Once, very long ago, a traveler walked a lonely road, lost and afraid. Though the path seemed to stretch on forever, they could not say where it took them, nor were they entirely certain of where they hoped it might go. All they knew was that they could not stay where they had begun.

The manuscript that follows is taken from but a single source, stored at Windsong Abbey. It is impossible to verify the authorship of “Fafnheir’s Lament”; the book in which it is contained also includes a bestiary and various tales of monster-hunting. If authentic, the lament—written in Skald—must have been copied and recopied many times over its ten-thousand-year history, potentially introducing scribal errors. Translation was further complicated when a fire broke out at the abbey centuries ago; an anonymous librarian saved the book, but not before the manuscript was singed along one edge. The damage was not extensive, but enough to make many passages difficult to read and some phrases entirely indecipherable. The edition presented here represents the best efforts of the abbey’s staff.

In the Trophy Room of Shyka the Many, among the infinite treasures that the Eldest has plucked from time, there sits a plinth of banded bone and gold.

It took less than a day for the first seven worlds to end.

We can learn much from the wisdom of the divine, but we can learn as much from their actions. The truly faithful understand that not even the gods themselves are infallible, and that words and promises do not always suffice. Those among us who see no fault in the gods are worse than zealots, worse than puppets. They taint the very idea of faith with their blind devotion. When a god makes a mistake, the results can be disastrous if their faithful do not understand the error. If they take that error as gospel, they are doomed to repeat the error and compound upon it again and again. And in so doing make the initial misstep into something more. In the worst of cases, these repeated mistakes can transcend to become the new order, and not even the gods themselves can turn them back.

“Reality is born. Reality must die. So somewhere in between must dwell both you and I.”