The Book of Destiny

Chapter 1: An Allowably Costly Bargain

World: Vanufas

Status: Inner Circle

"The world of humanity is so much more fragile than humans know." The voice was cold, sending shivers down Desmond's spine. It was a slow, oozing voice that seemed to have a physical presence like liquid in the air. It felt like it filled in any gaps around it.

Knowing it wouldn't help, but feeling better for it anyway, Desmond ducked behind a large stalagmite a little ways away from him. He couldn't hear if the source of the voice was getting closer to him, but he knew that he couldn't keep his location a secret from the other entity. Therefore, the position might not have been the most advantageous, but it was still human nature to feel safer with things like walls between one and one's enemies.

"I know," Desmond called back. "That's why I'm here!"

"Poor little human," the voice echoed around him.

From the shadows on his side of the rock, the entity coalesced and emerged. It appeared as living shadow made solid, but it also looked a little darker than that. Before coming into the cave, Desmond had woven together a floating orb of light from the mystical essence of the multiverse. This orb illuminated the creature's shape in much the same way that a flame would illuminate the shape of a shadow puppet on the wall behind a hand. The creature was partially humanoid, with a torso, shoulders, two arms and a head. Its lower half did not have legs, but just a solid trunk coming from the darkness in the ground, giving more the appearance of a person wearing a dress. The arms ended in two hands with long sinister-looking claws. On the creature's head, there were no discolorations, convexes, shapes to make the entity's facial features. Instead, there were simply gaping holes in the shadow to form its eyes and mouth. The holes could be shaped to portray whatever expression the entity wanted to portray. Right now, that was a sinister smile.

Desmond leapt back over the rock and began to run across the chamber of the cave. Near him was a gap in the cave wall. The edges of metal walls jutted through it, but there was a small open section. Along the metal wall were numerous dials and levers, as well as ancient-looking lights forming a control panel of the oldest technologies.

For his own part, Desmond didn't look the sort to be mucking about in caves. In truth, he normally wouldn't be. Normally, he had people that he could send into situations like this for him. He had used other people to get himself to this point. However, now that he was here, it was too important to do things right. And he couldn't trust anyone else with the secrets of why he was here.

He was built tall and lean, with a long face. At some point, someone had joked that it was as though someone had stretched his body out without bothering to widen it again. That person hadn't survived very long beyond that point in time. His skin was pale and pristine, showing no scars or bruises, as well as showing very little signs of being outside in the sunlight. The only sign of imperfection that his skin did show were the handful of wrinkles that he had earned in his many years of life. His hair was blonde bordering on colorless white, matching the shading of his eyes which were blue bordering on colorless grey.

His clothes were bright in color, consisting primarily of a purple dress-tunic, and seemed to have very little in the way of functional use. The outfit seemed more like something someone would wear to a low-key dinner party than something for exploring caves in.

As he drew near to the gap, the creature emerged once more before him, a dark laughter filling the cave. The creature had come forth, once more, from the shadows, giving an unnerving feeling as though it were in every shadow.