Author Note: I want to say up front, I tend to be very busy. This first chapter would be 6 1/2 pages printed and it took me over a week from the time I started it to now. I tend to pick up and drop various things like Manga, Anime, etc. so I will probably never be on a regular schedule but I will try to at least post one chapter a month and to keep writing at least until a reasonable lull in the action. I am not very good with dialogue so if someone would like to PR or make suggestions, I am open to such an arrangement. I am sorry in advance for my likely to be horrible update speed as I have several stories I am reading on here which piss me off for their update speed. Well enough pre- story rant. Here y'all go:
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A Dreamer Awakens In Darkness
A dark hallway stretched before the man with a sliver of flichering orange light a short walk ahead. A dull roar could be heard in the distance, but the man paid it no mind; his focus moved inward. At first he felt nothing and wondered why he felt the need, then of a sudden he felt a rage burning inside him so hot he thought he might burst into flames, if not for the slight tinge of fear creeping at the back of his mind, deep, behind the flames.
The man came to himself, realizing he'd walked to the end of the hall without realizing. Before him lay a crude but sturdy wooden door illuminated ever so slightly by light reflecting off his leggings, shining intensely from the crack beneath the door. The door seemed familiar and as he ran his fingers along a large gash in the door, he felt his blood begin to run cold. The small fear at the back of his mind remained as it was but his rage cooled from fire to ice without losing any of its intensity. The man slowly pushed open the unlatched wooden door which swung easily belying a craftsmanship that the door's appearance di not hint at.
He found himself in a fairly large square room; all 3 walls away from the door were floor to ceiling transparent windows which appeared to be somewhere between a physical substance and free air, never remaining the same but without changing. Beyond the windows were flames with little else visible, their great number throwing an almost blindingly bright orange light into the room without allowing the flames' heat to pass the windows.
When the man's eyes adjusted enough, he could remove his hand from his face; after several minutes staring at the flames out the window to his left, he turned toward a noise he'd barely heard and noticed something he had missed in his first observation of the room. In line with the door down the middle of the room, about 4/5 of the way from the door to the far window was something large of black stone. The man while only able to see a rectangle knew this behemoth stone that stretched 9 of the ceiling's 15 foot height was a great throne that faced the far window. The throne was enormous, at least twice as big as any human king ever used, and though it was the darkest shade of black imaginable, it seemed to shine in the light of the fire outside the windows.
When the man took a few steps toward the left side of the throne, over the distant roar, he heard a sigh before a deep voice spoke from the throne. "I have known you would come for quite some time. I know quite well just how much you despise me. That you are here to kill me, that too I know and understand." The voice from the throne then sighed again and remained silent for what seemed to be hours but should only have been a few minutes.
The voice sighed again and spoke again, much more quietly with a wavering tone. The man should easily have been able to hear what the voice said as he was now only 2 steps back and left of the throne, but every word of the monologue was lost to him. The man continued to a point several paces to the front of the throne and turned to face the source of the voice only to see the seat of the throne and the floor in front of it bathed in an inexplicable shadow despite the intense firelight shining from the window before the throne.
In the deep darness before the man 2 piercing red lights shown at a height one might expect a man's head could be at and the fear in the back of the man's mind surged forward drowning the cold rage that had been there. The voice then spoke again in a stronger, firmer tone than it previously had. "Well, I'm sorry I can't oblige your desire for my blood. I wish you safe travels little one. This is goodbye and I expect we shall not meet again in this life."
After the voice had thus spoken the man's world vanished and he was lost to darkness. Darker far than the hallway leading to the throne room, the darkness he fell into was somehow darker even than the throne's impossible shadow and though there was no noise that he could hear, somehow there was no silence either. In this space completely devoid of all light the man thought he heard the voice whisper one more verse to him but he could not be sure whether he imagined it or what it had said. As the man descended into panic, the utter darkness proceeded to devour even the light of his consciousness and all was silent.
***
In a small wood a young man slept by a larger tree. How the young man came to be there, no man knew. A traveling merchant by the name of Rolick had spotted the youth late in the afternoon as he journeyed from another nearby village to the village of Boran where Tobi lived.
It was now late at night and the boy still slept, now with 2 dozen pairs of eyes watching him. Rolick had proceeded directly to the house if the watch before even taking his belongings to Boran's Inn. The men of the watch were, at first, confused as to why Rolick had come to them to report the boy but understood when Rolick, who was well travelled in the region, told them that he had never seen the lad before.
Currently the Kingdom of Ronaa was at war with the neighboring kingdom, Valos. Boran was positioned within Ronaa, not near enough to the border to have been effected by the war yet, but not so far from the border that it was unlikely that they could be swept into the war quickly.
The situation being what it was, Rolick and the watch wondered if the young man in the wood could be a spy from Valos, however the watch, being a volunteer force mainly composed of the town's hunters, was inexperienced even in situations that a town's guards would typically handle let alone a possible spy. The watch's solution to the situation was to gather as many of their members who could conceal themselves well in the wood to observe the youth once he awoke. They had managed to fetch 22 of their men and surrounded the lad as he slept, among them Tobi a very young man himself, a member of the watch despite his age because of his skill in woodcraft.
The moon was almost full and quite high in the sky now. Watching the young man sleeping by the tree, Tobi could see his steady breathing by the moonlight filtering through the canopy of leaves. He thought the young man looked quite harmless, a simple traveler about his age. Tobi wondered, if this boy were a spy for the enemy, would the war be coming to Boran soon? How could such a young man be a spy for a large kingdom's army? Was he incredibly talented like Tobi, or perhaps they sent a youth as he would be less suspicious?
As Tobi mused to himself, the lad's breathing became uneven, shallow and quick, and Tobi roused himself from his thoughts. The young man suddenly sat bolt upright whie gasping for air and holding his chest, a nightmare it seemed to Tobi, perhaps the boy was even younger than Tobi and had not grown out of such things. After the boy had slowed and quieted his breathing, he began to look all around himself and slowly removed his hand from his chest.
As the youth slowed his wheeling head, he came to rest looking down at himself, apparently checking his clothes and body for anything out of place. When the young man seemed satisfied that he had all his belongings and limbs he got up on his feet, slowly looked around himself twice, not seeing his many invisible observers, and stood there for a moment looking at the ground ahead of his feet, deep in thought.
When the lad lifted his head and began moving straight ahead of himself with confidence written in his demeanor, Tobi, for no reason he could discern, thought back to his older brother Vanna and the day he left to join Ronaa's army.
***
Silence erupts into an all encompassing dull roar. Heart pounding out of his chest the man thought death was at hand, yet his heart kept pumping and soon slowed. The man came to himself finding his eyes were open and his hand was clutching his tunic. He began to look around himself frantcally, fearing danger might be nigh upon him, utter darkness having left him in an unfamiliar wood at night.
Sensing no threat, hearing only the quiet and constant hum of insects and the occasional call of a bird and seeing no disturbance to the wood other than an intermitent breeze, the man calmed and looked looked down to examine himself. He didn't know what he was looking for but he thought he might find some clue to his location as he didn't remember how he came to be in this forest. As he searched himself he tried to think back to the last thing he remembered only to find he did not remember anything; not where he was, not who he was, not his past, not even his name. He found nothing on his person to identify himself or this place, his clothes were unremarkable traveling clothes and in his simple satchel he found some unmarked coins and typical tools for traveling. He thought there was something odd about his body, it seemed familiar but at once not quite right. He dismissed the thought and stood as he could not think of what could be wrong with his body.
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The man needed information. Perhaps his mind would clear and his memories would return, maybe he would even think he had wasted his time after that happened but for the moment he knew nothing and was vulnerable. His best bet would be to find other people nearby to get information from them but for some reason he knew he should not trust anyone. This made sense in his situation, anyone could be his most bitter enemy, but something about the thought seemed more than that; it seemed more a conditioned feeling of distrust than a thought out plan.
Slowly he looked all around himself twice but could not dicern any sign that would help him find a nearby human habitation or even the directions he faced as the moon was almost overhead, eclipsed though it was be the leaves of the forest. The man decided that the direction he faced when he had woken would be as good as any so he immediately began walking forward.
He moved quickly through the light foliage of the forest for quite a long while; he was surprised with the frequent rustling of movement which surprised him as he thought he was moving quite quietly but he must be startling small animals as he passed. Suddenly a thought rushed to his attention, what if the rustling were not small animals constantly fleeing from him as he passed but something far more sinister, could some predator be stalking him through these woods? As he continued to hear occasional rustling, always behind him though he quickened his pace at the expense of making more noise; he became more and more convinced he was being followed by some beast. He quickly formulated a plan, he decided to take the dagger from his satchel, he would pretend to sleep and then spring up and kill whatever creature came to bite out his throat.
Putting his plan into action, in case the predator was intelligent and familiar with the behavior of men he put on a show of stretching and yawning before lying down with the dagger hidden in his sleeve. He lay there for a long time, forcing his breathing to remain slow and steady as if he slept. He focused every ounce of his mind on his hearing, listening for the rustling that would indicate his pursuer moving in for the kill, but it never came. He listened for what seemed forever, separating out the individual buzzing of half a dozen different insect species and the calls of 4 different birds, but never heard his killer approach; he thought he could hear something breathing quietly but it was at the very edge of his hearing and he couldn't be sure if it was really his ears or only his nerves.
He finally cracked his eyes open and saw he was as alone as before his thousand year ordeal. He spotted the moon much lower in the sky, barely visible through the trees at its present angle, confirming he had lain there for hours and he had been traveling east. Not wishing to waste another moment he leapt to his feet and brushed himself off before continuing east. He was so upset with himself for letting his discomfort with his situation to cause him to panic so, not more than an hour and a hlaf after beginning again, he noticed the sound of moving water ahead of him, several minutes after he would have heard it had he paid attention to his surroundings rather than his recent mistake.
A half hour later he emerged into a clearing with a crystal pool, widened from the small river that passed through it by several large eddys. In the clearing he could see the orange of sunrise just above the trees on the far side and knew it would soon transition from the current twilight to full daylight. Seeing the beautiful clear waters, he realized just how thirsty he was, having had nothing to drink in the many hours he had marched through and laid in the forest, he had a canteen in his satchel but it was empty.
He immediately fell to his belly at the edge of the pool and began to drink directly from the pond. He took several breaks to breathe and allow his stomach to settle, drinking his fill before rising to a kneeling position to fill his canteen. As his canteen filled he looked about at his scenery, the clearing he'd found was exceptionally beautiful with the rising sun just peeking over the treetops on the far side of the clearing. He noted that the river slowly turned back west as it flowed north. As he thought about following the river's flow to find a village or town he looked down to cap his canteen. As he saw himself reflected in the water's surface the man, no, the boy froze, his canteen in hand suspended in front of his chest. The boy failed to form coherent thoughts, in his shock he managed only to turn his head a little and stroke his own cheek with his left hand as he stared at himself.
The boy was shocked, not because he looked unfamiliar but because of his pparent age. He had been certain that he was a grown man but looking upon his reflection he seemed to be a boy of about 16. His body was of a limber athletic build nearly 6 feet and seemed that it would grow to be tall and muscular but not bulky. His face was fair, not quite girly but not yet manly, eyes of light brown almost golden and hair a medium brown with a rusty red tinge to it. The boy kneeled wondering at how he could be so certain and so wrong that he was a grown man, how he could be so certain of something and yet not have even an inkling of his name or his past life.
He was roused from his stupor by the sound of a stick breaking and rustling approaching his back. He casually corked the canteen he had filled a few minutes prior but seemed hours ago then stood and turned to the noise. A boy who appeared around his age, in his mid teens briefly halted in his approach then raised his arm and shouted as he continued forward. "Hail traveler, good tidings to you! I love to watch the sunrise over the Pool of Brionach before my daily hunting; how came you to be here this fine morning? This pool is not well known to strangers of my town."
The boy's mind sharpened as a razor, gleaning knowledge from the stranger's words told the boy as much as a dozen questions. There was a town nearby, probably not far down the river he was by. The boy was not from this town or likely known to many if any in the town. The boy was clothed in dew soaked, muddy clothes, drawing attention to the fact that he implied a lie, he had been traveling long hours. The boy remembered his clothes had been quite clean when he awoke raising the question of how he had come to be in that clearing. The fact that the boy had not heard the stranger approach until he had snapped a twig on the edge of the clearing meant that the act had been intentional to alert him to the stranger's presence and that he was extremely skilled in woodcraft. Finally that he approached exactly along the boy's trail meant that he had not imagined the pursuit last night. The boy quickly decided to speak partial truth to the stranger as he had, having deduced all this information in an instant.
When the young hunter was but 4 paces from the boy he responded, "Good morning young hunter. Truth be told I know not where I am, nor precisely how I came to be here. Can you direct me to your town? I am quite lost and without provision to fill my belly."
"Ho! My larder's not so bare that I need to hunt more than succour a lost soul. Come, I'll lead you there myself and you'll breakfast with my family."
"Thank you, kind friend, lead on. Ah! But I think I dropped my knife, allow me check just within the tree line to see if it is there." The boy said as he put his canteen back in his satchel and then rifled through it a bit.
The boy then proceeded to the edge of the clearing, looking left and right along the ground. After he had confirmed his suspicion, subtle spoor of several others who had followed him through the night, he exclaimed "Ah! I've found it!" as he bent his arm to the ground and dropped the knife, still hidden in his sleeve, into his palm. He lifted his hand to show his apparent prize to the deceptively friendly stranger before returning the knife to his satchel.
A moment later the boy returned to the hunter's side and followed him down river while striking u a conversation. "So, good fellow, tell me about your town. What is its name?"