Chapter Five Hundred and Twenty-Eight - Let the Record Show

    I was never someone who was super interested in like... rigorous study. I mean, at school, I''d do what I could to pass, but I was usually working just hard enough to get the grades I needed to keep my teachers happy.

    For the easier subjects, I got good grades, for the harder ones I''d need to study a heap more and I had usually passed without too much trouble.

    The truth was, though, that when it came to studying... it was kind of boring? Books should be exciting tales of friendship and adventure, not multiplication tables or dry records of dead people.

    All that to say that I was kind of impressed with how absorbed I became in the book Ophelia found for me.

    With storybook prose, Mister Celiga opened The Lost History of the Black Avatars by explaining his personal curiosity concerning these strange legends.

    Throughout my extensive explorations of ancient and premodern history, I have frequently encountered myths, legends, and folklore. As historians, it is crucial to recognize that such narratives evolve over time, often influenced by cultural shifts. However, certain stories exhibit remarkable continuity across centuries. One such tale captured my attention, and any discerning reader who has noted the title of this volume will already be aware of the subject to which I refer.

    Celiga went on for a few pages, but the start of the volume as a whole really just felt like... a friendly but open letter. Not one addressed to one person in particular, but rather one meant to be read by a lot of people. Or maybe it was like a lecture? But no, it was too... personal for that.

    I didn''t know what to make of it, but it was very interesting reading, even if Celiga was a bit academic in the way he wrote.

    The myths surrounding the Black Avatars initially struck me as highly localized. While they do feature a diverse array of characters spanning multiple species, this characteristic is not uncommon among other mythological traditions. What proved most surprising, however, was that as I began compiling accounts of these figures, I encountered remarkably similar narratives transcending national and cultural boundaries. While such widespread dissemination is not entirely unprecedented, it often suggests that the myth in question possesses more than a mere kernel of truth. Yet, as a rigorous scholar, I found that the more I uncovered about the legendary Black Avatars, the more my skepticism grew rather than diminished.

    Thus, after a period of relative academic respite, I enlisted several promising young scholars from the University of Deepmarsh and dispatched them on expeditions across the continent. Their journeys took them to Sylphfree, the Trenten Flats, the distant Crying Mountains, the neighboring Harpy Mountains, and westward to Mattergrove and the network of independent city-states scattered across the western lowlands. These students were entrusted with a range of scholarly tasks, but most pertinent to this volume was their charge to collect, transcribe, and analyze any myths, records, or relevant mention of the Black Avatars.

    Anyway, the Black Avatars dated back some ways. Celiga had little annotations in his text that pointed to pages further in with transcripts of the original documents. I turned over to those, but most were very hard to read, even with my translation magic, they were in a very archaic font? Is it still a font if it''s handwriting?

    There were a few more appearances of groups that may or may not have been the Black Avatar that Celiga and his associates found. He prefaced that a few of those were very suspicious, and that he was skeptical about them. Others seemed more reliable and detailed, but they were few and far between.

    If the mentions of the Avatars ended here, this volume would amount to little more than a pamphlet. However, the early accounts of this group—while admittedly speculative on my part—suggest the presence of a band of mixed-species travelers journeying across the continent for reasons unknown. Their only apparent commonalities were their black attire and the fact that most, if not all, appeared to be of at least second-tier strength or higher. While individuals of such power were not unheard of—especially in the more tumultuous periods of history when martial prowess was more frequently cultivated—their repeated appearances remain intriguing.

    Following a brief absence from recorded history, the Black Avatars reemerge, and it is at this point that their legend truly begins to take shape. The first legend of the Black Avatars. I was able to trace several accounts of the Black Avatars back to the northern reaches of the continent. These stories stand out as particularly noteworthy, as this region had little in the way of scholars at the time, so the events must''ve been significant to be worth so much ink.

    I sat up. That was super interesting. The first legend that survived to this day. The rest before that were just little footnotes and historical bits of data, but they weren''t really stories.

    This myth finds its origins in a pass known as the Walker''s Path—a valley nestled between two of the smaller peaks within the Harpy Mountain range. Today, this region is home to the thriving city of Walker''s Rest, but at the time of these events, it was little more than a small village, one that, according to the accounts, was beset by a subtle yet insidious adversary.

    It is the nature of this foe that elevates the tale from mere myth to a possible historical anecdote. If this were simply a story of a band of benevolent, powerful travelers vanquishing a cruel beast, it might be dismissed as little more than a local legend. However, the entity in question is often depicted not as a conventional monster, but as a figure—either a harpy or a human—capable of beguiling others into servitude. What makes this figure particularly intriguing is its recurring association with a greater, more nebulous entity. Many versions of the tale suggest that this foe was merely an extension or fragment of something far more monstrous, an entity frequently described as originating from an untended or otherwise unknown dungeon.

    I contend that it is the mystical nature of this adversary—rather than it simply being an exceptionally powerful native creature—that elevated the stories of the Black Avatars into legend. This figure is consistently described as not only strong and intelligent but also possessing a mastery of insidious and formidable magical abilities. It is this aspect, rather than mere physical prowess, that imbues the account with an almost supernatural quality, transforming it from a historical curiosity into a legend that endures across generations.

    A foe that lived in a dungeon?

    "Hey, guys, have you found anything about the enemy that the Black Avatars were fighting?" I asked. "Because... I think I have a feeling, and it''s not a good one."

    ***