Broken Glass - Taekook

39

The hours seem to pass without notification, as I slowly begin to go through the information the golem has found for me. The books I've been given are based on the ancient history of Eithyr, the formation of the kingdom, how the first monarchs slowly etched out an existence on the land they found themselves in, how the creatures came to be. 

According to Eithyrian legend, the world began as an empty void, until the golden river began to flow from an unknown source. It's said that the energy began to mould a universe, the very elements themselves, and began to watch the world come together into what it is today. The earth began to take shape,  and then the river slowly began to meld with it. It found a space underneath the land itself, underneath the oceans that began to appear on the surface, the seas that slowly filled with the growing days. 

Eventually, however, simple elements became too little for the golden river, and it began to long for life. Something to give its energy to, something to breathe with, something that would offer it company, for however long life could live for. And so the first plants were given existence, and the energy backed away once more. They evolved, and brought forth moving creatures: animals, birds, fungi, a great diversity of living things. 

And then, the legends say, the river blessed creatures and plants and everything in between with consciousness. It flowed up from under the ground, in a great golden stream, in an event known today as the Awakening. From that point forward, living beings did more than breathe, or whatever version of respiration they possessed. They felt, they truly lived. 

Evolution, it's said, did its part. Random chance led to the development of the different species we see today, random chance and the river's intervention and the choices of those lucky few with whom it interacted in those early days of consciousness. 

The first person to truly experience magic was a young wolf, who had discovered a small stream of gold within its natural territory. Recognising the stream as the golden river, or the Glowing Light, as it was known then, the wolf asked for a favour: could it be granted new abilities and skills, if it offered up its own life force in return? 

And so the balance was forged. 

As I'm reading through the story on a damaged scroll, there's part of me that wants to check. There's a part of me that wants to pull out the mirror and directly question the river, to find out if that is the truth. But I don't know if it would respond, and I know that I'm supposed to find this on my own if I can. If it wanted me to know these things already, I don't doubt that I would already know. But maybe knowledge has less value if I don't work for it. 

I don't know anymore. 

The golem then hands me another book from the pile, one which covers a more political history, of society. The first monarchs, the development of some kind of civilisation. It started small, with conscious groups of people coming together as they saw fit, sharing their abilities and forging connections with each other where they could in order to improve their lives. 

The language of Eithyrian became a way for groups of vastly different people to communicate. The golden river saw the society beginning to form, and chose to create it early on, in order to allow more connections to be forged. It was a slow process, but the kingdom of Eithyr slowly took shape underneath a variety of community leaders. They merged their territories until they had control over the entire kingdom as we know it today, including the Yarolian Plains. 

The book then references several names, several monarchs, each one with a reign of about fifty to eighty years depending on their species, as well as other factors. It covers the technical achievements made within each era, detailing who discovered each thing and sometimes even how.