The Lost History

Floating on the night sea, Old Stone Helm saw a glow spreading across the water's surface, a light so soft and so striking that it caught the eye at once.

That light had not appeared for no reason. It was there to guide the People of the Abyss on their way.

In a stretch of open sea with no reef or island anywhere, a lighthouse had somehow appeared, a tall tower breaking up through the water from the seabed below, with a single glowing stone set into its top.

Old Stone Helm looked at the lighthouse, and what he said carried a sigh in it, and something wistful too. "Back again."

Tito could see nothing at all, and kept close behind Old Stone Helm. "What lies ahead?"

Old Stone Helm told him, "The royal capital of the Demon Abyss Kingdom. What was once Yesael City."

"Yesael built it. The second King of Wisdom, Redlichia's own son."

"It's the oldest city in the world, too."

A terrible wound ran clean across both of Tito's eyes, and still he leaned his whole body forward, as though he meant to see this legendary undersea city with his own eyes.

It was his first time reaching this place. More than that, he was the first trilobite man in many years to reach it at all.

"Would you tell me what Yesael City looks like?"

Old Stone Helm glanced at Tito, and read the deep longing and yearning written across his face.

He smiled, and turned to look in the same direction Tito was straining toward.

As if the two of them were taking in that beautiful, wondrous sight together.

"They say King Yesael's companion built it, the Ruhe Beast Nini. Room enough inside for ten thousand people and more."

"Yesael's own palace stands in there, tall and towering. The floor of it is paved with stone dug from the very lip of the Abyss. Black, and shining like oil."

"Then there's the Yesael Tower. It rises higher than the sea's own surface. A miracle you could scarcely imagine."

"And one of King Redlichia's own inscribed stone tablets, carried out of the God-Given Land itself. It's still enshrined in the city's Yinsai Temple to this day."

Just hearing it was enough to set Tito's blood on fire.

"Ah!"

"How magnificent it is. What a glorious ruin."

"This place bore witness to the glory of the ancient kings. It keeps the record of the God-Given Age and all its splendor."

As he spoke, a look of loneliness and regret came slowly over Tito's face.

"What a pity, that it stands right before me, and I cannot see it at all."

After a moment of quiet, Tito turned his head suddenly and put a question to Old Stone Helm.

"There are so many People of the Abyss here. Why not go around?"

Old Stone Helm answered, "Because your road runs through the Deep Sea Abyss. Cross that trench, dark and dead and bottomless, or you never reach the hall of the divine. There's no going around it. And it's the shortest way there is."

Tito asked him another question. "How do you know all this? Do you actually know where the God-Given Land is?"

Old Stone Helm shook his head. "I don't know. But I know that people have gone searching for it before."

"Many people once crossed that abyss, searching for the legendary God-Given Land."

"A pity. There was nothing there at all."

Old Stone Helm turned to look at Tito, his gaze serious. "I hope that this time, you'll be the one to find it."

Tito's head came up. "You believe I can find it?"

"I feel it in my bones. You'll find it," Old Stone Helm said.

"Do you believe in fate too?" Tito asked.

"No," Old Stone Helm said. "Call it an old man's instinct."

Old Stone Helm led Tito down into the water, to a stretch of seabed piled with broken stone, with more than a few grim remains scattered among it.

"This is where they dumped the waste stone quarried out while Yesael City was being built. Ordinary patrols don't come here."

"Once dawn comes, there's a gap in the patrols. That's when we'll make our way through."

Old Stone Helm settled onto a jagged stone with the ease of long practice and curled himself into a ball.

"We'll rest here for now."

Tito could not sleep. The broken slab of stone he leaned against was covered in grit and uneven pits, and the feel of it against his skin was as unpleasant as biting down on sand in the middle of a meal.

He tossed and turned, and then it came to him all at once that the marks on the stone at his back were not pits at all, but characters, one after another.

He sat bolt upright.

"What is this thing? Are those words carved into it?" Tito turned toward Old Stone Helm. He had no need to speak aloud. The other could read his meaning already.

"Some stele they were carving and gave up on, probably. Never finished it. Threw it out here in the end." Old Stone Helm sent what he knew into Tito's mind as well.

Tito reached out and touched it, tracing the grooves one after another with his fingers.

"This is King Yesael's name. What is carved here is about him."

Excitement surged in Tito. This had to be a stele carved halfway through and then abandoned, and what it recorded was history concerning King Yesael himself.

Bit by bit he read the tablet's contents by touch alone, and realized that what it told was no ordinary story.

In truth, anything carved onto a stele like this could never have been ordinary to begin with.

What it recorded was the scene of King Yesael following his own father into the presence of the divine for the very first time, and the divine bestowing upon King Yesael the station of Priest of God, and a scene with a Ruhe Beast in it.

"Beside the hall of the divine stood a girl, one who wore the face of the divine race, yet who commanded the terrible power of the King of Beasts."

"His Highness Yesael stepped humbly into the temple, following after the Great King Redlichia."

"And then, he beheld the eternal God."

"What a magnificent being that was!"

"The divine, who had mastered the law of time and transcended countless ages, shone with a brilliance like starlight. That light swallowed His Highness whole, and everything within sight turned blazing white."

"God said."

"What is thy name?"

Reading this far, Tito was so excited that his whole body trembled.

He turned toward where Old Stone Helm stood, his hands making gesture after gesture without stopping.

"This is it. This is the very thing I have been searching for."

"I have finally found it. This is our own lost history of Yinsai."

"I will set it down in writing. I will pass it on, forever."

Tito took out his bone tablets and his carving tool and copied the inscription down word by painstaking word, terrified of missing even a single character.

Before that stele, he was like the most devout of believers.

Old Stone Helm did not stop him, only rested quietly at his side.

But all at once the quiet seabed filled with commotion, and Yesael City, not far off, began to stir.

The Demon Abyss Kingdom's soldiers patrolling the water began moving erratically all at once, converging on the very spot where Old Stone Helm and Tito lay hidden, as though they had found something.

"Surround this place. Search it carefully." The People of the Abyss struck their antennae together, passing the order along from one to the next.

"Find anyone suspicious."

"I heard he's back. The old king, come back to take his throne again."

A prawn knight came tearing through the waves astride his monstrous mount, some sea beast of a thing, with dozens upon dozens of the Abyss's soldiers coming along behind him, and he relayed orders and signals through wisdom ability.

"The bloodline stone has lit up. The king says the last king has returned."

"Find him. He is not to set one foot inside the royal capital."

The ripple of that mental voice spread outward, and it reached even into the minds of Tito and Old Stone Helm where they lay hidden.