Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“The Creator, who lies dead and dreaming…has dreams for us all. And…and when It wakes, It will…”

“There, there, that’s enough,” said Inspector Bryar. “You’re shaking like a leaf, Sister Ethne! An inspector from the Sepulcher is no reason to tremble so.”

“M-my…m-my apologies, Inspector,” said Ethne with a deep curtsey. Her mask, fine-featured and impassive, did not match the quailing tone issuing from it.

“We are not used to our ceremonies being attended by outsiders, I’m afraid,” said Father Yser. He spread his hands in an apologetic way, his fingers doing what his scarred visage could not.

“Of course, I understand completely,” said Bryar with a gentle laugh. “Half the time, I forget the liturgy myself whenever I’m called to recite it.”

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“Is it too much to ask where we’re going?” Squan lisped, his fattened lip making him dribble as he talked.

“Harrowshire,” I said.

“Harrowshire? I ain’t been there in years. Ain’t exactly popular there neither. Makes Anairo look like a royal harem.”

“Well,” I spat, “you’re going back. And you’re gonna die there.”

“Oh,” said Squan. “I see. Well, all right then.”

I turned around, craning my neck up to look in his big dumb face. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

“What’s what supposed to mean?” the orc said. “Ain’t mumbling. I said okay.”

“You don’t want to know why I’m bringing you there?” I shouted, somewhat unwisely, as Anairo is all ears for weakness.

“Can’t say as I do. You’ve got your reasons, but I ain’t got a say in ’em.”

“Even if you die?” I said.

“Well, if you really wanted me dead, I’d be dead.” Squan said with a shrug. “If I die when we get where we’re going, that means I get to live for now. Ain’t that a gift? I’ll take it.”

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There wasn’t any evidence that Sqan killed the bartender, but everyone in town assumed he did just because he was an orc. As sheriff, Dad refused to give him over to a lynch mob and let him out a back door.

So the mob lynched Dad instead. I guess they weren’t picky about which innocent person they strung up.

This meant that me and the twins all got branded as outcasts and shunned too, since we were orc lovers and “an orc killed my grandpappy” and what have you. Now we half-folk are pretty close-knit with big families. Everybody’s related to everybody. It didn’t mean much with Dad when his fifth and sixth cousins were doing their thing, but when it came to taking us in or even just taking our money, it was a big fat no.

The twins took it rough. Last I heard they were working as muckrakers in Harrowshire, for somebody who wasn’t half-folk or who paid them a low enough wage to compensate for their “treason.” Me, I took it rougher. Now I work the ruins of Anairo.

It’s close enough to Harrowshire that most of the folk there look at me askance, and most of the shopkeepers won’t buy what I’m selling. But they’ll take my money, at least, and that means that whatever ingots with dead kings I can find deep below are good for them.

No one knows how deep Anairo goes, or how the tunnels are mostly still intact after a thousand years under the water table. Not even the people who supposedly built it, squatting on the ruins. But there’s money to be made, literally made, with a mold and a hammer and gold smelted centuries ago. I’m not the biggest or the toughest or the smartest, but I’m quick on my feet and canny as hell. I’ll make it work. I’ll buy back Dad’s good name. I might even find and kill Squan, who went into the ruins two years ago and never came out.

Or I’ll die trying.

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Each soul is a droplet, a point of mist. When its shell expires, it rises, unnoticed, and returns to the well. There is it absorbed, mixed, reborn. The mist that can be seen rising off of the well is that of souls outgoing and souls incoming.

The collected knowledge and experiences of the well are the energies that power the world within the crystal. Everything inside the impenetrable shell crafted by the Glazier springs from and returns to the well.

But this has not always been the case. Many times throughout the history of the crystal, beings have sought to redirect souls away from the well for their own purposes, or to use the well’s energies for their own desires.

Everyone knows the tale of Erdall, who created her own well in mockery of the true one and built a mighty empire on its back. They know the story of her destruction and annihilation–never to return to the well herself–just as fluently. Perhaps its equal is the tale of Revinger, who sought to harness the power of the well to pierce the crystal and free the world from its “prison.” It is not for those within the crystal to know what he found when the howling void beyond sucked him in.

Is the rise of the Denier and its followers a peer to Erdall and Revinger, the two great enemies of the well? This remains to be seen.

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