"There was a time I would have killed a man for daring ask me that," She said, poised with a deadly grace upon her throne. "So tell me why my men should not kill you."

The Sunspears about him flexed in a uniform movement. Eight terrifying figures armoured in silver plate mail. Moments before they had been still as statues, indistinguishable from arming mannequins, now they moved with a lethal purpose. It was only a shift from an upright spear to one at parade rest, but it shook him.

"Lady of the Black Tower... I meant no disrespect. I had but one intent in mind, to chronicle your rise to glory. Your age was only a matter of when to begin my tale."

Her eyes glowed with a golden light, not indistinguishable from the sunlight glinting from the spears. As he stared, entranced, they flashed a deep crimson red and he felt a mortal terror strike him. He sunk to his knees in supplication, the force of her will making the movement involuntary but smooth. 

She rose and the Sunspears relaxed. She wore beautiful ornate silvered armour. In it was said to have been carved the deeds she had performed, each one marked with an arcane sigil and the blood of her most powerful foes, now strengthening her. At her side hung a gleaming black khopesh, its blade made of the very darkness of the void and hurting just to gaze upon. Where she filled him with dread, the blade filled him with rage, made him want to hunt and to kill. She flexed an armoured gauntlet and he saw the crystal at the back of her hand glow with an unearthly light. The runes about it glowed in turn, then faded as the slivers of magical energy dissipated. She glowered down at him, her patrician features harsh in the reflected sunlight. She was imperious and cruel, willful and disciplined, as cold as the ice of Doskara, and as beautiful as the sun over a Staelorian wheat field. Her auburn hair was pulled back into a tight bun, an exacting appearance that hid nothing. 

"Tell me... storyteller... What reason you think I have to tell my story... When I am eternal?" He paused a moment at her words.

"So that all may know the glory of your rise and your story be kept through the ages... For nothing is truly eternal and all ends in time, even tales told."

The air hung still, her imperious majesty standing at the edge of her throne, the dais upon which it sat trembling beneath her. No. He was trembling. The dais was as steady as could be, but he quaked. He, dauntless in the face of darkness, quaked. She would render judgement and if she wished him destroyed... he would be.

"I. Am. Ancient." She said in a clipped tone, "and I endure All."

She sat back atop the obsidian throne at the heart of her tower. The clash of metal upon stone resounding. Here, she was at the apex of her power, and here he knelt. No more than a scroll and slate to protect him.

"Tell me your name storyteller and I will tell my story."

"You know-"

"Yes. Your true name." She stated, her voice level and unconcerned. "In its totality and with no further dissent. In due time you will find it an equitable exchange."

"Yes, Milady, I am Lakhmu Berosus Balashi Alcalde, but I am known as the Librarian."

"Lakhmu" She said, the paired syllables rolling from her tongue with a touch of power. He shivered and cringed, the word causing him a pain he barely reckoned. 

"Good. It will suffice, now to begin the tale." She said as he recovered. "It is no short tale, you will need more than just that single scroll"

My tribe was never large and ever at the mercy of the larger clans and dynastic groups. To say we were unimportant to the running of the kingdom would be an understatement. We were a footnote within tax records and largely left alone.

We were mountain people, producing little for the dynasties. We could trace our lineage back to the worldbinders, but that mattered for little in those times. Even now, they are forgotten. My grandfather was the last to have met one in person and I will be the last to tell the ancient stories. I regret that, after a fashion, I regret the loss of their culture and ways, their knowledge. I digress. We were mountain people and in our time we were sages. My mother was the village shaman, her father before her, and his father before him, beyond that there were many shamans, but time took a toll on us.

I was born in the fullness of summer, in the warming months, though I have no date to give you, nor even truly a year. We had no words for such things, no anchor upon which to build such thoughts. I look back upon those days, viewed in the eyes of civilization as simplicity, with a measure of fondness. The days did not matter, but the moons did. It was an easier time of my life, those growing years, but they were short. Compared to eternity, they are a blink and a forgotten past. I grew fast, loved with all my heart, and sung the songs of our ancestors with a gusto. Life was hard, yet it was in the same moment soft. It was connected and isolated from the woes of what we face