So you want to hear a story, eh young 'un? Alright then, you brought me my next drink, so I'll tell you a story of your choosing, if I know it. Oh, you want to know about one of the Lantern Bearers? No? Oh, about The Lantern Bearer... The tragic one... Yeah, I know the story. The brave hero that traveled the lands and vanquished evil spirits... What? You want the truth? That is the truth... Oi! Wait, don't leave... Alright, alright, I'll tell you the truth. How do you know it's the real thing? Hah! He told me himself. Met him? More than that, young one. I traveled with him after he saved my hide! Yeah, I was one of his companions. How else do you think I know the truth.
Alright, so you wanna know about him... Where should I start? The beginning? Yeah, I guess that's the best place to start. Alright, just keep the drinks coming, you don't want me to get my throat dry and stop in the middle, right? Hehe... Ah, that's better. Now, remember the Plague? The one that ravaged the three continents more than a decade ago, killing off millions? Well, it's one of the places I can start... You know how many ghosts appeared after it... It's times like this that lantern Bearers come forth, pushing the Ghosts, Spirits, Poltergeists and everything else of the sorts back into Death's domain. What, you knew that? Alright, alright... I'll skip that part... Oh okay then, I'll go further back.
The true story starts seventeen years before the Plague. On a day like any other, when almost nothing remarkable happened... Save for the birth of a pair of twins in the family of one of the Lords. The Ludovig family, to be more precise. One boy and one girl... Aries and Diana Ludovig... Yes, he is the one. Now don't interrupt me if you want to hear it all... Gruh, where was I... Ah yes. Aries and Diana. Two identical twins... They grew up together, inseparable from each other. You'd have to look hard for two souls that were as close together as those two. They did everything together for seventeen years. Same activities, same schools, they were even going to get in the same college... I wonder what would've happened when the time for marriage came... Hehehe.
Oh! Alright alright, I'll refrain from such comments... Sheesh! So the two lived happily. Education, money, friends and all. And then the Plague struck... You know how some people turned out to be completelyimmune to it? How they could stay with the infected without fear of catching it? Well, the boy turned out to be one of those. But the girl... She wasn't as lucky. She got the Plague, and she got it hard. For weeks she was confined to a bed, her brother watching over her. Watching her wane with each passing day, growing weaker and weaker... His family used their fortune to try and help her, but soon they needed help... Yeah, they caught it. Only the brother lived from that branch of the Ludovigs. So one day, as with the untold thousands that caught that terrible thing, she didn't wake up.
No, it wasn't that morning when he found the Lantern on top of her cooling corpse... Where did you heard that stupid rumor? Oh, from him... I wouldn't trust him even if he says the sky's blue on a cloudless summer day. That lying sack of... Oh? Oh yeah, the story. Well, I don't know what happened in the few weeks that followed, not even the boy himself. You see, his sister's death hit him hard... Everything for the next few weeks is a blur to him. Right up to the point when he comes to his senses in a stinking dark alley on a cold and rainy night, all dirty, lying on his back, the filth and water seeping through his clothes. Yeah, not a pretty picture... Especially with the large knife in his guts. Simply said he was bleeding out to death...
And that's when she came... No, not Diana. She doesn't come until the end of the story. No, it was someone else... The one that gathers us all on the end of our mortal path... The Grim Reaper... Death. She saw him and paused. He was just a simple Mortal on the moment of his death, something that she had seen many times before... But there was something in him, something she saw that made him stand out... He was in despair... Despair that even she was touched by... "What are you waiting for?" He asked her. "Take me already. Let me be with my sister." And that was when She understood him. "The one you seek is not with me, Mortal." She told him. And it was true... She had not taken his sister. Diana's spirit was wandering the world, like many others...
All seemed lost... But it wasn't. For Death had a way that would help him... And herself. And she made him an offer he wouldn't refuse... To become the next Lantern Bearer and travel the lands, collecting the wayward spirits. In return, he would get a chance to find his sister. Of course, he accepted, and Death presented him with the Lantern...
And so the boy got home. After making himself look like a human being again he sold everything he had inherited, gathered his money and supplies and set out on that journey that became famous throughout the three continents....
Well would you look at the time! I need to be going. No no, I'll be here tomorrow night. Of course! I'm here every night, just ask the innkeeper! Well, I'll see ya when you want to continue, young 'un...
