Once upon a time, there was a great being. This great being came into the world from outside the universe. With his hand and direction, the great being created the Imaginarium.

He designed each acre of the world. He made each creature that would dwell in the world unique in many ways. He blessed each one of them with boundless creativity and imagination, and granted them with the tools to make them come true.

Under the great being's guidance, the Imaginarium was made aglow with innovation and creativity. They shaped the world to their liking and painted the walls with their whimsy.

It was beautiful. It was going to be perfect, but one glaring imperfection soured the entire masterpiece.

Hidden from the guiding eyes of the great being, a great and evil creature was born. It was a beast called by many names: the Villain, the Beast, the Monster, and mainly the Devourer. It was a monstrous horned beast with purple fur vivid as grapes, angry eyes as piercing as lighthouses in the dead of night, and steely teeth to grind the substance of the world into the basest of forms. Poisonous miasma escaped from the pores of its skin. Its body was as grand as a cathedral and its limbs were hulking like trunks.

It ravaged the next world with its demonic flames. The earth shattered, and the oceans boiled. The skies were scarred and filled with soot. It left nothing but ruins in its wake.

The great being saw the Devourer parade across the Imaginarium. He attempted to stop its path of destruction, but even the very powerful great being had to bow to its unholy might.

The Devourer could not be destroyed, not even by the great being. The great being sealed the Devourer away to a never-ending sleep. He created a bronze artifact that would sap away the strength of the Devourer, and when most of the Devourer's strength had been sapped away, when its ruinous powers had long atrophied, a hero would called to cull the beast once and for all.

It's the Hero's Prophecy.

_/~***~\_

Townston stood among the hills in Hillland. The houses of brick and plaster comprised the little town, standing humbly while displaying their bright colorful walls. The streets were paved with stone and clay just as offensively brightly colored as the walls of the buildings.

However, the town of Townston was not as it used to be. When the terrible creature named Prometheus built his castle upon the highest peak of Mountainland, gruesome creatures with breaths that burn and claws that rend began emerging from the castle's basement. Rumors arose that Prometheus planned to reawaken the great destructive beast of prophecy as his most terrible act.

The monsters were great and varied. There were some the size of mice that munch the posts of buildings until they crumble, while some were so great in size that they casted a shadow that shrouded a whole town.

Many of Townston's warriors had fallen to the beasts. Little was left of their army. Buildings were hardly repaired in the constant incomings of monsters from the castle, showing their dull bricks and concrete. The townsfolk lived in fear of the monsters as they were indiscriminate in who they took; young and old, man and woman, warrior and non-warrior, they slew them as equals.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

One day, two folks and their red dog wandered into the hills outside of Townston. The hills once housed Townston's expansive fields, but all of them lost their caretakers or been razed to mulch. These folks, named Stripe and Metaphor, and their handsome red dog, named Buddy, were looking for food, may it be wild cereal, berries, prey, or sugar grass.

Metaphor was a masculine looking dragon. Her blue scales were dull, not shiny in any sense. She had horns like that of an ox, and a body like that of a tree trunk. Her eyes was beautiful like an oceanic sapphire. Her hands were webbed, and turquoise fins jutted out her elbows, knees, and back of the neck. In her arms was a notebook in which was scrawled notes and magical spells written in an arcane otherworldly script.

Her friend, Stripe, appeared to be a humanoid amoeba or water balloon filled with a yellow paint-like substance. His head was the shape of a ferret's with horns of a giraffe. Blue and gold stripes were scattered up his wiry arms, down his thin legs, and across his back. In his hand was a cast-iron fire poker.

"Hey, look over there. I see some dandelions," barked Buddy. The wolf pointed at a patch of dandelions growing peacefully on a hillside. It swayed slightly in the light breeze.

"Jackpot," exclaimed Stripe. "Something we can bring home and eat."

"We've been practically grazing in the last months." Metaphor groaned to express her lackluster enthusiasm. They have been feeding on grass bread and dandelion tea for months with nary a bite of meat or fish. "Find anything else?"

"No luck. Other than grass, there's nothing," Buddy replied. "Hunting's been bad for quite a while now. They were scared away from these hills by all the monsters."

However, when the three folks began to harvest the dandelions, they neglected to scout for and notice the beasts that silently watched them from up above. Bony skeletal vultures with feathers black as ink, and smelly as smoke. Their eyes were black holes from which ink and black wax drip.

The monstrous vultures dived. They swooped upon Stripe, Metaphor, and Buddy, but before they could dig their pale talons upon their flesh, Buddy's wolfish ears and nose detected them, and so he began to bark. Metaphor and Stripe ducked to avoid a faceful of wounds. Stripe dropped his bundles of dandelions, and grabbed fast to his fire poker, and began to attempt to slay or scare them off.

Stripe swung the fire poker wide, but as untrained as he was, his strikes rarely struck true. He struggled to fight them, and soon he lost hold of his sword when he tried to parry the incoming sharp skull. The fire poker was flung far beyond anyone's reach.

The skeletal vultures attacked and terrorized them. Stripe was leaking his paint-like blood through ruptures of his membrane. The vultures wounded Metaphor and Buddy, and let their blood leak.

As all had become hopeless to the defenceless trio, a stranger, a bear with blue wool, came to their rescue with a bronze claymore. Determination to help the helpless folk glittered in the blue bear's ruby eyes. A navy vest with bronze trimmings hung on his shoulders. He stood against the flock of vultures with a stance of a warrior.

"Leave them alone, bad monsters," the bear bellowed from his wolven head. The monstrous vultures didn't comply, and began to attack the blue bear, and so he struck the birds fearlessly. Their bones shattered, and their bodies were sundered. Flames danced on the bear's blade. None of the birds could lay a claw upon the ferocious bear. Soon, all the birds were defeated and their corpses and bone shards lay on the grass, wet with their ink and wax.

When all of that was done, and no threat loomed, the bear's sword shrunk, and was promptly sheathed. He turned around, and stretched out his orangutan arms to the trio, and said "My name's Hero's Prophecy. Are you alright?"