Experiment One.

A soft thunder followed the man as he let the sand flow out of the blue-grey pot he held at his side while he walked.  It made a circle on the floor, covering up the guidelines that had been drawn out in chalk in the hours beforehand.  The man's wrists were still sore from the painstaking attention to detail he had put into the angles that linked the complicated yet graceful pattern into one whole interconnected design.  Now he walked with an uninterested gait, almost lost in thought as he paced across the cold floor next to each line.  The sand didn't stop flowing, had reached a volume on the floor that easily tripled the capacity of the jar, but this was normal for things found in a wizard's castle.  It's plain nature fought against the ostentatious nature of some of the other practitioners of the art, as did the plain pants and shirt that the man wore, the spectacles upon his nose, and the shoes that would have seemed perfectly normal besides the fact that they did not make a sound.  When the flow cut off, the mouth of the jar tipped up just as the sand-line reconnected with itself where the man had started, the chamber was quiet.  Setting the jar aside to pick up a small dagger from a podium, the man backed away from the circle.  He frowned through his closely trimmed beard, brownish blonde like the sand on the floor.  He bit his lip a second, then with a quick glance to his hand, pricked his finger.  A toss dropped the dagger next to the jar, in the corner, clattering as it slid and bumped across and into the grey stone tiles.  Gingerly stepping around the sand, the man picked his way to the center of the design, keeping the single drop of blood perched upon his finger.  Spinning in place, slowly double checking his handiwork, he nodded to himself.  Then the drop fell, crimson and shimmering down into the sand.  Soaking out, then streaking along, the sand turned all a bright red.  Every line seemed inundated with it, staying at first the dark red of blood then lightening, and finally shining a bright white, casting a dark shadow of the podium and the jar and the dagger on the rounded walls of the chamber.  The man left no shadow, standing in the middle.  His figgure was illumined, almost seeming to glow itself with the light that shone around.  Ignition.  White flame catching on the sand to dance and flow through the circular design.  The sand below it melted into red glass, holding its form, but not its substance.  The man's frown curled up, a smile growing along with the flames.  He clapped his hands and the flames themselves melted, flowing across the floor into pools of light, some caught in the design and other bits lapping at the walls.  Some pooled around the man's shoes.  There was no podium, no jar, and no dagger.  Just the man and the circle and the glowing water.  "It worked."  His smile was beaming now.  Running to the door, he threw it open.  Down the hall, past the stairs and to another wooden door the brother of the other room's.  This one he also threw open.  Inside there was a circle just the same as the other he had left, the glowing pools, and sitting in the corner where he left them, the podium, the jar and the dagger.  "It worked!"  Now it was to the stairway, up and up and up to the top tower.  He scribbled notes, drew out careful diagrams, and smiled to himself.  "Now to figure out how to do it without a receiving circle.  Can't expect other planets to set those up for me beforehand, can I?"  It was the start to a long decade.

Rural Happening and Lifelong Lessons: Part 2

Twisting a tentacle through the water, the creature snagged Saul by his leg.  Barely able to gasp a breath of air on surfacing, the boy was drawn deeper into the water.  As the air flowed out of him, panicked, he even dropped his sword, though the unwieldy nature of the weapon would have afforded him little help against the squid.  More tentacles stretched forth, groping him, strangling him, immobilizing him beneath the murky waters.  Saul was only half aware of what creature gripped him, seeing brown, slick skin with patchy green spots and lines, shifting ever so slightly as the beast coasted along the bottom of the marsh.  He happened to glance to the side, noticing the treasure he had waded in for: A bent old fishing hook.  The way the thin, frayed fishing line fluttered in the current brought up by the squid suggested a fish that had been too big for the line that held it.  As he slipped into unconsciousness, it seemed very unfair that he had been caught for so ordinary a find.

A pair of eyes watching from the shore held the power that tipped the balance of Saul's fate that day.  Lithe steps brought her to the water and then deeper into the muck.  She had stepped out of the tree, pushing out of it as if it were the same brown mud that squished under the water, and leaving the bark exactly as it had been.  Swirling in her wake, the water itself seemed to push her body onward towards the one-sided struggle that was almost at an end.  Reaching out, he put one hand upon the squid's body, pushing it away with a forceful, yet graceful motion.  Around the boy's waist she wrapped her other arm, pulling him free of the tentacles, each dropping off lazily as the squid seemed to drift off in a daze.  Retracing her steps she dragged Saul back to the shore before letting him slump back on his back.  He had swallowed water, and she had to pause and think, head cocked to the side.  Kneeling with a hand on his chest, she made a pulling motion up towards his mouth and a stream of water splashed out his nose and half-open mouth.  Again she paused, but as his coughing started she smiled and stood.  By the time he had a chance to look up, her light, white and grey mottled skin was disappearing back into the tree, and soon followed by the bright green hair that reached halfway down her back.

There weren't supposed to be dryads out this far was all he could think as he recovered from his ordeal.  Those were only memories or from stories of those adventurous enough to go all the way to the deep marshes.  "Um, well, I don't quite know how I should go about thankin' a tree, err, dryad, but, uh, thanks."  He took a breath, waiting for something, but nothing responded but his rumbling stomach.  Blushing, he glanced back up at the sun, sinking lower towards the horizon.  With a bow toward the tree, he ran off back towards the town, sticking to the shallowest water he could.  His mother made him wash off for an hour, so his dinner was cold by the time he got to eat it.

Saul's friends didn't believe him, of course.  Tall tales like that are almost always the overactive imagination of little boys, a bit of knowledge that even kids learn early on.  He was wise enough to know his parents would think he was lying to cover up for the mess he made when he got back that day, so he didn't talk about it.  He only asked his teacher, Ms. Calthern what you'd do to thank a dryad, like in the stories that parents tell of brave warriors and grand quests.  She thought for a moment, then said that most things weren't fit for a little boy's ears, but there was a tradition in the capitol of taking a seed from the dryad's tree and planting it in an honorary place.  Saul thought about this for a few days before he finally asked his parents for a garden, and it was a weeks worth of badgering before they would let him start one.  It would be in the back, resting against the wall of the house and facing north with a good area of sun for it to sit in.

By the time he got time and friends enough to venture back out into the marsh it was nearly the end of the Holy month.  They made their way out to the tree, his friends laughing and joking and making the occasional jab at his story.  The tree wasn't quite in season to bloom, but Saul wanted to tell the dryad about the garden he was going to start, and ask for a seed once it came around to be fall.  As trees do, Saul was met with silence.  Silence until the friends he had brought with him started giggling behind him.  It was a nice day.  "I'll come back in the fall."  his smile twitching upwards as his eyebrows did the same in the center.  His friends were already heading back out, talking of the festival that would happen at the end of the summer.  A noise from the other side of the tree, a branch hitting the ground he thought.  Racing around the tree, he found the wooden sword that he had forgotten, and stuck in a crack in the wood was a seed.

Rural Happenings and Lifelong Lessons: Part 1

Saul was not in his father's shop, minding the parchments.  He was not running errands for his mother across town.  He certainly wasn't at school, though only on account of the holy month celebrating Alrea, the goddess of restoration.  All around town the men and women spent their time cultivating the land, restoring buildings, and setting parties to help ease past misgivings.  Saul, being only eight and an adventurous boy, had instead set out for the edge of town and the marshes beyond the low hills that banked the eastern side of the Pauli river.  He had tried recruiting some of his peers, but they had been whirled up in the festivities with work or play that they could or would not leave.  His company was a crude-hewn sword of wood that he had whittled in his free time the past summer despite his mother's disapproval of what she would only term 'that sort of thing'.  A few of the farmers and townsfolk on the road gave him a smile and a nod as he ran by, most of whom he knew by name from their visits to his father's scroll business.  Farmer Najit even called out to him about the fertility charm that his father had promised to have ready for today, but Saul was in a hurry and didn't know anyway, so he just called out "dunno" as he sped to his destination.

Brown dirt receded into flowing green grass that squished and sucked at his feet as he angled his way into the swampy floodplains that the river expanded into before emptying out into the sea thirty miles southwest.  The vast expanse of the swamp was his playground, and more important to a young boy, a vast swathe of unknowns that were almost certain to contain hidden treasure.  For all his time spent dozing off when Ms. Calthern went on about the history of the town and the country, he had caught the notion that at some point way early on there was a veritable wealth of ruins in the bottom of the swamp, and with the water flow that came in the spring there might be a good chance to find some of it washed up a mile or so in.  All of the best rumors talked about the overgrown heart of the swamp, deep and dark with trees as old as the town and mushrooms as large as houses, not to mention the dryads and fey folk that were supposed to inhabit that area.  He wasn't quite so bold as to go that far in, even if he had the time, but searching the shallows where the flow was greatest was well within his ability and courage.

A mile or so of walking, avoiding sinkholes like the older kids had taught him last summer when he could get an afternoon or morning away from school, staring into the muck in hopes of seeing something shiny, and watching out for blinking eyes that he would like to think led to reptilian bodies his courage and wooden sword could fight off, and a few hours had easily passed.  Nothing had caught his eye besides a few glittering pebbles, smooth after their travel down the river.  Climbing up an old, gnarled tree that pushed its way skyward he surveyed the sky and the glistening surface of the swamp alternately, shifting between the silent mystery of treasure he just knew was below him in the waters and the delightful shapes of clouds that he formed into heroic battles,  back-lit by the early afternoon sun.

Finally, stomach rumbling, seeing nothing but his own fancies, he hopped down to make his way back across the marsh towards home.  The light had shifted, and there had been a slow current by that time, so when he glanced out once more into the water he saw a faint glimmer under it, deep in a thick weedy place beside the small island the tree had accumulated.  Stepping closer, peering farther into the murk he saw a shimmer of metal, not of the stony reflections that had fooled him through the morning as he had scouted his way through to the tree.

Wooden sword propping him up in the water as he gingerly stepped towards it, grin already expanding on his tanned face, he slipped.  It wasn't the first time he had slipped today, though it was the first since he had begun to use his sword as a cane.  It was the first, however, that happened to be within hearing of a particularly mean creature of those parts.

Of the few rare creatures one would sight in the swamp, the squid was the least likely you were to actually glimpse before it did any mischief.  Mostly it would steal a catch of fish or flip a boat into the water before blending back in with it's camouflaging skin.  Little boys, however, were just the right size that a squid of great enough size, and this squid was easily a man's length without counting its tentacles, would find him a very delicious snack.

Witch Post is this Even?

Stray blood was usually a sign that something was coming, out there in the sands.  Either a wild animal looking for food who smelled it on the wind or a pack, human or otherwise sweeping the area for wounded prey.  In that cave deep in the wastes, it was something a little different.  The blood, hastily drawn out in patterns that could only be described as occult blurred in the dust.  A short, brown haired girl in a dirty shift double checked the pattern against the piece of paper, a page torn out of a book, smudging the edges with the bloody fingers she used to draw.  The goat she "borrowed" the blood from lay over to the side, dead and starting the fast process of putrefying in the desert climate.

"Oh d-dark ones, l-lingerers in the shadows, grant me audience this m-moonless night!"

A glow, blood turning from a muddy-red to a shimmering blue, sparking a little at the imperfections but otherwise shining to life in the cave.  A wind, blowing out the torch, the blue light all that remained to cast light shadows.  From the entrance a teal glow flowed into the room, knee deep, and coalesced in the center of the diagram.  A sharp intake of breath as the light grew more solid, piling up into a pillar of ethereal flesh, a column with faces plastered around the whole surface.  Shivers, only a little from the chill of the light-water now only around her ankles.

"Mmmm. . .Who Calls. . .the Ancient Ones.  You, little girl?"  The eyes of each face focusing on the shivering, bedraggled form facing them, voices speaking almost in unison as if each face a part of a monotone choir.

"Y-yes!"

"For what. . .Purpose. . .would you Call Us?"

"Revenge!  Those b-bastards who k-killed my mum and d-dad!"

"So you. . .Seek. . .the Power to. . .kill them?"  She nods, warmed by the fires in her eyes.  "You know the. . .Price. . ." their eyes shift towards the goat "that you Must. . .Pay. . .for our Help?  Or are you. . .Just. . .Another. . .Dabbler. . .like most Witches. . .of Late?"

Her form slumps a bit, biting her lip as she thinks.  "I, uh, I knew th-that there would be a c-c-catch to it.  I have to do sssomething, right?  Sacrifice more g-goats?"

The column pauses, looking her over for a minute, watching her eyes dart from face to face, not quite sure of where to look.  "Perhaps. . .Though. . .it Depends on. . .Who. . .Exactly. . .you wish to. . .Punish. . .and Why. . .you turn. . .to Us."

"W-what?"

"Which. . .heh. . .of Our. . .Number. . .will Help you. . .will determine. . .the cost.  Only Those who. . .Want. . .to Help. . .will set Themselves as. . .a Burden. . .on Your. . .Shoulders and. . .Lend you. . .their. . .Aid."

"B-but you will help, r-right!?"  The flame in her eyes flickering, less intense, pleading.

"There Will. . .be Some.  Each. . .Cause. . .will find. . .Sympathy. . .Or. . .Greed. . .in Some of. . .Us.  Tell us. . .More. . .to determine. . .Who Answers. . .Your. . .Call."

"It w-was the Horsemen!" A snarl of rage.  "Th-they rode into our c-camp.  S-s-slaughtering e-everyone." She looks down, sadness and a bit of terror creeping into her voice.  "I w-was g-getting water at th-th-the oasis and h-hid."

"The. . .Sons and. . .Daughters. . .of the Wastes. . . Who are. . .raised to. . .Pillage and. . .Destroy."  The column shifts, some faces coming to the forefront and other drifting out back down the stream out of the cave.  Eventually a small pillar of faces stands in the center of the room, diminished to the same height as the small girl.  "We. .know of. .the. .barbaric ways. .they follow. .and will. .answer. .your call.  Reach out. .your. .hand."

She does, the pillar moving forward and engulfs her arm, flowing up her arm, shoulders, neck, and seeping into her brown hair, now more of a teal than a brown.  The flow of light recedes from the cave, the blood once again a muddy brown and the only light radiating from her hair and a pale teal goat-figure standing over its body, bleating at it.

"You have. .formed. .a. .contract.  We are. .one. .now."  The voice muffled from the hair it comes from.  "Take. .responsibility for. .your actions. .and bring him. ."a teal hair raises up and points at the goat "with you. .so that he. .may see. .the results. .of his own. .sacrifice."

"Y-yes. But, um, that was a she- goat."

". . . .well. .we were. .not herders. .in our. .lives. .that much. .should be. .clear."  The hair chuckles to itself.

An Introduction to Characters of Minor Significance

Sitting on a rock outside the city, the wagon-master of the caravan waited in the pre-dawn light.  He had thrice made the fifteen year circuit from the east kingdom of Kath, out into the hot sands and oases of the Degeleen Empire, and back down through the peaceful, alluvial Commonwealth of Centhoundria before traveling by boat back up the coast to start again.  This specific journey was his first leading the merchant caravan of Livilee, the guild he grew up in.  This was also one of the times that the caravan was kept waiting on order from some noble, though the first time by a king.  Footsteps behind him turned his gaze from the city gates to his wife's smiling face.

"You think they'll be interesting sorts, Garth?"

"How should I know, all I got was a scroll with a few words on it telling us to wait.  Now I'm stuck here waiting for them like they think we're some sort of escort service, hah."

"Why not show a bit of hospitality for once, it is a whole week we'll be traveling with them."

"A whole week of going through that forest, all up on our toes for bandits and wolves or some strange wild thing out from the dark places in there and me not knowing what sort they'll be?  If the kings graces here weren't such a big deal, I'd leave them and be through with it."

"But a few extra eyes will be useful, 'specially in these times.  Word is something happened at that old castle near the border."

"You mean that old fort against the Empire?"

"No, the castle, owned by some wizard of some sort."

"That thing?  I'm not surprised, I was always a bit uneasy about it, remember the fuss there was about how the old codger in there hadn't got a magic licence from the king?"

"And how nobody was man enough to go knock on his door and tell him he needed one?"

"Well, it was a big castle."

"Yes, they say it appeared overnight almost, though nobody was really there to see it."

"Not like anybody besides us and the garrison over there actually take this road.  Thankfully we don't pass more than a crow's flight of the place."

"So it'll be great to have more travelers to keep a lookout for strange things in the woods, especially with talk about that castle being mighty haunted."

"I s'pose so, but whats this about haunted?"

"Seems some big blast of somethin' or other came down there, no word out of the place since."

"When was this again?"

"Well, remember when we had just crossed into the Empire last trip and saw that comet in the east?"

"Bad signs, comets, makes sense that bad times would fall when they do."

"Exactly, Folks took it as an omen, but nothing ever came of it besides that castle growing real quiet, so the story is that the wizard was smote from above for delving into secrets above his right."

"And now his ghost walks the halls, seeking revenge or something?"

"Pretty much."

"Well, it's not the tallest tale we've heard.  How long are these king's men going to keep us waiting?"

"Now dear, not everyone is used to such an active lifestyle, waking up this early on city-folk might be a bit hard."

"I'd agree with you, but two of them are from down south, came up through the pass before we set out by ship.  Didn't say why they came up, or who they were, or why they're going to the border, just that they were coming with us.  The other is Some sorcerer of the king's, didn't say which one he was neither."

"Well, that might be them there, just coming out."

"But there's only two of them."

"Well, some of them then."

"One looks like a kid, seems short enough."

"No, I don't think so, look at how he's walking.  Wasn't there something about a goblin conjurer in the city?"

"Maker's light I hope that's not them."

"Oh!  That might even be a fairy on the other one's shoulder!  And you know it is dear, they're even coming this way."

"I don't like them already.  At least it's just a week."

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.

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.

Centuries in the past, but not many.

When he was young, the boy said "tell me a tale of the dragons, a tale of adventure and magic and of great battles."  When he was young, he would run through the forest, hacking at branches and rabbits and squirrels with a stick, laughing as he went.  Now he is a man, and cannot set aside his childish dreams.  He cannot step outside of the world of wonder he dreamed up as a child.  Now he lives among dragons, fights armies, and wields powerful magic.  Well, so the tale usually goes, anyway.

Leolaf, king from the western reaches of the Wyrmteeth mountains to the rocky shores of the Mekki sea.  From the dark forests of Wilderglen in the south to the northern step and frigid coastal waters.  He was not always royalty, and this the scribes tell true.  He came out of a small house on the eastern edge of that great forest, alone but for his father in the cottage they shared.  If one ventured westward into the forest too far, one might run across things of a highly dangerous nature to a little boy, but in the few miles near the edge, nothing beyond a stray wolf or a sleepy bear might venture on accident.  That area just wasn't as wild as the forests name would normally denote.

So then he would grow into a nice young man, well built with dark brown hair and a confident stride.  Back then there was little more than a few castles and local lords who kept the peace in that cut-off country, though none would call it that for years.  The road west was not yet carved out at the base of the troll-tooth hills that stretched up out of the Wilderglen.  The most the outside world heard of was a few sailing ships that would come up the coast to trade for thick wool and elvish sculpted wood.

That was the real civilization of the land in those days, those elven trees breaking through the forest up into the sky.  Perhaps if you set foot into the forest back then you might see more than the few remaining home-trees, before they retreated back into the woods away from the touch of man.  Back then they were ever peaceful with the folk of the forest's edge, trading back and forth for bread and shiny metals.  They had their fear of the dwarven folk under the mountains, never trading with them who dwelt too close to mother nature's bosom.

Leolaf's mother was an elf maiden in fact, though the rarity of such a coupling has been exaggerated in the stories.  Back a few generations such a thing was common, though certainly not widely talked about.  Most of the stock of the country is a bit mixed, but at the time it was down to the half elven women and men who still came down to claim a mate from towns, or hold one night of passion in a fit of fey wildness.  The difference that was striking was that Leolaf's mother was the only truly full elf who had left the forest since half a century before, though most historians and bard just guess at this and include it as an afterthought.

It was in this time, this land, that a king needed to rise, for unbeknownst to all, a very terrible force would soon awaken in the west and wing its way over to the coast.  The elves would hide in their forest, growing back the burned swaths with no problem, but the dragon, settled in in a coastal cave soon found that men made tasty snacks.  The local lords, those left after stone burned and melted in their proud strongholds would unite, but against a force of magic so great, armies just set out great buffets for the beast.  Life so close to the forest was more peaceful, but the refugees streaming inland from the destruction told tales to spark the adventurous urge in any young man's heart, though the burns and the ruined castles on the north-east roads took back many boy's courage almost as soon as he had obtained it.

Not so with Leolaf.  He set about to find the beast and see if any strength from his arm might kill it, or at least send it back from whence it came.  It was in this spirit that he ventured westwards into the Wilderglen first, seeking his mother's people about whom his father had told him stories.

An Anti-hero of sorts:Prologue to a Monster's Tale

Down from the foothills of the troll teeth range flows the ygdril river.  Northward it runs, through the whole Wilderglen, those miles and miles of emerald topped land-sea that holds many a wondrous sight under its treetop coverage, small ray of light illuminating patches of forest floor.  Quite near the beginning of the river's course, it hits what is called in these days the dwarven tower, a giant spire of solid stone that pierces the green waves and splits the water the main river continuing northwest while a small section meanders of to the northeast, descending into a vale of darkness.

Near where the river begins a series of waterfalls, each descending into the darker forest and caves below, the spider Azlock makes her nest.  An old lineage is hers, proud and noble in some respect, but her kind is feared by those who love the light.  An old wizard in his castle once listed back generations of her kind, from Gogleth the snatcher, daughter of Rekzim the impenatrable, to Nethalkhan, father of 1000 brood, the only male of their kind to have survived a mating.

Farther on down the vale, hidden deeper, more and more webs wrapped trees, covered caves, and hung in open air to catch any who wandered down into the depths.  Even for all the silken masking, Azlock could make out the massive structure of Silanon, the great tree.  Standing at the center of the vale, the river wound its way down to Silanon's great roots, feeding the tree and then diving deep down into the ground.  None have ever found an exit for that river, and few have returned to tell of the dark corridors, swamped with water that rush around with a fury.  Inside the tree itself the elves and the fey are said to have carved out a great city, cut off from all else and only reached through the treetop boughs that rise far above the rest, even from its depth in the vale.

None of this concerned Azlock much however as she sat in her web day by day, hunting the for food in the night.  This was until the meteor came.  Under the canopy of forest the burning light across the sky could not warn of anything new and terrible coming to pass, but the howl it made as it descended raised the whole of those in the land-sea from their slumber.  Azlock, young then, and still today by her kind's reckoning climbed up to peer at the sky that night.  A red streak trailing black smoke, seeming to glitter as pieces of glittering rock flew off into the night, raining down.  Surely such a force would level the forest, surely such a great terror descended from on high.  Yet off in the distance another light shined through the night, white and blue, building in intensity.  From atop his mountain, solitary as an island in the sea, a great ray of light reached out to greet this new and terrible visitor, reached out to stab and to break and to sunder.  The fury of sound from that meeting rivaled its force as the rock broke and scattered pieces throughout the forest.

Only on the following morning would Azlock find the strange riders who came flying down on that rock, red of skin, though painfully burnt to a dark grey in the scorching sunlight, some fled down into the caves in the ground, some were rallied and marched on that mountain they had come to destroy, and others were far flung to the west, but theirs is a different tale to tell.

The tale of Azlock goes on through the seasons her eight legs growing ever longer, her great ornamented webs growing thicker and more elaborate, and her eyes turning a deeper and deeper red.  Hers is a tale of much death, much hunger, and as with all of her kind, a tale of deadly romance.