THE UNTOLD STORIES OF THE PAST

The stairs seemed to go on forever, Evelyn slowly walked down the stairs, not knowing what to expect. 

"It's been 20 minutes already!" Jack complained, "Where in the good Hadilocks is she?!"

"Relax, she will be back soon." Emily said.

"S-she didn't say how long she would be…" Radeon began, "I-it shouldn't t-take too long for her to bring s-supplies the t-to us…"

"He's got a point," Emily says, looking at Jack, "We will give her another 10 minutes before we go out to find her. She told me on the way that the chute won't start moving until 45 minutes from stationary time. It's only been 20, we have 25 minutes until it starts moving again." Emily said.

"Alright, another 10 minutes I guess." Jack scoffed, wondering why he even agreed in the first place to go in the chutes; It's so cramped in here! I hate this. 

Evelyn steadily walked down slowly, unaware of how much time had passed, until she finally made it to the end…

She found herself in a cosy little room, a bookshelf to her left, and a wonderful study area, she walks up to the study area and fumbles around. Nothing too special, just some old notebooks with doodles and different coloured pens. That's when something caught her eye in the bookshelf, a gleaming, gold framed book, with the words "Tall But Strong Tales" written on the spine. She walks closer and grabs the book, she gently blows off the dust and looks at the cover. Strange. There is no actual author written anywhere, she looks at the back, the spine, the front page, nothing.

She decides to bring the book with her, as an entertainment for their long journey.

Evelyn carefully jogs up the tall, spiral stairs, aware that quite some time has passed, and she better get going.

Evelyn makes it to the top, grabs some water and food, then quickly follows the long corridor to the chute, she slips in with the supplies.

"Finally, took you long enough!" Jack said, very annoyed.

"I ran into some, er– well, let's say, issues, but not really issues." Evelyn tries explaining. "That's not important now, I'll tell you guys later, how long was I gone for?"

"Around 30 minutes." Emily said.

"Oh, that's quite a while, sorry guys." Evelyn says, realising how long she took.

Jack shrugged and said, "It's alright, just tell us the "issues" you ran into." 

"So, basically, I was getting the supplies, but then I think I activated something, it was like a lever clicked, but the cool part was that the whole supply room's wall opened up–"

"Woah cool! Like open, opened—-"  "—Jack don't cut in. Anyways, it opened to a spiral staircase, which led me down like a lot, a lot. And when I finally reached the bottom, I found a secret study room—" "Wow! So what was it like—" "Jack, I'm getting to that, so it looked like a very cosy study room and had a bookshelf in it, the shelf was filled with all sorts of very old looking books–" "Bor-ring! Tell me what secret treasures there were—" "JACK! I AM SPEAKING! Stop it! So I found a very cool looking old-worn book. It has a neat golden frame work, I bought it with me, here" Evelyn says, showing them the book.

"Is that it?" Jack says, disappointed.

"Yes, but there is something very odd I noticed about this book." Evelyn said, brushing the cover.

"What's wrong with it?" Emily asked.

"There is no author to this book." Evelyn said.

"Let me see." Emily says, taking the book.

Emily looks at the book; "Tall But Strong Tales", what could that mean?

Emily checks out the spine, and flips the book, to her surprise, she sees a symbol. Not just any symbol; a symbol that stands for the society of mages–the oldest society recorded, but died out in the ice age.

"This symbol…" Emily says, pointing at the circular sign, "That stands for the oldest mage society ever recorded…"

"Really?" Evelyn leans in, taking a closer look. Just then, the chute begins to move, and every light starts darkening.

"I've g-got my torch…" Radeon says, handing it to Emily. She shone the torch on the book and opened it.

"Nope, can't read that." Emily says, "It's a very ancient mage language, only my great grandfather could read that."

"Well, you can't?" Jack asks.

"Nope, never got taught. If you really want to know what it says, we could head to my great grandfathers once we get to HQ16. He lives in the eastern mountains of Hirmalies, it's somewhere around HQ16." Emily replies.

"Wait… it has english notes on the side of some pages…" Evelyn points out.

"It does…" Jack begins.

"IT SAYS KAHLEY!" Evelyn suddenly yells.

Radeon shuddered at the name.

"That can't be good…" Jack says.

"She wrote…:

The essence of the mages comes from the inner strength one has, in order to have more essence, one must train their inner strength.

—------- There are many ways to obtain essence, the more, the longer the span of someone's life. One way is to extract it from an existing being. But if extracted, the existing being would also cease to exist— or in other words, — die.

— Kahley notes 01.0

"Oh my gosh… this is what Kahley has been doing the whole time… murdering people, but I thought she wanted the powers of the mage? Not immorality?" Evelyn shakes in her place, speaking quietly.

"That's just a bonus, then. Powers are a bonus, immorality is the goal." Jack says quietly in disbelief.

Emily stayed silent, unable to process what she had just heard.