In that last chapter, I may have gotten a bit more…. caustic than usual toward humanity. I don’t apologize of course, but I admit my own biases. You must understand something though. When you have lived for as long as I have and have the knowledge of the many sins of the world like I do, your perception tends to be colored just a little bit darker than others. I don’t want to make it seem like I’m throwing humans under the proverbial bus for no reason. So let me reintroduce myself.

Hello, dear adventurer.

I’ve gone by many different names over the millennia, so feel free to call me as you wish. You may have been wondering who, or what, I am. Neither of those things matter. Well, not to me. Not anymore.

But for curiosity’s sake, let’s say that I am the human equivalent to a sage. I mentioned in the beginning that I’ve taken it upon myself to right your misconceptions about the world. With everything that happened, you may also be wondering why I didn’t just take it upon myself to stop all the terrible things that happened to these creatures. Two reasons:

1) I’m only a single entity.

2) I merely observe and record. Live for a few centuries and you realize that your actions mean very little in the long run.

That isn’t to say I didn’t try in the beginning. When I first learned of what I was, it was during the Elven exodus. Before they disappeared to another realm, my friend and teacher warned me about humanity’s inner nature. She told me about how your desire for control would eventually consume and destroy everything. I didn’t realize it at first, but not long after humans hunted the fire-drakes and other Drakae to extinction. The tension between humanity and orcs started intensifying as well.

I tried mediating between races. That only staved off the war for about two hundred years. I tried researching for ways that sirens could live without human energy, but that fell through long before anything could change. I tried setting up schools for sorcies, but because of my little condition of dying and reincarnating every twenty-three years, I couldn’t retain enough support.

What was I supposed to do?

After the Orcken genocide and later witch hunts, I grew exasperated. I started observing instead. I observed, and I wrote. That leads us to now with this anthology of observations that I’ve collected over the years. So ends my re-introduction.

Hm?

You’re left with more questions than answers you say? What were you expecting?

Perhaps you wanted more information on exactly what I am? I told you before that it didn’t matter, right?

Maybe I am an eldritch being once called upon by a cult seeking knowledge. They imprisoned me in this body of flesh, hoping to hoard whatever gifts I would have granted. Instead, each piece of knowledge cut at their minds and turned them into beasts to be hunted. Those beasts, mind you, were your fellow humans. Yet fear has such a way of motivating humanity into radical decisions. Instead of using your talents to try and help them, you slaughtered the beasts then sook me out again, only to repeat the cycle.

Or maybe I’m a librarian cataloguing the various histories of the world. Every life has a book and every action is a chapter added to their stories. And just as adults laugh at the little problems of children, I laugh at the little problems of humans, for you all are but characters whose troubles serve only to advance the plot and entertain me. I watch over each of your stories until the book ends, then I shelve it away until the next installment.

Or maybe I’m nothing as grand as that. Maybe I’m not some otherworldly creature that has come to impart knowledge on the masses. Maybe there was no cult or demons or grand design in my existence.

Maybe, just maybe, once upon a time long ago, there lived a foolish farmer whose pregnant wife was very sick. He prayed and wished and hoped for something, anything, to save his family that had barely begun. He begged for his child to survive and be born with a body that death would never touch in this unforgiving world. And maybe his wish was half-answered by a bored creature that lurked in the blind spots of the world. His wife died, and what would have been his child became the embodiment of his wish—an existence that would not lose to this world. Death comes to all things, and the world would curse their existence to be a short one, but even so his child would be reborn from the ashes, again and again and again and again.

And maybe to keep from going insane, that child had to find their own purpose in life, so they traveled the world and kept records of everything that would have been lost to time.

And maybe they found humans, with their short lifespans and ever-changing natures to be beautifully blessed and wish desperately for them to enjoy their fleeting moments instead of pursing powers outside their reach, just as that foolish farmer did so long ago.

And maybe that’s all there ever was to it.

Or maybe it’s none of these and I’m just messing with you. Who knows?