11th day of Nardure, 1283

A few hours before sunset, a bird arrived carrying a message from the Offensive Team. It says they can’t make it due to some ‘shit’ they encountered along the road. The team had decided to spend their night in an inn with a promise to leave as soon as daylight.

Gefran grunted after he reported the message to us. I wonder if it was just his mannerisms to grunt every five words of his sentence, or just his way of expressing his dislike for his captain. Regardless of his reason, I find his antics annoying to the eye.

We managed to push back the last wave of Stecars, and there was nothing left for us to do after that but to go back to the place of our accommodation. 

Despite my annoyance with Gefran, his addition to the team made things easier for all of us. I don’t exert myself to exhaustion like how I used to. I decided to use my remaining energy for that day to visit the library; there were still bookshelves I didn’t check during my last visit there. 

As I was checking the books, the librarian spotted me. When he saw the books I was reading, he thought I was interested in the prominent legends of their small town.

‘Aren’t you part of the team sent by the Magisterium?’

He smiled and proceeded to the contents of the book that I picked. It was a localized version of how Emperor Flinard established the Blacksilver Valley. But what he told me differed from what I had been taught at the Imperial University. 

‘Emperor Flinard didn’t have to put too much effort into eradicating the Stecars,’ he said. ‘At that time, Stecars was already leaving this place and crossing the Red Savanna.’

This talk caught my interest, so I asked him why they were migrating to a different habitat.

‘There are many causes, one is their increasing contact with humans, and another is the abrupt change in the climate… there are pieces of evidence that show that this place had a warm climate. There are even evidences that show that this place receives a share of snow during winter. When the Imperial Army arrived here, what they did was to push back the small remaining population of Stecars that hadn’t vacated the area.’

‘For years, they didn’t show up, and we thought they all went extinct until two decades ago, Stecars appeared once again. But they didn’t do as much as hurt people in those early encounters. This phenomenon continues, but as it keeps repeating itself, we notice something odd about them.’

I turned at him rather too abruptly. The librarian turned at me too. 

‘Stecars brought with them their old people, and if we compare it to human behavior, it will look as if they’re migrating again back to the place where their ancestors used to live.’

The librarian hummed, and I shivered as soon as I realized what song it was. It is the Third Song of Destruction. But the librarian seems unaware that what he is doing bothers me. 

‘I wonder what’s there in the Red Savanna for them to suddenly migrate again.’

‘Perhaps it’s the change in the climate once again,’ I said.

The librarian shook his head, ‘they’re rather too desperate. It appears to me that they’re desperate to leave that place but… for what reason. What’s there in the Red Savanna that makes the Stecars keep coming back to a place that causes them nothing but death?’

He left at once when the bell on the door rang. For the rest of my stay there, I could only think about the situation in the Red Savanna, the dead crows and sparrows, and the creatures in the Endless Desert. I couldn’t help but tie it to Stardust Disturbances.

Lord Mikkaelo Sarganse