Roxas45
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The room grew silent as the children finally settled down in front of the old man in his rocking chair, with his pipe in hand, and a cane in the other. The children sat uneasily, but excited. This was the great Storyteller, Vaanel. He was a part of the oldest sect of loremasters, which still believed in the premise of passing on stories through word of mouth only. He was old, wrinkly, and a pleasant smile on his old features. He puffed on his pipe once, twice, and then thrice, before putting it down and leaning forwards into the eager faces of the children in front of him.
They couldnt have been more than a decade in age, except for the three scowling adolescent ones sitting in the back, not particularly wanting to be here, except their parents had forced them to attend.
"Well?" snapped Vaanel suddenly. The children all flinched and leaned back from the face, which had suddenly turned into a scowl worthy of making old Glanoth, the retired master of DragonSmiths falter. "Do you want a story or not?"
Unsure of how to respond, the children fearfully nodded, taken very aback by the sudden change in demeanor. Vaanel smiled, just as suddenly as he had scowled, and leaned back in his rocking chair and mused. "What sort of story would you like?"
"The kind you tell our parents" shouted one of the three from the back, serious faced, while his companions smirked. They though that he would be chastised and told that it was an adult's story and not one for children. This boy, however, was someone who wanted nothing more than to grow up, and be an adult. Probably wanted to hit a sneevil with a wooden sword too.
Vaanel grinned, his two missing teeth showing. "I have the perfect story for you then!" he shouted, as he got up and began to walk to the other end of the room. All the children, again, were taken by surprise in the old man's behaviour. Vaanel shut the windows and drew the curtains. He shut the door and locked the door and made the key disappear into his robes. "Tell me. What do you know about magic?"
The children grinned. They were all excellent users of magic, despite their young age. In response, the youngest snapped his fingers, and a ball of flame, barely the size of his nail. A second one clapped once and the room lit up. A third, annoyed at the light, brought his hand down in a slashing motion, and the darkness again overtook the room, leaving the flame in the hands of the youngest. One of the three adolescents brought his hand over the flame of the child, and took with him some of it with him. He separated his hands, and was now holding two spheres of fire in each hand, each as big as a baby hydra skull. The last of the adolescents kept her hands near the face of the flame wielding boy and the boy's visage changed one to a black skull with flames coming from its eyes. Xan, the old pyromancer who lived in Warlic's tower.
Vaalen clapped once, the bright light returning to the room, and then he swept his hand in a horizontal direction, ceasing ALL the magic in the room made by the children. "Excellent," he mused. He then muttered under his breath and the room lightened up slightly. The fireplace roared into existence, and the wind blew from unknown corners of the room, gently tousling the children's hair. Perfect for the story he had in mind. He smiled and took his place in the rocking chair once more. In his lap, an orb of pale blue glowed into existence, giving an eerie glow to the storyteller's face.
"Each of you have demonstrated a powerful use of elemental magic. While it was merely within the confines of my small room, you still were able to do so, and at such a young age!" he began. The children's faces lit up. The Adolescents smirked. What else did the old man expect? "However. What you fail to realize is this: Where does your magic come from? Some of you will answer from within yourselves, but it is not so." That wiped the grins off their faces.
Vaalen dipped his head and closed his eyes for a moment, looking like he was gathering his thoughts. All cheap tricks and tomfoolery, but the children bought it. Looking up, he began his narrative.
"In the many days, years, centuries, and even eons, before this very day, Lore was growing as its own realm. In the beginning, there was oblivion and the void alone, or so they say. In the past there were created the elemental avatars: Fiamme, Neso, Kyanos, Khazri, Temblor, Celerita, Voidstar, and Haeos." As he spoke the names of the avatars, the orb in his lap glowed with the element of said avatar. Flames, waves, frost, winds, stone, darkness and light. It then resumed its natural pale blue glow. He paused. "Or so they say. In the future, those who read the wind predict both great peace and prosperity, as well as untold destruction, following both an endless cease. Or so they say. What they DO say, however, is that the Loremasters will always be there to bear witness, as they have, and as they are."
"This tale of mine, which I share freely, in a time before my Death, is older than the very avatars!" He paused, this time really collecting his thoughts.
"The elemental planes of 8, as you know them. Most people think of them as 8 plates on a table, with lore in the centre of them. Each plate revolving in a circular manner, and all of them revolving around Lore. However, we, as storytellers have found out this is not true at all. In fact, in one instance, the fire-lings of the realm of Fiamme led us along a path of stone, and straight into the frozen realm of Kyanos. The Giants of the ice welcomed us with open arms, and we were bewildered. For was it not that the realm of ice would be opposite to the realm of fire? A similar such occurance was found between the realm of light and darkness, as with the realm of earth and wind. It was astonishing that such a thing could exist! The very fabric, nay, the very nature of the elemental planes was taught to us wrongly! Our magic faltered, as did the understanding of our magic. If the realms were all connected such, and seamlessly, then how could there be such differences in the magic which we wrought?"
"We lost our magic, and wandering around on Lore, as the first loremasters. Devoid of magic, and only good at telling stories and collecting information. We started writing our works down into parchment and on solid structures like the iron walls of Faloran, in the mountains. We knew that without our magic, we were nothing, and that our lives would end much sooner than earlier, so we had to immortalize ourselves." A look of sadness passed over Vaalen's face, before it was replaced by the serious calm expression he wore when the story began. "We couldnt tell anyone of this, lest they began their own journey to prove us false, and lose their own magic in the process. After all, what IS magic, but our understanding of energies and power and shaping them to our will?"
"But you regained your magic! The travelling storytellers, you, and your kin, still travel through the planes!" said one boy from the centre. Vaanel nodded once.
"Quite right. But it was some time before we could."
"This however, led some of us to reexamine our old stories of how Lore was created. We were always told, as children, that Lore was a realm separate from the other 8, each of [I]them[/I] separate from each other! How did such a change in knowledge come about? In the end, we surmised that it was because of the number of retelling of the same tale of the original had distorted the facts so much that the original doesnt resemble the new one by half a point! So, we set out to discover what we could about the original story, the truth of how Lore was formed. The story of this story's discovery is but another story altogether, and meant for another time"
"The world once belonged to no one. Not to man, not to dragons, not to the elementals, not to its avatars, not to anyone. In this time, the whole plane of existence was a set of temporally fractured events. It had been the cause of something else altogether, but that event's cataclysmic end brought about the creation of our plane of reality, with the birth of no one, and no thing. This was the void. From inside the void, nothing came, nothing left, and nothing moved. There was neither an element, nor its opposite counter. It was neither emotion, nor emotionless. It was pure entropy. It was a sea of violent thrashing pieces of nothing which collided and merged and then broke apart again. Reality tried to form in this mass of nothing, but kept getting swept away each time it was brought to a beginning.
"Such continued the existence of nothing, for eons, and eons, and eons. Even Death, the original being, knows not till how long it went. Eventually, one day, or one year, its difficult to keep track, it stopped moving. The void simply stopped moving, as if it had gotten bored of its own existence. it settled down for a few seconds, and in those few seconds, the void dismantled itself beyond recognition." he paused. The ceiling of the room became purple, and swirling all over the place. They all stared at it, as it moved. Suddenly the swirling stopped. The patterns broke free and began throwing themselves at each other. Each time they collided, sparks flew. Two void threads merged together and at their merge, released fire. Two more collided and erupted into a mass of light, followed by darkness. A mass of them circled each other before collapsing at the centre into a ball of earth. Such images went on for some time before the old man resumed his narration.
Thats it for Chapter one.
I felt that It was getting a bit long winded, and going off track, so next chapter, ill bring it back to the topic :D
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