Inkway to Albreton

Chapter Eleven

"When I was an inkling," Enkaiein said in that voice veterans use to tell their grandchildren war stories, "The world was different. All these boundaries and kingdoms and castles did not exist and the world was luscious and inviting." A chuckle and he added, "At least that is how I felt when I was young and the world young with me. Ah, I am getting off topic. Back to what I was saying; Kingdom Albreton had not yet been established and neither had any other vast colonies sprung from the human population. At the time, your people were scattered about the land, in pockets and bands, huddling for warmth in the night and serving as prey to many a beastly thing."

Mythos remembered the first time Enkaiein told her this story. She remembered gulping rather loudly at the point he noted humanity as fodder for beasts and monsters. Somehow, that did not frighten nor disturb her anymore. She smoothed Prince Albert's bangs across his forehead with her fingertips as King Allard listened to Enkaiein's tale on the next bed over, stroking his beard in contemplation. At a mere glance Mythos could see the King's impatience. If she could speak, she might have informed the King that a creature like Enkaiein must not be rushed, lest he forget the point of the story and habitually start over from the beginning. Despite his restless visage, the King impressively said nothing of his current irritancy and remained atop the bed, statuesque and regal as he listened and held his tongue.

Enkaiein was continuing, "While no alliance as large as a kingdom had formed at that time, there were plenty of conglomerations of humans: small villages, groups of nomads and the like." Folding his wings half-way, some of Enkaiein's ink dripped from their tips onto the floor and slipped across the white stone in swirling patterns towards King Allard's feet. "It did not take long for the humans to adapt, to form larger and larger groups and to discover many things we beasts have known since the ageless times."

Before King Allard's eyes, the ink on the floor spread thin, curling itself into a moving image of three humans walking up a hill. That image molded into a village, where five humans and three children sat around a fire, seeming to laugh as the stark shadows molded their faces.

"Initially, this was inconsequential to my kind and the creatures with whom we associate. After all, the humans were not discovering anything inherently new. However," the image shifted to reveal one human standing up and leaving the fire, "You are the most curious beings, such ambitious things. When one of you discovered magic, he sought to find more. He journeyed, returned, and taught his kin what he had learned and they, in turn, taught the future generation. The pattern continues to this very day, and not just with humanity. This also was not seen as a problem for my people, as that craving for knowledge is something our species share. And so for a great many ages we ignored your growing populace."

Mythos recessed her stroking of Prince Albert's hair. Her ears perked and she expected King Allard's did too, for Enkaiein paused in the dramatic way narrators do in theatrical plays.

Once he was sure he captured everyone's attention, Enkaiein went on, "That is, until the wizards came." The spilling of ink on the floor shaped itself into a figure who carried a staff and whose presence was amplified by staggered, diagonal lines, rigidly straight against the grooves of the floor. "Magic is a curious thing," Enkaiein went on, "It resides within some creatures naturally and is simply absent in others. Humans do not have it, of course. And wizards are the humans who seek it, under the guise that they must use it to help their fellow man. The people they aide never question where the magic comes from." The image shifted again; this time a caricature of Enkaiein himself stood beside the wizard. "But we beasts know."

King Allard watched the ink fizzle as the wizard impaled Enkaiein's miniature self with the staff. The King's face wrinkled at the edges like cloth stretched too thin. The image shifted between forms so fluidly, so seamlessly, as the miniature Enkaiein shifted into a nymph, and then a dragon, and after that a being covered in looming eyes that King Allard had never seen before. All of them, the large and the small, the grotesque and the beautiful, died by the wizard's staff. And each one of them left something of themselves behind, an object that the wizard would collect and pocket deep in his robes before he faced the next creature.