The pen is mightier than the sword.
Being the daughter to the Resistance’s top intelligence officers, Azura grew up hearing this saying every day. Her mother and father swore by it. Often times, their strategies were what got the Resistance through its most tangled predicaments. Azura was constantly told that the mind was the most powerful weapon in a war. Such things were hard for her to believe, but with everything she once knew being torn from beneath her, anything was possible.
She sat amongst the shelves of a library larger than her mind could grasp. Strangely enough, over half of the Gaian texts were written by the same author, but no one was ever able to trace the literature back to its source. All Azura knew was that this man, whoever he was, would probably get along very well with her parents.
After Jay left the library, the girls decided to explore it a bit before heading off to the training grounds. Roselyn dove straight into the text on magical abilities, hoping to get a head start on her training. Unsurprisingly, Kaelin went to the art archives. “You know, to get used to landscapes and stuff. It can’t hurt, right?” was her excuse.
This left Azura wandering the endless archives without purpose. She didn’t want to think about the bloody future that lay ahead of her, but she was surrounded by reminders of it; over half of the library’s content dealt with the war. The young girl eventually settled with a book about Cardin, knowing she would either have to learn now or find out the hard way later.
Origins of the Cardin remain unknown simply due to their unpredictable nature and lack of consistent appearances. They are little more than deformed beasts, with no two Cardin resembling one another. The only generalizations that can be made are their violent tendencies and entirely black exteriors and interiors. Scholars have tried to trace their origins but have failed do to their irregularity and inability to be studied alive.
Despite their deformities, scholars and warriors alike have agreed on a loose classification system, dividing the Cardin into the following groups: flying, tunneling, small combat, and large combat. It seems that there are no Cardin capable of utilizing the arcane arts and their intelligence is very limited. They are unable to speak and seem driven only by their bloodlust.
The Alliance had never seen anything similar to the Cardin before Gwydion’s attack, forcing most to believe that they are either his creations or his servants. However, their lack of intelligence leads strategists to wonder how much control Gwydion truly has over the foul minions. Further research fails to show…
The book continued to ramble on about the irregularity of the Cardin. Flipping ahead, Azura found some detailed sketches on generalized classes of the creatures. One of the sketches was of a bipedal Cardin with a large right arm and no left limb in sight. Instead, its head was angled and protruded from what should have been its shoulder. Something akin to a large lower jaw was embedded on its left side where a ribcage would have been on a human. A second one resembled a sort of hyena in its hunched posture. I couldn’t tell where the creature started or ended because it had no visible head and its legs were pointed in different directions, with sickly sharp talons coming out of each of them. A tough hide covered its back and carried a line of tall spikes along its spine, if it even had one. No head was in sight and its underside was raw with organs exposed, clearly showing its dripping black organs.
Azura slammed the book shut in frustration. There was simply no escape from reality anymore.
After a moment of fuming, Azura stood up and began to wander aimlessly once more. The selection was enormous, and there had to be something interesting for her to read. Eventually she found herself in a dusty section of the library with the oldest-looking texts there. The scrolls and books were written in a cryptic ancient language. Thinking she had stumbled into the wrong section, Azura turned to leave but glanced back. To her surprise, she was able to make out many of the words on the covers. She also caught a glimpse of the familiar signature of the main author of the literature in the library. It may have been her previous fascination with foreign languages or her father’s lessons in them, but Azura slowly picked up the language’s pattern, which she would later find out Hadwin couldn’t even decipher.
Picking up a book and slowly reading out the words “Legends of Gaia,” Azura decided she had nothing to lose.
