In the darkness a small fire burned. The fire only illuminated the circle immediately around it, not the entire room. Floating in the darkness near the wall of the small confiding stone chamber were the unnatural bright green eyes. Ever curious even after so much time, they were waiting now to see what will happen as the fire shifted colors of its flames to purple - a thing that has never happened before in all this time.
From the middle of the fire, a hand reached out. Fingers, wrist, the whole arm, and then shoulder rose one after another, unaffected by flames for an unknown reason. Then, the hand bent and started feeling the surrounding floor around the fire. Damp stone of the cave, some dust and rubble, and clang. The hand reached out to feel the misshapen piece of metal that produced the noise, and appeared to be unsatisfied. Extending its length unbelievably, the hand started frantically feeling the rest of the room stopping to inspect carefully each thing it touched. As if that was taking too much time, the hand stopped its search and then did a twisting motion in the wrist, fingers retracting in a fist that then opened fully. Nothing happened at first and a few long seconds passed only for the hand to grasp around a small toy-like hammer that flew across the room.
The curious bright green eyes turned startled at that and the creature ran for the fire from it's corner, body enveloped in the strange absence of light. It snatched up the hand poking from the fire, flesh sizzling at the contact, and started pulling the owner of the hand up and into the the stone chamber with great difficulty. As the head started poking through the fire that now burned brightly, a second hand wearing a watch erupted from the fire. Grabbing an object hanging at the creature’s side as if it could see the room, the hand with a watch smashed at the darkness enveloping the creature which dogged resulting in the hammer hitting the ground hard.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The tiniest crack showed up in the stone floor and the creature let the hand it was holding drop back into the fire it came from, along with the tools it had snatched. Inspecting the thin crack with wonder, there was hope in the creature's eyes, emotion it had long forgotten.
The creature produced a scraping sound from its throat. It tried again and a deep rumbling laugh emerged from it's mouth sounding ominous. And then it laughed some more like it was liking the sound that it made. The tiniest stone fell from the ceiling that the rumbling laugh made.
Far away on the cliff overlooking a domineering snow covered mountain, a small vibration shook the man’s feet and a small golden key around his neck.
“Oh my deceptive tranquility, the seeds of chaos have been stealthily planted and are ready to erupt, awaiting their moment to unleash devastation upon us all.” The figure with the long red beard whispered to himself shaking his head as he pulled the still vibrating key from his neck chain and plunged it into the ground.