This world was deceptive. There was always an irresistible desire in Nikolaos to see through it. Sometimes quite literally. Decades ago, he researched the accounts of his underground kindred: large, sentient earthworms. They could communicate with the surface dwellers only through Maker and the earthworms spoke about strange distant vibrations, which they felt coming from the deep belly of Equiya. Nikolaos was intrigued.

And so, to the additional scorn and ridicule of his peers, he took detailed accounts—with the help of Maker himself—and marked the locations of these vibrations on a map. Then he was able to extrapolate points of interest. Often these tremors were noted in proximity to abandoned crystal mines and deep below mountains. This led him to find bizarre, often half-collapsed, tunnels. They were monumental. With only the light of crystal placed onto the end of the oak staff to guide him, Nikolaos was wandering in the rotten bowels of the world. He had theories about what created those huge tunnels, theories he could never speak aloud.

He remembered reading hundreds of crisp-new-looking—and more than a few dusty and yellowed—books about animal physiology and behavior. Long ago there was a lizard with dark green-brown skin. This was during the time Maker and some human books claimed that Equiya's plants and especially grass were mostly green. This greenish lizard was well adapted to its living space. In another colorful book, written around the time of Nikolaos' birth, by one of his fellow scholars, there was a masterfully drawn picture of the same looking lizard but this one had dark purple skin with black stripes. It must have changed somehow over time to better hide. His writings on the topic of animals adapting to their environments were mostly well received, but only after years of scholarly debate.

The theory that was not well received, however, was the one he took the most pride in, and simply couldn't let go of. Decades of research and void-deep thinking led Nikolaos to propose the idea that if the entire world was at least somewhat larger then the force pulling down on everything would also increase. This would make it more difficult to build tall structures and the world would probably be filled with creatures that are shorter or that can just slither or crawl. Perhaps birds and those such as his flying kindred wouldn't be able to take to the skies at all. He condensed his reasoning from reading copious amounts of scientific scrolls and volumes written by long-dead humans as well as more recent works of kindred scholars. He was laughed at when he wrote or tried to lecture about such things. ''The world was already vast,'' they'd say. Or, ''It couldn't possibly get bigger.'' That was the problem with thought experiments, good luck proving one.

What really hurt more than Nikolaos will ever admit, even to himself, was that even Maker found the idea far-fetched. Maker, despite being a wise and great scholar, only truly believed in things that can be proven repeatedly. A good trait for a scholar to have but also potentially limiting.

We are standing on the shoulders of giants. Maker was always heavily interested in uncovering the lost knowledge of the human empire and yet he does nothing to address this petty odium his kindred have toward knowledge of old.

Occasionally, he thought about returning to Vantium—a good few days of flight to the north—and stopping his way of pursuing knowledge. There was always that cursed instinctive desire to belong, to be accepted by his peers. But then he wouldn't be in his element.