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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alyx" data-source="post: 160596" data-attributes="member: 623">Preface:  This is a post of selfish character development.  Be warned. Chrysalis      The mists hung thick in the skies.  Ash fell everywhere, hurled from uncountable volcanic maws.  The skies roared with lightning and thunder – yet no rain fell.  The air was dead.  It tasted of demise.  The sun did not pierce this cloud, but hovered somewhere far above and out of sight, ashamed and unready to face the world it had scorched.  The ground was somewhere below, and the magna it contained lit the ash, which drifted aimlessly above.     He who watches floats in the middle of this disarray, hanging limp in the air, listening to the lightning.  He who watches waves a hand.  The ash is pushed to one side, yet the mist remains undisturbed.  He who watches creases his face in a frown.  Then he is gone.     The shattered remnants of a mountain lie on the ground.  Stones lay everywhere.  This is where the watcher reappears.  This time he walks on the ground, looking neither left nor right but taking step after step further into the mists.  A white stone catches his attention, and he looks hopefully towards it.  A grinning skull stares up at him.  The walker stares at the skull, at those empty sockets.  Neither blinks for a long, long time.  Then the walker is gone.     Blackened husks that once could be called trees line the hills and the fields in endless rows, while the thorn bushes coiled about them seem to smile in the fog.  Here and there are the remains of an elven flet or an orcish stronghold.  This fire burnt all things alive, living and unliving alike.  The walker is here as well, passing through the once-trees with measured steps, not once breaking his stride.  Once he pauses and turns to the side, where lies a burnt out home of human origin.  The walker steps into the house and sees nothing.  All that remains is blackened oak and pinewood, and that has begun to fade and contribute to the airy ash.  The walker touches one wall and his hand comes away smeared with char.  Voiceless, the watcher disappears.     Now he is deep underwater, far beneath the surface above.  This was a shallow bay once, but it is no longer.  A massive ship juts from the ground.  Its decks are shattered and the mast has sunken somewhere else.  Harpoon heads are still embedded in the wood, and swords are in the hold.  The mist is even here.  No true mist could enter the water.  This is not mist.  This is something more.  Emotionless, the watcher is gone.     Here is where he is now: far to the north, at the base of a mountain where men once climbed over to reach streams of gold.  Even now a few remnants remain – a pick head here, a hatchet head there.  The watcher, the walker, looks about him.  This place is untouched, almost.  The ash is less here, filtered through the mountains.  The mist is here, black and representing some distant danger, but it holds no menace.  Trees grip the ground with unshakable roots.  The watcher nods.  There is a pool of Oerthblood near by, a natural one, and it has bestowed upon this place a gift that few other locations hold.  ‘Who are ye?!’ comes a below from behind the watcher.  Swiftly he turns, careful not to touch his sword.  A grizzled old man is before him, holding a mighty crossbow before him like a talisman against evil.  ‘I am a wanderer.’ says the wanderer, voice emotionless and sounding distant.  ‘I thought as much.’ The old man mutters.  Some inner flame, a force of will that the watcher has not seen, possesses his eyes.  Then the flame seems to die, the crossbow goes limp in the old man’s hand.  His voice is strong when he speaks again.  ‘You may as well kill me now, lad, if that is what you came to do.’  Wordlessly, he lifts the crossbow to reveal that the trigger mechanism was shattered.  ‘I will not hurt you.’  Says the watcher.  ‘Won’t hurt me?’  The old man’s voice reflects genuine surprise.  ‘Let me tell you, stranger, you’re the first person who has said that to me in three months!’  He hesitates, then turns around and beckons over his shoulder at the watcher.  ‘Come with me.  I have a home near here, and I confess I want some decent company.  Too many wild things about these days, and wargs as well.’     The watcher follows.  He does not know why – perhaps it is curiosity that moves his feet.  Or perhaps something more.     The two come to a log cabin, made out of five-foot thick walls of sod and a roof of solid, honest wood.  It is a cabin that has seen a lot of conflict and a lot of hate.  The roof is marred with small slashes of black and the sod is pitted hard in some places.  But the building has withstood everything.  It lasts as a testament of unsurpassed fortitude.     The old man lights an old iron stove, rubbing his hands to its warmth and then moving to a quiet chair to sit on.  The watcher sits across from him.  For a lingering moment the two stare at each other, eye to eye.  The old man smiles.  ‘You might be wondering why my crossbow is all smashed up.  She’s a beauty.  I carved her two years ago, took two months to do it just right.  I forged the iron myself – got a full shop for iron mongering nearby.  Today I tripped while chasing Kobolds from my food cache and the trigger just clean broke off.  Gave me a nasty surprise, although the little yippers seemed happy.  Chased me off into the bush.  Two months effort broken in a moment.’  Then the old man grins, and looks expectantly at his visitor for an answer.  A long moment goes by.  ‘That’s too bad’ says the watcher.  Gleefully, the old man slaps his thigh.  ‘Ha!  That’s what you think, and those yippers too.  But what I know that you don’t is this.’  Springing up from his chair without any signs of age, the old man rushes to the chest at one side of the room and rummages through it.  Quickly he finds what he is looking for, and pulls out another crossbow, like the first.  But this one is whole and unbroken.  ‘I started on this one right when all the troubles began.’  For a second, the old man frowns, but that second passes fleetingly.  ‘I knew I might need it.  And I did.  That’s what you get for planning, lad, never forget it.’  And he laughs, crossbow cradled in his hands.  The watcher cracks.  A corner of his lip turns, and then he smiles.  His eyes join in, as he watches this ancient soul bubbling over with joy.  This is what life is all about, he remembers.  The triumphs made day by day.  The past was a pale thing in comparison.  The watcher stands.  ‘You know, I don’t think I will.’  ‘Bah.  You’re like everyone else.  You will forget.’  the old man said, his laughing long and hard.  ‘But it looks like I’ve broken your ice.  Perhaps now you’ll join me for dinner, and tell me something about yourself.  I don’t get many friendly folk around here, you know.  Maybe I already said that, but it bears repeating.’      They ate.      That night passed quickly, and without nightmares, as the old man of the mountains and the more ancient but less wise red elf named Jand ate together, and remembered again what it is to laugh.</blockquote>

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