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| Jik'hirun-gharl ... the Bone Singer |
| The first, they say, to have stood up upon the World of Lojuntair and used his eyes to tell the eternal stars and their darker companions from that which was different in the skies above was Rillun-ar, the Watcher. This was at the dawn of his civilisation, just as the fires had been caged in metal, and that same metal bathed in the blood of enemies. Rillun-ar spoke of what he saw. Great stones sailing the sky between the stars, filling a quadrant of the starscape. They had done so for centuries before those of Lojuntair had thought to give them a name. The Great Stones came from nowhere, and they returned to nowhere. They had always been there, up in the stars. A thousand years later, the direct descendant of Rillun-ar considered that he would do what no other had done. Morra-nar had eyes made from his science that were a thousand years more progressed than those his ancestor used. His had crystal excellence, while all around him fires dimmed and went out, one by one, as energies used without thought to the future faded, one by one. His crystal eyes told him that the Great Stones, now dwindling in number, now becoming fewer, held within their heart great power denied the watchers from below. So, Morra-nar calculated, and sent slender streaks of silver from the skin of his world to snare the last of the ancient stones. And brought it to the skin of his world with one, shrill, piercing scream. That was the last anyone ever knew of the World of Lojuntair. Some say they have seen a circle of dust where once that world glittered. Some say the tales of the old rim-walkers are just fancies, though. The stories that tell of some of that dust forming words in an Old Tongue. "Bone Singer's song was stopped here. Bone Singer, in turn, has stopped their song forever," |
| From Manak's Stories, unknown author. |
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