In Harandaal, the shrines remain…
Wander deep enough into the meer, following deer paths and burbling streams, skirting around toadstool rings, and there you’ll find them.
Tumbled piles of buttons and coins, shiny trinkets and smooth river stones. The shrines still tended—but by whom? And why?
Then, of course, there’s the empty place setting at every Harandean dinner table—yet another offering whose origins have been lost.
But ask ten Harandeans who the Hidden Company were and you’ll get twelve different answers.
Some say they were ancestors, long-vanished kin with names now forgotten.
Others claim they were gods—or demi-gods, perhaps?—guardians of mountain and meadow, grotto and meer, who vanished when Harandaal fell.
Still others insist they were ghosts. Or still are.
Arcanus, the librarian of Harandaal, has spent his life ferreting answers from dusty scrolls and cracked leather tomes. There isn’t much, but what he’s found leaves a tantalizing trail.
The first clue was found in a forgotten travel guide…
A guide misshelved under Agricultural Methods. It contained a sketch of mysterious runes, which the author claimed were the lost language of the Hidden Company.
Now, to anyone else, this might seem nothing more than a linguistic morsel—curious, perhaps, but easily forgotten.
But this faded sketch stopped Arcanus cold, for he knew what no other Harandean could.
These runes weren’t unknown.
They were the language of the Aeloihim. (How Arcanus knows this is a tale only he can tell.)
Startled though he was, Arcanus assumed the author was simply mistaken. A well-meaning scholar encounters an unknown language and ascribes it to an equally unknown people (if the Hidden Company were, in fact, people…).
But some years later, Arcanus stumbled upon another text.
This time, a brittle manuscript containing a map of something he wasn’t allowed to see. A map of the legendary Star Garden.
Though Arcanus had spent most of his life in the palace—directly beneath the Star Garden—he’d never once set foot in it.
He’d heard plenty of rumors, of course, each more outlandish than the last…
Bats, large as roosters, were said to drink from night-blooming flowers.
Flowers with petals that, when crushed, glowed like slow-dying stars.
Some claimed the flowers even spoke, in a voice old as time. The Spirit Song, they called it.
And to one who remembered this ancient tongue, the flowers would whisper where a great treasure lay buried.
Yes—each tale more outlandish than the last.
But the grand spiraling staircase to the Star Garden, which spanned the top of the massive red-rock butte from which the palace was carved, was barred to all but the Bryndiel royal family.
And yet, amidst the tall tales, one detail Arcanus knew to be true. At the heart of the Star Garden lay Harandaal’s most sacred site—the First Stone.
This is where the mystery deepens…
Inked in the margins of that forbidden map was a note, and if the anonymous scribbler was to be believed, the runes carved on the First Stone are the lost language of the Hidden Company.
Runes that Arcanus, having pored over the map for many hours, knows are absolutely, unmistakably, the language of the Aeloihim.
Two sources.
Both linking the Hidden Company to a language never known in Harandaal.
Either two authors are sorely mistaken…
Or Arcanus has discovered a link between the Aeloihim and the Hidden Ones that was never meant to be found.
The trail ends here…for now.
But in the meers of Harandaal, a stream runs cold and clear. Follow it far enough, and you’ll reach the Waterfall of Mesmer.
Some say there’s a cave hidden behind the water’s curtain.
Still others claim the cave isn’t empty…
See you next time.
