Hymn of the King of Wisdom

In the days that followed, the poet took a well-preserved chamber inside the Wisdom Palace, once a guard's quarters, and began composing his verses there.

A stone door served him as a table, and he dragged broken sections of a shattered pillar inside for stools.

Outside the window, the sea of Sun Cup flowers swayed gently in the night, and beyond its farthest edge lay the blue sky and the sea.

When the night wind blew past, the scent of flowers came with it, and he found himself looking outside without meaning to.

He stood at the window with both hands braced on the sill, leaning out, and let the fragrant breeze brush across his face.

"I never imagined I'd really be standing in the God-Given Land."

"I've really climbed the pilgrim's steps King Redlichia and King Yesael once walked. I've looked upon God Yinsai Himself."

"It's as though I'm dreaming."

Rummaging through his basket, he found he had run short of bone tablets. He took his carving tool, scraped away some unimportant lines, and etched new words in their place.

Sitting by the window, he began to recall and turn over everything he had seen and heard along the way.

He remembered the ruins of the Yinsai Kingdom he had passed at the very start of his journey, the seafloor villages and towns he had explored along the way. All that vanished splendor became the feeling and the strength behind the great verses he now wrote.

The trials of the Sal Domain had been like a baptism to him, and through them he had come to understand the meaning of his own life.

The inscriptions on the stone tablet he had seen in Yesael City became the very cornerstone of the myth he set down in writing.

And then there was the shock and the exhilaration of finally arriving at the God-Given Land itself. Everything here left him feeling as though he were adrift in a dream.

An overwhelming passion burst out of him. A thousand emotions seemed crowded into the poet's chest, all of them waiting to be poured out.

Day after day it went on, until on this one night, beneath a sky of countless stars, he carved the final passage onto his bone tablet.

Hymn of the King of Wisdom, the Final Chapter

【The first King of Wisdom, betrayed by his own son and mourning the death of his queen, ended his glorious and radiant life before God.】

【He passed his throne to Yesael, the most excellent of his sons, together with the oath and the covenant he had made with God.】

【But the divine was enraged by Redlichia's death, and disappointed by the trilobite men's sins of patricide and fratricide.】

Stroke after stroke, he carved everything that had ever happened into his verses.

And in doing so, he set it down as well upon the historic stone pillars of Yinsai.

【God withdrew the land he had promised, and all trilobite men were driven from the God-Given Land.】

【The divine erased every memory of the God-Given Land's location from their minds, so that they could never again return to that paradise God had promised them.】

【Even should they reach the waters beyond the God-Given Land, they could only wander forever upon the sea, never able to set foot upon God's Island.】

Tito thought for a moment, and in the end added one last line.

【The divine withdrew his grace, yet in that same act he loosed his hold upon the fate of the trilobite men.】

【The end of the God-Given Age marked the dawn of civilized history.】

Tito set down his carving tool.

He had finally completed his own myth, and recovered the memory and glory the trilobite men had lost. From this day on, it would become a verse and a glory that every trilobite man would sing forever.

Everyone would come to know the story of what had once happened, would know where they had come from, and why they had come to be.

This, then, was the power of writing, the undying magic of the very script King Redlichia himself had created.

"I did it."

"I did it."

He said it over and over, as though murmuring in a dream.

He pushed his way past Sun Cup blossom after blossom, winding through the ruins of the God-Given Land, until at last he stopped.

Only then did he realize he had come to stand beneath the pyramid, and he bowed in worship toward the pyramid temple.

At the same time, he found himself ready to leave.

One morning, the poet Tito shouldered his pack and set out.

In his pack he carried not only the manuscript of the Hymn of the King of Wisdom he had written, but two copies of it he had made in stone tablet form.

And there was King Redlichia's precious inscribed stone tablet as well, the one he had found within the collapsed Wisdom Palace.

It was only a fragment, but to the people of Yinsai, it was a treasure beyond all price.

A handful of young, not-yet-grown dream spirits drifted in over the sea of flowers, clustering around second-rank Dream Spirit Hila as she approached.

Tito recognized this beautiful being at once. She was the one who drifted through Dreams at the divine's right hand, the very one from whom that vast dream bubble enveloping the whole Hall of the Gods had first unfurled.

"Tito pays his respects to the honored Divine Messenger."

In his eyes, every dream spirit was a messenger of God, but it was plain that the one standing before him now was different.

She was powerful, and beautiful.

She held a miraculous power granted by God, one beyond anything he could have imagined.

Hila studied Tito closely, and then she asked him.

"Your heart is very pure."

"Purer even than a dream spirit's own heart. Why is that?"

The dream spirit was curious.

She was nothing like Polo, the two of them as opposite as stillness and motion. And yet they shared the very same pair of innocent eyes.

She had heard the stories of the trilobite men, and could not understand how living beings born with such fierce desire, greed, and bloodlust could possess hearts to rival a dream spirit's own.

Tito said to her, "Because a person's heart can change. It can be clouded over by sin, and it can be transformed through hardship."

The dream spirit seemed to turn the thought over, and nodded.

She waved a hand, and a faint glow appeared. Something took shape upon the surface of the sea.

It was Dream Spirit Hila's gift to Tito, a sailing ship forged of metal, its white sail raised high and rippling in the wind.

Tito had never once seen anything like it. "What is this?"

She told Tito, "It's called a sailing ship, a kind of boat."

"It can harness the power of the wind and sail across the surface of the sea."

"With it, you can cross the ocean, and return with ease to the shores of your homeland, the Origin Site."

As Tito listened to the dream spirit's explanation, he understood at once what this thing meant.

Trilobite men swam the sea with familiar ease, but crossing it exhausted them, and they were forced to stop and rest after every stretch of distance. A sailing ship would spare him both strength and time.

It was much like a person who could walk on their own two feet and yet still needed a carriage.

"My thanks for the Divine Messenger's gift."

The dream spirit taught him how to handle the sailing ship, and then Tito set off aboard it, sailing away into the distance.

That single man and his single ship, its white sail raised high, slowly faded from sight upon the far horizon of the God-Given Land.

Dream Spirit Hila carried the stone tablet of verse the poet had given her back inside the temple.

"God, he has left."

The dream spirit knelt before God and held the stone tablet up before him.

What was carved upon it was none other than the Hymn of the King of Wisdom.

Dream Spirit Hila put her question to him. "God, is this truly how the story went?"

God did not answer her directly. Instead, he spoke.

"The same stone looks different to different people, seen from different angles."

"Some think it round, some think it square, and still others think it triangular."

"This is only..."

"...the myth of the trilobite men."