Prologue

12 1 0
                                    

An old man is walking in a forest, taking in the once-beautiful now dark and grimy scenery. The forest looks very old, and looks like nobody has walked through it for hundreds of years. He stops in his tracks, sits down near a cave, and lights a fire from some wood. He turns his head over to look at the cave, looking peaceful, as if this was the place he chose to die at, or at least, chosen for him. "This is it," he said. He stays there for a few minutes and chants something in an ancient language. He then quietly walks away from the fire into the cave, looking sad yet determined. He sets out his hand on a rock at the end of the cave's tunnel, mutters an ancient language, and all of a sudden, two torches are lit up at both sides of the tunnel. A door almost instantaneously appears, with a hole for a key to be inserted. He reaches in his pocket and takes out a key, opens the door, and there stands a huge circular room, heights of at least a hundred feet, with enough room for a huge banquet hall. There lies hundreds of chairs, encrusted with jewels, occupied by lifeless corpses that look as if they'll never decompose. An empty chair is in the very middle of the room. The old man walks carefully to the chair, sits down, and takes something out of his pocket, what looks like an old pocketwatch. After he pulls out the watch, a huge clock appears at the ceiling of the room, with the time at two-twenty-two. The old man looks up at the clock for just a moment, then looks at his pocketwatch and changes the watch's time to two-twenty-two. He lays the pocketwatch on the floor at his feet, and then suddenly his eyes close, and makes no sign of movement. A shortwhile after, the ceiling opens as if it were a hatch, and a voice is heard, saying "It is done."

A Strider's JourneyWhere stories live. Discover now