Category: Lorellum Fantastica

887 ASF

After seven years of study at the University—so close to graduation that I could count my remaining exams on my fingers—I was expelled.

In the long years since then, I have developed myself into a proud expellee. But at the time, it was the most traumatic thing that had ever happened to me (cute). The how and the why are another story—what is more pertinent is what I did after the University booted me onto the street. Looking, I suppose, to outdo myself, I followed my expulsion with perhaps one of the dumbest choices of my life: to become a riverbird.

Some context is in order. But more importantly, this was how I learned the tale of Sarsha Marwood, the Riverbird Traitor.

Sarsha was a noblewoman of House Marwood, a house that had amassed wealth by harvesting its oaks for the crown’s fleet. After marrying up and into House Marwood, Sarsha had basked and bathed in its luxuries. This is not to say she was a neglectful wife, mother, or daughter. What was more, she transformed herself into a jewel of the court, her auburn hair tumbling like river rapids, her green-eyed gaze as bright and dangerous as swamp fire. Indeed, for many years, Sarsha lived a life glamorous and blissful.

Until it wasn’t.

Sarsha was in her sixth year of marriage when the Everscratches swept across Rivona. The Marwoods and her former house were among the first hit by the plague, and it struck with horrific intensity. The most common symptom was hot spots that could appear anywhere on the body, blistering and pustulating and burning with an insatiable itch. It wasn’t this that killed victims, but rather when they scratched themselves bloody, raw, and infected. Sarsha’s husband, children, and most all of her staff succumbed to Everscratches, but the illness passed over Sarsha herself.

I doubt she counted herself lucky. Especially when famine trailed the plague, and hunger riots burned down the land and seat of House Marwood. Sarsha could have thrown herself at someone’s feet—perhaps the rioters, perhaps a distant cousin, perhaps the King himself. Instead, she struck out into the countryside, taking all that remained of House Marwood: an heirloom in the form of silver jewel-studded necklace.

Eventually, Sarsha came upon a hut perched along a river, an isolated place home to a colony of toads, a yowling cat, and an old, wiry woman with hair like a bush of nettles. The old crone took in Sarsha, nursing her wounds of body, mind, and soul—and in the process, showed her that this tragedy was not the end. There was a way to live with the river, tending to its waters and banks, clearing it of obstructions, pests, and gunk—and in return, enjoying its many blessings.

This was the path Sarsha had been seeking, and she took it in full stride. In doing so, she joined the countless women before her that had carved out a life in the riverlands. Widows. Estranged daughters. Wives in hiding. Washerwomen and barmaids and prostitutes cast aside. And many more. All had become stewards of the waterways—and without them, Rivona would be filthier, darker, and more dangerous place.

Riverbirds.

And then there was me, scrambling into Rivona after my expulsion, believing that I—a precious little student whose greatest tragedy was getting thrown out of an ivory tower—belonged with the riverbirds. Hah! I hadn’t even fallen, hadn’t even plummeted into the blackest depths of despair like Sarsha Marwood had. I’d simply been shoved out the door.

So it was a wonder I found a riverbird, but an even bigger one when she invited me into her hut. Contrary to the image of folktales and my initial expectations, this woman glowed with cleanliness—her dark hair brushed, her patchy dress washed, her angular face spotless. She introduced herself as Arlisse and asked what had brought me here, to which I described my academic woes and announced my intentions to join the flock.

Her laugh, wistful and bitter and laced with all the long years otherwise hidden in her stellar hygiene, haunts me to this day.

Arlisse agreed to help me—on one condition. I would pitch in with chores and earn my keep. And while I worked, she would tell me the story of Sarsha Marwood, the Riverbird Traitor, one of the most famous riverbirds of all.

And if, by the end of this tale, I still wanted to be a riverbird, then she would teach me.

825 – 848 ASF

When I confronted Lorekeeper Chrasse in the Raven’s Nest, he beheld me with wide eyes, a quivering lip, and a face drained of blood—as if I were the ghost of a long-dead creditor. He made no denials as I connected the dots right there in front of him, accusing him of selling his University brooch and stealing my money. But before he could offer up a defense, there was a metallic bang.

The game of chance had begun. All at once, the raven keepers opened the cages. The birds burst free from within, soaring outwards from the chamber and into the halls beyond. Lorekeeper Chrasse sprung into a dash after the bird he had bet on, as did everyone else. I rushed after Chrasse as the crowd boiled into several stampedes, following their ravens, screaming at them, egging them on. I winced as elbows and knees jammed into me, but I fought to stay on the tail of Chrasse and his raven. The madness spread all throughout the Raven’s Nest. Onlookers joined in the chase or retreated behind guards, who kept the frothing masses from spilling onto other games.

The ravens circled and swooped like hawks hunting for prey. Chrasse’s raven, however, alighted onto a great raven statue. Then it preened itself with an air of indifference, despite Chrasse and other’s pleading that grew steadily more deranged. At last, there was a monumental cheer that echoed across the Nest. I turned to see The Scythe soaring back to the starting point, a jeweled ring glinting in its beak. A triumphant crowd hooted in its wake.

I had just witnessed my first game of Raven’s Eye. And, judging by how Chrasse’s face whitened even further, I had just lost it, too.

There is a saying in Rivona that survives to this day, a shadow that has followed its culture through the ages. It is whispered like a curse when your child dies in the cradle. When your sheep and cows fall sick in the fields. When your crops fail, the rivers flood, or a swamp fire burns down your home. Or, perhaps, when you lose all your money in a game of chance.

Whenever ill luck and dark omens fall over you, it is said that the Raven has roosted in your house.

Not just any raven, but the Raven of the Willows. According to most accounts, she is an old woman, crooked and hooded, her robes never clean and tattered with marsh muck and feathers. She has always lingered in the gloom of Rivonan history and folklore. Her appearances in tales—where she offers riddles to those she favors and curses to those she doesn’t—predate and succeed Rugon by centuries. She is either a creature older beyond reckoning, or a figure assumed by multiple people over time. Regardless, Rivonans fear and respect her as something of a god, one who walks with the rivers and the ravens.

In short, you do not want the Raven roosting in your house.

As she did, when ill fate and utter defeat befell Rugon at the Blackrush Massacre. But dark luck lingers like a miasma, Rivonans believe, and the king soon experienced this himself. More rebels and defectors fled his kingdom, on the verge of forming into rogue states. More flooding. More swamp fires. Rugon spiraled deeper into desperation, taking more reckless risks with money and resources and people, most all of which failed. We, as did his court and his family, must ask: why? Why, when most of his winnings remained intact?

Rugon’s despair surged to a new height when his eldest son was thrown from a horse, breaking his neck in the fall. A freak accident…or the shadow of the Raven? Something changed in the king then, and it wasn’t just grief, but a doomed, dark look in his eyes, reported by servants and his wives and everyone in between. The look of a man who knows his luck has abandoned him, never to return.

Perhaps this is why he leashed in his second son and heir, Rykar. Upon him, Rugon dumped a deluge of lessons, instructions, and advice—things previously passed over to the late heir. This only alienated Rykar, who had grown used to his freedoms as second-in-line and the bloodlust bred into him by his father. This only made Rugon cling tighter, like a drowning man clinging to driftwood—but to no avail.

Rugon soon came down with a scalding fever, frigid goosebumps, and a cough that produced something like bloody swamp silt. When he was told he had contracted marsh chills, a disease with no cure, he said words that would continue to ring through a thousand years of Rivonan history.

“Death shall not claim me. I shall claim death.”

In 848 ASF, King Rugon Craythe, aged 71, ordered the construction of the first ever burial ship, upon which he was fastened. Then, after Rugon attended his own funeral, his family and friends sent him over River’s End, the greatest waterfall in all of Rivona.

Lorekeeper Chrasse and I weren’t quite at that point yet, but we were far from well-to-do. His gamble on a raven named Rugon (but of course) had swallowed not just all of my money, but all of his as well! I would have been furious if I hadn’t started panicking. How would we pay for food? Lodging? Supplies? To say nothing of a charter back home to the University?

Chrasse apologized over and over, claiming he owed a debt to someone as greedy as a dragon, and he’d run out of alternatives. We left the Raven’s Nest, emerging back onto the city and finding a quiet spot on a bridge. Here, Chrasse finally calmed me down, saying he’d think of something to get us home. His chief worry was that I was going to tell everyone about this, and pleaded me not to.

After some thinking, I agreed to keep quiet—on three conditions. First, that he would get my money back. Second, that he would not go back to the Raven’s Nest on this trip. And third, that he would tell me Rugon’s secret. He didn’t like any of this, but I now possessed knowledge that could cost him his career, if not more. He furrowed his brow, ground his teeth, mashed his lips together, and then finally gave in.

Among the University’s most prized artifacts, he explained, was a diary entry from one of Rugon’s wives, written just before the king’s death. In it, she wrote about how, in his final hours, the king shared a secret with her he had been carrying all of his life. It was this:

Rugon had met the Raven as a child lost in the swamp. Instead of playing a game of riddles with her, he’d gambled. Gambled his own life that he could escape. And when he did, he won something from the Raven herself: a piece of ancient wisdom from the rivers and ravens. This higher knowledge of the riverlands was supposedly the secret to his success, to all of his “good luck”. For example, during his conquest, rival chieftains thought they could escape and hide from him within the Lost Rivers, the one of the most inhospitable and confusing corners of Rivona. Supposedly, Rugon used this wisdom to track his enemies through the watery maze. To find them. To corner them. To execute them. Each and every one.

To Rugon, this supposed ancient wisdom became an unquenchable thirst. Over the years, he kept coming back to the Raven for a new gamble, for more ancient wisdom. Again and again and again, sometimes for strategic purposes. Sometimes for the thrill of it. Sometimes out of desperation.

He’d gambled anything and everything. Resources. Seats of power. Vast sums of money. Bigger boats. People, too—subjects, allies, even his own family. Gambling and gambling, until he’d won all of the riverlands and become Ruthless. He didn’t always win across the board, of course. For example, he wagered with the Raven that he could conquer the riverlands in five years. He did it in just under six—and the price, it seems, was his firstborn son.

After ascending into kinghood, his losses just kept coming—out of his own complacency, or arrogance, or simply because over time, the Raven always wins. The Blackrush Massacre, which he’d bet on being a victory, was the tipping point, and his penchant for winning never returned. His pile of debt to the Raven grew ever higher with each loss—until at last, she came for him, roosting not in his house, but in his very blood and flesh.

This is what Rugon and his wives believed, at least, but how much of this is actually true? It is difficult to say. Perhaps the story of Rugon is just one of ruthless ingenuity and a heap of luck, both good and bad. Or perhaps the Raven did play games of chance after all. Unfortunately, she isn’t one to show up and answer questions.

Lorekeeper Chrasse was a believer, naturally. He told me that he was trying to solve his problems the same way Rugon had, so I could spare him my judgement. And, he reminded me, Rugon’s secret belonged to the University. I was not to share it without express permission (which, even as I write this, I never obtained). So, Chrasse concluded, I should carry on and pretend none of this had ever happened. Gratefully, he added.

Gratefully? Indeed. How we untangled ourselves from that mess is a story for another Volume. But at that time, I did know one thing. Like Rugon, perhaps, I had gambled, even if it had been involuntary. I had lost, yes, but I had also won. I was now a player in the game, and had no idea when I’d get out.

805 – 825 ASF

Many travelers will tell you that a visit to Great Forks is invaluable, if only for the chance that some of the city’s good luck—past, present, and hopefully future—might rub off on you. I, too, bought into this enticing rumor. At least until I woke up one morning and discovered that all of my money had been stolen.

There were no signs of a break-in while I’d been sleeping. Nor could I see why my fellow students would turn to thievery, and I trusted them as friends besides. I wanted to report this to Lorekeeper Chrasse, but the old man was nowhere to be found. Clueless and penniless, I wondered if, somehow, I’d offended the rivers and ravens.

Even the first King of Rivona respected the rivers and ravens. If we go back to pre-Ruthless Rugon, where few songs and scholars go, we begin to see that when the king gave his firstborn child to the river, it was not a streak of uncharacteristic zealotry. It was a cursed waystone on a path he had been following all his life.

Into the Swamp, a precautionary lullaby favored by Rivonan mothers, tells the story of how a ten-year-old Rugon ran away from home and became lost in the eastern swamps. For a week he wandered aimlessly, encountering man-swallowing bogs, freezing mists, and even glimpses of corvil, elusive black birds so large they can carry off small livestock and children. Only by praying to the rivers and ravens and trusting in their ancient wisdom was young Rugon able to find his way back home.

Thereafter, Rugon carried forward a reverence of these faceless gods. His adolescence and young adulthood were marked by more streaks of good luck: a victorious and mortal duel with a childhood rival, a swim across the White Fangs to affirm his eligibility as chieftain, and of course, his rise as Ruthless.

All of these tales Rugon affirmed himself. All of these he attributed to the blessing and favor of the rivers and ravens.

Rugon, however, did not want to rely on luck alone to keep his winnings. Across several wives, he fathered two sons and seven daughters, not including the one he’d given to the river. When each of his children turned age five—including, famously, his daughters—Rugon brought them on his war ships, where they witnessed their father slay rebels, traitors, and runaway criminals. At age six, his children attended all executions and punishments. At age seven, each was given a knife to finish off a captured enemy. At age eight, they began a brutal combat training regime that lasted into adulthood.

Perhaps his goal was to protect his spoils with a family bred for war. This twisted form of parenting, however, was not without its costs. Bloodlust and baseless warmongering festered in his sons. And while his daughters eventually became revered as the Seven Daughters of the River—founders of great houses still alive to this day—their stories are riddled with trauma, tragedy, and darker things.

Despite his horrendous efforts, things did not go Rugon’s way. In fact, it went the opposite. In the second decade of his kinghood, Rugon began to lose. Rebels and traitors slipped through his fists. Former chieftains, disgruntled at their meager piece of the pie, broke allegiances and fled the riverlands. One year a devastating swamp fire engulfed half the kingdom, followed by two years of famine.

But the most paramount of his losses (if you asked Rugon, that was) was the Blackrush Massacre. Rugon and his warboats had discovered a coalition of rebels and defective lords on the banks of a twisted, treacherous river. It coiled along the western fringes of the kingdom, so Rugon was far from his normal lines of support. The enemies hunkered down in an old fort, entrenched in a position uphill to Rugon.

But Rugon, strangely, was desperate for a victory. He commanded an attack. A reckless wager, by all accounts, but one he may have won—if not for the fogstorm. Whether it was due to a failure of reading the sky, blind ignorance, or just bad luck, the result was the same. As Rugon and his men charged ashore, Rivona’s worst type of storm swept over the Blackrush. Crackling lighting, booming thunder, torrential rain—all veiled in a thick sea of fog. Flash floods surged down the banks, sweeping men off their feet and into the Blackrush, boiling and frothing with currents that swallowed horses and smashed ships.

Slaughter.

Rugon’s only luck was that he escaped with his life.

I wrote “strangely” above because many scholars puzzle on why Rugon even bothered with the Blackrush. He faced internal problems, of course, but this can be expected of any fledgling kingdom. Great Forks was booming. His coffers overflowed. His fleet was unmatched. In many ways, his kingdom expanded from a solid core. So what was he trying to prove out on the fringes of the riverlands? Why take such a desperate risk?

Perhaps tumbling with luck has always been a keystone of Rivonan culture. Beneath the coursing canals and proud houses of Great Forks, well-known but tucked away into the city sewers, is a place called the Raven’s Nest. A den of gambling—cards, dice, snake fights, breath-or-death diving, among other vices—packed full of both locals and visitors alike. It is the city’s secret touristic attraction, allowed to exist only because of the sheer amount of gold that flows through its echoing halls.

I only know of this place because I followed Lorekeeper Chrasse there.

I decided not to report the theft to Chrasse. Instead, I followed him out into the city one night, and could scarcely believe my eyes when I ended up in the Raven’s Nest. Odd as he might be, the Lorekeeper lived his life by the books. He wasn’t just straight as an arrow, he was a whole quiver-full of the prickly things. The same Lorekeeper who had asked me to rewrite an entire paper because I’d misspelled a word on the third page. Him, in a place like this? You didn’t come to the Raven’s Nest to get up to anything good.

Weaving through the crowds after Chrasse, I followed him into a spacious chamber with birdcages, polished and tidy, lining the walls, each guarded by a keeper. Beneath each cage hung a sign denoting the name of the raven housed within. Blisterbeak. Phantom. Hoarfeather. Sage. The Scythe. Relga. Among much more. Gamblers shouted and pointed at one of these birds as they handed their money across the betting table. Lorekeeper Chrasse was one of these people. He approached the table and, reaching within his jacket, pulled out three pouches of coins. One of them I recognized as mine.

I cried out, but nobody heard me over the laughing, shouting, and squawks of ravens bouncing around the chamber. Chrasse stepped away from the table with a single card in his hand. That was when he met my eyes across the crowd. Too late, however. A hooded man had stepped in front of the betting table, closing bets for the round.

The game was starting, and all my money was in it.

803 – 805 ASF

When I attended my first ever lecture on Rugon Craythe, Lorekeeper Chrasse strode into the hall sporting a metal skirt, clinking beneath his robes. “I look funny, don’t I?” Chrasse exclaimed to us. “Well, that’s what everyone else thought of Rugon. Then he went on to conquer them all.”

I soon learned to expect oddities like this out of Chrasse. But during my trip to Great Forks with him, his odd behavior began to pile up. I heard him coming and going at strange hours of the night. He staggered in late to his own meetings, forgot about which tasks he’d given us. Dark bags grew beneath his eyes. All of this on top of how he guarded a morsel of knowledge I wanted more and more to learn: Rugon’s secret.

Perhaps, I thought, I’d discover it on my own, so I redoubled my efforts in learning about the first King of Rivona. Rugon the Ruthless may have carried a secret while establishing his new kingdom, but how he kept it stable thereafter was hardly a novel concept.

A fist. An iron one, crushing all resistance and taking what remained. He executed chieftains while their tribes watched. He stole wives, mothers, daughters—for a night, for a week, or even forever. He made horrific public examples of traitors and criminals, often with creative punishments that matched the crimes. For example, Rugon was known to have an affection for ravens and declared them protected under royal law. When one of his bowman used one for target practice, Rugon strung him to a pole, flayed him to an inch of his life, then left him to die, letting the ravens have their fill.

For all his crushing and taking, Rugon was at least wise enough to share with his allies and people. He poured most of his wealth back into his conquered lands, building long-lasting bridges, roads, and strategic ports up and down the many rivers. He raised a great castle at Great Forks—and as a city sprang up around it, he enclosed it in powerful walls, cementing it as a seat of royal, cultural, and economic power. He even progressed the craft and style of men’s skirts. (Alright, confession, I fabricated that last one. But nothing suggests Rugon stopped wearing skirts in this time—and fashion, like most else, follows the king. So tell me, is it so flimsy a speculation?)

But perhaps Rugon gave too much. When the King sired his firstborn heir, a healthy young boy, he ripped the child out of his mother’s arms and cast him into the river—and in doing so, shocked the entire realm. Sending the deceased out onto the water was a custom that predated Rivona, but Rugon had now twisted this into a new tradition. It was an offering to the rivers and ravens for their continued blessing. He sealed it with a decree, a firstborn sacrifice required of all his successors.

The practice soon became called “giving to the river”. It does not survive to this day, but it survived much longer than it should have. Long enough that I could still personally see its impact on my time in Great Forks.

Grotters—“great otters”, which can grow large and strong enough to flip a fishing boat—have long infested the waters surrounding Great Forks. Forkians will yammer on and on about all the trouble they cause, but did you know this wasn’t always the case? Deep lakes and warm marshes are the normal habitats of these creatures. Most naturalists believe they were drawn to the Great Forks area in the days of giving to the river. A haunting thought, to be sure, but the grotters never left, even after the tradition was outlawed.

As I soon saw myself, the grotters spend their days hunting for whatever the city dumps in the river, and will still go after people and animals if given the chance.

Something that was not lost upon Lorekeeper Chrasse. He was a burly and collected man, yet one driven to sweats and shakes whenever we crossed a bridge over these creatures. Imagine my surprise when, while on an evening stroll, I spotted him from afar on Grotter’s Bridge, the best location for viewing in all the city. Slipping into a nearby alley, I studied him for a while, watching him pace and pace and pace until a hooded figure emerged from the crowd. The two men made an exchange—something glinting in Chrasse’s hand for a sack of coins—so quick I would have missed it if I hadn’t been watching closely. In the next blink of an eye, the figure had vanished.

I pretended to bump into Chrasse as he was coming off the bridge. When I asked him what he was doing here of all places, he claimed he was feeding the grotters. But what, I pressed, about his very valid and very healthy fear of them? His reply: the locals said it was a sign of good luck—and couldn’t we all do with some now?—and by the way, how were those copies of The Lover’s War coming along?

That was when I noticed that his University seal—a silver brooch worth a decent sum of money—was missing from the front of his jacket. Something was not right here, and it wasn’t just Chrasse’s blatant lie.

Many scholars remain baffled as to why Rugon sacrificed his firstborn son and began the tradition giving to the river. Did he buy into Rivonan superstitions about the power of rivers and ravens? Did he fear them? Was he beseeching greater powers for peace and prosperity, or did he feel obligated to give back after all he’d won? Or was he simply asking for more good luck?

Whatever he wanted, Rugon got none of it.

Note: RIV01 through RIV04 is Season One content, which is different in format and length than Season Two. Season Two began September 21, 2025 with AVL-01. New readers are recommended to start with Season Two, then come back to Season One.

777 – 803 ASF

For many historians, picking a period to begin with is like picking a favorite child–it’s just impossible (or so our parents tell us). Naturally, though, you love each for different reasons. The country of Rivona is perfect for beginnings, simply because among all of the modern countries in my area of the world, it was the first one established. It’s also quite easy to summarize its history. It is thus:

“Can we beat it with our boats? No? Fine. Let’s build bigger boats.”

Rivonans, you see, have always loved their watercraft. Who can blame them? Rivona is a land of a thousand rivers, of roaring rapids and hushed lakes and eerie swamps. There is plenty of water to go around, so you might think this translates to a relatively peaceful history of sharing and caring.

Nothing is further from the truth.

It is widely believed the first people settled in the riverlands about a thousand years ago. Soon after arriving, these settlers formed into tribes and quickly found things to fight over: cleaner water, greener grass, an insult to someone’s mother, perhaps. Whatever the reason, these tribes locked themselves in perpetual war, with land passing back and forth in a maddening cycle until someone finally came along and shattered it.

Enter Rugon Craythe, a chief of this bloody era, born in the year 777 ASF. The man was practically a giant, standing over six and a half feet tall. Broad of jaw and shoulder. Long raven-black hair and misty eyes, common among Rivonans. I also have it on good authority that he refused to wear pants, preferring instead skirts of metal or cloth. He beheaded anyone that mocked him for it.

So how did Rugon shatter the cycle? With a boat. Most tribes had figured out how to build simple canoes for fishing on calm rivers. Rugon, however, was the first pioneer of the “bigger boat” way of Rivonan thinking. After much trial and error, Rugon and his people built not just a boat, but a warboat—big enough to hold a squad of warriors that, with their combined rowing strength, could travel upstream. With this revolutionary vessel, the Craythe tribe could reach every corner of the riverlands.

And they did. After biding their time and building a fleet, Rugon unleashed his tribe on the riverlands with frightening speed and ferocity. With little warning they descended upon settlements, leaping ashore in raiding parties, pillaging and burning and disappearing in their warboats before reinforcements could arrive. Rugon’s aim wasn’t to capture or conquer, but to destroy and remake from the ground up. As his total war spread across the country, Rugon earned the name Rugon the Ruthless.

One by one the chiefs fell or surrendered until Rugon was the last one standing. Styling himself the first true King of the Rivers, Rugon established the kingdom of Rivona, with House Craythe as its royal line. With his plundered wealth, Rugon built the young kingdom’s first city and capital that stands to this day: Great Forks.

My knowledge of all this comes from my visit to Great Forks as a young, starry-eyed student. I arrived with a few others under the care of Lorekeeper Chrasse, our primary instructor of Rivonan histories, and a self-proclaimed Rugon nut. He had important University business in the city—and, ever a two-birds sort of person—had brought us along to assist him as well as to see the country firsthand. And by ‘country’, he meant Rugon. In our free time, our Lorekeeper toured us around the city, pointing out the hand of Rugon where it was still visible in the city’s bustling harbor, majestic bridges, and soaring towers, among much else.

And yet, the more I learned, the more I noticed an omission in the Lorekeeper’s ramblings. It was as if he was painting a magnificent portrait of Rugon but leaving a patch in the center blank and gray, neglecting it even as he embellished the edges. On a few occasions I asked him to fill the gap, but he always brushed me off, shrugged, or pretended he hadn’t heard me.

Even before this trip, Chrasse and I had always gotten along well. This was mainly because I indulged him after hours with questions about Rivona—an excuse for him to crack open a bottle of Merlish red and rattle on about Rugon for half the evening. So his sudden slipperiness to my questions struck me as especially odd. My questions, after all, were no different than the same that have puzzled Lorekeepers across the ages.

What was Rugon’s secret?

Many Lorekeepers (not including Chrasse) consider Rugon’s achievements as bordering on the unfeasible, even accounting for his bigger boats. How did he win every battle? How was his tribe able to navigate so swift and accurate across Rivona’s labyrinthine waterways? How did Rugon discover and select the perfect place to build a great city, one that still stands to this day? How did he time many of his attacks when the flow of the river and the turn of the weather were at his advantage?

Bigger boats cannot account for all of these things. What knowledge did Rugon wield that others lacked?

Lorekeeper Chrasse, I began to suspect, knew exactly what Rugon’s secret was.

And I was determined to pry it out of him.