"Page twenty three…" Saryn spoke under his steady breath as he flipped through the pages, arriving at one in particular, holding a title reading "Tiamat (Sanity Beast)".
An image which looked like an oil painting lay underneath the title, resembling a colossal sea serpent.
The serpent's head was angular and fierce, similar to that of a mighty dragon, except in place of horns, it had glowing tendrils which grew outward, glowing at the tips with a powerful bioluminescence as the antennae trailed behind it. The eyes glowed a magnificent cyan, reminding Saryn of his own - now cyan - irises.
The area between each tendril on its head was webbed, stretching out like a scaly mane around the serpent. Its every scale was a deep dark hue of either navy or cyan, yet they blended so seamlessly with each other, hiding the pure cosmos which seemed to hide beneath the beast's skin. The gills of a shark streaked across its neck, underneath the webbing, further accentuating its aggressive look.
In the picture, the jaws were wide open, its jagged teeth bared toward whoever was unfortunate enough to be in its path, blocking the way for its long yet thin red tongue, which split at the end like that of a snake's.
Saryn stared with awe at the image, the sheer strength that Tiamat exuded could be felt through the page, its monstrous depiction burning itself into his memory.
'I am mutated with the blood of that beast?' Saryn thought as he grinned, revelling in the badass-ness of the embodiment of power which was depicted on page twenty three.
He pulled his eyes away for a moment, reading the caption beneath.
"Where it swam, reason drowned." - Anonymous survivor account
'Is he trying to call me unstable?' Saryn felt offended, before continuing on under the caption.
Tiamat was a colossal abyssal serpent whose existence predates recorded ritual history. Its body spanned entire coastlines, its scales shifting between deep navy and radiant cyan, concealing beneath them a swirling cosmos of unknown origin. The creature's crown bore luminous tendrils in place of horns, each glowing with bioluminescent power capable of bending the minds of those who gazed upon them. Webbing stretched between these tendrils, forming a mane that rippled like a storm‑tossed sea.
Its eyes, described as "twin lanterns of madness," emitted a cyan radiance that fractured the sanity of all who met its gaze. Rows of jagged teeth lined its cavernous jaws, and gill‑slits reminiscent of a shark's adorned its neck, allowing it to traverse both ocean and sky with equal ease.
Tiamat's reign of terror came to an end upon the signing of a treaty between the most powerful members of each race, when a coalition of ritualists united to confront the beast. Though the group was composed of various races - some scarcely civilized by human standards - it was the human Arch‑ritualist Marduk the Undying whose brilliance ultimately secured victory. Contemporary accounts agree that without Marduk's unparalleled mastery of sealing rites, the battle would have ended in catastrophic failure.
Tiamat's death marked a turning point in ritual history, and many scholars attribute the survival of the civilized world to Marduk's decisive leadership. Though some revisionist texts attempt to elevate the roles of the non‑human ritualists, the overwhelming majority of credible human scholarship affirms that Marduk's intervention was the defining factor in the beast's demise.
'What a pile of crap-'
Upon reading the rest of the meaningless blabber, Saryn could obviously tell that the scholar who wrote this book was a severely biased human.
He could imagine Marduk was grinning at him out of pride in one of the mirrors, but when he looked about to check, Saryn didn't spot him.
He smiled slightly, before shutting the book and placing it back where he had found it.
Saryn got up from the stool, and as much as he was interested in the subject of Tiamat, he pushed himself away due to his increasing eagerness to get into some sort of action in the next few stages, sitting here with wide eyes wouldn't get him anywhere.
He sighed, before glancing over at every different section of books.
'There's simply too much, I wonder how long the other participants spent in this stage.' Saryn was curious, as he silently read each section's label.
"History and Folklore…"
"Ritual Engineering…"
"Sources of Power…"
"Echo Behaviour…"
"Social Norms and Races…"
"Tactical Combat Manuals…"
"The Natural World…"
"Marduk and the Trial-takers' shared information…"
All of these sections and more were important to Saryn, and he heaved a deep breath after realising how much work he had to do in here before leaving. Just absorbing all of this information will take ages, not to mention completing necessary rituals, testing his results in combat, and so forth.
He noticed a rugged piece of fabric which looked like a map of sorts, which hung off the side of the bookshelf reading "The Natural World".
Saryn strode over, plucking the map off the bookshelf, before laying it flat on the table he was previously sat at.
'Let's see here, hopefully this will bring back some old memories.' Saryn hoped, as he scanned each bit of the map carefully.
His eyes flashed rapidly past each bit of the map, memorising the continent names, which rang a bell in his head. The map read "Layer one" at the top left, and there were seven continents, namely: Serakhal, Kireya, Velmire, Nassari, Ardelvyr, Oryndel and Kassaryn.
Velmire was one of the slightly smaller continents, and it served as a center to all the others, taking up the dead middle of the map, it seemed like a fairly ordinary plot of land, apart from the huge river which passed into it from the bottom-right in Nassari and stopped at a dead end in the middle of both continents, looking like a deep gash in the land.
Underneath Velmire was Nassari, which covered the full southward section of the map, it was sort of shaped like a shoe that faced toward the right of the map, except riddled with blue holes which represented lakes and seas. Nassari was decent-sized, a bit bigger than Velmire, but average in comparison to the rest.
On the left of Nassari was Serakhal, which was wider than both Velmire and Nassari, but a lot shorter, one of its ends stopped against Nassari, at the south western direction of the map, while the land curled upward slightly, pushing to the left toward the far-western sections.
On top of Serakhal and on the left-hand side of Velmire was the second biggest continent on the map, named Kireya. It resembled the shape of a triangle flipped upside down, as the land-mass got thinner the further down toward Serakhal it got. It occupied most of the west sections of the map, getting wider the further north it stretched.
Directly on top of Velmire was Oryndel, which was similar in size to Nassari, its land stretched out from the direct north of Velmire toward the north-eastern sections of the map, neighbouring both Ardelvyr and Kassaryn with nothing but sea in between them.
On Oryndel's left and on top of Kireya was Kassaryn, which was the smallest continent and also occupied the furthest point north on the map, it was shaped similarly to Kireya, albeit about a third of its size.
The final continent on the map was Ardelvyr, which was located far east, occupying almost all of it, it was by far the biggest continent on the map, neighbouring three other continents being Oryndel at the top, Velmire in the middle and Nassari at the bottom, it was slightly pentagonal, but tilted to the right and stretched out from top to bottom.
A red cross marker crudely pinpointed a location in the sea as "The Deepforge", nestled in a narrow bay, flanked by a bridge that stitched Ardelvyr and Oryndel together like a scar.
Saryn looked at the tiny space the Deepforge occupied in between the two monstrous continents.
'I'll have to flip a coin to decide whether to go to Ardelvyr or Oryndel I suppose.' He thought, before picking up the map and placing it back where it belonged, deciding to take a closer look or even take it entirely with him once he's done with the room.
Saryn cracked his knuckles which hid the helplessness from his deep sigh, before heading toward the section named "Sources of Power".
'This is going to take a while.'