Mercenaries of the Gods: Chronicle One - Stories

A House on a Hill

After a long journey that is little more than mist in your memory, you find yourself at the short, wooden gate of an unusual house on a hill. You don't know exactly why you are supposed to come to this eccentric place, only that this is the point of everything that came before in your existence. The rickety wooden gate connected to the fence isn't much taller than two feet and lets out playful squeak when you open it slowly. With respect and care, you move into the quaint yard as the gate closes softly behind you on its own. Looking around the yard, you see many things that defy all that you thought you knew about reality. The thick and tall grass seems to have a mind of its own, swaying side to side even though the air is still. A large apple tree appears to smile at you while leaning to shade the path to the front door. Glancing up, you see puffs of prismatic smoke come from the small chimney that pokes from the poorly thatched roof. The cobblestone walkway, that matches the stone of the house, is slightly uneven with laughing weeds growing in the cracks and it seems to enjoy being that way. You keep looking around as you make your way to the door and see the juniper bush to your right sneeze. Suddenly, out of the corner of your vision, you notice the curtain move as if someone was peeking at you. While this alarms you, you keep moving on, soon arriving at the old, weathered door. From inside you hear the noise of something falling over and the string of expletives that follows. Just before you knock, the wooden door slowly creaks open. As you debate entering, there is a powerful gust of wind from behind you that forces you in the house. 

Once inside, the door creaks as it closes itself. Before you have a chance to look around the room, you spot the owner of the house in a stream of light coming through a crack in the wall who is busy picking up a pile of books off the floor. Not more than three and a half feet tall, it curses from its thin lips as it stacks the books back up. Its butter-colored skin is the texture of an old leather shoe that should've been tossed out years ago. Two wide and pointy ears, with so much hair coming out of them you wonder how this creature is able to hear, flank a patch of scraggly, gray hair. The slightly webbed hands, with blueberry-colored nails, grasp a tome almost as big as the creature and lift it with amazing ease. It rises on its bare feet as its well-worn, dingy, white house coat falls to its ankles. Your host turns around quickly showing a pair of old gray shorts and a stained brown shirt that hangs off it. Its beady, mold-green eyes sit below what looks like a long, gray woolly worm. Their small and flat nose nearly get poked by their lower tusks as it sniffs in your direction. The strange creature, still holding the book, gives you what you think, and hope, is a smile. 

"Hi." it says in a very plain voice. It looks you up and down as it points to a small, though intricately carved, wooden chair in front of a matching old table. "Sit. You are very early." 

You look over to the table then back to your host only to find it's gone. Not sure exactly what is going on, you move to the chair and, as you take a seat, the chair seems to transform to fit your unique body shape. Once seated in amazing comfort, you look slowly around the dusty and ill lit room. On every bookshelf, table and stacked on the floor are books upon books upon books. The only space free of books is the space in front of you at the table and a few narrow paths to walk. As you await the return of your host, you take a deep breath and realize the air is stale, as if no one opened a window in years. From your left, your host silently glides next to you and puts down a ceramic bottle and a matching cup on the table. 

 "Drink. Or don't." It turns to the bookcase on the left side of the room, shuffling their feet as they move to it. "My title is the Seer. My task, to show you how it all happened. But where to start?" it says while it looks over the bookshelf with great focus. With a smile, the Seer finds and removes an old, dusty book from the top of the pine bookcase. Almost like it's teleporting, the Seer is next to you and slams the book in front of you. You glance down at it, then back up and the Seer is gone. Curious about this strange entity, a thousand questions race through your head before you return your attention to the book. After wiping off what seems like a millennium of dust, you see odd markings on it that seem to be some kind of number system, though it looks little more than gibberish to you. As you gaze upon the book, something deep inside you knows it's something very important for you to read. Not knowing how, the Seer is back to picking up books from the floor and, without even glancing at you, says "Since you are early, I am not ready. Read that. Good backstory for what to come." 

Though you think of a retort, it seems like it would be pointless to say anything at the moment. A bit parched, you decide to pour yourself a drink. Carefully, you take the bottle and, to your surprise, the beverage you were wanting the most comes out, stopping as the cup reaches near full. After a most enjoyable sip, you return your attention to the book and slowly open the heavy cover. The pages are dry and almost brittle, though the ink seems rather new. As you examine it more, you cannot tell what pages are made of but it's obvious it isn't quite paper. You look to where the Seer was, and it is gone once again. As you scan the room, you hear sounds of a stack books crashing down and cursing coming from a room off to the side. Looking back to the book, the inside cover is blanketed in strange marks that you cannot understand, but they seem to glow a faint purple. Curious about the book, you carefully turn to the first page...