Eternal Beasts

The Primary Dictum

Where, Jared sighing with releasing tension, it fit exactly. Then he felt a shiver of excitement when, with a soft, muffled 'click', a slab about five centimeters from the edge of the box on all sides and five centimeters deep, sank about a centimeter before it slid to the right with a soft hiss, light exploding out from the interior. Squinting against the fountain of light, Jared carefully peered over the edge, having initially jerked back to avoid being caught in a possible sprung booby trap. With another soft click, the lid stopped sliding, now projecting out from the right end of the box like a shelf, the ring still in its surface.

Nodding in mute satisfaction, Jared narrowed his eyes to look through the light at what the box contained. And nearly whistled in astonishment to find, nestled in a creamy white velvet to keep them from the glowing sides of the box, were ten thick books, one for each of the symbols that had etched into the box's lid, bound in white leather with gold lettering. And while he didn't recognize the language that marked the books' spines, he did recognize two of the symbols that were on every book.

One was the universal symbol for the Eternal Beasts, a spoked wheel. The other was an image he had only ever seen in the book's earliest chapters that talked about the Second War of Balance. An image that represented a fabled resource by the very first riders of the Eternal Beasts, one supposedly lost at the end of the war with the Betrayal.

"The Primary Dictum!" he breathed in disbelief.

The supposed rules and codices behind befriending, training, and bonding with an Eternal Beast. And not just dragons and griffons, but every Beast. Even the leviathans were represented as a slug-like symbol in gold against white.

Blinking in both astonishment and uncertainty, Jared stared at the collection of books. To any who weren't riders or collected ancient books of knowledge, they meant nothing. To him, however, and his efforts to restore the griffon flights, the books were a treasure beyond measure. Within their pages, especially the one that focused on griffons, he would find every scrap of knowledge, lore, and magic to return the flights to their full potency that they experienced during the Second War of Balance. With their opponents the dragons reduced to being merely transports and flame throwers, his discovery gave them an even greater advantage.

Were they the true reason he was guided to this island? So he could rediscover the might and magic of the Primary Dictum??

"I think so!" he breathed before frowning. Why else would it have been included in the Daughter's vision? Now, he just had to figure out how to get this big stone box out of here without bringing the whole building down onto his head.

Curiously it came as he was doing another examination of the box's exterior. Like the surface, all the edges were etched with symbols, runes, and other imagery. But only the left end, opposite of where the top had slid to the side to become what Jared was starting to think was possibly a built-in reading desk, were the Beast symbols repeated. Maybe they were release points to detach the box from the wall?

A half step was enough to reach the extended lid. Tugging his ring free, Jared nodded in satisfaction when the lid slid back into place and resealed the box. He then took his ring and without hesitation pushed it into the griffon symbol on the edge. And almost laughed out loud when, instead of detaching from the wall, the box shrunk in an eyeblink to the size of a child's toy, his signet ring stuck to the end like some sort of bizarre handle.

Lifting the box, now weighing less than a loaf of nysim black bread, and had no connections to any of the surfaces it had rested against, he tugged the ring free and braced himself for the box to return to its former two meter by one meter by one meter dimensions. He smiled when it didn't, the left end now completely filled with the griffon symbol, now clearly the key to restoring the box to its original size.