Memories Imbibed from Other Minds

Recorded herein are the memories that were forced upon me on the day of the Lighthouse's first activation. I cannot be sure they haven't been altered to decieve (it may be possible; it may be not), but regardless, being a singular perspective of an event they are inherently biased, and so are not yet prepared to be added to the general archives. Should further memories be given to me, I shall record them here also.

- Shiosai Ike, the Ruminator

The Fall of Kor'ethel, from the Perspective of Ganswick (Felagund?)
Note: Memory was provided by Jetorix Felagund, and is recorded here as it occurred with formatting alterations and minor grammar corrections.
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My consciousness dropped into the mind of a mad man.

Hero? No, I don’t think so. I attempt to lift my hands that feel heavy with the weight of a hundred souls that they have taken life from. Where did all that life go? Certainly not to me. I was no more than a sixteen-year-old boy, whose thoughts consistently turned downward upon my body. All that life stolen by my bloated hands: gone from the land.

I remembered. Everything: all at once in slow, agonizing motion and again for good measure in a blur on repeat in my third elven eye. Yes, that third eye of legend to elves of Korth. It’s always been there with me. I was born with it as a sad inheritance from my mother, who was born herself under unique circumstances.

My brother and all five cousins on my mother’s side were told the “story of why” as we first developed nightmares from our third elven eye. This is not that childhood bedtime story to scare the monsters away. This is the story of how we lived like legends.

How could anyone survive their sanity, no less live as legends, with a third eye placed squarely in the center of the seven atria of an elven heart? That third eye that constantly looks at the world through the tainted lens of blood flow. We still have two eyes and view the land as any normal elf would, but with an entirely separate, additional viewpoint that constantly looks into the heart of other souls… through a blood-stained monocle. And it never ever allows your memory to forget any pain in any heart that it sees. Every sight with the third eye recalls to memory all previous sightings in a slow motion, then rapid blur cycle of life flashing before your eyes until it finally registers the trigger sight. How does anyone live like legends in the most ancient and powerful elven citadel in the world… with the third eye?

My five cousins, my brother, and I all trained ourselves, like our mothers before us, to simply ignore it. The earliest part of such training involved a bedtime story at the times when the third eye was most actively awake. We could never consciously stop the third eye when it was awakened. We did train our two facial eyes to sleep on command with the bedtime story. In doing so, we could pretend that the third eye visions were merely hazy dreams that could be ignored. As we got older, we trained ourselves to actively fight the third eye visions with our dream state. However, none of us fought the third eye in the same way in our dreams.

My elder brother Reggenix claimed that in his dream world, he fought the third eye by calling up a circle of fire as saffron orange as his curly mop of hair. The fire obscured his view from clear sight of the third eye visions.

My cousin Dallarix claimed a similar feat as Reggenix, but with more tidal waves, tsunamis, and hurricane winds.

My eldest cousin Dex claimed that the only true, noble way to fight the third eye in the dream world was to cast his entire body into its own shadow where only black filled one’s vision.

My cousin Jetorix insisted that his elders were both possibly deranged and psychotic. He maintained that the wisest course of action to fight the third eye was no action at all. He remained silent, unmoving, and unfazed by the nightmares of the third eye. He let it wash over him like an emotional tide and simply ignored it by true blissful ignorance. Jetorix was the best werewolf in Korth.

So very much unlike my cousin Garrick, who was not the best. Garrick trained himself to fight the demons within the third eye with a ferocious bite. Several ferocious bites… and lots of his own frosted tears. I do pity Garrick though because he was twice-cursed from birth when he came into the world during a ritual of the Dark and was forever marked as a were-being… one who bears a part-animal soul. In Garrick’s case, his soul was half panther and the elven half gifted with frost magic. I always chuckle when I hear passersby call him the wildest of our family.

They never met my cousin Chee. Chee was objectively both very beautiful by elven standards and very violent by even drow standards. Like her four older brothers, she was born into a ritual of the Dark. In her case, she was part python with elven gifts of water magic. None of these “fun fact” traits determined how she handled the monsters of the third eye. Chee adapted all the techniques from her elder brothers into one. When the third eye awoke in her, she stared at it within her dream world. She absorbed all its horrors within her and then flung it back out with a tidal wave of her dangerously acidic tears that lashed directly upon the heart of the object of the third eye’s attention and ceased its beating. Then, she definitely tore the heart from the person and ate it raw.

Apologies, my technique for dealing with this third eye curse is to bring light to the dream world. Sometimes, that involves fire like my brother Reggenix. Other times, I joke. Chee does not eat raw hearts.

She rips the heart from a person’s chest, wraps the vein somewhat loosely around her neck, and wears the heart like a bleeding pendant until she can find a time and place to cook the meat prior to ingestion. She insists that this is the most civilized way to cope with the third eye. I am just glad that I have one deranged older brother, and not four.

I can’t always bring light to the world. As I stand on a balcony of the Kor’ethel Grand Palace overlooking the entire ancient forest city of elves become overrun by humans from the eastern sea and drows of the western volcanic lands, I summon a shadow griffin. Summoning a shadow griffin is the type of scenario that begs the question “Why?” so much more than the question “How?”. Why do such a thing that objectively sounds evil and not at all what a hero would do?

Because I am not a hero. I can feel it deep within my soul that I am No-Body. I am part of the Dark that no one knows, nor cares to come to understand. As I stand on the balcony, awaiting my family to accept my call to arms, I look down at the shadow that I summoned. My body of the Dark cast a living, clearly breathing griffin shape of a shadow. Again, I am not a hero. I am the Dark Griffin.

My shadow corporealized before all three of my eyes. I mounted the fully formed black griffin and smiled to my brother Reggenix and cousin Dex on the other side of the balcony.

“Dallarix is drowned,” Dex said finitely.

“The Firebreather has fled,” my golden-haired werewolf cousin Jetorix spoke quietly as he suddenly appeared behind me.

I turn my shadow griffin around to smile at Jetorix, and when I turn back to face the other two, a small servant elf barges out of nowhere onto the balcony. I contemplate for a moment letting my shadow griffin feed on the No-Body servant elf, but I feel a strange sense of kinship across timelines with this No-Body. Perhaps because we both understand that we are of the Dark and trapped in a dangerous world of Light. I made eye contact with the servant elf, who cowered in fear at my gaze.

“Kor’ethel has fallen,” my cousin Garrick said as he entered the balcony along with my cousin Chee in her python form. “We have been betrayed.”

Garrick placed a hand written note into my hands.
It read:

To All Residents of Kor’ethel,
We tried for millennia to bring the true Hero to your temples.
We protected you for centuries from the Dwarf, the Satyr, and the Drow Rebellions.
We warned you for a decade about the rising threat of the Griffin’s brood.
You nurtured the Dark to maturity like a cancer in the land of Korth.
You refuse the Torritian Heroes their place in the empire.
A new elven capital will rise in the south.
Yours will be forever vanished from history,

Dallarix Felagund
Grand Marshal – Knights of Lycurgus, First Class

“My own brother,” Garrick said. “You messed up, Ganswick. You insisted we could trust him when the rest of us wanted to cast him into the bottom of the sea. The fall of Kor’ethel… our home… is on you.”

This is a situation in which the question of my being the leader of our group is more concerning as to “how?” rather than “why?” How did I, the youngest male of our family, manage to become so highly regarded by the rest of the family? My third eye remembers vividly.

I was a scared four-year-old child when the first ship of human settlers arrived on the coastline between Kor’ethel and Dar’itim. Garrick and I were the first to spot the ship in the distance with our third eyes. We ran. Garrick hid away in some corner of the city. He was lost for days.

I ran to tell my uncle Verx what we had seen come to Korth. Because my third eye stared into the hearts of the first human settlers, only I could see what they were capable of. That was when I summoned my first shadow griffin and my uncle saw what I was capable of. From that day on for the next twelve years, I organized where and when my family could best strike at the future invaders to keep them at bay. How then did our efforts fail on this day when the fall of Kor’ethel by the human invaders become so evident?

Wrong question. Why did our efforts fail the people of Kor’ethel?

I pondered the question while turning Dallarix’ note over in my hands. It was certainly not Dallarix’ betrayal. It couldn’t be me. I was sure of myself in trusting Dallarix. I stumbled upon the answer when I realized that I was not sure of myself in trusting my other cousin… Garrick.

Where was he for those eight missing days twelve years ago? I can remember when we spotted that first human ship, I ran straight home to Kor’ethel. I assumed Garrick followed behind because he was so much slower than me, but I never looked back. I could not risk the chance of my third eye seeing the humans again. It stood to reason that Garrick did not follow behind, but perhaps ran in the opposite direction… towards Dar’itim and the drows of the volcano. The drows that invaded Kor’ethel now were proof of this.

Why would Garrick betray his home? Wrong question again. How did he do it?

His third eye. When he returned from those eight missing days, he had a gash and suture wounds over his chest. He no longer possessed a third eye in his heart.

Where was Garrick’s third eye? Wrong question. What purpose did the third eye have outside of Garrick’s body? Was it simply to remove the trauma of the third eye from
himself? I always had my doubts about that.

“Most of the damage to the city is being perpetrated by the Knights of Lycurgus,” Jetorix added to the balcony conversation.

“Scorched Korth strategies are the most productive,” Dex said, although his tone was unclear if he spoke sarcastically or genuinely offered up a battle strategy.

“I agree,” Reggenix finally spoke in his commanding voice. “Torch the city. Let them have a burned husk of what used to be.”

Chee nodded her serpentine head in agreement.

“What about the elves that will lose their homes?” I asked.

“No survivors…” Dex said coldly.

“…Except for us,” Reggenix added confidently.

“We are the strongest elves since Theodora’s Queens,” Garrick spoke up against the proposal. “We can save Kor’ethel.” On that night, Kor’ethel was not saved.

Jetorix was the first casualty of the worst decision in my life. We fought the hordes of drow invaders with Griffin’s Talon daggers and our keen instincts. But Jetorix and I are not heroes. We had a blind spot. In that blind spot, the human hordes found their way into the silver mines under Kor’ethel. They chipped silver dust and coated arrows with it. Then, shot Jetorix three times in the back.

It’s a common mistake to think that silver kills werewolves. Silver is merely a killer to an untransformed werewolf. The wolf body itself is far more resilient to anything from the earth, including silver. It’s perhaps a side effect that a person with werewolfism becomes vulnerable to silver only when not embracing the Wolf Aspect. Forced to transform into a full wolf form in order to stay alive, Jetorix skittered into the forest away from battle.

Dex shouted after his little brother Jetorix… and was immediately sliced in half at the waist by a nasty bipedal crocodile-type drow warrior wielding two woodcutter’s axes in each hand.
Since Dex was killed, on cue, a towering inferno erupted above the tall trees in the southeast corner of the city where Reggenix fought back the treasonous elves that called themselves the Knights of Lycurgus.

Dex and Reggenix were the first children of their mothers, who were both sisters born under unique circumstances that practiced a combination of divine, blood, and sigil magic. Reggenix and Dex were also born at the same precise moment of the same day. The recipe for tying their two life forces together involved the shared bloodline with the shared time stream topped off with shared moral values.

…And their mothers cooked a fantastic stew with that recipe. The inferno cast its shadow from the moonlight upon Dex’s severed corpse. Dex’s severed corpse absorbed into the earth, and out of the shadow stepped a black hooded figure, who walked solemnly to the southeast, carrying the shadow as it went. It had a covenant to uphold when in Korth.

Garrick held another battalion of blood-soaked ebony armored drow warriors at the main gate of Kor’ethel. He smirked as he slashed at limbs, twisted necks, and gouged eyes acrobatically. Despite the smirk, his yellow eyes appeared severely pained in sorrow.

Down the hill, python-Chee slithered along the wavy shoreline. She dug her fangs into the heart of the human soldiers wading onto land from the ships out at sea.

If I choose to help Garrick, then the most ancient city of Kor’ethel will fall to humans from the sea. If I choose to help Chee, then the most resilient city of Kor’ethel will be infected by drows from the volcano.

Only a hero can choose the third option that saves the dying city of Kor’ethel by summoning shadow griffins from the sky.

I am No-Body trapped in a powerful body.

'The Day a Hero Was Born', perspective unknown.
Note: Retrieved from a Garrick tampering with the Lighthouse immediately prior to activation.
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A shadowy man sat in a leather armchair, with a checkered black and white blanket over his lap, watching the roaring fireplace before him. Narianna Zopel heard the intruder break in her family compound. She stood behind the leather armchair watching the man. Her hand clasped onto the handle of a silver dagger at her belt.

“The clouds are burning,” the shadowy man spoke solemnly.

“I know,” Narianna whispered as she unholstered the dagger.

“Everyday, the sea conquers a few more inches of the coastline,” the shadowy man spoke again.

Narianna raised the dagger high above her head with both hands, “I know.”

“I don’t care about dragon conflicts or ocean giantesses. I want to discuss the Korth Trinity of Heroes that will save the world from the shadows,” the shadowy man declared.

Narianna’s silver dagger clattered to the floor. Trickles of blood rained on top of the shadowy man’s thinning salt-and- pepper blond hair. He heard a body collapse to the floor behind the chair.

“Is she breathing?” the shadowy man seemed to ask the blazing fire in the emerald stone fireplace of the Zopel living room.

"No,” a small feminine voice responded from the bay windows of the living room that overlooked the river dividing the land between forest and ash land. Her fingertips still pulsed with electricity.

“Good,” the shadowy man spoke softly into the night.

The shadowy man’s head tipped back against the leather. The fingers of his left hand loosened around a green emerald encased in a gold amulet as his body began the process of shutting down. The shadow of the man corporealized from the floor. Its predecessor found the new warrior hero, as the earlier predecessor found the new sorceress.

It spoke in a harsh, sinister tone, “I must find the guardian.”

The new shadowy man flew into the night, sailing along the winds of the east. Just as Narianna stood in the way of the warrior hero’s destiny, it knew that a villain would stand in the way of the new guardian’s destiny. It was ready for the Ancient World Myths to try again.

'The Woods Savior vs. The Firebreather', from the Perspective of Reggenix (?) (Felagund?)
Note: Retrieved from a Garrick tampering with the Lighthouse immediately prior to activation.
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Upon my return to the Circle, I was immediately faced with one of my worst fears: religion.

Divine magic was a funny brand of magic that didn’t apply to any of the standard rules of the land. So it was stunning when Verx, the High Priest of the Ra’nulian religion and current caretaker of the Circle, suggested to help me find my way by accompanying me into the forest of my mind.

“Why do you think, after so many decades, that it is still burning?” Verx asked me.

We stood in the ruined forests of my mind that represented all the memories that were now burned away. We watched the northern horizon as fire still roared throughout the ruins of the ancient Kor’ethel city.

“Strong foundations in our lives are nearly impossible to completely eradicate,” Verx answered his own question. “You were born there. Your parents were born there. Do you remember their names?”

I looked sadly into the distance at the burning city.

“Cassandra and Sadcker Vacca,” Verx said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “We were very close in Kor’ethel.”

My focus was transfixed on one of the many green turrets in the ruins. “I remember... Lesacha Vacca,” I said slowly.

“Of course. Your Aunt Lesacha was a strong foundation in your life, do you remember why?” Verx asked.

I shook my head.

“Your mother, Cassandra was her name, could not feed you for the first months of your life. Her sister, and my wife, Lesacha Vacca, gladly took up the responsibility to feed you along with our own baby boy, who was born at the same moment as you. Do you recall the names of your cousins?” Verx explained and asked again.

Two pairs of yellow eyes dashed through the windows of the green turret that I focused on.

“Chee,” was all I said in reply.

Verx lifted his hand from my shoulder. “Yes, Cheetrixana, my daughter. You two were inseparable. Air and Water: the feel-good tale of love from the moment she was born.”

“Air and Water?” I asked as a breeze churned the air in my mind forest.

“Try to remember, nephew,” Verx implored. “Your signs in the old church of Ra’nul, back when Kor’ethel still practiced freedom of worship. The griffin of the air claimed you as your inner spirit animal. Cheetrixana was claimed by the serpent of the water. Oh how your father tried unsuccessfully to introduce you to other air elementals, but you were so stubborn against your father, just like my own sons and your other cousins. Do you remember them?”

One of the pair of yellow eyes stopped moving and stared out at me from the highest window of the turret. I felt an icy cold breeze waft the boy’s name along the wind from the north.

“Garrick,” I said aloud.

A golden-haired wolf, grazing in the charred ruins of the forest, howled another name into the wind.

“Jetorix,” I spoke softly.

The sea carried yet another name on its sapphire waves.

“Dall,” I frowned subconsciously.

The Fire of ancient Kor’ethel spelled out a pair of names into the
shadows.

“Dex and Reggenix,” I spoke timidly.

I felt as a child again running up a spiral staircase in a green turret with white blond hair blowing my eyes. I held hands with another very thin elven girl with white blond hair cut similar to my own.

“They’ll never catch me!” Another little boy’s voice called down from a higher step in the turret.

As the girl and I ran up the icy cold, damp stairs, I could hear dying screams from below. Towards the top of the turret, just before breaching the topmost level, we ran head-on into a younger version of a man I now knew and loathed: Antron Caldwell.

“Yes now you’re remembering!” Antron said in the voice of Verx before kicking us down the stairs.

Antron pursued us silently back down the turret as we tumbled, kicking us with more force each time that he got close enough. I felt a hand grab me by the shirt and then my consciousness was returned to a safe distance away in the burned forest looking at the flaming ruins of ancient Kor’ethel with Verx at my side.

I curled my fists in anger, oblivious to the dark mass that I summoned above my head. My fists transformed into the talons of an eagle. The dark mass latched its tentacles onto my skull.

I bent down, planted my knees and my new talons on the ground. Pain shot through my face as my nose and mouth elongated into a beak and feathers sprouted from the pores of my face and neck. My lower body grew larger, ripping through my clothes. My feet were heavy lion paws. I wanted to scream in agony as a lion’s tail sprouted from my back side. Then more pain as two wings burst from my shoulder blades, shredding the remaining bits of clothing still clinging to my body.

Verx jumped on my back and shouted, “Let’s remove the fire that destroys your memories!”

I kicked off the ground with my feet, leaving a trail of dark shadow in my wake, and flapped my wings. I soared with a vengeance over the burned forest toward the great flames.

Verx inhaled the fire from below into his lungs while I steered him to the sight of the humans overrunning the most ancient elven city with weapons of steel. Verx exhaled the fire back at direct shots upon the human forces. I changed course from the sea straight at the turret where Antron Caldwell stood blocking the final doorway to the top.

“Not yet!” Verx yelled.

Verx grabbed me by the feathers on my back and veered us into a nosedive straight for the ground.

“Welcome back, Dark Griffin,” Verx said from his throne chair made of orange and yellow fire.

I was back to my normal body in the only visible cottage spared from destruction at the Circle. My fists were still balled with anger rising in my chest. Bethani Valkaelin grinned up at Verx while massaging his bare feet.

“There is a time for vengeance when Korth to all,” Verx said. Verx looked upon his assembled cult of followers. He smiled at the dwarf girl named Luna and Mana and spoke sweetly, “Fire Wolf.”

Then he chuckled at the sight of the former human ship captain Ludwin Obsul, who wore two griffin’s talons as earrings attached to gold-plated artificial, comically large pointed ears beneath a gold sailor’s hat, and said “Captain Talons”.

Verx’s eyes lowered to the twisted elven child Mormerilon, dressed exactly like me by my side in dark wooden armor. “Demon's Savior.”

His eyes then shifted with pride upon his middle child Jetorix Felagund, who stood on his hind legs as a bipedal golden-haired wolf frowning at the ground.

“And the truest son of virtue… Silent Shadow. Korth to all. Time to bear the holy griffin’s talon and let the blood flow a river for the High Lord.”

The Inauguration of Chancellor Otyak Zopel, perspective unknown.
Note: Retrieved from a Garrick tampering with the Lighthouse immediately prior to activation.
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Narianna Zopel held the fin of a dolphin as she glided along underneath the waters around the Prolix City port. The waters were smooth and full of wildlife again after the boats commissioned by Brendan Caldwell sailed off into uncharted waters some weeks ago.

She felt at ease swimming along with the majestic dolphins. Dolphins needed air just as much as she did, so they made perfect underwater companions as they came to the surface every now and then to breath. When she came up for air with her dolphin companion on this day at high noon, Narianna noticed a crowd of people swarming around the large bank
tower in Prolix City. She waved her hand farewell into the water like a flipper to the dolphin and then stroked towards the shore.

She grabbed hold of a metal ladder that extended from the stone dock into the water and pulled herself up. Dripping wet and wearing nothing but a leather bikini bottom, Narianna jumped the last rung of the ladder up onto the stone pavement. Her cousin and husband Rayyan Zopel stood with a black cloak draped over the railing.

She smiled, then leaned forward to give him a kiss without dripping water onto his fine red velvet suit. He returned the kiss and then helped Narianna into the black cloak to clothe herself.

“The inauguration is about to start outside the bank,” Rayyan said in his deep voice.

Narianna grinned. “Let’s not keep the people waiting for their new first family.”

The pair of married cousins strolled hand-in-hand up a flight of stairs to the upper tier of the docks, then through a narrow alleyway between the stone port buildings, turned left down the cobble stone street, and finally walked into the edge of the crowd gathered in front of the white marble steps of the imposing marble tower that held the wealth of Prolix City. The crowd talked excitedly amongst each other in thousands of individual conversations ranging in topics from the political to the recent death of Chancellor Yancy.

“This is probably the last of our welfare coins for a long time,” a fish-smelling young man jingled a small sack as he spoke to his wife.

“I hope somehow they can reach word out to Robbie to come home from the voyage,” an elderly woman whispered up into the ear of her adult son.

“’Eard Yancy killed hisself in his sleep,” a drunken man said coming behind Narianna.

Another man to Narianna’s side cocked his head back to the drunken man and replied, “That’s not even possible. He would have had to be awake to kill himself.”

“Tis true!” the drunken man proclaimed a little too loudly. “Bartender Barnaby witnessed it hisself.”

Rayyan raised an eyebrow at the drunk. “Right... I’m sure he did.” He smiled to Narianna, kissed her hand, then held it in his own hand while waiting patiently for the crowd to quiet down for the ceremonies to begin.

A short man in a brown suit with a turquoise shirt-tie combo walked out of the cast iron bank doors carrying a wooden podium to the center of the top marble step.

Four women and one man, each dressed in identical scarlet robes, next followed out of the bank tower and formed a horizontal line to the crowd’s right of the podium.

Narianna recognized the people in the scarlet robes as the members of the High Council representing the “Collective Of Liability & Banks”, a group formed by the owners of the five minor banks that swore to protect the interests of the High Bank of Prolix City. She petitioned the former Chancellor Yancy frequently to dissolve their five votes on the High Council into one vote in honor of the hatred that her father Sarok had for them when he was in the Chancellor’s office and this collective repeatedly blocked his financial reforms. But Yancy Caldwell was dead now and fairness was sure to rise in his place in Prolix City.

Next, a balding man with grey worn skin in his 40s walked out of the bank with a folded piece of cloth under his arm to the podium followed by enamored applause of the crowd. Here was Goshenta Daskalin, the Councilor for Education & the Advancement of Technology. He stood at the podium in a ceremonial role as the eldest grandson of the founder Edward Prolix via Sara Prolix’s first marriage to a lowborn, nobody scientist.

Somewhere in the crowd, Narianna knew, the man’s younger half-brother Cain Prolix was fuming with his minions of burgundy-clad knights that he was not given the chance to be up at that podium. Goshenta was the real “Prince of Prolix City” if ever there was one. His story was one of hard work and morals to climb the social ladder to his own personal success as well the success of the city at large.

As the applause from the crowd died down, Goshenta placed the cloth onto the podium and cleared his voice to speak loudly.

“Greetings to all those gathered and to all the residents of Prolix City,” Goshenta began. “It is with great humility that I bring the results of our fine democratic system as the final votes were tallied last evening.”

There was a surge of applause from all around the crowd except Rayyan and Narianna.

Goshenta waited several minutes for the cheers and claps to diminish
slightly and continued, “First, it is with a heavy heart that I must ask for a moment of silence to honor the passing of Chancellor Yancy Caldwell in his sleep at the tender age of 27.”

Goshenta and the five people on the highest step leading to the bank tower bowed their heads while the crowd remained silent for a solid minute.

“Thank you all,” Goshenta said when the minute was passed. “Now onto the order of business that gives me great pleasure... to announce... with an astounding 26,742 vote majority... the new Chancellor of Prolix City ... will be ...”

Narianna clutched Rayyan’s hand tighter as she hung onto Goshenta’s words with baited breath. The cast iron doors of the bank tower opened with a tall shadowy figure standing in the doorway.

“Otyak Zopel!” Goshenta shouted to the crowd.

More than half of the crowd groaned quietly at the announcement. Narianna stomped her foot and applauded enthusiastically while Rayyan cheered and whistled with the drunk soldiers to his right. The tall shadowy figure in the doorway of the bank tower stepped
backwards into the shadows.

Narianna’s father Otyak Zopel, a slim man in his 40s with jet black hair neatly combed back across his scalp, walked confidently to the podium while dressed in a ceremonial emerald green robe lined with a scarlet silk interior with silver stitchings and a silver five-pointed star pinned above his top right breast.

Goshenta turned to face Otyak as they together draped the cloth over the whole of the podium so that the crowd could see the letters “K.O.L.B.” spelled out in fancy cursive font enshrined in a five-pointed star upon the cloth.

Goshenta smiled proudly and said so all could hear, “Sir Otyak Zopel, are you prepared to swear your loyalty to the welfare of the human people before all of Prolix City today?”

“I am,” Otyak returned the smile and placed both hands softly on top of the clothed podium so that the crowd could see.

“Do you swea—,” Goshenta began.

Otyak quickly interrupted and began his own oath. “I do so swear fealty to the welfare of all pure-blooded and half-blooded humans in Prolix City and throughout the entire land of Korth. I do so swear to protect all of these people from sorcery and superstition with the full power of Prolixian Democracy. I do so swear to continue the work left behind of the founder
Edward Prolix in securing a safe haven for all of mankind. And finally, I do so swear that my life is entirely and freely given to the advancement of humans everywhere.”

If Goshenta was perturbed at being cut off, he didn’t show it. He smiled graciously and shouted to the crowd, “The chosen servant leader for the human race... Chancellor Otyak Zopel... is duly accepted to continue the noble task of my grandfather.”

As Goshenta’s words trailed off, the entire crowd now, even those that were groaning in silence, cheered exuberantly for the new chancellor. None were happier than Narianna and her cousin-husband Rayyan. Narianna leaned closer to Rayyan’s cheek and planted a kiss upon it before whispering softly, “My father’s legacy is restored. Thank you.”