The King has died.
Those four words end the sixth tablet, and no one has ever been able to explain them.
Forty-four years ago, archaeologists uncovered six tablets, each about three hundred years old. Scholars translated them from the Volcav language and found the story of a king who is never named. Readers began calling him Illiad, because the tablets only ever say "the Prince," and later "the King."
The first five tablets tell a miracle. For eighteen years, the prince lay paralyzed, unable to hear, see, speak, or move. Then his mother prayed for seventy-eight days and seventy-seven nights without rest, and on the last night, he woke and stood. That same day, the old king died, and the prince took the throne. A month later, he marched fourteen thousand soldiers to Babylon and conquered the nation of Prunia. His people believeed that heaven had sent him.
And then, on the sixth tablet, he simply dies. There's no war, no illness, and no explanation.
People have argued over it for four decades. Some say it was old age. Others say he was murdered. But everyone who studies the tablets agrees on one thing: there must be a seventh, and whoever finds it will learn the truth and claim a power beyond anything the world has seen.
Most adventurers don't believe it exists. They search for it anyway.
----
"Forty-five hundred Velvens?!"
Loon's shout rattled the bottles on the shelf. The shopkeeper, safe behind his heavy desk, didn't flinch.
"Imported directly from Terizilia," he said. "Best healing potion on the continent."
"I don't care if a god brewed it! That's a rip-off!"
"Loon." Dolphin caught his sleeve. "Voice down. And there's a cheaper alchemist by the river. Five hundred sixty."
"That's still too much!"
"It's what we can afford." Dolphin lowered his voice further. "Which is barely anything, in case you forgot."
He hadn't forgotten. Their coin purse was so light that Dolphin counted it twice a day, as though the numbers might change. Loon glared at the potions a moment longer, then let himself be dragged toward the door. On the threshold, he turned.
"No one's going to buy your crappy potions, old man!"
The shopkeeper turned a page in his ledger.
Outside, Dolphin sighed. "Was that necessary?"
"He needed to hear it."
"He needed to hear nothing. That was the fourth shop today."
They walked on, past stone buildings with timber upper floors and crooked roofs. Dolphin had been asking about the tablet in every shop since morning, in the casual voice of a man who wasn't really asking. Every shopkeeper had either laughed or changed the subject. Loon, meanwhile, was too busy scowling at prices to notice.
Then a small crash sounded ahead. A little girl had dropped her basket, and a dozen apples were rolling across the cobblestones.
Before Dolphin could speak, Loon had crouched, scooped up the fruit, and was already handing the basket back, complete with a wide grin.
"There you go. Don't let anyone steal 'em."
The girl ran off. Dolphin raised an eyebrow.
"What?" Loon said.
"You scream at shopkeepers and then you do that." Dolphin shook his head. "I'll never figure you out."
"Nothing to figure out."
"Mm." Dolphin was smiling anyway.
The scream came from behind them.
A man in torn, filthy clothes was sprinting through the crowd, shoving people aside, his eyes wide with terror.
He crashed into Dolphin's back. Dolphin barely shifted, and the man bounced off and hit the cobblestones. Behind him, three knights in silver armor were pounding down the street.
The man scrambled up and tried to run past them. Loon caught his arm.
"Get out of my way!" The man wrenched at him with everything he had, and found that it was like pulling on a stone wall. He looked back at the knights, then at Loon, and his rage collapsed into desperation. His eyes dropped to the guild badges hanging from Loon's belt and Dolphin's.
"Adventurers... Please. I saw something I shouldn't have. The Gargoyle Group has a disgusting secret."
"The Gargoyle Group?" Dolphin frowned.
"The nobles who look after the poor?"
"That's what they want you to think!"
A gauntleted hand seized the man by the hair and yanked him backward. "In the name of Sir Syris, you are under arrest for trespassing in the Justice Building!"
The knights hauled him away. The man twisted in their grip and glared at the two of them, and his voice cracked.
"You're the ones asking about the seventh tablet! Everyone's heard! I know where the--"
A fist slammed into his jaw.
"Silence!" the knight snapped. "Spon Feldevan, speak again and I'll finish you here." He turned to the duo. "And you two, forget what you heard. Help this man, and the Gargoyle Group will be your enemy."
Dolphin's eyes, which had been narrowed in suspicion, suddenly lit up. Loon saw it, and knew that look.
Around them, the crowd had gone silent. Every civilian in earshot had heard the words seventh tablet.
"Dolphin," Loon murmured. "Our purse."
"I know."
"The tablet."
"I know."
Loon grinned, and moved before any of the knights could.
He darted forward, tore Spon out of the knights' hands, and leaped up onto the nearest rooftop.