[Many races treated their meticulously recounted creation legends as part of their culture, passing them down from generation to generation with reverence.
Gruush for the beastfolk, the mines for the dwarves, crystals for the gnomes. Even tieflings had to admit that the blood of demonspawn bound them together invisibly, making them a community whose members could lean on one another.
But in most cases, one race's creation legend would conflict with another's.
Of course, that hardly counted as a problem. None of the history passed down to the present had actually happened anyway—and few people cared about these so-called myths.
Yet not every race possessed legends explaining its origins and justifying its existence.
The aboleths, for instance.
The reason was simple: they knew their origins beyond all doubt. Even if everyone in this world was forgetting the past, they would not. They had originated before all other life, and every race's supposed creation legend was merely a crude imitation of their own beginnings.
Generation after generation, tens of thousands of years of memories were inherited in full by their descendants from the moment of their creation.
That meant those three slitlike crimson eyes had witnessed the rise and fall of ancient empires, and had personally watched the universe undergo countless destructions through unprecedented catastrophes, whether natural, man-made, or both.
They were older than ancient.
Forgive me for dwelling at such length on their existence. I was simply a little surprised.
Surprised that these creatures, older than ancient, now hung one by one in cages beneath the vaulted ceiling, clinging to life as prisoners below Wind Sand Islet. Eve Edel, Princess of the Golden Country, might well be more legendary than any legend.]
Listening to the long, drawn-out whimpers around him, Tang Qi finally saw the aboleths' true forms in the