Healing Dungeon

Elisa looked at Avan expectantly.

When she saw his eyes, which were also wide with excitement, she bounced up and down slightly and rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet.

When he became aware of the suddenly very interested audience of Yue, Eve and their party members, he cleared his throat in his right fist and pointed his eyes from Elisa to the guild building to let her know that they should talk about it somewhere else.

The agitated archivist noticed his implication with wide eyes and blushed slightly as she looked around with her shoulders hunched. "It happened again...!" She whispered in shame and shock as she realized that in her euphoria she had once again lost sight of her surroundings.

Without turning back to Avan, she grabbed his left hand with her left and pulled him behind her towards the metal back door of the guild hall, which had fallen shut again.

With an apologetic look towards Eve and a "Thanks for the training!" in her direction, he looked around at the audience and gave Yue a sideways glance. A quick jerk in the direction of Elisa and then to the guild house was enough for the fox girl to understand that she was welcome to follow.

Yue apologetically said goodbye to Seff, Milan, and Dunkin and got up to follow Avan, who had just been pulled through the door.

Elisa, now with Avan and Yue in tow, stormed down the long hallway, into the guild hall, and up to the second floor to unlock her own office, which appeared to be next door to her apartment, in one swift movement.

She let go of his hand again and rushed to her desk, which was centered in the room, crowded and covered with mounds and stacks of books.

The room itself, as he stood in her work area for the first time, looking around with interest as the fox girl moved past him, was spacious and gave off a homey aura.

The room was about the size of four noble carriages without harnesses, and the walls were lined with bookshelves stuffed to the three-meter-high ceiling with books and scrolls of all kinds. On both sides of the room was a small ladder on a metal rail, so that it could be moved and all the manuscripts stored higher up could be reached.

In the background, there was an ornate wall covered with various runes, with three large glass windows placed centrally, which offered the same view over the backyard and the western part of the city with the approaching sunset. Far back, behind the walls of Cyntha, Avan could even see a huge mass of water, which he had never noticed before, and only now presented itself properly through the reflection of the sunset. The river, he guessed, was certainly fifty or even a hundred meters wide and flowed from the north down to the south. From the few books he had read in the library of the Order of Healers, he knew that this must be the River of Talamar. It flowed from the north of the continent to the center, and then split there, flowing partly to the southwest and partly to the southeast, dividing Eos into three almost equal pieces.

He took his eyes off the breathtaking sunset on the horizon and looked around the room again. To the left, directly next to him, a door led into an unknown neighboring room, while on the right side, between the bookshelves, another ornate wooden door led out of the room to the right. Both doors were closed, which did not allow him a deeper look into the neighboring rooms.

Elisa, meanwhile, had stepped up to her huge, three-meter-long, barely recognizable desk and pulled an open book out from behind one of the many stacks of books to wave enthusiastically at the two.

Both stepped closer and recognized a picture book with a dark red leather cover, which was entwined with gold and silver ornaments and threads.

"This!" The young researcher, beaming with joy, explained. "Is a collection of an unknown author, who hundreds or even thousands of years ago had managed to capture and record all the ancient gods and goddesses in one volume!"

She waved the open collection of images of various people in various poses back and forth in front of them.

And with a clap she shifted the book with a short movement onto a side table, which Avan had not noticed at the beginning, which stood on the wall to the right of the door and very much resembled the round little table in her bedroom.

"This," she pointed to a book page with her right index finger while resting her left palm on the only tidy palm in the entire room, "is Akkalon!"

Elisa stood with her right shoulder tilted back diagonally in front of the little table and looked at him enthusiastically, having completely forgotten about the fox girl.

Eager to see what she would show him now, Avan walked up to the book next to Yue and looked at the page and the picture.

The picture, with the excited archivist's index finger resting on its lower edge, showed a man in his mid-thirties in black and white, leaning on a gnarled white staff with a sphere resting on its tip.

A sphere that immediately caught Avan's eyes and took his breath away for a moment when he saw the smooth yet ornate round globe so well depicted in front of him.

With a quick sideways glance to Elisa on the left and then to Yue on his right, he was able to make sure that no one had noticed his conspicuous reaction, because both were staring spellbound at the almost mesmerizing image.

Damn it! That is EXACTLY the same sphere that had forced the dungeon class on me! he quietly conjectured to himself, cursing inwardly at the coincidence, as he heard the brash researcher next to him speak.

"And that's Akkalon, Avan!" She explained with a vehement tap of her index finger on the bottom of the image, where the name "ACKALON" was actually written.

"Akkalon was known then as the God of Creation." She continued as her finger traced along the subtitle. "It's best if you read it for yourself.... Because it's just amazing! You found a dungeon that bears the name of the God of Creation! Just imagine that coincidence and the sheer significance of it all!" She waved both hands wildly in the air and then ran her left hand over her brown straight hair in excitement.

Avan took a step closer to the book and pointed with his right hand first at Elisa and then at the wooden chair that stood in front of the small table. "May I sit down?" He asked the obvious question, as the young woman, bursting with excitement, continued to stand in front of the chair, blocking it.

"Oh, yeah! Sure." She apologized with slightly rosy cheeks and took a step to the left so he could pull out the chair and sit down.

Yue placed herself behind his back on the right and looked tensely over his right shoulder to read along as well.

Avan began to read quietly to himself. "Akkalon, also known as the god of creation, was said thousands of years ago to be the creator of all sentient beings, or at least the first generation of all known races and beings found on Aorus and all seven continents."

He whistled softly in appreciation as he was tied up right at the first paragraph.

"Akkalon was also one of two gods who had been called the father of the gods, while his wife Exitia was called the other side of the coin and the goddess of destruction as well as the mother of the gods. Both ruled in unity and while one created, everything had to end at some point, and the goddess ended the cycle again. Life and death. Creation and destruction. Light and shadow. Good and evil. Knowledge and oblivion. Reincarnation and excarnation." he read the next paragraph spellbound and nodded slightly to himself, because what was written here painted a good picture in his mind's eye and indicated a closed circle. On the subject of reincarnation, he became particularly alert and all sorts of questions about his arrival in this world and the gods in general, including his home world, shot through his head at the speed of light.

Moving on to the next section with his index finger, he continued while questioning himself and his belief in gods and supernatural beings.

"Akkalon, as it was told today at the time of my composition of this work, was also the father of dungeons, as they are sometimes seen in the wilderness or near villages or larger settlements. Caves and supernatural structures in which creatures and things are created to give the various races on Aorus a chance to evolve and ascend. A haven of treasure, but also of death for the inexperienced or unwary adventurer. Places of wonder, where the unprecedented is always encountered, and the newest and most bizarre creatures are always seen."

"Places where creation seems to be the order of the day anew. A creation which was attributed to Akkalon."

"The image I am depicting here comes from a ruin that had borne the name of the god of creation. The dungeon itself had been abandoned and apparently subjected to destruction of inexplicable proportions. The crater, which extended as far as the eye could see, had exposed spaces in which parts of various paintings and stone sculptures could be found. In such a crater one found the picture of this man and the engraved name in golden letters over it stand. Only at the sight itself, so it was told to me by trusting contacts, had triggered headaches and dizziness with the viewers, especially the represented artifact, which is to be seen here in the form of a staff. The young archologist, who had copied this picture here, had been found afterwards, according to reports, only drooling and babbling to herself, with her completed drawing at her feet. I still thank all the gods, known and unknown, for making this picture possible, for otherwise I could not have completed this manuscript and collection of gods!"

By the time Avan reached the end of this section, he could picture in his mind's eye why the image might have driven the artist mad. Even he felt a kind of chill goosebumps all over his body when he looked at this drawing, which had only been copied, even though something was pulling at him, as if something wanted to call him to it.

Slightly worried, he moved his finger to the next line and tried to banish the image of the supposed god at the top of the page from his thoughts for the time being.

"After Akkalon tired of creating Aorus, he retired with his wife to create other worlds and leave them to their natural course. Neither Exitia nor Akkalon was said to interfere in the affairs of mortals and their worlds. Both did their part and then left the worlds to their free will to do as the creatures pleased. With the seed of creation and the seed of destruction, the primordial gods ensured that both parts of their being were present in each creature and would emerge according to their traits.

After a few centuries or millennia, my fellow researchers and I disagree on this, new gods emerged covering different aspects of the mortals."

"There were various theories about the appearance of new gods and god-beings, none of which, of course, could be proven or disproven by the time this book was written."

"For one thing, legends and myths arose that Akkalon and Exitia had longed for companionship after thousands or millions of years, and released children into their worlds to assist them in their work, instilling each of their children with a meaning and purpose which the child would then embody."

"On the other hand, a small but religious group of healers vehemently asserted that the emergence of new gods was our own doing, since we carried the seeds of creation within us and our very belief in them produced new gods. And this belief and lack of explanations for many things finally resulted in the emergence of gods and goddesses, all of which embodied the aspect of the correspondingly incomprehensible. This explanation met with great resistance from many experts and researchers, since all opponents of this theory claimed that we would then be gods ourselves and must have already created much more."

"Beside these two theses, which had held themselves most stubbornly through the times, there were still many smaller ones. Such as that gods were only figments of the mind and not real, or that gods were only overpowering mortals who merely pretended to be gods."

"I myself, at the present time, do not believe in any of the theories until they have been proven. And even if many of the theories turn out to be difficult to prove, I am a person of research and science!"

Shaking his head and reaching the end of the sparsely written page, Avan looked up and found himself face to face with a confused Yue over his right shoulder, wiggling her fox ears and still trying to understand what to make of the content.

He turned his head away from her and looked to his left at Elisa, who was looking at him in anticipation of his reaction.