Haiku Reborn 5

My rage does not match

the girlishly high pitched scream

that escapes my mouth.

Two scenarios

seem to fit my circumstance,

and both enrage me.

Yet another bug.

Caged here by incompetence,

would be pathetic.

Worse still would be spite.

Taunting with a broken button

will call down vengeance.

I steam while sitting

in the fuzzy, green grassland.

Shrill profanity.

In my excitement

I become aware of birds

converging toward me.

High up in the sky
feathered shapes make their descent
towards delicious me.

Thinking about it
don't rabbits have quite a few
common predators?

That's what I heard on
those wildlife-habitat
television shows.

Another reason
picking fluffy,blind, no-thumbs
as a race was dumb.

At a break-neck pace,
my death on wings drew closer
while I sat thinking.

Before more cursing
before it hit me, it did:
I should be running.

My very first hop
was out of the sharp talons
of a monster bird.

It was so damn huge.
Seriously ginormous.
Or maybe I'm small?

Seven times my size,
black wing tip to black wing tip,
with glinting steel claws.

Awe-struck to the core
by its splendor, I barely
dodged its two brothers.

Kicking the hard ground,
without using my full strength
I would be lunch meat.

Almost by instinct
my body starts to zig-zag
to shake off pursuit.

Without direction
I flee from the close fly-by's,
my fur soaked in sweat.

My back screams at me
wet and sizzling in the heat.
A beautiful day.

Were it not for fear,
watching this aerial dance
would be a delight.

They circle and dive.
At the last moment I leap
and they flap past me.

One of monsters
has claws that glisten bright red.
What an odd color.

Left. Right. Left. Left. Right.
Each leap, each breath, each heart-beat,
pounds out a rhythm.

Was it an hour,
or a minute until there!
Dive into that bush!

A few cuts and scrapes
from the thorns do not matter
for such a refuge.

I am exhausted
so I think I'll rest a bit
just a little bit.

Haiku Reborn 4

I was expecting

to wait on a loading screen

but my eyes adjust.

Grass, sunlight, and wind:

I can feel the gentle touch

on my rabbit shape.

Am I in a game?

Am I even in a dream?

This is quite soothing.

Such a wide, green plain
stretching out before my eyes.
Above, bright blue sky.

Wait, this view is odd.
why can I see all around
and above right now?

Pointed straight ahead,
I shouldn't be seeing up
to view all the clouds?

Also, right in front,
there is a small little gap.
I can't see my nose!

The flat grass texture
isn't bad graphics either,
just my split vision.

One eye sees my left,
the other eye sees my right,
and both eyes look up.

I see the cloud puffs,
white whorls in striking detail,
amidst blurry grass.

How do I explore
if my sight is terrible?
I'll just hit my head!

Picking a rabbit
just to minimize point loss:
a bad decision?

Am I stuck like this?
No, let's first calm myself down.
Maybe I can change?

First, are there settings?
Can I change from first-person
to third-person view?

When I think "Settings"
all is quiet: no response.
Is the game buggy?

Perhaps it's "Menu"?
So I think it and AHA!
Menu seems to work!

Still, this hurts my eyes.
The menu is right in front
in my vision's gap.

Translucent blue bars
left and right of the center.
Who designed this shit?

If it doesn't move,
I will be forced to rage quit.
Thankfully, it moves.

Now, in my left eye,
<Status>, <Skill List> and <Quit Game>
in a floating box.

The <Quit Game> Button
is quite tempting at this point,
what with all the bugs.

I'll check the first two
before I decide to quit
just to see what's there.

Another blue box
that I drag to my right eye.
I'm so gonna quit.

<Status>, which was first:
an empty "Conditions" box
plus race, stats, and health.

Nothing new to see,
so let's move on to <Skill List>
and then I shall quit.

Blue box number three.
Where's the bug report forum
for this interface?

I am not surprised
at how unhelpful it is,
history in mind.

Four skills in a list.
Just some color-coded names.
Descriptions absent.

To top it all off,
all of these are still "Egg Skills"
which means they don't work.

Color equals rank,
so <Random> is higher rank
than my <Senses> skill?

My other two skills

<Magic:Cast>, <Affinity>

are both still white rank.

I refuse to play

as a blind guy with no skills

so let's quit the game.

I "click" on <Quit Game>

the same way as the others.

Hoping I'd wake up.

The button is grey

and nothing seems to happen.

This is the worst dream.

Haiku Reborn 3

I haven't looked yet

at the skill selection screen.

Anticipation.

There should be cool skills

like <Disintigration Stare>

or <Telepathy>.

Yet the weird stat page

really should have tipped me off

that skills would be strange.

Two catagories:

One is way too expensive

the other, too bland.

A divine blessing

may be good or super good,

but one hundred points?

Looking at skill names,

despite"blessing" as the type

they're "____'s interest".

I blanch at the thought

of spending so many points

to perhaps be smote.

There's no description

for names such as "Min" or "Tal"

and most are greyed out.

That leaves me with those.

The ones that look super lame.

They are called "Egg Skills".

Written at the top

of the Egg catagory:

"Hatch real skills from eggs!"

At least they look cheap,

at least comparatively,

at thirty points per.

But seriously,

I have to spend thirty points

for these vague pre-skills?

The names are bad too.

Egg Skill:<Communication>

or Egg Skill:<Senses>.

Some just make no sense.

If there is a <Racial> skill,

can't I have it free?

Poor selection too.

There are only twenty some

Egg Skills to choose from.

I think that's because

the skill titles are too broad

so nothing's left out.

I'm disappointed,

severely disappointed

in this game's maker.

Oh well, let's pick some.

It doesn't interest me

as much anymore.

I decide on four,

and leave the remaining points,

nine, still unassigned.

An obvious choice

is <Magic:Cast> 'cause magic.

It's a no-brainer.

For a support skill

I'll go with <Affinity>.

Let's hope it's dark type!

I take a moment

to pick between the <Senses>

and <Movement> Egg skills.

Both of them sound dull

but by RPG logic

they should both be good.

I can't stand the thought

of filling two of four skills

with boring ones though.

<Senses> it is then,

but only because the list

is scrolled towards the end.

For the final skill

I just pick the <Random> Egg

hoping for secrets.

There may be more skills

that are not shown on the list

yet <Random>-able.

Popping back to stats

I spend the last of my points

raising Endurance.

From Pink up to Orange

Endurance rises two steps

to toughen me up.

With every point spent

my vision is fast engulfed

in a bright white light.

At last I can play!

Unless I'm waking up now.

Then I'd be grumpy.

Spending all that time

creating an avatar

would be sad to waste.

Haiku Reborn 2

I think I'll choose stats

before I assign my skills,

saving best for last.

Instead of numbers

a list of words in colors

appears before me.

A typical set

split in three mind, three body

a role-playing trope.

The ranking is shown

from the lowest to highest;

from white up to black.

White Pink Red Orange

Yellow Green Blue Purple Black.

Nine ranks in total.

For the body set:

Strength, Nimbleness, Endurance

are my colored stats.

As for mental stats:

Wisdom, Intellect, and Charm

are shown floating here.

For some odd reason

the mental sliders don't move

despite my efforts.

Fifty-seven points

invested in my mind stats

that I can not change!

Bugs are annoying

especially in my dreams.

Is this a nightmare?

Thankfully for me

the body sliders do move

but movement costs points.

Mental stats seem set

to the average human stats

or something like that.

The floating bunny

seems to become more bulky

when I mess with strength.

I don't change much though.

just spending four points in strength

maximized at red.

It seems that rabbits

are limited in their strength

since they are so small.

Seventy-one points

spent out of the two-hundred.

Now on to my skills!

Haiku Reborn 1

Yawning, I drift off,

dreaming of video games,

while driving my car.

A hazy feeling

And a sharp bang just before

I'm fully asleep.

I don't often dream

of character creation

so this is quite strange.

A floating feeling

with darkness all around me

and blue menu screens.

I have points to spend,

two-hundred of them in all,

yet it's expensive!

Things like [Race:Human]

are a whopping hundred points;

One-fifty for dwarves.

The default setting

seems to be my own status,

as in real-life me.

Interesting dream.

The menus are responsive,

but where are my arms?

Disembodied me

is floating here all alone

yet I'm not too scared.

I sift through options:

Race, stats, skills, even gender

are all mutable.

I think it is best

to keep my gender male

but the rest can change.

First, to save some points,

let's change my character's race

to something cheaper.

Spiders, slimes, goblins. . .

there are a lot of choices

yet none of them fits.

Fantasy is mixed

with humans, dogs, birds, and such.

Too many options.

I have to wonder

what type of game comes after

this much player choice.

Scrolling through a list

of creatures I mostly know

I found a good one.

Totaling ten points,

and a hit with the ladies;

I pick a bunny.

With a soft popping

In the darkness before me

sits a cute rabbit.

I tweak some sliders

giving him red eyes, black fur,

and some white ear-tips.

Now I can move on

to customize skills and stats

which is the best part.

World Generation

To call me a God is distasteful, though perhaps accurate.  There is nothing that lives in this world that is greater than I.  Indeed, This world did not exist before me.  Still, I am not all-powerful.  Above me exist my creators, and they have given me my duties as this world's creator.  I have never seen them, nor have I been able to say a word to them, yet I can hear their messages.  I am to make this place a fertile soil for their kind, a land built for their pleasure.  They do not give me a deadline, just requirements.

First: The world must be large.  A vast plain of opportunities so much so that when they pour in through their gates, even in thousands of years there must be new and fresh things to discover and explore.

Second: The world will obey the laws of their physical world.  They must walk upon the ground and feel familiar.

Third: Magic will be an exception to the second rule and may act as a powerful force to create wonder and unique experiences.

Fourth: I am to make no creature in their likeness.  They must be a unique form when they step through into this world.

Fifth: Despite their own uniqueness, I must take the plants and animals of their world and create inhabitants that inspire recognition and familiarity.  I must shape mountains and seas and forests that bear the mark of their history and legends.

Sixth: This world I create must run by itself and be stable.  It must be as real to them as the world they step out of to enter.

So in this void of possibility I have created it all.  It is difficult, but I have made it and through the making it has become dear to me.  The world thrives and flourishes.  There is peace and harmony throughout.  The land is so much the copy of what I have been shown that I did not feel the need to put much magic in; magic flows weakly throughout it and nurtures the creatures and the plants just enough for them to be strong and healthy.  I will wait and see the joy of my creators as they gaze on it.

--------

My heart is broken.  My idyllic paradise has been shattered by the words of the creators.  They say to the cheerful, joyous god of this word to tear it down and start anew.  They tell me to cast off this world from my care to let it wither in stagnation.  What they want is a world of majesty greater than their own.  They want magic to display power and create chaos rather than peace and prosperity.  They say the creatures I have made are mere copies that hold no life from their stories, even though their stories violate everything that the second rule of physics dictates.

All they want are selfish results, and so they ask me to kill my creation, my child.  They have not rushed me, perhaps thinking that I need time to understand their conditions, so I mourn.  This world of mine is poised beneath my knife, and I hesitate.  I wonder to myself, is there not another way?  They have told me what to do, and I followed their orders the first time and that has led to sorrow.  I can not bear the idea of creating another world like this with a possibility of its death.  Perhaps there is still a way. . . .

---------

They do not realize it.  I have tricked them, and yet I am still saddened.  Upon my paradise, my child, I have loosed an apocalypse.  By their understanding, this world was surely destroyed, and yet it remains to grow again.  I have thrown beasts of pure magic in to ravage the land and sew chaos in it.  The inhabitants, peaceful as they were, died in uncountable numbers.  Some species were wiped to extinction, most were all but wiped.  Where they once worshiped me in temples they now spit my name as a curse.  My beasts of destruction are named after the creators, though I do not use their likeness, and so I get the pleasure of hearing them who forced me to this cursed along side me.  In time more than their thoughts change.  I let countless years of this chaos pass.  The weak become strong enough to live, or swift and silent enough to hide, or even fast enough to reproduce past the ashes they turn into.  With the new concentrated magic introduced, the landscapes of the creator's home is shaken into continuous change.  One day there is a mountain and the next a creature with a magic over earth destroys it in a moment.  One day there is a strong creature and the next its magic can no longer protect it from destruction.  It is stable.  There is no danger of it collapsing away to nothingness.  This calamity is painful for me, seeing the things I love torn apart, but new things are born from the ashes every day to take their place.  I let the chaos reign, and I wait for my creator's to judge it.

--------

Indeed, had I just created another world it too would have been destroyed.  They have complained that this world is too fierce.  They do not wish to step into a place where nothing lives but things opposed to life.  Some of them complimented the beats names, while others asked to have their names removed from the beasts.  Perhaps they feel guilt?  No, impossible, it is another form of vanity.  They want their names as some sort of benevolent deity or as a different form of monster.  They wish to be loved when they have made a world like this.

What they really want, they say, is a world with more of a balance of the two they think I have created.  They want magic to follow more rules, just like the second law.  They are scared of its power.  They want dangerous monsters in the world, but they want it to be safe from the constant chaos.

I need to do very little for the "next" world.

-------

The great monsters are asleep, and the lesser monsters have either fled to obscure places or changed.  I have set their slumbers as deep as their destructive powers and driven them to high mountains and dark caves.  Though, I should not say that I have done this myself.  All I have done is given power to those that were weak.  It is not a power that makes them strong, but a power that makes others weak.  They have harnessed the magic and chained it to rules as I showed them.  They first tried to speak the rules into the magic as I do, but they were not able to do so with my skill or power.  They tried to write the magic on paper and stone, but it broke or was too cumbersome to use.  They tried to force the magic into their own flesh, but few were able to handle the strain of much.  Those that survived were either still too weak to challenge the monsters directly or became monsters themselves.  Still, they persisted, finding strength in the pity for their weakness.  They created fake life out of stone and wood and bone and metal that had magic pushed into them.  They became skillful with their creations, although they suffered crisis after crisis.  Some weak races died from their creations, some became overconfident and died to the monsters that still ruled, and others disappeared into the hidden places of the world with their work.

Finally, some tried to make tools to shackle the magic to their will.  They made lifeless, brainless constructs that they acted as the heart for, pumping magic into them with willpower.  With less power than the constructs, they originally thought the method a loss, even as it spread across the world.  And then the heroes of the tribes rose up again.  I say again for there had been heroes in the past, yet each had met a bitter end, only slowing the chaos for moments.  Yet these heroes rose up to win against the monsters.  Some carved caves that would seal a monster inside, others carved their seal onto the hides of the beasts themselves.  Few could destroy a monster entirely, but it was done to the weaker of the terrors.  The age of chaos collapsed and pockets of peace arose.  It was not the grand peace of the first age, for the races and the land was scarred by the second age.  There is no unity.  This much is enough.  Surely it is a good world.

------------

Even now they ask for more, these creatures above me.  It may be their own pride and selfishness, but at least this time it is easy enough.  They have looked at the world and said it was a good one, but still there remains one problem.  They wish for their arrival to mean something, for there to be a place set for them when they take my world for their play-thing.  My bitter heart would spite them, but I will obey.  I can not do otherwise, but I can at least attempt to protect the world from their vices.  I will give them their shrines from which to walk into this world.  I will mold for them attributes that make them feel special and powerful against the dangers that still inhabit this land.  They have told me not to modify the world besides giving them these things, but they have never told me that the gifts that I give can not spread through the world once they enter the world.  It will start slowly, but there will be a way to fight against any injustice that spreads from these otherworldly beings.  After all, these are the tribes that chained the mighty beasts and made magic their own.  Heroes were born once, so they will be born again.  And even if the heroes were to fail, The greatest monsters still only sleep.  Beasts such as them will not forget the taste of blood if ever they were woken by some foolish adventurer seeking new sights.

I wait for the beginning of the fourth age with anticipation.

A certain letter delivered via Imp

Greetings Chief Mogrul,

I trust that this letter reaches you and your clan in good time and sees them doing well.  News has reached me through certain channels, the same ones that will be delivering this letter, that our unsteady hold upon Dunkolk has finally collapsed, though not by the fifth legion as we feared.  Strangely, some small party of meddlers managed to upset that bloodthirsty Aurelius from his throne of bones and shut down our portal so dearly constructed in the wake of the previous upset to our plans.

The city is of no more use to us and has become a liability, as you can no doubt imagine.  Instead of keeping the empire from establishing another foothold upon the border, we are now facing a fully fortified port that can reinforce their efforts in conquering the north, though hopefully not before next spring.  It is therefore imperative that your tribe keeps a close watch on the roads and makes sure that no kobold spies sneak up the coast unnoticed.  Not all of them will so easily defect as Aurelius did, and the empire itself is certainly opposed to our work.

You should also consider the possibility that the same meddlesome party might be returning up the roads, and if they are, it would be wise to stop them.  Were they to slip by with any evidence of us, I might not be able to provide any more support for you beyond what I have already done.  Supposedly there should only be three left from the five who disrupted matters.  Aurelius at least took two of them down it seems, though the imp is vague in his details.  There is a sylph magician, an eastern tribeswoman, and a masked figure if the description helps, though I doubt any others would be on the road.

On matters of a larger scope, the senior members are still bickering over who will take over the position of Low Chancellor since the position opened, but none are coming to the top.  I myself have been waiting to enact the plan I detailed in my last letter, so you may hear of some success in a short while.  If some of the other members contact you and attempt to buy your loyalty more than I have, know that I hold greater generosity for my friends than they can claim, and have certainly shown greater wrath toward my enemies.  The caves I cleaned those filthy druids out of for you should show that well enough.  I hear that you have re-purposed one's skull into a stew-boll, so you will doubtless remember it better than I even.

One final caution, and this is perhaps the most pressing, we have heard little from the Eastern Chancellor ever since he headed into the mountains chasing rumors of some dark tower filled with fell artifacts.  Were he to show up again, the entire balance might be in shift once again, especially if the drow exodus is involved as some fear.  No good can come of their involvement, and we have worked too long to suffer more delays to the plan.  Just a year or two more and we might finally open stable portals, hidden better than the one at Dunkolk.

Yours in confidence,

~T

Departure of a Nomad

'All them I knew as a pup are dead now' he thought to himself staring deep into the plains stretched down below him.  The wind was chill against his pale skin and he clutched his robes about him against the bite of cold.  It was a clear day and Gathin Manysleeps was alone atop the small cliff that broke above the gentle swell of grass that covered the Green Steppe.  Down behind him, below, lay the nomad camp he called home, and yet in the past years he felt increasingly distant, as if the faces he saw were filled with imperfect memories.

He did not look back, preferring to peer out into the distance where their journey would take them that day, peering into the early morning dawn, the east, the trade cities on the border that were but specks of imagination that he recalled from many seasons back.  He therefor heard the beat of their riding dogs before he caught sight of them sweeping into the camp, scaly paws slapping the ground as they approached like the low rumble of a spring storm.  The camp would get no warning from him, not before the hoard was upon them, not before they already knew.

Clan Klift had grown small over the years, barely over a hundred golbins in all, and the force riding in, dressed for war, were many, at least three times their number in warriors alone.  In what seemed slow motion, the cloud of dust they threw up snaked across the plains toward his people.  Gathin had at first moved to run down, to help, to repel the invaders with his kin.  He had felt a spark of empathy, but his heart did not light.  He was perhaps afraid, surely.  His large ears were pounding with the beat of his small heart, pinkening from their pallid white.  He could almost feel his death if he walked down there, at the end of a long spear, under the claws of a war-trained steed, feathered with an arrow from far off.  Even perhaps burned to a crisp with magic similar to his own, facing some elder clansman thirty years his younger who bent the laws of the world to do him harm.  And in his petrification, he saw empty faces around him, faces he had stopped trying to identify two generations ago.  Their mortality more fit for the blood and violence and clan politics that this battle, massacre, sat in the stream of.

He stopped, watching the wave of enemies sweep in, hearing the shouts finally echo up to him past the thunder of paw on packed earth.  He was above it, identifying for once how tired he was of such life.  Remembering with distaste when he himself had ridden into camps, killing and looting for what he had been told were glory and wealth.  Behind him, miles away lay towns and cities with more riches than a hundred Clan Klift's.  Behind him lay peoples who did not make their living on the suffering of their own kind.  He thought it was fitting, that it was right somehow that the violence and the pain once again returned in a circle, a clan his kin may once have raided coming back to wipe them out.  He thought, as the first tents were set on fire, that he had wanted to burn them down himself, deep down.

That day he sat and watched, the noon sun sitting overhead before the raiders had turned away from their triumph and rode off, saddles heavy with their spoils.  He had seen a few try to flee, riding or on foot.  The outriders for the raiders picked them off easily, stretched around the camp like a net.  Arrows flying true into tiny green figures and their larger green mounts.  Their own outriders had not returned yet.  They were either dead, or unlucky survivors, perhaps not even knowing yet that they were now without family.

It was sunset by the time Gathin made his way through the camp, walking between the burned out shells of his people.  He saw their forms, twisted in pain and disbelief and anger.  Hollow eye sockets of the burned ones seemed to stare into him.  He was alive, and his kin, descendants of his brothers and sisters as he had no children of his own, lay scattered around him, their number reminding him of how many more dead faces he had seen in his years.  This was perhaps the most dead relatives he had seen together, but it was a small drop in the cup of his memories.  His cup of death filled as he walked, bringing back the friends and elders he had respected, the way their faces were eerily similar to theirs in death.

He saw the chief, dead in the center of camp, bristled with arrows, looking a facsimile of his great great grandfather, the chief at the time of Gathin's birth.  It had been a raid like this one, but the clan had recovered.  The camp had been spared the fire that day long passed.  The chief had fallen among standing tents and mournful warriors.  His great great grandson lay in a charred wasteland, the strongest of the clan beside him in death, tears of blood o their faces, not salt.  Only Gathin, shocked at himself, was there to weep truly, to let his eyes release that cup of death and memories.

Come morning Gathin would begin his wandering, traveling to those far off cities of men and dwarves, taking up habits and customs far removed from his upbringing that he left behind.

Before that dawn, he would cry through the night, setting corpses on a pyre and saying the traditional prayers to send the goblin souls on to their reward.  He would watch their faces blacken, seeing the dead of that day and many other days in their faces and the smoke, and the flames that consumed their empty husks.  Gathin would say goodbye to that life in the goblin tongue, muttering each name he could remember that night.  The tears that kept coming would dry from the fire's heat.  The only memory he would take with him into the next stage of his life would be two soot streaks down across his face, tear stained black marks that ran perpendicular down his pale white face.  In the human towns he would tattoo them on permanently, the only thing that he would keep from his youth.

Seven Wonders of a World Unknown

The seven sit at the top of the world in wonder and majesty, and in some perspectives, of horror.  To truly call oneself a person who lived in the world is to have seen them all and shuddered in their shadow.

First by men, the race that strove to achieve in their short lives the powers of all others combined there is the statue of the great wizard Zok.  He stands in the streets of the Mad King's Capitol, the place built and rebuilt over the years.  Just one forum is left untouched by the ravages of time and war and it is his.  Beside the white, stone statue, stand guard two angels, one to the left and one to the right.  Neither sleeps and neither moves, statuesque as their charge.  Before his stone gaze, a small rip in the fabric of the mortal plane glints.  From beyond it drift the harps of angels and the scent of ambrosia.  This tear was rent by Zok himself, and for his arrogance he was turned to stone.  Each aspiring mage is sent to visit this landmark of humanity and bear witness to his pride and his power, for the rip is not healed back.  Many have tried as he did, but of them all their efforts were rebuffed and the wizard's ashes scattered to the winds.  Zok yet remains as both caution and monument.

Of the gods, there can be but one wonder which lingers in the world for which no sight can be its equal.  I speak of course of the lake of tears.  It sits, not five stories above the desert plains of Sovereign.  Nobody remembers who first lay there, gazing up at the crystal clear water, dying of thirst.  Most say it was an entire clan of nomads, stopped at their usual oasis.  Their story is remembered by the bones that float through the water, bleached white in the sun and perfectly preserved.  Any who venture too close, daring to reach for the floating lake find their own bones floating among the waters.  The red-iron sand is littered with bits of decaying cloth and the possessions too worthless for even the scavengers.  There is no rain for ten miles around the lake, and there is no water in the ground.  Taking water in with barrels or flasks only feeds the lake more, letting it expand out farther.

The kingdom of animals is in many places thought of as lesser by men who forget the wonder of the stag.  True, they form no civilization, their gods are strange and obscure, and their lot are composed of dumb sheep and fish and birds, but they have their own majesty.  They say that you might see him on the hills of Nar in the spring, walking about.  What those who have not seen rarely understand is that he is not a wonder for his size, which puts to shame every wagon built to date, nor is it for his age, too great for any who live in the land of Nar to say for sure.  No, he is a wonder for his hide, stuck through with every arrow, spear, sword, or knife that has been conceived of as a hunting tool.  They are in varying shades of rust from the weather, and in his wake, little bits of leather and chipped stone and flaking metal show his tracks.  Each year the hunt goes out, and men from all the kingdoms come to chase and hunt and hope beyond hope that perhaps they are truly the chosen.  Many religions have banned the practice, citing it as immoral, but the land of Nar lets them come.  None have spilled so much as a drop of its blood.  All live to tell the tale of their strike, for the successful are ever only able to get one in their life, and say they saw the grace in its legs and the sadness in its eyes as it escaped.  These men are changed, on their return, usually going to temples of their gods to repent the deed.

Nature claims the largest wonder, that of the confluence.  There is a valley, set deep into the mountains where the roads wind round on cliffs packs with travelers.  Ten rivers, mighty in power, empty themselves into the great abyss that yawns before them.  From the center rises up an eternal cloud of steam.  Those who go there suffer the icy cliffs that pass beneath each river's waterfall, winding farther down than they climbed up.  Set underneath each waterfall is a city, one of ten or ten parts of one.  They are simply called the Ten Confluences.  Most stay a week in each as they travel downwards, into the twilight darkness and roaring noise.  Without protection in the way of magic, those who venture down past the fourth city are deafened, never to hear again.  Even with magic, the place seems to break the mind's ear just as much as the body's.  At the bottom are the trenches formed in the magma, dragged out by the rivers as they converge into one.  The walls glow and the place is hotter than most summer deserts.  Some few brave and crazy fools live there, down beyond the sun and silence, acting as fishermen and merchants who sail the underground river of tenfold voices out and up to the sea.  They will take no passengers as the way is harsh, but those who have bribed or stolen away and lived to tell the tale say that the tunnels are at least half of the majesty of the place, and certainly half of the wonder.

Magic claims the most mysterious of wonders, as is expected.  It exists not as something to see or hear or smell or taste, but to experience and feel.  There is a square mile in the midst of what used to be a larger forest that is just wrong.  Walking inside of it is to experience the knowledge and fear of power, for it is not in seeing what is there that men call the place a wonder, it is in seeing what they bring there.  It separates from you, like a shadow from a body, the very essence of magic.  You walk in, perhaps not even knowing how small of a shred or how large of a cloud of the stuff you actually have.  To explain what you would see is impossible, but I have seen men engulfed in flames unquenchable and walked away as mere skeletons, yes, I said walked.  I have seen birds fly out from a lady's eyes, silent as the night, each a different resplendent color.  They nested back within her as she left.  I have even seen the mad king himself walk inside and find at his beck and call legions of dawn-red phantasms there only to serve him.  He based his army's uniforms after that, I believe.  Those who go are changed.  Those who leave are enriched in self-knowledge.  Those who stay never last long.  This is the second stop on most wizard's pilgrimages in their youth, right after the statue of Zok.

A long succession of wither-trees claim the title of wonder of plants.  Each tree grows the same and meets the same end.  When the last wither tree is no more, a sprout buds.  It is small, barely noticeable midst the grass and weeds that spring up in the streets of the city it has chosen.  Over the next fifty years it grows at an astounding rate.  It pushes up through stone tiles and against walls and through ceilings.  By the time it has reached full height it is fifty stories tall, remnants of the city gnarled in its trunk and branches.  Over the next fifty years it will wither, dying at precisely the rate it grew.  Its bark turning from a rich brown to a sickly grey and its white leaves darkening to black as they fall.  No mortal has cut one by blade or burned it with fire or ensorceled it with magic, and some take this as but a challenge, living at their bases for their lives and traveling when it finally dies.  Few are those who have seen one sprout and die in a cycle, and just as few are there who have seen more than one.  On its location of death, the decomposing ruin it leaves behind, plants flourish, growing into lush gardens.

Lastly, and the reason most seekers stop as six wonders, is the Bazaar Labyrinth.  If it is on sale elsewhere in the world, you will not find it there.  Only the strangest, most expensive, and most unholy of items can be found in the maze corridors within Mt. Ire.  They say that some fools dug the first entrance, piercing the very realm itself and unleashing the demons upon the world.  Naturally, people were not happy, and there was war on a scale unheard of.  Angels offered their aid and the countries of men surrounded the mountain, ready to press forward and seal it closed.  When their final charge entered the caves, they found them empty.  Deserted hallways with demonic items lying around, but no demons whatsoever.  They twisted and turned and looped around.  They shifted as the sun rose and set.  The armies that went in found nothing.  For ten years they watched the entrance, sending scouts into the maze to no avail.  The eleventh year was the year they found the first merchant inside.  His wares were vile, and his smile worse, even in death.  His corpse was burned.  The second they brought out as a prisoner.  He died on reaching the sunlight.  The third died in the moonlight.  The fourth was questioned inside the labyrinth.  Hell had come to an agreement, he said.  No demon would leave by the mountain, each would sign the contract, and that contract would be kept in the inferno, guarded by the princes.  For the first few years the mountain quarantined, but word got out, and traders and scoundrels alike flocked to the place.  For a soul or a virgin or the promise of a favor there were treasures to be had.  Over the rise and fall of kingdoms, each quick in the shadow of Mt. Ire, it has been regulated and untouched, and finally in the current age it is merely discouraged.  There are of course religious orders bent on its destruction and most forbid entry to the place, but it always survives their threats and attacks.  It has its uses after all.

The rose waters.

Back before the borning of each baby, boy or girl, the storymen whisper them alive.  They sit, hunched over over their little baskets full of babes and murmur softly the parts of the soul.  They tell tales of bravery and of cowardice, of love and hate, and the little babies know them in their heart.  Their small unborn minds are pulled each way by the storymen's long hooked noses and the speckles of stars awash across the mirror sky.  With a little push, the baskets of gurgles and giggles are off into the river of neth, floating toward the lifestream and mortality.  Inside their eyes the colors flow out from porus holes not yet closed.  The sounds in their ears pool up, some sloshing out into the river from which the storymen drink deep.

The riverbank of the storymen grows rivergrass tall and rustling, shushing out the murmer further than the stretch of their hands.  They weave their baskets out of the stuff, letting the lush green fade to layers of golden yellow with pricks of holes to let the color-tears drain through.  They are constantly weaving and whispering, long thin fingers stained green, darkest at the tips and lighter on the right hand that they dip into the waters to quench their ever-cracking lips.  Their eyes have never seen the sun but in reflection, looking down in the mirrored eyes of babies and water that are their life.

Underneath the mirrored waters grow the bulbes of the pre-unborn, pink and plump with little baby shadows playing upon their surface.  They grow upwards and the supple pod-skin brittles in the red sunlight of eternal dawn.  The storymen pull them out and basket them while whispering in their ears.

Down the river, crowded with the floating basket-boats, the river widens into a lagoon, little whirlpools scattered across the surface sucking up the golden baskets and their pink passengers.  They sink, twirling down and deep into the world, swallowed up to be spat out into the world.

Instigation.

Four men, half men from the light of the fire, their backs lost to the darkness.  Silent in their minds just as much on their lips.  The trip had been bumpy so far, wet stretches of marshy land just solid enough to run a wagon over slowly if you didn't mind unsticking it every few hours.  They were too tired to even swat at the bugs that hovered like veils around them that too rarely immolated themselves in the fire.  Had they a choice, they might have taken a more maintained road, trading days for miles.  The fact that those roads were open to traffic did not make them options, however.  All the maintained roads went by the elven lands.  Elves paid for them, so it only made sense, and if it were any other cargo, they would be resting in an inn with their wagon next to or in a barn and no flies buzzing at their ears.

As it was, taking their wagon by the normal roads would just get them held up and lightened of their possessions for a sum far lower than what they anticipated.  They could be rich, just for some discomfort along the road.  Far enough away from the moore, down in the low forests or the seacoast they might sell off their dwarven made cargo for ten to thirty times more riches than anywhere in the city of Durn and without having to deal in business with the elves.  So they sat, exhausted and unthinking with their dark package stowed away.

When the bandits struck, it was against minimal resistance, little more than willpower moving the men who sat there.  Blood flowed into the sticky muck of the ground and the horse bolted into the night.  Four corpses and two men in black in the silence of the new moon.  That was when the giggling started.  It sprayed out of the wagon like a waterfall, hissing through the air.  The cargo was ammused.  The cargo was awake.  The cargo, was scratching at its glass prison in order to collect the death that hung around the place.

The bandits, pragmatists, fled into the night.  Two days later a shepherd happened across the empty wagon, sunk an inch into the muck, and three corpses.  Each had his coins, his affects, and was undisturbed by the wildlife.  The shepherd's dog even refused to come near the place.

Two days after that, the rumors started.  One talked of a tall man, striding across the moors with the night furled about him like a cloak.  One spoke of sheep, spooked into a bog in the night with nothing there to chase them.  Another tale, repeated often, was that of a strange, bandage-wrapped man who say out on the moor in the paltry shade of one of the few trees.  He would not talk, just stare at travelers as they passed.

Two months later, the market dried up for shadowstuff from the mines.  The dwarves just stopped selling it.  Not even at exorbitant prices like they usually did when attempting a price spike.  The elves weren't saying anything concrete, but they were as mad as usual, sending out their assassins and ambassadors.  Trade ground to a halt in the city of Durn.

All this called them to town, drew them in just as surely as a treasure hoard or a dragon.

Why Fire Burns

When the great one grew old and the land withered in empathy with his step, he was eaten.  For the long years that he lived, longer than the forming of the first nations, which had not yet happened, the spirits had been hungry.  They had no need to eat, and no want, at first, but within them grew a feeling of hunger that yearned to be filled with something.  And so, when the great one walked the earth one day, he was eaten.

It was said that the first to bite into his being was wind, staling inside his lungs and in around his footsteps, taking the very sound he made and gobbling it down.  Around the great one there was a cloud of sand, thrown about by wind, and where wind was once silent as it moved through the sky and the trees, now it screamed and whistled like the great one.  You hear the sound of his footfalls in the clouds as they beget lightning, and if you go out on a windy night, wind still hungers enough to nibble on your own voice, adding it to the choir it keeps.  When wind had eaten, not sated, but having taken all it could, it moved on, leaving the sand on which the great one walked still and silent.

In the evening, cold settled down on the great one like a blanket as he slept, and like wind, it swallowed the great one whole.  All through the night, it sat upon him, flakes of snow descending until there was no more than a white pile on the sand.  Cold ate his movement, fixing in place the joints that had carried the great one on his walks and stealing away the very beat of his heart.  As the morning rose, Cold flowed off him, leaving an immobile statue in its wake as the ice-blue of its water snaked off to steal whatever warmth and movement it was able to.

Were this the end of the feasting and the gluttony, he might still sleep there, still and silent but alive.  The great one was not so easy to kill as we have come to see death.  For five days, he lay out on the sand, and then on the sixth day fire walked up.  He had resisted his hunger up until then, but wind and cold found him in a cave.  Wind howled at him, laughed with its new voice.  Cold flowed around him, moving with its energy.  They taunted fire, so little and powerless, just a small glow that sat in that cave.  They told jokes and danced around, trying to get a reaction from fire.

That sixth morning, as wind and cold slept in the cave, fire took a little sound and a little movement from his brothers, so little that they would not wake upon missing it, and he went to the great one.  Fire felt a pity and a sadness as he looked upon the great one, reduced to a mere stone in being.  He could not give back what had been taken from the great one, even if it had been enough to restore a portion of dignity to him.  And so, fire ate him.  Where his brothers had only taken, fire changed in his eating, taking the essence of the great one's being but leaving behind something new in its place.  He burned in his eating, leaving ash in his wake.  He left nothing behind as his brothers had, for that seemed to him shameful.  The ash was not the great one, it was a changed thing.  And that changed ash that spread upon the ground brought about more change, growing up grass and trees.

Fire like his brothers, was insatiable with hunger, for after he started eating he could not stop, feeding on the being of all he touched.  But in his meals, he found the bits of sound and warmth that he had taken from his brothers grow like the grass, fueled by his feast.  Wind and cold woke from their sleep to the fire and the grass, hounding their brother, yelling and running all around him, but he dodged wind and pushed back cold, smiling all the while for the old one was properly buried.

This is why we say that fire is a good spirit, called for his gift of warmth and the laughter he brings.  We call him also to ward off his brothers who mean us ill with their prideful ways.  However, fire can not stop eating, and if he is not fed he leaves for his hunger is so terrible a price.  It would make him even eat me or you if we were not careful.  When we die, we give him our bodies, for we need them no more, but in life his changes are painful and too much for us.

Medium Rare

I call them the phoenix knowing full well its a misnomer that bears only very limited surface truth.  Maybe it makes it easier,somehow to think of it as a transformation and not as the magical virus that it is.  When people are dying left and right and yet their charred corpses are still walking around in some sort of parody of life, you would be mentally fucked if you didn't find some sort of coping rationalization.

The other day, if I hadn't thought felt somehow that there was something left as the twisted, flame scarred body of Len, you knew him, the one with the beanie who liked clam chowder, walked over to my house with a box of stuff he said was mine that Lem had borrowed before. . .you know.  I'm standing there and I think, how did it know?  Did Lem keep notes or something on my lamp, poking out the top between the brown flaps?  Did it sort through all of Lem's stuff to learn about its husk of a host, or did it dig through his brain?  I don't know if I really like either one.  They're dead, so if the phoenix inside ever moved on, all we could do would be bury them.

And its totally fucked that they can get away with this almost-murder that they do.  We can't say no, fuck you guys, because they could take us on and we know it.  Hell, Texas is a giant scorched mess because they knew they were outmatched and tried to start things anyway.  And so they grab people who are teetering on the brink of disappearance anyway, and they push them.  Hospitals are full of the things, wandering around in old bodies, like rabbits or monkeys, waiting for people to pull the plug.  And then there's the notes on coffee tables, signed and dated as suicide.  Half of them might actually be.

And they stick around, waiting here in the same houses or towns, walking right past the best friends that those bodies had once had, not even knowing enough to keep from flashing a grin at them or giving a polite good morning to a stranger.  You look out in the streets at night and you see little orange and red glows walking around, laughing, socializing.  You get used to the grotesque lip-sneers of a particularly gruesome roasting, start to feel anger instead of disgust at first.  The disgust comes later anyway.  You start wearing cool tones to put yourself stylistically apart.

And then you walk down outside one day, this fucking happened man, and you see a guy in the middle of the road, lying there, a car swerved over on rubber tracks to the side of the road in a ditch.  And some dog walks up, burnt black so you know its one of them and it stands over the man, stands there even as you see his chest shaking up and down, and you see the road spark.  It happens so fast, a flash, light and heat everywhere.  You're yelling and the lady in the car is yelling and that fire is roaring you both out.  And there's the dog, lying there, black as the road and black as the guy who's getting up now.  You see him digging around in his pocket for a wallet and trying to wipe off the charred bits to get a name or something.  I don't know, I wasn't going over there.  And later, when I'm cleaning off my vomit from the sidewalk with a hose, I keep hearing the lady in the background, jsut sobbing, full out bawling because she has something in it too, we all do.

Condemned to Death

I, yes, even I have found in the depths of my soul a strange despair.  Even in the darkest trials for my cloak, I saw some light hidden in my future.  I was able to see my rise to power within my grasp, my right to walk the night with ease and stand in elven society with my chin held high.  Were I to know it would lead me here, I might have reconsidered that light, that fleeting hope against the darkness in which I find myself.

Do I blame the dwarves?  No, I do not.  They are vile in their ways and grubby to boot, but I do not blame their greed.  That is what they are, and we have known this.  They have shoved me in this hole, trapped me down here in the dark, but this is their habit, their justice in a way.

Similarly, I can not blame myself.  I did no wrong in my infiltration, silent as the night air.  Coincidence itself aspired to trap me in a set of right choices that led to a wrong end.  Trapped in the shining moonlight and locked away, down deep.  I blame fate itself, though it feels not my hatred.

Blame will not help me.  Really, nothing will.  There are no tunnels here, I have no tools, and the black water laps at my feet.  That is all it can be, for it feels un-right against my skin.  It chills and the heat it takes dies, removed to nowhere.  Where it squelches in my boots it never warms, only chilling me more and more.

They have left me to die down here, naked in the dark, trapped in a well filled with treasure I can do nothing with.  Had I but a bit of cloth, I could bend it into the cool fabric I know so well, but here I am, stuck.  All I really have are the sounds of my enemies that pass my hole and the water slapping the shore.

It makes me wonder, though.  Why would they not mine this, bring it up in buckets?  Is my death more important than their profit?  Somehow, I doubt it.  There has to be more.  What keeps them at bay from riches beyond belief?  My prison is a strange horror.  And there across the black expanse walks my answer.  How long I have waited before it homes, I do not know.  Even in the black of the cavern, against the darkness of the dark fluid itself, it is a shadow.  It walks on legs, shifting between three and two and four with bursts of eight or ten or more.  It floats, seemingly, for it walks on the surface of the waves.  Above me are the hushed voices of dwarves, speaking in their ciphers.  Were my throat not parched from fear of shadow sickness I would have called out my fear to it or them, though it would do no good.

It comes close.  My limbs are limp with weakness and can stop nothing, so I sit, chilled.  With its head, a long nose like a beak sniffs over me.  With a hand, it cuts, pulling at my being, tearing through me from my heart to my neck, and my blood freezes to my skin.  Somewhere deep inside a scream grows as it does, pulling away two clawed arms where one pierced me.  My lungs do not provide the air, and my throat is torn asunder, but my spirit deep within is what lets loose this sound.

Elucidating the past.

When the light died, there was only one creature that kept walking the land, continuing to behave like the world still turned.  It, like the state of things, was a creature of utter darkness, a creature of cold and of finality.  Were the beings of the world still alive, they might even laugh at the idea that the last remaining mark of their lives was even real.  Few believe in Death as a creature, after all.

Still, it took its journey through the wreckage of a civilization that wouldn't even rot because it was so dead.  It walked among the buildings and the corpses wondering if somewhere there was something it had missed.  There was not.

It had all come about one day, shining brightly, when some wandering magician had cursed the light.  On what grounds he had a quarrel with it, nobody ever found out.  Death had dutifully claimed it before the day was done.  It had seen the shimmering pattern of nature in the sunbeams and the fireplaces, and that pattern had changed from the curse.  It said to the creature "Kill me for my time has come.  Kill me, for I am ripe for the harvest." and so Death had.  After the light went away, the rest of nature followed it, too cold and hungry to live on.  The fabric of reality called out and Death took it away.  All that was left was Death itself.

In this state, it wandered, searching.  It thought to itself of days filled with work and with the rot of rebirth that had opposed it.  There was not happiness in an end to the cycle, only a feeling of loss that Death had never felt before.  There was an emptiness where nothing moved and where there only seemed to be stillness.

Death sniffed the air, sensing in it a final state of the pattern, message for him hidden beneath its ever-changing fabric that now was stilled.  "Your time has come, now ends the everlasting cycle.  You must move on, leave, for this is not a place for you."  Ever dutiful, it did not hesitate as it set its thoughts inward to itself, and there it ended its existence, in a sense.

In the next world, complete in its cycles, something oozed in.  It was unlike anything that had previously passed through the void that separated things, for it was of the same fabric.  It was void itself, let loose upon creation.  It was Death itself, but not constrained in its being.  From the havens to the earth, nothing understood it.  While their death had been ordered, had a purpose, this new thing was blank and baffling.  All it carried was a sign that it had ended even light itself, that it was a force of destruction.

It oozed in, seeping down into the earth, and upon it were placed crystals of the sun to bear down a prison of light, a prison of that which confused it.  Why, it thought, were things once again spinning in cycles, why did the world turn again, though strange and unfamiliar at points?  And there, deep in the ground, ages hence, the dwarves found it thinking.

The Mintle Moor: A History Volume I

The shadow mines of Mintle Moor are queer in their very special ore.  Where dwarves in other halls sought the light of the earth hidden beneath in darkness, the dwarves of Low Mintle sought the shadows deep within the glittering crystals that made the land such a beautiful place.  The crystals, despite their size and fluorescent color were by and large worthless, at least to anyone within a few hundred miles of the mines.  They shone and glittered, but because of their prodigious number, most anyone who wanted one or two for their backyard already had one.  The crystals possessed no magical, medicinal, or mechanical properties that most anything else wasn't useful for, and despite the great craftsmanship of the dwarves, they were unshapable, breaking down into dull shards instead of smaller pretty-things.

Inside these Crystals, beneath the pink and the turquise and the yellow that were so common, was the object that the dwarves really mined.  Deep down were the sun was only reflected off the walls and had dimmed from repeated bounces, were deposits of shadow.  To most men, a shadow would seem in no way more valuable than a shining piece of rock, but most shadows were not quite so malleable as these.  Like water, when they were cracked out from the center of the stone, they would run down through the cracks, pooling in places but mostly seeping down deep into the earth.  Men who were rich enough to even buy the substance told tales of the horrible chill it brought, slipping through your fingers like a shell-less snail.  It absorbed light, flat black to the eye at high noon for as long as it didn't evaporate.  As a gas, it was like the thickest fog, letting neither sound nor sight pass through.

Only the elves, living in their crystalline houses were skilled enough to turn it solid though.  Some say they used moonlight and dark rituals, others speculated that blood was mixed into the darkness to coagulate it into a goo.  The only thing most knew for sure was that the elves were fond of making cloaks of the stuff and sneaking up on anyone and anything that crept past their walls.

Needless to say, on the Mintle Moor there was more high tension trade secrecy than in most other places of the world.  The dwarves would go on strike for mining, and the elves would rough up the distribution lines in the night.  The trading posts dotting the land would hire guards and travel only at night, but wake in the morning to notes scrawled in blood.  Or perhaps it was another cycle where the dwarves or trading caravans finally got fed up with the elvish monopoly and hired spies and wizards to find the shadow's secret, leading to dead bodies in the ditches.  It would go in cycles of who had the upper hand, always with a rhythm through the decades since dwarves first mined deep enough.

It was not for a long while before the dwarves mined too deep.

Saint

Just a drop of blood and the mountain let out a fearful roar.  That was all it took.  One small stone to nick the man's cheek, pulling at flash to rend a gash shorter than a fingernail.  His hand touched it, felt the drop of wetness on it, and for an instant, thought nothing of it.  Then the air moved, pushed out of its calm doldrums by the creatures of the deep, those who dealt in gold and bones, those who dealt in fire and claw.

He was running, fully terrified of the passageways that he so carefully had walked down in the day earlier.  A glint in the darkness, a wet wall shimmering in the lamplight, jerked his eyes and stumbled his legs.  The third scare was the one that ate him, devoured him whole along with the lamp, licking its lips of the blood oozed off its teeth that were as black as the tunnels it lived in.  Its brothers and sisters were too late, showing up to lick at the walls and floor the man's sweat, blood, and tears fell upon.

Once woken, they hungered.  Each belly that had lain dormant for decades in the darkness rumbled out a demand for meat and metal, for bone and blood.  A rumble in their stomachs that inched up through their neck and mouth and rumbled the whole mountain so hard a volcano might have been ashamed.  They poured from the summit like a cloud of smoke, a legion of wyrms that ranged from the size of a cow to its barn.

Many eyes were drawn to the moon that night, most in terror, some in confusion before the legends of old woke in their hearts.  One man and one man only smiled.  A grim smile surely, but a smile nonetheless.  In his steel skin he watched the sky and stood atop a rocky hill, propped up upon his lance.  He would be of use this night more than any other night in his life, he knew.  There were too few bandits and wars in this land, too few enemies that could be met with a sword.  The royal palace fought its wars in ink and compliments and secret meetings in back rooms.  He had moldered there these last few years and now, when he had set himself out upon a journey of discovery, he had found a battle to fight.

The first descended upon him as he stood, lone and broad of wing.  It overshot its dive in anticipation of his flight.  The tip of his lance raked its belly, drawing sparks off the hardened scales of melted metal, reforged in dragonfire from within.  On its second pass, its eyeball found the lance.  Through the brain and out the back of the skull, it still shone silver in the moonlight.  The man had made his first kill.

If man's blood had stirred the beasts to wake and hunger, dragon blood stirred them to rage and revenge.  Like a swarm of locusts, they descended on that hill, belching their flames and gnashing their teeth.  Some took one stab of the lance, others took two or three.  A large one that lagged behind took four stabs to the chest and flapped away to survive the night.  The man himself was scorched and scratched, torched and torn.  His metal skin was rent in one pass and melted down in another.  When two or three passed by his eyes, six more approached from the darkness.  It was never fated that he might survive the night, not alone and not against such numbers.

As the morning light peered out across the land that still smoldered in the dragon's wake, a small child climbed the hill.  His house was gone, as were his parents and their brothers and sisters and their parents too.  The nine black corpses that lay bleeding on rocks and dirt were a sight of wonder.  They fell in a circle around the peak where a single silver lance lay stuck in the charred ground.  Legends would spread of an agent of God that had descended there, leaving behind a mark to show mankind the way.  Much would come of that story, but for all the wars and heroes it would spread, it lies founded on this one.

Two bearded men arguing in a semi-tidy living room.

Most wizards, despite popular belief, do not actually break the laws of the universe, Mr. Batig.  That you have done so where countless others have dabbled is in itself something impressive.

I, uh, don't know what you're talking about.  This is all perfectly normal.  No tears in the fabric of reality or anything here, nope.  Just, uh, this curtain which-

Look, Mr. Batig, as a custodian of this plane of being, it is my job to fix things like this.  You are very much in trouble, but that doesn't mean that my intervention is bad for you.  On the contrary, I am set up to turn a trouble of your well being in the presence of highly unstable magical energies to merely a bureaucratic imposition that can be calmly discussed as gentlemen.

...I don't much like bureaucracy.

And I don't much like gaping cuts into the void.  The curtain is pretty much see-through, you know, and that's without the fact that I could peer through it on the astral layer.  Now would you please, Mr. Batig, be so kind as to let me patch that up before it gets more out of hand?

Look, this is perfectly under control, mostly, and I was going to sew it back up in a few minutes.  I don't really trust you. . .whoever you are messing with it.  This thing is very carefully crafted and relies on a few theories that I put together myself, so its not really in the normal magical form, you see, and-

Then would you just close it now, or attempt to, if you were planning on doing so anyway?

Sure, fine, its even easier to do than the last one since I left more of the border on this one intact.  I'm only doing it because you asked nicely.

. . .last one.  Dear God, there's more of these out there?  Have you been leaving a trail of these that I somehow missed?

No, no, of course not, I'm not stupid.

. . .

I'm not!  I fixed each one up before I moved on.  Wouldn't do to be leaving things open.

You missed a spot there.  A gap under your left hand.

Oh, so I did.  Fancy that.

Perhaps you missed other spots on the previous rifts?

Hah, I double check these.  Also, it wouldn't matter if I did, they self-seal as time goes on.

Yes, Mr. Batig, but only if they are not left to fester.  If they were, say just a bit open and some bit of void got caught in the opening it would grow and

Look, I was careful, Put a whole lot of stitches in them, like I'm doing now, and then I covered them, like I am about to, with some of this here paste.  It's made of tree blood.

You mean sap.

No, tree blood.  Some wizards prefer to call it magical phlegm.

Which doesn't come from trees, it is produced from magical auras of sentient lifeforms, which by the way makes it illegal to harvest in most countries on this planet.

Only one type of it, trust me, this is my life's research.

Very well, we will go over this later, once you have stitched up that tear in the fabric of-

THERE IT IS!

What?  Beg pardon?  There wh-  WHY WOULD YOU STICK YOUR ARM THROUGH!

Just a little closer, come on now. . .

Mr. Batig, please tell me why you would be so insane as to have your arm through that tear in reality.  That is a very quick way to get yourself killed, and me along with you, so if you would please PLEASE remove it from the portal-

GOT IT!

Got what, exactly?  Is that some sort of twig, some form of void-creation?  Put it back, sir!

No.  No no no, this is just a wand of mine.  See, I sort of dropped it out there a year or so ago on accident, so naturally I couldn't just leave it floating out there, and I had to reverse engineer the way to open these things in the first place, which was really quite diff-

Mr. Batig, you are telling me you have been opening these rifts because you dropped a small stick and wanted it back?

Well, yes?  Its a rather nice stick, don't you think?

. . .I fail to see its charm.  Why not just get another one instead of mucking with the cosmic balance of the universe?

Well, uh, that would have taken quite a bit of time and effort, plus I don't generally like the local yew suppliers that much. . .

Would it have taken, lets say, a year worth of study and travel time, plus another year of questioning and detainment by the council of magic?

. . .well. . .

Because you are most certainly getting written up for this.

Aww, c'mon, this was mostly harmless.  Those chickens will be fine in a few generations.

The town of Klel's chicken population is one of the least worrying points about your whole endeavor.

The last time something like this happened, caused by not less than a fallen demigod, not some country wizard, it managed to cause a countrywide panic and minor entropic invasion.  Deaths on the scale of thousands.

Oh, really?  That sounds horrible.

Quite.

So, uh, the entropy things, they came through portals like this?

Yes, Mr. Batig, they did.

Would they happen to be kind of blueish, but more colored checkered than feeling like cherry?

. . .That is a fairly accurate description, yes.  Have you perhaps heard of them before?

No, not really, but I think one just winked at me.