The Ebon Aquil

Lately, it has come to my attention that a number of letters are not reaching their destinations, and I've even heard of them being stolen from their recepients. It seems I've acquired an inconvenient reputation. Given the situation, I will hereafter be signing my letters by different names and sending them by different couriers, and must ask that you destroy these letters after you've read them. Any knowledge of import I might relate, you'll just have to memorize.

-This article is excerpted from the collected correspondence of the The Alchemic Psychopomp, one of the Fabled Compendiums of Sof Sator. It contains uncommon, forbidden, or perhaps even dangerous knowledge-

You won't be surprised that I was on the southern slopes of the Seafont Mountains; you wouldn't be surprised to hear I'd been anyway across Sof Sator. But you might be surprised if I tell you that I came here seeking the victims of the Sanguinates. The southern slope is a common place to find people who have fled raids on Redfall Reach, either wounded and half-empty of their blood or ill-prepared for the wilds and dying to exposure. One such man I found at the bottom of a particularly craggy slope. He'd been running afraid along ill footing and fallen seemingly half a mile. He wasn't dead when I arrived, but he was beyond hope, so I helped him along.
I caught his soul on its way out. He was eager to move on and seek his loved ones, so he was agreed to my terms, lest I hold him overlong. We made the typical deal and he numbered his secrets, among which was an alcove in a location that I dare not write here. I'd rather no one know about this, obviously. Suffice it to say I trekked to another part of the continent and there in an inhospitable wilderness I found a hidden entryway to a chamber of vaults. Each one contained uncountable tomes.
The library was built into an extant cavern. I magicked the pale light of a singing keres bloom I brought with me, just one flower against the dark of the earth. The vaults that contained the tomes were made of glass, tempered beyond breaking and enchanted against illicit entry, arranged to form great hallways between them. In the flower's soft light I could see the tomes and scrolls within the glass painstakingly organized in rows, clean and preserved beyond the abilities of any arcivist I'd ever known. These vaults were vast. I'm sure they were beyond the scale of even classical Jeimr, such that the reach of my modest bloom could not reveal the length of a single wall, nor could I discern the heights of the utmost shelves. For all I know, their size was unlimited, as before I could walk the length of even one of the vaults I found, the floor disappeared, so that one would need wings to continue onward. The glass walls on either side of me extended onward, and downward, and upward beyond my ability to perceive.
In the waxen light of my bloom, I saw something move in the abyss ahead. At the sound of a click -- stone against the glass, perhaps -- I was gripped by the same mortal fear that haunts lesser beings. You've warned me about this in the past: I've become to accustomed to being above death myself. Suddenly I realized how vulnerable I was in this unknown place, unsure of what magics and curses might reside here. Shocked back into that sense of mortality I'd been hiding from for so long, I ran like a fool toward an exit I'd lost track of.
In retrospect, I'm sure I ran through some thread of magic that I missed at the time. I triggered some defense or some notice, which I believe summoned an apparition of the librarian. But at the time, I thought I had chanced upon the Ebon Aquil himself, soaring out of the darkness to drag me into it. It felt real enough when I was thrown to the ground, and the air moved with the beating of feathered wings. There was warmth and the music of magic as some large being moved above me. I caught only a glimpse of the thing before it snuffed out the light of the bloom.
My ashen friend, you swore to me you were the only being of your kind, and based on that I had assumed the Ebon Aquil to be a myth. Perhaps you genuinely believe the same, or perhaps there is some technical difference that divides the two of you? Such a difference certainly wouldn't concern me; as near as I can tell, you and he have as much in common as I do with any being of my own species, all differences aside. This being in the dark, the Ebon Aquil in fact, matches you in size, many times taller than me, an he's broad of shoulder and trunk, powerful of arm and leg and claw. I was surprised at the size of his shadowy wings, like a great cloak that spread about him as he pinned me down. His feathers and body shone, his beak large and pointed and polished, his eyes like black pearls. Then I lost sight of him, my only sense of him being his immensity above me, as he lingered.
He was, I think, deciding what to do with me. I tried to speak to him, though I don't remember exactly what I said. I'm sure I pleading in some humiliating manner. He didn't answer verbally, but the librarian -- that is to say, this summoned simulacrum through which he acted -- laid a great hand upon my body and slowly pressed his weight into me until I couldn't breathe. I gripped his arm in all futility, his muscles dense as hardwood and his feathers soft as satin. My breath grew so thin that my senses faded, followed by my mind, a feeling much like falling asleep. Too terrifyingly similar to falling asleep.
I did not lose conciousness. He had, by crushing the breath from me, ceased the warding music that I had bound to my bones before leaving Arin, leaving me with no protection against further magic. No sooner had my wards faltered than the Ebon Aquil summoned music from the shadows and wrapped me in a spell that swept me away, and I fond myself in the dark of night in the wilderness outside.
Immediately, I sought the entrance once more, only to find that it had vanished as though it had never been. This was no illusion; I would have dispelled it if it were. The music that lingered in the place is of an older magic than I recognize, some spell of transmutation leftover from the fall of Jeimr which the Ebon Aquil used to erase the library's entrance, or perhaps even to relocate the library entirely.
I write you about this to assure you of the truth of the Ebon Aquil's existence, on the off-chance you actually believed yourself to be one of a kind and were not simply lying to me. If you think that the two of you are dissimilar in ways significant enough to hold yourself as a different kind of thing, let me disabuse you of that: you two are very similar. Besides your physicality, his aura of ruthless mystery reminded me of you, as well as the way he crushed and whisked me away, as you have done yourself.
On a related note, this event has left me with lingering frustrations and discomforts that I'd like you to help me with. You owe me, for your dishonesty. I've enclosed the necessary reagents. I'm sure you remember how to use them. I'll be awaiting your call. Know that if such a call does not come, I will seek you out, with all the more frustration for needing to do so.
-El. D.
616 CR