Page 180 of The Cradle of Ice

“And others.” Tykhan stared around. “But I know little about those details.”

“What of the war?” Aalia pressed, curiosity piquing through her.

“Yes, a shameful time. When the world stopped turning, the ta’wyn observed the great floods, the world-shaking quakes, the devastation that brought down mountains, the burning of seas to salt. Throughout it all, we watched those who still lived brutally trying to survive, clinging desperately to whatever foothold they could manage. The cruelty, the savagery of that time … it was beyond any imagining.”

“You’re speaking about the Forsaken Ages,” Pratik whispered.

Tykhan nodded, looking haunted. “And those barbaric and brutal people were once our creators. It was hard to watch. It broke many. In great dismay, a faction of the ta’wyn deemed you all unworthy of our further protection. They believed that the Urth should be cleansed of your stain, to make room for the reign of its new masters.”

Frell looked appalled. “The ta’wyn.”

Tykhan sighed, acknowledging this. “But most of us adhered to the original definition of the name given to us. Defenders. War ensued. It lasted for a full millennium, long before the Crown ever formed. The defenders came close to losing, especially as one of our Krysts betrayed us.”

“Krysts?” Aalia asked.

Tykhan lowered a palm to his waist. “I’m a Root.” He lifted his hand to his shoulder. “The one you call Shiya is an Axis, a ta’wyn of higher status and knowledge. But a Kryst—” He shoved his arm as high as he could reach. “They truly are undying gods.”

Aalia shivered, trying to contemplate such a being.

“It took every defender to finally defeat Eligor. He was as monstrous as any infernal god in the Klashean pantheon.”

Aalia shared a look with Frell and Pratik. “We saw that name in those pages, too.”

She pictured the looming figure of a man, holding aloft a thunderbolt.

Eligor.

“Though he was defeated,” Tykhan said, “some of his surviving members absconded with his broken body. They fled to distant corners of the world, still wreaking havoc. Before leaving, they damaged or destroyed many of our buried libraries of knowledge.”

Frell flinched. “I think we saw such vandalism. In a crystal librarie beneath the stones of the Northern Henge.”

Tykhan looked grim. “Such knowledge is needed by an Axis. They are the only ones who can ignite the massive forges and set the world to turning again. Without it, the Axis rise as newborns. They are driven by an insatiable desire to seek out that knowledge in order to fully restore themselves.”

“I believe we’ve witnessed that compulsion, too,” Pratik added. “With Shiya.”

“Unfortunately, continents and landmasses shifted and reconfigured during the long sleep, often separating an Axis from its librarie.”

Frell frowned, clearly frustrated. “Why didn’t your creators just steep that knowledge into an Axis from the beginning? Why bother with a separate librarie?”

“Our brains are not like yours. They are resilient, pliant, able to hold vast amounts, but the problem with such flexibility is that our means of storing knowledge is corruptible by time. The crystal arkada that you saw down in the vandalized librarie … if left intact, such volumes can retain their knowledge until the universe goes cold. Knowing that, our creators only instilled a core base of knowledge into us. Even I was greatly confused when I first woke in my eyran.”

“Eyran?” Kanthe asked. “Do you mean that copper egg?”

Tykhan scrunched his brow. “I supposed that’s an apt enough description. When I was attacked there, I only survived due to a baseline of self-preservation. That and a Root’s inherent strength and fluidity of form. It allowed me to tear apart my attacker.”

“We saw a body in your copper egg,” Kanthe whispered.

“One of the enemy. Besides destroying libraries, they also tried to kill Sleepers. It was why I woke up so early. With my eyran destroyed, I could not return to my slumber. So I traveled down a longer path, one never attempted by a Root.”

“And what was that?” Aalia asked.

Tykhan looked at all of them, as if the answer were obvious. “Like any Sleeper, I waited through the passing millennia until I was needed. Though awake this entire time, my core directive remained the same.”

Aalia frowned. “Which is what?”

“I’m a ta’wyn, which means my primary goal is to defend.”

This answer was unsatisfactory to another. Her brother Rami had quietly stepped through the doorway of the stern cabin. He pointed back inside, his voice furious. “Is that what you call defending? What you did to my father?”