Many things had changed while we were away. And things changed even further as I spent time in the city again. In the summer, just a few weeks from the next solstice festival, I found out about a group of young men and women who had fallen in love with glass making, and had been trying to improve upon the rudimentary types of glass that I had introduced. With the dream about mirrors still fresh in my mind, I decided to meet this first generation of glass-makers.
They were an incredibly polite bunch, or perhaps they were being respectful towards me like the humans tended to be. They showed me their many experiments and designs, including work they had been doing on molds, furnaces, and the types of sand they used. I realized right away that their experiments would be incredibly useful for magic and medicine, and decided to get involved.
The glass-makers were from different tribes and said that they had mostly been focusing on using glass of different colors and clarity for jewelry and decoration. But while doing so, they had come up with a type of powerful brick furnace that could use fire and air magic to turn certain high quality materials into very clear glass. And since they now had metal molds to play with, they were able to make the glass into all sorts of shapes.
I first got around to making a special mold. I needed the glass to come out in the shape of a convex lens. It took a lot of trial and error, but the glass-makers were very good at making molds in different shapes, by this point, and were able to do most of the work for me. Surprisingly, their first few lenses were smooth and regular, although I still had to make some more adjustments to the mold to get them to come out exactly how I wanted them to.
The next step was to find some people with experience molding metals. The glass-makers introduced me to the people who had helped them with their metal molds. Unlike the glass-makers, who were a talented group that worked together, there were only a few people who were working with iron at this time. And most of them were playing around on their own and trying to find more effective forms and shapes for weapons, not tools. Apparently, somebody in the Nare tribe was the best at making arrowheads, so I decided to visit her.
When I arrived, I realized she was the only metalworker or smith in the Nare tribe. She was working on a strangely shaped arrowhead, and only turned around when one of the glass-makers said that the great teacher had arrived. The Nare metalworker was also very polite, and was willing to help me with my designs. I ended up just drawing them for her on some of the rough paper that had become very popular among the humans, and returned to the glass-makers' furnaces.
But I wasn't actually here to make any more glass. Instead, drawing the diagrams for the metalworker had made me realize that I had forgotten to introduce standardized measurements for the humans. Actually, it wasn't that I had forgotten to do so, but I had underestimated the speed with which artisans and craftsmen who could use these measurements would appear among the humans.
Unfortunately, I didn't have access to the sort of universal constants and measurements that could be used to create measurements on my world, and had to come up with most of them arbitrarily. Thankfully, however, I could skip all the complicated denominations and irregular demarcations that led to stuff like imperial units in my world, and leapfrogged to a metric system
A bar of iron became a meter, with small lines on top to divide it into centimeters and millimeters. A lump of iron become a kilogram. And various measurements of volume and density could be derived from them. I figured I'd introduce seconds as well, although the means to reliably count time down to such short intervals did not exist yet. I even figured I'd write down kelvin, for temperature, candela for luminous intensity, and mole for amount of substance. What these words would mean in the human language, I wasn't sure, but I tried to write rough approximations of the sounds in the human language. They didn't have to mean anything, since they were really more like signifiers rather than actual words.
Now that I had these measurements, I posted them along all the elders' huts around the city, and decided to unveil them at the solstice festival as well. I also gave them to the metalworker to help with her work.
It took a few more days for the metalworker to make the things I had asked her to make, and by that time, the glass-makers had made the perfect, tiny little convex lens that I could put into the thing I was trying to make. I collected the small screws and plates from the metalworker, lined them up in the shape I wanted to, and put the whole thing together. With a few more materials, a lot of adjustments, and the perfect positioning of the lens, I finally had this world's first, functioning microscope!
The first prototype wasn't very useful. It couldn't zoom in and focus as much as I wanted it to and there was way too much wiggling in the mechanism. Still, with a little bit of careful magic, including motion and light, I was able to get the first images of micro-organisms in this world. Most importantly, I was able to confirm that they looked and acted very similar to micro-organisms from my Earth. The uncanniness of this discovery notwithstanding, I was glad I could finally make some new strides in the branch of magic that might be the most useful to the people of this world, and which had changed my mind on interfering with the natural development of these societies. I also felt this would bring me that much closer to the secret that I had been searching for, for so long, and for which I had finally found a few hints while I was away in the Izlandi Kingdom.
Annihilation.
---
I sat with the elders around a campfire once again. This time, however, there weren't any decisions to be made nor any things that I wanted to share with the elders for their benefit. No, this time, I was approaching them for advice.
"I found some traces of elves across the mountains," I said, as I passed around the first prototype microscope for the elders to try out. At night, it would only work with a bit of light magic, but most of them could use that themselves by now.
"Only traces?" asked Elder Lipo Pole.
"Yes," I said, "it was difficult even finding those. There were no scrolls or other documentation of elves or elfin activity in the region, nor were there any artifacts or graves. The only thing I could find at first, were stories. And so that's what I followed."
"How does one follow stories?" said Elder Brol Ibog.
"By following the way stories changed from place to place," I said, as I went on to explain the process and my experience.
Most of the elfin stories followed similar patterns. Something bad would happen, like a monster or an evil ruler, and the people would despair. Until a helpful elf appeared to save the day. Sometimes directly with powerful magic, and sometimes indirectly with advice or support to a human hero. Sometimes, the elves could speak the language of monsters, sometimes they would come alone, or they might come with their whole tribe. There were descriptions of their faces, their clothes, their attitudes and social norms, with the only thing every story shared being the pointy ears and the ability to use magic.
I followed the stories that seemed to be the most accurate with their descriptions of elfin magic and appearances. I also tried to find the greatest clusters of stories that were the most similar. I employed some other methods, like plotting the most likely routes of any elfin tribes that crossed the mountains, usually by following major rivers or game trails. Eventually, I'd arrived in the Eastern part of the Izlandi Kingdom. If I had to warrant a guess, the biggest clues about the elfin tribes in that part of the world would probably be in the area controlled by the Singing Horde.
"The Singing Horde?" repeated Elder Konri Oko, "that is a strange name for a tribe."
"Yes, it is," I said, as I moved some charcoal in the fire with a long stick. "And their name, it gives me a bad feeling. If the demon kingdom was influenced by the Immortal of Evil." I looked up at the red star in the sky. "Then the Singing Horde might be…" I trailed off, looking far above my head to the silver disc hanging innocently in the inky blue night sky.