tyra left us at different times within the last month. It is sad to think that the time we need as a group to move past our mourning and continue onward has decreased so much. We have become so used to death that even when those around us fall we’ve begun to ignore it. I need this war to end soon. I’m terrified of what I’ll become if it continues for too much longer.

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Year 761

The nineteen of us have finally reached the inner areas of the Ushas Continent. Winter is close and it is then that we plan to attack since we need much less food and can fight better than a large group can in the snow. I’m sure Zsóka has a plan to counter this but as a group it was the best idea we could come up with. Let’s hope it works.

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Year 762

We have been sieging Zsóka’s capital for almost a year now and it shows no signs of ever weakening. If this goes on for much longer I’m going to be forced to bring out the weapon I created.

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Year 762

Zsóka’s capital fell today and I put her in stasis. I don’t think I will ever forget that look of absolute terror in her eyes after seeing what I had created and done. It is now time to begin rebuilding a semblance of civilization on this desolate land. I wished that I didn’t have to stay here any longer but I can’t blame people who had no say in what happened to them for the state of the land they live in.

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Year 770

I decided it was time to confess. During the last month everything I‘ve been doing or thinking has been incredibly out of line and I know that I need to take a step back and let someone else handle the reins for a little while. I’ve done things that are not me and I know that my mind is close to the point of breaking.

Zsóka has been my unwilling test subject and stress relief for sometime now and I’m not proud to say that I have dissected her enough times to know anything you could ask me. The only saving grace to my conscious is that she is unaware of everything that is going on because of the stasis she has been placed in. It gave me a great deal of insight into what the growth that my knights actually suffered from are and how to combat them in the future as our bodies seem to naturally target and kill the.

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Year 793

We can head home. I don’t think I’ve ever missed seeing nothing but trees before now. All I can do is hope that I never have to take part in another war again or at least not one spearheaded by the Ancients.

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Year 796

The rest of my knights have decided to leave and live out the rest of their lives in peace. They have more than enough money to solve any problem that comes their way and there isn’t a fight they can’t win at this point. When I asked if they wanted the runes not a single one accepted; it was a unanimous decision to leave them and the longevity they give behind.

I wish them luck in their endeavors and I hope that I will never need to gather more people to join me like they did.

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I remember almost everything that is told to me and the last words of someone who’s dying tend to stay more ingrained than most other events. Before Veit passed on he wanted to speak to me and, even though we had never been on the best of terms, by then all grudges had been long forgotten or forgiven. He told me about his childhood, something he had never shared with the rest of us to my knowledge, and how he had been left at an orphanage run by the Church of the Radiant Sun.

It was from the upbringing that he got there that he formed the faith that he always carried with him. Even with the different prejudices and opinions that he had he still saw life being equal for most people and beings. I find it highly ironic that it was the only belief of his that didn’t stick to the changes he made to the Church of the Radiant Sun.

When I compare the empire he built to Zsóka’s it was easy to see the difference. His people had food regardless of their social position or employment status and if a job appeared anyone could apply. Even ruling by fear he did so fairly and looking back I can’t say I ever found anyone who was in poverty or anyone who actually feared him.

Zsóka, on the other hand, was the epitome of what made a bad ruler. If you could do it wrong she did and sometimes it was on purpose. The entire continent became a harder place to survive even more so because of the extreme weather the continent experienced. Death was the only thing guaranteed under her rule and she reveled in it.

Once we were finally free to return home, the remaining Knights of Death formed their own little fiefdom and lived quite happily there since other left them alone. There was no way to reduce the burden I had placed on them but the peace they found suited them and I helped whenever they required something out of their reach.

Zsóka and Veit were dealt with by use of a contract similar to what spirits used. I had to ask Rin and Atsuko about it but after a few test I was able to replicate the same effects with the runes I used. I forced Zsóka and Veit to agree to a non-aggression pact in regards to the gates of the catacombs and that any fights in the future could not involve anyone but themselves.

The catacombs were available to anyone who wanted to enter them, though that is no longer the case now. There was also the issue of the dangers within the depth of the catacombs and I wanted to eliminate it if possible. I started by researching a way to influence the gates using the runes I had available to me but there was little I could do at the time. What I was able to do was set up safe zone at the entrance inside the catacombs allowing for anyone who entered to have a place where the dead wouldn’t attack them.

That task took me ten years and after I finished it I returned to my home in the forest and spent more time working on the runes and their use. I now had first hand experience that the runes were much stronger and more dangerous than anything I could have ever imagined. At some point I hit a dead end and decided to wander again and in doing so I found two more of the Eldritch higher ups.

I’ll start with Volm first as I had less interaction with him that I did with Nix. Volm represented creation and destruction and, like Akhan, he had his own fault of never wanting to destroy anything he made. Of all the Eldritch that I interacted with he was the furthest from being sane or whatever passes as the Eldritch equivalent. There was little I ever needed from Volm and, unlike Akhan and Nix, he did not want my company. He still wanted my help and at the time I was happy to oblige. I wish I had not.

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Year 856

My conversation with this Eldritch was different. At first I couldn’t see anything and it took me a very long while to realize that there was nothing for me to see. The Eldritch I had found was Nix, a representation of nothingness.

That’s not to say that Nix was nothing and a conversation started between the two of us very quickly. Volm was very much a man and even Akhan was easy enough to figure out after a few hours. I had to ask Nix what its gender was.

The answer should have seemed obvious but to me it was something I had overlooked. All of Nix’s Eldritch referred to her as Nix and it wasn’t until now that I knew she was a she. Our first interaction was tense to say the least but hopefully that can change in time.

Nix asked me if I wanted to stop existing. I’m not proud to admit that I said yes. She had told me that anything that entered her or touched her ceased to be simple on principle. At the time not having to live with the burden of so many lives on my shoulders seemed like a great thing.

It didn’t work, I wouldn’t be writing this if it did, but neither of us knows why it failed. I have an idea and it has to do with what makes me and the other Ancients immortal but there are no plans to test this theory any time soon.

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Year 856

I spent more time talking to Nix to get to know her. Volm had been resistant to talk but fortunately Nix is more like Akhan and enjoys conversation. Like Akhan, there is a certain point in time where she just came to be without any reason and her memories start there.

Akhan refuses to have spawn for reasons he won’t tell me but Nix isn’t against it. The problem is that she is unable to create an Eldritch and must instead rely upon a host to accept part of her power and allow it to warp them. It has to be a voluntary want for the change and the power and that fact is a stark contrast to other Eldritch who are able to force their power onto others.

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Year 856

Yesterday I told Nix of everything that had been bothering me and I talked for almost thirty hours without stopping. It was nice to get everything off my chest and after doing so Nix did the same. After each of us finished we sat and thought about the problems the other had told us and thought about what we could do about them.

Nix is nothing and has always wanted to be something. This was a task I can work with as all I needed to do is find out what kept me from being destroyed by her and if it applied to every Ancient or just me. In addition to that Nix’s other problems were similar to my own. Neither of us held a great attachment to our lives but also had no way that we knew of to end them. Maybe that will change in time.

I was offered help in my endeavors with trying to preserve the lake’s flame and Nix was able to tell me about nothing and what it was like in great enough detail that I could try and mimic it. Her idea was to place the flame in a state of nothing so that it couldn’t lose anymore of its being. It’s a good idea and one that I will look into.

She also wanted to know about the other higher up Eldritch and my guess is that the four of them share a kind of brother sister bond. I was able to talk with her in great lengths about Akhan and she enjoyed hearing about what I had discussed with him. When I told her about my interaction with Volm she wasn’t surprised that I had basically been ignored.

I think I will enjoy being around her.

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I spent a long time by normal standards going back and forth between Akhan and Nix just to talk. It was impossible to link the space that contained them together in any way and I didn’t have the power at the time to get them out of their respective pocket dimensions. If we could talk about it we did and they were a great help in solving the problems that I faced in regards to trying to save the lake’s flame.

When I wasn’t talking with them and repairing my damaged psyche in the process, I was working on the common language that I wanted to spread throughout the world. It wasn’t the same as the language I was slowly creating for use with the runes, as that was too powerful to just give to every person on the planet, but it held enough commonalities that bits and pieces could be understood. In addition to my work on the language, I continued to research the runes and what they could do more in depth. I now had first hand knowledge that the runes would have long-term effects if there wasn’t something in place to stop them.

Regardless of what I felt I continued to move forward and the occasional trip to the catacombs proved very helpful when I needed to find information regarding a language that had been dead for a few centuries. The gates had become trading hubs for information and the lack of a limit on what could be brought out would have been a problem if it wasn’t for the contract that we had created and made people agree to before they set foot inside the tomb.

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it and before I knew it I had turned over half of the runes I used into commonalities shared throughout different languages. This in turn lead to more advancements with the stasis diagram and the idea that Nix had given me to use worked wonderfully in place of the concepts that I was missing or couldn’t express outside of Eldritch.

So I perfected the runes I needed to keep the flame in stasis until I could help it grow. Unless someone came along and destroyed the runes or the diagram nothing would touch the lake; not even time. Everything had slowly moved from worse to bad. I just wish it hadn’t gone back in the other direction.

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AN: Hello readers! Nothing to say this time (sad I know) so leave any questions, comments, or concerns and until next time I'll bid you adieu.

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