New Schoolyear

Dear reader,

I am Henrieke and I'm the daughter of King Magnus II., king of Urgua. Currently I am sitting in a small wooden carriage and writing this for generations to come. I am on my way to my new school, it is deep out there in the grand forest of Umba that it will take another hour until we get there. Because of this some of the best guards are riding with me. Not that we fear a robery or someone kidnapping me, no its the creatures living in this forest. They say even the gods fear them. No one in their right mind would normally go out this far, but the school I will go to isn't any ordanary school, it is very special, even compared to those schools my father sent me to before. They are independant of Urgua but invite each year a few students to study there. They say that Amalia, the principal, selects students by their talents and until now all have later excelled at whatever they did. Some became great inventors, others adventured out into the depths of Umba and were among the few who returned.

The school is housed in an old fortress about 25 kilometres deep into the forest. So about a day by carriage. We started our journey early in the morning and will arrive in the afternoon. The occasional break to let the horses rest for a moment really stress out the guards. Whilst we are moving it is less likely to be attacked by something from the forest, but being stationary might allure creatures we'd rather keep away. At the second halt after a while the horses seemed restless, as if they sensed something we hadn't yet. We quickly packed up and moved on. Looking back out of the carriage I think I saw something between the trees, but they stand so dense it was to dark to make out more than a shadow.

You may now ask yourself why the school needed to be this secluded. The simple answer is privacy and defence. There has not been a king of Urgua stupid enough to try to send and army through the forests of Umba and likely there will never be.
Also the fortress' history is quite remarkable and I am pretty sure it is the only place where the gods can not listen in on you or punish you. Why? Let me tell you a little about my childhood. When I was younger, maybe ten or so, I once stumbled into a room deep down in the dungeons of the royal palace. I liked to go down there, mainly because it was forbidden, but also because no one else would go below the second level. There are at least five, and I have been in four. The entrence to the fifth is covered in rebble. I am not sure what is down there but it would take ages to get through. In the first layer my father houses prisoners, some of them any way. Below that are supplies, not just food but also weapons and such things. Both floors are quite clean, for a basement where rats live … The floors below are shut of by a big oak door that is normally locked. It isn't guarded because no one can get down there, the dungeons are deep down under the palace and embedded within granite. Breaking in through the lower levels would be silly. With I would assume around eight years old I stole the key to that door. Since no one ever went down it went unnoticed. On a visit in the city, when the guards left me alone for a while, as they were distracted by some kids making noises down the street, I asked a blacksmith to replicate the key. On the way back to the palace I picked it up and then put the original back. Since then I visited the dungeons any time my father had an important meeting he forbid me to attend to because I am a girl.
I often picked up some food on the second floor and once tried on some armour, just to regret it moments later, as it is quite impossible to put that on alone and made a hell of a noise that would have likely cought the guards attention if they were not ordered to the great hall before for the meeting. At such times only in the prisoners area guards will stay and the door to the way down will be locked. Thankfully it is the same key as the one I copied which opens it and most of the guards aren't actually very stoked about their jobs there, so they often just let me in. At first they questioned why I wanted to do that but later they just stopped caring, really that is the case with much of the staff - accept Rulf, he always ordered me back into my room in one of the towers of the palace, as a princess should not explore dungeons; especially not alone. He's one of the higher up guards and thinks that he is very important. At least he only was there not that often, since he likely had better things to do.
On the third floor there isn't much, well there is a lot of trash, broken things, a lot of dirt, and prisoner cells with dead bodies, well at that point mostly just skeletons. It smells weird down there and some things are really creapy. For example one of the former prisoners is missing its head. In another cell lies a skeleton of a person that must have been at least three metres tall. And engraved on some of the bars are weird symbols I couldn't read. In contrast to the third floor the fourth, when I first entered it - I needed some time to break the door open to it - seemed almost clean. There weren't even rats, which was nice. Also there were no skeletons of prisoners. There were no cells either. Just a few empty rooms. I am still not sure what was here before, especially since it only seemed like someone removed the furniture. Since the walls were not just blank stone but covered with wooden panelling I assume it had been important in some way. And there I found this room, behind one of the wooden panels - because I was curious what might have been there I knocked on them and one sounded hollow. That one I then tried to break open for a couple of days with no success, just to find a hidden button later on hidden in the wall itself. The panels have seems covered with more wood and where those seems connect there are small squares of wood decorating it. One of them was a button. I which I could say I found that by being very smart, but in reality at some point, exhausted from trying to break the wooden panelling of, I leaned against the wall and it clicked. A part of it slid to a side and I could enter the room behind. I am pretty sure there were more rooms down there, but I never tried to open them, as what I found here gave me more than enough to think about, even until now about 7 years later.

Behind the panelling was a room, much bigger than I thought it would be, its base shape was rectangular, but the wall I was facing coming in was slightly rounded. There were skulls of all kinds of creatures, including those of humans, stacked against the walls, building piles that got larger and larger to the back of the room. The floor was made out of heavy planks, the roof was tall, likely two or three stories, the walls had also wooden panelling, but these were decorated much more. There were scenes of war engraved in the panels. They showed armies fighting against a few human like beings that in some flew over the army, in others threw fire. Some of the people in those armies also seemed to be capable of magic, but to a far lesser extend. And many showed death, of people with pointy ears, which I know assume were elves, short people, likely dwarfs and so many other magical beings.
In the center of the room there were five podestals made from marble. The marble was formed to resemble trees on whichs crowns each one book lied. The left most was light blue, with fine silver embossments and symbols engraved in the heavy leather. Next to it a black book with heavy steal resembling a hammer on it. The one on the right was green, with golden pieces formed like leaves. Blue vains of glittering yarn were threaded through the leather like rivers. The one to the left of that was another dark, but not quite black book, it had a big golden flame outline around a similarly formed crystal in the middle. The crystal was glowing warmly and when I later got close to it it felt hot. The book in the very center was white, with a silver sword on it. All of the books emitted a faint glow, something very intriguing and warm, something that felt like home.
I am pretty sure I just stood there for a while taking in this view and then had to leave, so my father wouldn't notice my absence. I came back the next time I could and opened the books, curious to what was written inside them. Accept the very middle one I couldn't read them. They were all written with symbols I couldn't read. The center one though was in the tongue of our kindgom. The words sounded old, but I could understand them. Over the years I copied them all, all five of them. It took quite a while, and I am sure copying the ones I couldn't read I will have added some mistakes, but I didn't want to get these books out of there, it felt like they belonged in that room. And the center book at least has proven helpful in understanding the past of our kingdom.

The books of suffering

That is what they are called. Books of suffering. They are about how a few humans became gods and killed almost everyone.
This happened - I would guess about one and a half thousand years ago - and judging from the technologies described in the book I can read there hasn't been much change. There was a lot of cultural change though, mostly related to there being only humans now in Urgua and the gods strengthening their influence and position as the rulers of our world. They clearly wanted us humans to forget about magic and this has worked quite well. But now you might ask why these books are still there. That is also explained in the five books, I assume at least since the one in my language implies the others have similar content written in the languages of elves, dwarfs, dragons and forest spirits. So let me explain a bit why they exist in the first place.
At some point, the book doesn't say it more precisely, a hand full of human beings began to claim they were more powerful than any other mage has ever been. Claimed to be invincible, unkillable, undefeatable. They requested the human kings to respect their power and would in exchange fight on their side. The human kings, accepted this deal, they granted the self proclaimed "gods" rights beyond what even most aristocrats enjoyed and used them in battle against each other and against the other magical races. Humans always had a sense they were meant to be the dominant species and now with this power they could prove it. With time even the elves and dwarfs united against the human forces to stand a chance. And with time the gods required even more power, at some point requesting to rule over all kings. This was the point where even some humans began to fight against them, and those who did not were made toys of the gods. Those who did fight were often killed. As the fighting seemed to take no end, now that even the old powerful dragons who had previously kept private in the mountains joined in, a few powerful human mages made the gods a proposal. If they were made gods as well, they would fight alongsides them. They thought it was just a matter of time until the gods would win anyway. The gods not so sure accepted the deal and so it were thirteen gods now fighting most of the rest of the world. In a last battle they defeated the dragons, elves and dwarfs, banished the former into a vulcano, the elves into the forests in the hopes they would be killed by monsters and the dwarfs into the old mines around the dragons last fortress. This last fortress the magical beings put a spell on so the gods could never fully invade it is now the building for the school I am going to.
After the most powerful magical beings were defeated there were only humans left, and they made a proposal to the gods. Their best fighters wanted to fight one of the gods. If they won the gods would banish themselves, if not they would banish their own magic. Somewhere during that time the white book was created and together with the other four books put into the place under the Urgua palace, as it was the largest kingdom at the time. They made the gods swear a magical oath to not destroy them and to not punish or prevent people by force of reading them.The gods accepted, likely as they knew they would win the fight and that a world without magic would be a world where no one could ever stand up to them again. And that is how it came to be. The books were meant as a reminder of the past and to educate humans again to help them find back to magic, but this never happened, as the gods as soon as they had won killed all who knew of the books and made it unatractive to search for them. At least that is what I assume happened. It is likely they made sure everyone forgot their killings. It must have worked as today they are seen as all powerful beings that when you are a true believer will help you. They are now mostly a passive influence on the world, directing the king of Urgua. From our history books I know that Urgua has taken over the rest of the known world about a thousand years ago, with wars leading up to that taking hundreds of years. If I am correct these wars started after the gods had secured their position, as it is easier to control one kingdom than many. But these parts are, even though we have books about them, not as clear as the time before. All those wars are reasoned as decisions of the king. Although I know that the kings decisions are mostly focused on what the gods will like this makes it hard to know what the plans of the gods were and by that what they would do today to secure their power. I am hoping to find more information in the fortress of the dragons, as the dragons were keepers of knowledge hording piles of books. Also I am sure that there are still nature spirits living in that area, some rumors I have heard imply this.

Some other things that can be found in the book are that the gods were always very fixated on being seen as unfailable. This in my opinion explains why this world is still technologically at a point where it has been over a thousand years ago, since more complex technology needs specialised knowledge and since the gods were humans to start with they aren't able to be experts in all those small categories.
Further the books show that they were not always demanding the (sacrificial) offerings they are today. The first chapters of the books do not speak of offerings at all, but rather imply they only wanted to be influencial people. With time it seems that they have gotten more and more extreme, with requesting that for each dinner we humans burned some of our food for them. Today they not only demand all good things to be attributed to them, but also that any privilege that might exist is given to them, as well as that they have the right of the first night and a yearly human sacrifice, without which they would bring doom to the world. I am not sure how much this is coming from normal humans trying to gain control through religion and what of that is the gods real desires, but at this point they are for sure much different than they were and much less human like in behaviour in some ways, in others they are clearly still humans. For example when a temple was built for Magrit it wasn't beutiful enough in her opinion and she not only blew it up in a spectacular explosion but also brought a serious illness to the people who constructed it, killing them and many others.

My father always says that playing by the rules of the gods is the best way to stay alive and keep our position of power. I think playing by their rules just means we are too weak to fight our own fights. Too week to stand up to people pushing us around. Sadly my opinion doesn't count for him and my two brothers are full on on my fathers site, judging me for breaking rules almost as harshly as my father. Really, have they never questioned why we have no mother? I have. And I am pretty sure I know the answer. A good took her, as they do from time to time. Halfgods come up from time to time. It seems some urges the gods could never supress. But they aren't any special. No one teaches them magic, so even if they were more talented than others it wouldn't make a difference. They get powerful religios positions oftentimes but otherwise live normal lives. But not many talk about what the gods bring to the people who they have "fun" with but do not get a child from. I have seen people ripped into pieces after they encountered a god in a bar. And by the way my father refuses to talk about it and that he has forbidden the personell in the palace to talk about it, I am quite sure to know what happened to my mother.
I still find it curious that the gods are sometimes pretending to be normal humans just to pick up someone for a night or two. This is behaviour that in my opinion just shows that power doesn't come to people who intelligent or nice but to those who dare to do anything for it. And I intend to do anything to revenge my mother.
This school will be perfect for me to prepare. No oversight by the gods and potentially access to the knowledge of the dragons. If I can somehow read their books I will learn to cast magic and use it to trap the gods at a new years ceremony.