Far below Myrdin's palace, Anwill ruminated over another portion of ancient texts hidden within the deepest corners of the Antiquary, while the mana-lantern hanging on the nearby pillar grew nearly as tired as he was.
There has to be something hidden in these texts that will show us how best to prepare for the war that's coming. Thoma and the others already told us everything they'd found in Narin, but even that was still just a rough summary of the Great Partition, he thought.
After idly tracing his thumb along the grooves of a small cubic artifact with mathematical designs on its faces, he set it aside, leaned back in his chair, and sighed as he rubbed his eyes. "This type of work is why scholars are often held in high regard for their wits, because I swear I'm losing mine," he groaned to no one in particular.
Forcing himself to blink a few more times to clear his eyesight, he pulled another scroll from the stack to his right and laid it out before him. His eyes lazily traced along the text as they loosely searched for any words that might provide him with new information.
Finding nothing in that scroll as well, he rolled it back up and set it in the stack of ones he had already finished, which was nearly five times the size of the one he had pulled it from. "On to the next one," he muttered tiredly. "Are you sure you're alright, Anwill?" Aurae's voice came from behind him softly, causing him to close his eyes and sigh.
"I am, Aurae. I promise I'm doing well. I am merely making light of the situation," he said with a tired smile, his eyes showing visible dark rings on the skin around them, leading her to chuckle and shake her head. "Of course. Far be it from me to judge the mental faculties of my former Master Synner," she said, moving to the far side of the table and pulling up a chair.
"Please, you don't have to subject yourself to digging through these with me. I'm nearly finished and was getting ready to turn in for the night after this next one," he said, holding up a hand to stop her. She curled an eyebrow in curiosity, then chuckled and shook her head.
"Then I will take over for you. Elhael's busy with our defense's inspections, as he has been for the past week, and I don't know how many more pieces of equipment I can count," she said playfully, to which he chuckled in response.
"And so you've come here to sit in the dark with me? My, my! What an honor," he said, prompting her to smack his wrist in playful jest. "I was not aware you wielded sarcasm as well as you can a blade," she said, pulling one of the scrolls from the stack. "Spend enough time with Bernar and Gwili, and you'll learn to do the same," he chuckled, loosely eyeing the next scroll.
"I have. Although I will admit, it was fun having all of them around for a while. It made the palace so much more lively," she chuckled as she undid the string wrapped around the scroll. "Even including Irun's passes at Lisai?" Anwill half-chuckled with a raised brow as he grabbed his cup of tea.
"I don't mind those two together. I think it is a good thing that he's turned his life around, particularly after Taegin told me of his troubled past, but I do wonder what their children would look like," she replied idly, prompting him to turn aside and hold back from spraying tea all over the scrolls.
"I didn't know they had gotten that far, yet," Anwil admitted, prompting her to shrug. "They have yet to even spend time alone together, but from the look in her eyes when she talks about him, I can tell she likes him," she replied with a subtle grin.
There was a pause in their conversation, highlighted by the two of them falling deep into focus nearly simultaneously.
"Wait a minute. What is this doing here?" Anwill began, leaning forward in his seat and tracing his finger along a sentence starting at the base of one of the angled lines. "This one is talking about the history of… Codrean? Why would this be here in Myrdin?" he asked, curling an eyebrow at her.
"I-I think it might have something to do with this," she said, turning the scroll around and placing her finger along a passage positioned at the base of another line.
That design looks incomplete as well. Maybe if I do this… he trailed off, gingerly taking the scroll from her and placing it beside his own.
He adjusted the height of the scroll to match his own, revealing that they were, through some twist of fate, connected to each other. The two looked at each other with puzzled expressions, shifting their gaze to the remaining scrolls. "I think we need more room," Anwill suggested, getting a nod from Aurae in return.
Scroll after scroll, they unraveled each one, revealing more of the strange markings along the edges, and aligned them with the others. By the end, they had a total of eight scrolls, with each line forming its own octagonal ring, and a small circular part in the center connected them all.
"Eight scrolls, eight of these… rings," Anwill said, a shadow and a doubt beginning to creep into his tone. He took a step back to admire his handiwork more completely, noticing Aurae idly fiddling with the ring she wore on her left hand, noticing that a portion of it seemed to match the general shape laid out before him.
It can't be. Is this the true form of the Benevolent Ring? No, that should be impossible… he trailed off, taking another gander at the ring.
Aurae, of course, noticed his gaze fixated on her hand. "Y-You can't be serious," she said, a look of despair growing on her features. "I'm not sure, but there is no other object in Kavrass that I can think of that even remotely matches this… whatever this is," he said with a confused gesture aimed at the rings.
I was always told to never let this ring leave my grasp, though I suppose I don't have much of a choice now, Aurae thought, closing her eyes in acceptance as she slid the ring from her finger.
Anwill gingerly took it from her and examined it carefully, holding it close to his face to align the ring's shape with the strange design created by compiling the scrolls. After a few heartbeats, his eyes widened to their maximum capacity.
"I-It's a perfect match," he said, his voice hardly louder than a whisper, causing Aurae to let out a heavy breath. "Liagon's alternate," she began, snapping Anwill out of his musings. "What?" he asked breathlessly.
"Liagon's alternate, that thing that attacked us. It must have come here for the Benevolent Ring. That's why it attacked Myrdin and came straight toward the palace, but it doesn't explain what it could have wanted with it," she continued, her fine brows furrowing in pensive concentration.
"Was there anything particular that you remember about it?" Anwill asked after a few moments of consideration. "Nothing I can recall at present. The only thing I know to be a fact is that due to my being only half-dragon, I am unable to unleash its full potential," she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose tiredly.
"If it came for the ring, and it was potentially under Mideia's control, or perhaps even that of one of his subordinates, it would stand to reason that they would try again," Anwill began, earning him Aurae's full attention.
"However, that doesn't explain why it wanted it to begin with. What could it possibly want with a ring that no one native to this realm would be able to use to its fullest capacity?" he asked, allowing his words to hang for a moment, considering a wide range of possibilities.
Father, what have you done? Aurae asked herself silently.
"Well, what do the passages say? There must be some connection to the ring's properties," she suggested for lack of anything better to add, as Anwill handed her back the ring. He grabbed the lantern from the pillar and brought it close, noticing the smallest flicker of pure blue mana racing along the design.
The two of them looked at each other with genuine concern written on their faces.
"D-Did you see that? It looks like it responded to the mana from the lantern," Aurae said, prompting Anwill to draw the lantern closer. As he did so, the rings lit up more solidly this time, revealing a hidden layer of text within the sentence, each apex of the octagonal rings aligned with.
"There's writing here, but it's in a form of Caegweni I'm unfamiliar with. Would you mind?" Anwill asked, gesturing for Aurae to move closer. "Of course," she said, kneeling down beside him, taking a moment to find where the text began.