Shady times in the hot sun or "how I met your queen".

Gravitas in truth.  So began the wars leading up to the new empire and the divine rule of his lordship the former prince of thieves.  Whispers through the cities talked of him, his plans, his ambitions.  Nothing that really tickled the ears of most the nobles, but the spymaster was competent enough in his job.  The alleys swarmed with guards, a show of overbearing force with the sole intent of squashing a bug.  The dessert folk of the wastes in the southwest have a saying, "never squash the scorpion in your boot with bare flesh, for in flinching from the sting the scorpion may get away with your life and its."

Prophetic in a way, Aligon the Stinger was known as the little scorpion in his youth, poisoned blade and quick reflexes felling each foe to stand in his march to the top of the cities underbelly.  Even that was not enough for the prince, though for a time he played the patient crime-lord of the city.  Guards were corrupted and streets kept safe out of respect and fear.  While he was never inactive his routine was set into the business, the trade of seedy duplicity.

Then came the returning conquest from the east, the duke of the gate come bringing tribute from the mountain passes and the parade of captives and of marvelous wooden sculptures.  The train of his company stretched back a mile out of the city as he progressed through the twisting streets up to the palace gates, each company of men scarred and weary from battle, empty of vigor yet filled with a pride at having survived the long campaign that duke had pressed deeper and deeper into the forests.  Cages of magnificent stags, great wild boars hobbled and tied in wagons, sleek wolves of white and black and grey that snarled at the end of poles, chained and collared and still barely held back by five men apiece.

From the windows and rooftops and alleyways that the procession edged past, the noble palanquin passed, the duke seated on it with silks and his heavy sword belted to his side even in the city.  The jewel that caught Aligon's eye, the only treasure that he could not steal out from under the duke's nose was that bound and chained lady, that pointed-eared grove-walker.  Surely the old empire knew of them, felt their arrows bite into leather clad shoulders and heard their laughter echo through the trees, sure a few brave and mighty warriors had been known to fell one in combat, but none this beautiful and none this tame, none this alive and none with eyes of flashing green had appeared in the city.

That year was filled with Aligon's impatience, his plotting, his cunning, and most of all his obsession with the lady.  He would sneak about the palace walls, peering up at windows in his free time, wondering where she would be. She was a gift to the current emperor, Lord of the lands and the shifting sands, ruler of the outreaching provinces.  His rule was cemented by the city he governed, situated at the center of the land on an oasis shore with rivers extending out like rays of light into the desert.

The King fell eventually at the end of that year, killed by a dagger in the back by that very same prince of thieves.  He took the girl for his own, and in time she loved him.  It was not quite that easy, though.  Each province did not know to fear the prince and his wiles, they did not know the fear a sharp prick in the night can cause.

So there was war.  Bloody war.  A war to last ten years, each slowly grasping back towards stability.  The city did not love him, but they feared him.  His barons, some new faces some old, respected him as much as they feared him.  He cared not of their love, ruling the sea of sands with an iron fist.

Some say he charmed the immortality out of the grove-walker, some say he was magic to begin with, others say his sons replaced him in his old age, the world none the wiser.  Who knows for sure, but he still sits on his throne, white hair and weathered face next to his bride, old surely but beautiful in her age like a parched flower.

It's like talking to a Tree.

Lilting in the breeze and round the ever-flowing branches of the trees do flitter flutter in and out the bright winged moths of deepest grove, lit up and shining as ground-fell stars in the moonless night that folds us in in this warm, summer wood.  Perhaps a chance to dream and dreaming take up the greater spirit of all that around lies asleep as well, branches and leaves the protruding bubbles that spring up from natures patient folk.  More noble perhaps to watch and keep the sight of summer's lingering beauty, arrayed in splendor before the folk who have their home with bird and beast and free-running water.  

Still, all around the chill of twilight rushes in as suns light warmth disappears over yonder horizon leaving only the bitter aftertaste of winter's bite, promise of the white one's fated return.  The time when through the vast stretches of forest not a green speck be left out, pressed down to the ground and yellowed out in age.  The darkness and the wind whipping through the branches, singing dire dirges as a fore-running messenger of doom.  These days bode ill for the land and for we elves of little worry.  

Bound by custom and by long ages past, rooted to our lands and our trees with no thought of touching the open land on the east or the high craggy mountains west and south.  These many miles of lush beauty both a heartwarming homeland and a prideful prison that captured a whole race of ling-lived immortals.  Once we had a star within our midst, a purpose and a gem of beauty.  Once we held a common goal of life and immortality that flowed through our veins like the sap through an old tree in the verdant land we lost.  

This beauty we surround ourselves with may as well be our lifeblood flowing out of us as we shrivel and putrefy.  Once we were a high born race akin to gods, now we are no more than the caretakers of a forest grown up from sad memories of home.  Sure fate quickens his step to snuff out our very being here as once before the hateful ones tried to do.  To finish what they started in their fire and spells.  We stay as the elves of the past, attached to our land, our trees, our home and surely those elves will be found, be sundered by time.  

Is it a moral thing to leave this behind, to run from what we view as our birthright to escape that death?  Is it spit in the face of the land we have created here, sustained in this way by our sweat and blood?  But yet the tree grows around its bonds and the wolves grow thicker coats as on trudges winter through the groves.  

Perhaps we are hindered in our pride, refusing to change like those we deem our kin.  In this dark land bereft of our star and our hope, perhaps we are done with the civil tranquility of our past and must again run through the woods in fear to stay alive.  Perhaps in our change we must embrace the ruination of ourselves to keep the soul within us from being snuffed out.  I know not, for I am old and wisdom leads me to much indecision as I see the cliff on one side and the baying of the hunter's dogs sounds behind.  

The young ones would be those to take the jump, to plunge off the edge to doom or salvation.  None will appear though, for all of us are old and wonder at the fate we can have in this world.

-Thaelis Longshadow, Eldest of the Elves of the Wilderglen and first to cast off his immortality.

White Sea

Five years of light, then home again, that's all it was.  Voyages like that don't tend to be the greatest fun a crew can have, but every half-decade one of the great island-ships of Kakrecoon sets out from port in the tropical bay the city-state calls home to venture the two-thousand mile journey to relieve the last ship stationed at the top of the world, that desolate sea barren of all life but the ships that weigh anchor there.  Nothing in the line of storms to rock the boats, nor any change in the light that beams down, taunting the sailors.

To have served at the top of the world is said to be an honor, a privilege, and some of the fanatics who come from Kakrecoon truly believe it.  A few less each voyage back, but the church has persisted for generation upon generation.  The long ivory bones that serve as scaffolding for the great cathedral in Kakrecoon came from somewhere, came on that prophet's boat so long ago.

Keil Kinsblood heard the tales beforehand, knew a few men never came back from the voyage, but it was only a handful out of the hundreds needed to man one of the island-ships, nothing out of the ordinary for a nautical voyage.  He signed up for the pay, which was descent, and the prestige around town.  All the important men in the city had served there, and all the men who came back had a hard glint in their eyes that the city noticed.  If he ever wanted to set up a permanent shop in the bazaar, he needed to make this trip.  He needed the eighteen hundred days of cold sunlight, the chill of the calm water, the days of boredom.

Even if the days passed uneventfully, there was still the glimmer of hope that the god-egg would hatch deep down beneath the waves, barely visible even through the clear waters that filled that patch of sea.  It must be gigantic, sitting so far down yet visible.  A few dissenters said it was naught but a giant rock from all they could tell.

Still, the next day the ship would reach that empty sea, join up with the vessel that sat there, waiting, and take it's turn.  The crystal lady made good time for one of the island-ships.  Keil was still getting used to the lack of night though, so if he wanted to see it rise above the horizon, he needed to get to sleep, somehow.

The flotsam and jetsam that lay in the water the next day signaled a new period of life for the whole seacoast as much as it did for Kiel, but for now he slept with troubled dreams.  Dreams of a giant red sea-beast descending upon his small rowboat, alone with nothing but a silver harpoon to defend himself.

Origin Stories are so Cliche (but Fun).

Way back when there was nothing.  Not the between type of nothing, since there was no bits and pieces of stuff around it.  Not the empty type of nothing, as there would have to be a concept of something to fill it.  It was just a chunk of nothing.  It couldn't be measured because there wasn't really anyway to look at nothing without having a something to compare it to.

Then something happened to the nothing, something that was rather unprecedented.  A little magic appeared there.  Nothing formed well, just a blast of pure magic, the kind that one might throw at another's face in an act of violence.  The magic was sent to the nothing, sent in a similar manner to how one might make it go away if it were heading at one's face.  The important part of our story is that there was now a something in the nothing.

Once it had occurred the first time, more things showed up as time moved on, for now that stuff existed time was a thing too.  It wasn't always magic though.  Sometimes it was penguins, or rocks, or people, though anything living died off in the nothing rather fast.  Eventually there was so much stuff in the nothing that it really couldn't be called a nothing anymore, at least if you were there.

Speculation farther back tends to think that outside of the nothing where all the somethings were coming from was quite keen on believing the universe, for that is what we shall call it now, as nothing.  Speculation also leads one to believe that it was not just one other place of somethings, but many places of somethings.  So at that point, there was quite a bit of something in the new universe, for a few millenia is rather new for this sort of thing.

The strangest of coincidences happened around then.  Three beings appeared in the universe within seconds of each other and each refused to kick the bucket like everything else had before that.  Not to say that there weren't beings who had survived for a moment or two, maybe even a month for some lucky ones, but these were beings who would persist.  They might be called gods, for they did shape the fate of the universe, tailoring it to their tastes and fancies, but I prefer to think of them as entrepreneurs.  Each came from a different place, a different universe filled with somethings.

One was banished from his realm, thrown out for purposes he would rather not talk about.  He shaped the masses of matter into planets, creating for himself a new home.  One happened upon this plane through curiosity, playing with forces he did not then understand.  Happy to find a new cosmic sandbox, throwing matter around haphazardly in what might be called play by one and research by another.  The third arrived full of umbrage at her plight, devoted to escaping her prison of relative boring emptiness.  She found the first and learned to make her own sculptures of habitation.  She found the second and soaked from him his knowledge, creating experiments of her own.  Deep rooted were her marks on the world, great the signposts of her presence, detailing the many attempts out of the universe, the boundaries she clawed at and the holes she attempted to rip.  Then eventually one day she went home.

In the span between, more and more things kept piling up in the universe, shepherded onto planets or played with, but kept for the most part in much better shape than the things that came before.  Populations rose on the planets, new creatures and things were scattered in the wake of the curious one, and a few things went to the third with the common goal of escape.  None were quite so powerful as those first three, but some came close.

On each planet the builder raised up a pupil to shepherd the wayward to a new home if they so chose.  Countless of these followers rose up, generations of which still exist today.  The curious one was followed by three others who could match his pace as he delved into the secrets of the world.  When he eventually grew board of the universe, two stayed behind to continue his projects while one followed him out into the other realms.  The followers of the exile were numerous, though many died before their escape could become reality and many gave up halfway through.  One however lived to see the dream fulfilled, the secrets of the veil pierced, and instead of fleeing immediately he vowed to sew the rips that such constant exits would make.  Even more, he watched the fabric like the builder's pupils and was the first in his line to deny entry to that which had no place in the world.

The builder sleeps, the curious one wanders, every once in a while to return, and the exile is exiled no more, only present in her cult that guards the secret of the road.  In all that once was nothing a new thing thrived and thrives still.  A pocket of civilization and wilderness where the garbage of the multiverse was dumped.

We call it home, we countless beings scattered around stars the builder forged.  Some call it a great adventure or a great test in their passing through to other realms.  Others, mainly the curious one and his students, view it as the greatest playground invented.  Not that the whole of this is the story one might get from any of the three or any under their wing.

The builder is said to have carved out the whole cavern of space himself, breathing out the stars and using the carved nothing to squeeze the planets into being.  The curious one's students know enough of what happened to piece it all together, but they are all old and hoard their knowledge, preferring to differ to the sentiments of the other two to stay out of trouble.  Much the same as the builder, the exile is said to have carved out the world in her passing, walking out of her own world to venture to others, leaving a path trod down in which we all sit like squatters on the roadside.  Others have either never known the old ones in the vastness of nothing that remains around it all, or have forgotten such things, living as best they can.

I happen to be one of the few who can tell it truly, having come in on their heels, but no one really seems to remember the watcher, for he just sits and observes it all.

Down by the Riverside

The bank of the river was flat, grey stone.  Some day the river would cut down deep to form a mighty valley, but today it sat a few feet below the rim of the plain.  Cool, dark water whirled about, flowing down towards the sea, miles and miles away.  There was just the river, the plain, and the man crying on the bank.

He knelt, hunched over, tears soaking his clean-shaven face that was only visible to the water he wept into because of the black veil of hair that cascaded down in strands.  The sun was setting, the heat of the day already gone into the clear sky.  Like the shadow he made that stretched out across the surface of the river, his clothing was a dark black.

No words were said, for how does one plead with a river to give back what it stole?  The water has already gone onward, the water shrugs off a yell, the reflections it shows are only your crying eyes.  If there were a grave, he surely would be there, but a grave requires a body, and a body was not to be found, not from this river.  It was swift, fast, unstopping.  So all that was left to talk to the river was the salt water mingling with the fresh water.

The moon rose to the setting of the sun, pulling itself high above the plain, and yet the man still knelt, waiting.  Either he would break, or the river would relent.  Drifting shadows, slowly in the moonlight, time itself dragged them to and fro through the night.  When tears subsided, the shaking took over, night chill a poor comfort against tragedy.  A poor mimicry of her warm body, a fair one of the river.

He had thought of jumping in, but what use was that?  To be forgotten as well, nobody left to light a remembrance candle, nobody to leave a piece of bread at the doorway for the departed.  If the spirit could make the journey back up the river, would it be kind to run away, to abandon a hope of welcome?  He knew not.  He could not grasp it, he could not escape it.

All he had were the red eyes, the cold wind, the empty house.  Nothing to tie him to the city, nothing to keep him away from the river.  Dawn came, flashing through the veil of hair his hung head draped over red eyes.

The sun rose and so did he.  It walked across the sky, and he walked down the riverside.  When it sank to the horizon, so did his knees sink down to the cold, grey stone of the riverside.  A drink, then vigil like the stars, looking down from the black veil of night.

Alien World

Selvian V, sitting just so in orbit around a fair sized star and home to some of the richest merchant guild's operation's workers.  Not to say that the workers were that well off, in the grand scheme of things they, and I really should say we here, fit squarely into the lower middle class.

The work itself is mostly easy, it doesn't take much to pilot a drill digger or a loader crane, maybe a little more to work the scan station to plan out the digs, but the real tough spot to get used to is the boredom.  Either you're down in featureless dark tunnels, relying on the green glow of your scan system to guide the digger, or you're sitting up topside staring out at the brown-red rusty plain that stretches out far as a man can see.  Gives a man a whole lot of time to think about the world, it does.  See, as far down as the drilling goes, after half a year of that you're either washed out for trying stupid shit on the job, or you're digging deeper into your soul than any digger could descend.

Guess that's not really what you wanna hear about though, I'll get back to the planet and the operation what you done come here and ask about.  See, Selvian V didn't have this rust layer on top when we first got here, was like a big shiny marble, all metallic.  Not sure how rare that is, being here most of my life, but every so often we get folks like you coming through here asking about it so it figures its special.  The iron layer on the surface formed when the guilds got together and decided it was easier to just fix the atmosphere than to keep fixing the suits and dealing with all the special locks on the doors.  So they bring in the gasses and the water on the first fleet.  The thing was, they didn't get all what they planned.  Sure they figured the rust would come, came with the territory, but they didn't really care about the iron anyway, more just the heavier stuff on the inside.

The real surprise was the weather.  It went like normal for the first few years, but as we kept digging and stirring stuff up the flooding happened, and the contamination, and the water pockets in the ground.  Had to modify the diggers for that one, what with the equipment cost and the deaths.  Nothing worse than being trapped out miles from home in a little pod train deep underground knowing the next time somebody was coming for you was gonna be too late.  Started carrying these big boys out of fear around then.  Now this is a radio, half the size of a man with an antenna to boot.  These babies can still sound from a few miles down.

Anyway, the surface was all shiny when we got here.  Yeah there were some meteor craters, but they were pretty clean.  Figured the advance crew had scrubbed the planet like they always do, and just got a bit overboard on it.  Just the metal down here, never seen anything out of the ordinary, but we can't go more than halfway down with the equipment, which includes the big scanners up top.  Just a big black hole of unknown down there, but I figure it must be more of the same, maybe a bit more dense stuff, but we're just here to get the rich layer in the middle.  Once you go too far down you hit some heavy radioactive stuff.  Not worth much on the market so we don't touch it.  Yeah there's some seismic activity, it screws with depositing the filler that we get supplied with, had to leave off doing the full job because of it, but don't go spreading that around, makes us look bad.  The scientists say that it's all because of the heat from the sun hitting the planet.  No molten core, but it sure is hot down there sometimes.

Anyway, what's a biologist doing out here on this planet, no animals to speak of, not any microbes either, least not after the scrub at the beginning.  All that's here we brought ourselves.  You said something about eggs, I think?

A Curiosity in my Travels

Far beneath the ruby surface of the lake, the Jahwhel sleeps, bathing in the blood of countless cultists sacrificed to form his sanguine home.  Deep in the mountains, the lake sits as a mystery to most who encounter it, wondering exactly why it takes its brilliant hue.  At first they assume rightly that it must be bathed in blood, but the purity of the water, free of grime and mold, free of gore or growth confuses the observant.  Thus they pass it by as a curiosity, mayhaps catching a glimpse of towers through the mist the plays across the surface.

Those few who set out across, and it is always across no matter which shore one starts on, may reach a pair of dark grey towers around the base of which a small town carries out a simple life.  Hunting, farming, spending off time in the tavern, it seems normal enough, if not for the mists and the lake upon whose shore it sits.  No door can be seen into the towers, just close-set stone and unmanned buttresses way up away in the sky.  Looking up under the moonlight, people whisper that forms sometimes seem to hide in the shadows up there, looking down, watching.  I wasn't one to stay out of doors at night there, but for the festival of the full moon, so I could not say as to how tall these tales are.

Down the main street of the town, down into the waters that raise so much interest, a small channel runs, wooden of an unnaturally white hue and meandering side to side like a stream bed.  On that festival of the full moon, all the town gathers, from the youngest to the old high priest who resides there, one might even believe he was from a time before man walked the earth by his long white hair and pruned skin.  All the village gathers with knives and makes a cut across their palm, letting a drip of blood flow into the channel, trickling slowly down into the red waters.  Afterwards, they all gather around a giant bonfire at the shore and dance and drink for hours until the sun peeks over the mountaintop.

The next day, I took furtive looks at the channel on my way out of town, noting the absolute clean of it, no red stains to be found.  The hands of the villagers were without mar and though they attested to holding the festival every full moon for as long as they could remember, it looked as if they had not so much as scratched the surface of their skin with a thorn.

I left town that day, rowing my way back across the water in my boat.  The village had none, no fishermen to set out across the waters in a craft, so my solitary craft drifted out across to the other side, across the clear, ruby waters of the lake.  I think that some day I might return to spend a few moons there, for the land was beautiful and the life was laid back, but I think I might not find it again having left.

Something of a God Complex

Down by the waterfront you could see the city lights from across the bay just glistening on the swells and the sides of boats as it all drifted out down river.  Quite night then, not busy, not loud, not colorful, not yet.  See, the thing was, sitting here under the trees in this park, sitting under the cover of the looming elm trees, sitting waiting for something to happen, I knew a bit more than one might say was legal seeing as how I was keeping it to myself.  They call it aiding and abetting, y'know.

Soon as it got real quiet that medium sized yellow boat would come floating down the river, and the city would see a show.  A show was what I was here for too, but my backdrop looked a bit more promising.  Coincidence they might say at later dates.  Two heists on the same night, followed by a hostage situation and a car chase, not to mention the boat chase from the first heist.  The explosions would be ascribed to chance, the fires and the way they danced from building to building as well.

I know better though, and if you wanted to point a finger, you might say that I was in some way responsible, sure.  I did a bit of nudging, pushing things back and forth in the river of time.  One fire back a few years, another forward a week or two.  Time the criminal element to strike at that hour in the night.  I can't be blameless, but it wasn't like I caused them, just pushed a little.

Over the years some people seem to think that bad things are just innately drawn towards others, like some snowball rolling down a white hill.  Either science or some sort of karma approach, and to some extent they are right, right about the way things flow into one another.  Nights like this though, perfect intersections, they're a bit hard to come by naturally.  Pompeii was one of the few, really, and that was more just spectacular in majesty of a volcano.

This night though, not perhaps one of the most spectacular, but it will be talked of for a few years.  If I waited a few more, maybe I could have snuck in an earthquake or a flood, but then I'd be bending the rules a bit.

Lately the big heads don't want us fiddling with the weather, say they have something huge planned, something world-wide.  Might be worth the show, but it might also be a bit premature to throw on these little monkeys.  Maybe they don't realize it, but these ones are a true joy to mess with, always getting back up after we push them down, like self assembling block towers.  Most entertaining thing to happen in a long time.  I might be able to slide the scale in a few places, fiddle with the world in what they would call a very boring way.  I think they show enough promise for that investment.

Anyway, here comes that yellow boat.