Ifrid flipped through the book with pursed lips.
The bloodied letter flakes off the book, dried, lost hue.
He tried multiple times already with different word organization and styles, even mimicking the esoteric scripts the book wrote itself in, yet to no avail.
Several pages back, the book recorded his encounter thus far, presenting to him a web of information originating from him.
By the will of Nylegris, the twelve dwarves assassins left behind their belongings and headed for the head of Crelynine, daughter to the Duke of the Golden Ridge.
'Dwarves?'
Folklore and tales told of the fairies of the earth and crafts. With short, stocky build and a great bearded mass, they herald from long before the era of fire and snow.
Yet the mythical race stood before him in the flesh, or what of the untorn flesh.
Back to the corpses again, he found them around a head and a half shorter than him (the headless not included).
Some were as clean an egg skin, but those with beards were in neat and intricate style.
'To think I'd see the fairy of children's tale corpses, dead by the dozen.'
Unsure of what to do with himself, he would rather give them a proper funeral as a final respect and not let them rot as a corpse unclaimed.
A mound of bodies formed, the corpses as firewood; now to set them ablaze.
Thinking of how to burn bodies, an idea came to Ifrid.
He turned to the last written pages where the funeral he built appeared.
And wrote in the line, the pyre set ablaze.
String he once saw permeate the cosmic birth burst forth from the book toward the funeral.
Furl, crackle.
Pyre rose from the pillar of corpses, first burnt the clothes before skin and flesh charred.
Throwing the trinket he took from them into the pyre, with the book between his clasped hands, he prayed for their passage to wherever their path led them.
As the pyre howled, thrashing tendrils coil toward the heavens, Ifrid contemplated.
'Why does set ablaze work but return home doesn't?'
'What is the extent of the power held by the book, and the conditions to return home?'
'And those strings again? What are they?'
With the dying flame, ash, and dust washed by the wind, he set his sight toward the book once more to see and stretch the limitation of this book, his only tool.
His bloodstained hand cleaned by clean hand.
His dirtied garment re-conjured up anew, hooded vestment whiter than silver.
The string wrung dry, exhausted of its drive, grew translucent in the light.
Pages turned to the chapter of the assassins' lives, biographed to the steps.
Traced the path behind from where he woke, Ifrid found a clearing in the jungle with bags half buried in the dirt.
And a figure, in all black and purple, slimly overreached the breath of the meadow; the cicadas rose early and browning evergreen.
Who, Ifrid circled behind, oblivious was of his action, stared with a pleased smile and hidden eyes not bothered by his commission unreturned.
Unfazed until Ifrid appeared behind his back, the figure merely turned around with a plastered smile and an air of curiosity in them.
Approach with murky steps, his height insurmountably tall of ill proportions.
"We didn't expect ourselves found." With outstretched hands, he states his name: "Nylegris, pleasure to the company of a young one—?"
"Ifrid," took his hands.
"Ifrid! What a name; say why, particularly this star."
Nylegris's dissonant tongue was jarring, but his understanding of it was more so.
Oppressive aura balance on a sword edge, immaterial tendrils of taint and eyes.
It doesn't take much to figure out whether someone is a god when they're not explicitly hiding it.
But trying to deal with one is a different matter.
"The same as what is well." Ifrid response.
"Well?"
"Are you asking the purpose to a stranger's pursuit?"
Nylegris pulled a step back and laughed, "Hahaha, young one these days. We act on fleeting fascination when we live all of life in patience. We take what is new and discard what is told."
"And you think here is fascinating?"
"Second."
"The feast is raw."
Nylegris's voice lowered, "We'd caution the sole thread."
A powerful shockwave emerges from Nylegris, pressing on everything in the clearing.
All rapidly decayed, and the cicadas all fell from the trees dead.
With a false step back, Ifrid said, "Mortal wines are best with time."
"A bold overreach, but an interesting proposition. How about a game to prove that?"
"What do you mean?"
"With here world as the board, against us. Champion as pawn, legends the measure and death the other's victory. To the victor a prize, the loser sacrifice."
"Old hand against a new seems hardly fair."
"A counterweight then? Ten years given as head start."
"And the wager?"
"Your divinity to a glyph fragment."
"Glyph fragment?"
A hand rose from beneath the robe, pointed finger black finger, palming something, radiating countless strings.
Colorless and formless glyph, half a stroke complete, squirming with translucent tendrils, floated within Nylegris's grasp.
"Young gods might not know, but us stars didn't start wars over squabble as mortals speculate. Nay, for glyphs, are what shape heavens from planetary leap to celestial time."
"More than divinity?"
"More than divinity can even compare."
"Then I shall play that game with you then."
"So we will it."
With shook hands, their bet sealed, witnessed by the world.
Ifrid witnesses in totality the power of a god, a binding that tore space, their contact inked into the ripped skin of the universe.
Countless threads weaved into a seal handed a copy to both parties.
"We shall look forward to our next meeting."
With that, Nylegris disappeared.
Like an illusion, green returned to the brown and gray forest, his trace all but gone.
Silence.
Ifrid slumped over to the ground, mentally exhausted.
'I've just made a deal with a god.'
He looked at his shaky hands, the same one which moments ago firmly shook on a bet made of bluff.
In his hand a wax seal stamp with the inverse triangled eye, the binding force of the contract still rippling on the surface.
'Thank god he saw me as a god, too.'
On the rim of the seal, hollowed out the term of the bet:
Nylegris will not interfere with the world for the next nine years, three hundred sixty-four days, eighty-six thousand three hundred and forty-five seconds, and decreasing.
On the appointed date, both shall choose a champion to represent them in this bet.
The legends their champion accumulates shall be used as the metrics for which the winner is judged.
If either champion dies, victory is immediately granted to the owner of the surviving champion.
The winner of the bet is entitled to Ifrid's divinity and Nylegris's glyph fragment of his choosing.
The glyph fragment Ifrid saw reminded him of the strokes and ink of the marble book.
Intuition tells him that the glyph is related to the book somehow.
He put the wax seal into his robe and stared at the spot where Nylegris disappeared with a determined gaze.
'If I want to go home, I'd need to get my hands on a glyph or its fragment.'
But only after he checked those bags for anything useful.
***
Blech.
In his morning ceremony, the saint of Klanthra suddenly fell and vomited blood.
"Saint!"
The priest and high priestess in service paled and panicked at the sight.
"Someone call the knights!"
An acolyte went out and was back, followed by a squad of temple knights.
"Seal all exits! No one enters or leaves the premises." The captain of the order continued, "You all here are under the suspicion of attempted murder of the saint under the holy father and god. Please cooperate."
The already pale clergy turn white because of the captain's unexpected accusation, with some fainting on the spots.
The temple will be under tight supervision within minutes until the saint is healthy again, and all suspicions cleared.
"... A deal was struck…" the saint whimpered, much to the joy of the conscious priest.
"Oh, saint! You're awake!"
"How do you feel, saint?"
"You must clear us of suspicion, saint!"
Deaf to the cries of those around him, the saint continued.
"Beware the deal struck between tyrain and silver."
From the crowd of the wailing priest, someone said, "A prophecy."
And like an angry mob, they echo the train of thought.
"This is a prophecy from the god of the chaos to come!"
"All but a natural cause! How dare mere knights defile the prophecy of gods!"
"Calamity is upon us. You must release us immediately. We will spread the word."
Everywhere all over the world, saints, shamans, oracles, and diviners all bleed from either noses, mouth, ears, or eyes.
Any with a connection to the world knows of its screams, of the deal that was struck a herald darker times, a vision of the future torn by a star falling from the sky.