It was originally placed at the center of Garudan praying temple in the Tsayap Mountains.
During the Iron Tempest, when the Seven Watchers of the Realm led the imperial army to fight back the Garudans in their territory, a general stumbled upon the temple and decided to take the main piece of the tablet with him as a spoil of victory.
Years and generations later, the general's House went bankrupt and had their possessions auctioned away.
I happened to stumble upon it when I was accompanying my mother to buy jewelries.
I was about to graduate from the academy at the time and was looking for a field I wanted to specialize in.
When I saw the tablet being auctioned, I knew Garudan culture was something I wanted to dedicate the rest of my life into.
Indeed, specializing in sub-races topic was frowned upon in the empire. So I presented myself as an expert in the sub-race wars, with an emphasis on the Iron Tempest era.
Though in truth, of course, I was studying all I could about everything there was about the Garudan folk.
All centered on the tablet.
I had to clarify that it was not the tablet's exoticism that attracted me to this field.
It was not because the tablet was simply an artifact of another race which got me invested.
Rather, it was because the tablet was Garudan.
I admitted. It was contradictory to my words earlier.
But there was something about the Garudan, out of all the sub races in Dunia, that attracted my attention.
The winged people of Garuda referred themselves as Messengers.
The other sub races had a name to call themselves as well.
The lycanthropes dared name their kind as the Devils of Chandra. The dwarfs named themselves the Keepers of Agni. And there were old sailor songs in the deep southern regions mentioning the Tsamudran calling themselves as the Heirs of Varuna.
Devils. Keepers. Heirs. Messengers.
Of all four, the last term interested me the most.
Messengers of Garuda.
Why would the winged people of Tsayap Mountains call themselves as such?
What message was their kind supposed to convey? From who to whom?
Garuda was an ancient being which existence dated prior the Eternal Throne's foundation.
It was a divine creature that was put on the same pedestal as the other Ancient Gods, which were often mentioned in Tchakran culture. A whole other field entirely.
After all my years of research, I managed to answer some of these questions.
While Tchakran ancestors prided themselves as the servants of the Ancient Gods, the Garudan prided themselves as the mouths and ears of the divine beings.
It was often implied in scripts which talked about Garudan, either in topics of Dunia's genesis, the empire's foundation, the scriptures of the Serpent's Order, and testimonies of the Iron Tempest, that the tribes of Garudan were each led by a priestess.
All actions of Garuda folks were dictated by these revered figures.
The priestess called for…. The priestess judged for… The priestess demanded for…. The priestess stated for…
Rarely a sentence mentioning Garudan would be devoid of such term.
The way the priestess was addressed in all the texts made the figure similar to a chief, or maybe an empress, to one particular tribe, and highly honored by the rest of the Garudan.
The reason for such tremendous treatment was because the priestesses were supposedly the ones whom directly received the words of the gods and spreads them.
It was the duty of the priestesses of Garuda to proclaim the will of the gods.
Hence, whatever words that came out of the lips of a Garudan priestess, they were regarded as a divine order. At least by their fellow Garudan.
From what I gathered in my long forbidden research into their culture, the priestesses conveyed many things from the gods to their people.
Lessons from the past. Guidance for the present. And even warnings on the future.
This particular tablet I won at the auction many years ago was apparently carved with a warning delivered by a Garudan priestess. Sounded all the way back before even the First War more than two thousand years ago.
The words were regarded deeply by the Garudan folks, enough for them to carve the words into a tablet and enshrine the relic in a temple.
This Garudan prophecy was so old that it still used the ancient language of Dunia.
And to my inconvenience, the words were even written in a dialect specific to Garudan tongue.
I spent many years trying to translate the words on this tablet.
After accumulating many Garudan artifacts, I managed to decipher most of the ancient words.
But there were some key terms that I could not translate properly yet.
Hence the Sulam's lost entry.
The explorer was quite extensive in describing his journey throughout the continent.
The geography book that was sold to the public was merely the simplified and condensed version of Sulam's experience.
Sulam actually wrote over nine hundred travel journals before he died, detailing each day and moment of his long expedition.
All of those precious detailed records were compiled in a special section in the imperial library.
There were rumors that the collection was incomplete. That there were other journals of Sulam that did not make it to the shelves.
His tales with the sub races were among the missing records.
I had read Sulam's writings.
The explorer could be very detailed in his observation.
I just knew there bounded to be a lode of precious Garudan knowledge jotted down in his diaries.
All my years I looked far and wide for that specific missing journal.
Imagine my surprise when a trading company from the Damai region reached out to me and said they had what I was looking for.
The Roilan Company from the Damai region.
Damai. A small corner along the empire's northwestern march. But rich in history.
The nobles of Damai were avid collectors of Sherefin articles.
The relics of those ancient settlers dated even older than the Flame's Campaign. Some even dated way back before the First War, just as old as the Garudan tablet I was researching.
I should have guessed a Damai folk would be capable enough to procure a rare item as Sulam's missing journal.
Fortunately, I did not have to pay a heavy price to purchase the book from the Roilan Company.
I simply needed to put in a good word with the dean of the academy about the business owner and introduce some of my colleagues to them whom might benefit from the company's service.
Now all that troublesome matters were done with, I could focus again on my research.
I turned my gaze toward Sulam's missing journal and the Garudan tablet.
I could not help but curl my lips into a smile.
Given my own collection of historical items, I was certain even the Sandomer would tip their hats for me.
Though I never concerned myself with the Great Houses, or other Houses for that matter.
Live politics did not interest me.
I would rather read about what the nobles were doing centuries back than seeing them firsthand with my own eyes today.
The past attracted me more than the present.
Although, considering my work with the tablet, I was more curious of the future at the moment.
I turned the cover of Sulam's journal and began poring over its pages.
There were a number of terms on the tablet I was having difficulties of understanding.
Hopefully, Sulam's texts would enlighten me on most of them, if not all of them.
But, of all the cryptic terms on the tablet, I was more absorbed in solving the word 'Paranpua.'
That term was repeated again and again on the relic.
As a historian, it was to my understanding that when something was being repeated in writing, the more profound its significance.
For the next several hours I inspected Sulam's account on the Garudan tribes.
As expected, the explorer was very detailed in describing his experience. He drew drawings of places and symbols he saw, even going on a deep dive on Garudan sayings and philosophies he learned.
Truly remarkable.
Sulam was not an explorer.
He was an intellectual. A true academic.
What I would not give to speak with his spirit right now and absorb everything he knew about the Garudan.
As I read through the pages and studied the term Paranpua in Garudan dialect, I managed to find several other terms I had been investigating as well.
In the middle of my reading, I grabbed my cipher book which contained the list of terms I had translated over the years.
It took me more hours of going back and forth between Sulam's pages and my cipher book. Noting the sudden discoveries while keep on searching for the specific term I had been studying all this time.
The sky had gone dark outside my window.
Hopefully it was still a while till midnight.
Sharine would scold me if I stayed up too late.
Though I thought she came in to check on me while I was on the third chapter. Or was it the sixth?
I could not remember. Maybe I was just imagining herself going into my study.
Eventually I discovered what I was looking for.
All this time I had been mistaking Paranpua as an ancient term for Garudan priestess.
Along my research I realized that translation was incorrect since I discovered other ancient terms that also specifically referred to the priestess.
I could not tolerate the ambiguity given how repetitive the term was used on the tablet's carving.
The entire text would be gravely misinterpreted if I did not translate the term 'Paranpua' properly.
After reading Sulam's journal, I had now realized 'paranpua' was more accurately meant 'she' or 'her.'
A woman. A female.
Apparently that identity was crucial on this Garudan prophecy.