Chapter Text
Watcher Myrna,
Archival work is a lot like hunting a criminal. Instead of city streets, I slink through a labyrinth of bookshelves, sniffing after ink tannins instead of blood, eyes straining for the telltale glimmer of a gilt title under a century’s worth of dust. Fugitives never present themselves to you, trussed up and ready to face the magistrate, and neither do facts. If they did, both of my jobs would’ve been much easier.
This is a long way of saying that what happened to me last night was, in my experience, very weird (and that’s saying something). I’d stepped away from my desk for a minute, just to cross-reference a date for my Volkarin biography, and what did I find on my return but a packet of old letters, all tied up in string. I untangled the knots, opened the one on top, and…Andraste’s flaming knickers. If I had a heart, it would’ve stopped beating right then and there. The letter was in the Professor’s own hand. Of course, my first thought was that it had to be a prank. But none of the other spirits have seen anyone around, and no amateur could’ve forged those flourished Ts anyway.
Now I’ve read all the letters, and if you’ll pardon the metaphor, they’re not exactly going to break the case wide open. The content is pretty trivial: anecdotes, bits of recalled conversation, personal reflections and the like. With the exception of one big reveal, nothing in here sheds much light on the really important events in Volkarin’s life. But assuming they’re genuine, they would fill some pesky gaps in his correspondence with the great Rodomante van Heigl, his mentor and confidant, and they all date from the Evanuris Crisis, which so far takes up ten chapters in the ms.
That brings me to the reason I’m contacting you. I really want to file these letters away and call it a day, but their provenance is a mystery and their appearance entirely too convenient. To put it bluntly, I don’t trust them, and I don’t cite sources I don’t trust. Could you give them a read (annotated facsimiles enclosed) and let me know what you think? Do the details line up? Does the timeline make sense? Did the man really use that many exclamation marks? You knew him much better than I did, so any clues you could pass on would be helpful.
Many thanks,
Audric Felhausen