The Sword of Hero's.....

Chapters 1 - 8

1

It had been nearly two thousand years ago when the old man had stumbled into the village inn just around the time the evening meal was ready. Back then, this place had been called Last Drink because it was the last piece of civilization before the Desert of Endless Reflections began. The last place a traveler could stop to get supplies and water before attempting the incredibly perilous journey across the desert. Last Drink was little more than a large village then. It comprised several dozen small stone and wooden houses, a mill by the river, a butcher's shop, a blacksmith forge, an alchemist's shop, and a few other assorted businesses. The largest building was the wooden and stone inn. The inn was called The Thirsty Traveler's inn, and it also served as the village meeting hall and the general store. There were many farms and animal ranches that dotted the landscape for dozens of miles outside of the village, but only on the village side of the river. Last Drink was also the last stop for several trade caravans that came over the course of each year.

The river was and is still called the Horizon Twilight River. It was so named because it stretches from one horizon to the other and because of the night and day difference from one side of the river to the other. The river meanders from one side to the other by a few feet here and there, but mostly it runs straight and true. The river was and is nearly a third of a mile across for as far as anyone had ever traveled, either on it or next to it.

In the long ancient past, it had taken the builders nearly one hundred years to build the stone bridge that now spans the river. The bridge itself stands nearly thirty feet from the surface of the river and is one hundred feet wide. There are two sections in the middle of the bridge that can be raised and lowered like drawbridges to allow for the passage of tall-masted ships. But the passage of tall-masted ships were so few that to see one was considered good luck or bad luck, depending on which old villager told you which story about which ship they or someone else had seen.

On the village side, the earth was and is lush and fertile. There are all four seasons here, but the winters are usually very mild. Large snowfalls are actually so uncommon that when they happen, the entire village and many of the peoples from the surrounding area would gather at the village inn and have grand celebrations. There are forests and fields as far as the eye can see in every direction, except across the river.

On the other side of the Horizon Twilight River lay the Desert of Endless Reflections. The desert starts at the river's edge and goes out in every direction for as far as the eye could see. The desert was named because of the innumerable pieces of desert glass that lay on the surface of the sand and buried in the sand. These pieces of glass ranged in size from as small as the grains of sand themselves to spires of razor-sharp desert glass up to fifty feet tall in the deep desert. If the few traders and explorers who had survived the desert were to be believed, that is. The innumerable pieces of desert glass made traveling the desert not only dangerous for the obvious reasons but also because of the reflections. It was very easy to get lost in the desert and travel in circles because of the sun's light reflecting off of the desert glass everywhere. If you planned on traveling into the desert, you had to wear special eye protection to help block out much of the reflected light. The biggest fear for anyone traveling into the desert, however, are the sand storms. There are hundreds of tales of travelers being caught out in a sandstorm and being cut to tiny pieces because of the infinite number of pieces of desert glass that the high winds would hurl and whip through the air like clouds of razor blades.

The old man had stumbled across the bridge from the desert side just before the guards had closed the bridge gates for the night. The guards had later reported that they had not seen him nor spotted him until he was at the bridge's edge. They had been in the process of closing the gates for the night when he stumbled up behind them. The old man had begged the guards to allow him through the gates and for a drink of water.