The Serving Boy Asks a Question

"How?"

The serving boy's half uttered question flopped out of his puffy mouth.

The oldman, squinted his eyes lazily at the boy's visage.

The serving boy was tall for his age, and stood eye to eye to where the oldman sat. The boy couldn't be more than two hands old.

"I once knew someone. He almost died reaching this mountain that I speak of. It was a boy... No older than you are now."

The oldman looked up, wistfully, "Indeed. It is the meek such as you. That find inner strength to do what ought to be improbable."

The boy tried to believe what the oldman was saying was true. He wondered if the oldman really knew God's Finger. The oldman retracted into himself, the flamelight made it seem he had disappeared into his robes. The oldman spoke, and the serving boy could hear sorrow and regret in his voice:

"I was his teacher."


next: The Spire

The Tale of the Oldman

On a slow Tuesday night in one of any of the many places where man gather, to eat, drink, sleep and exchange lies, a wizened old man told a serving boy the following tall-tale:

Beyond the desert of the cursed, beyond the sea of sorrows, beyond the places where man does not thread, beyond the wild where beasts fear no man, far beyond the lands that gods once claimed for themselves.

There is a mountain.

It is not the biggest mountain, nor the smallest. It isn't the most dangerous or the most difficult to find. It is only the hardest mountain to reach in the known world. A mountain that only a person with a purpose can get to. Indeed, it is said that only a person consumed with rage may find it. Only a person completely devoid of any desire except one may return from it.

That desire... Revenge it is called.

On that mountain, it is said, an old man lives. A man as old as any man can be old. And then, older still. Some people say that this old man will die the day someone sets foot on the mountain. Others say the old man will die after presenting his visitor with a one-of-a-kind gift. Some people say the man will utter a few words before dying:

''I should have wished for death...''

With the oldman gone, the gift is given! It is a gift few would be worthy of. It is the finger of a god, cut by a god. Resized, reshaped...

As a sword!


Next: The Serving Boy Asks A Question

The Crash

The Sword's leap cut the night's air. The wind rushing in his ears threatened to deafen him. The Sword closed his eyes but for a second. And then he saw every moment that caused him pain.

When The Sword opened his eyes he realized he would miss the mark. His leap had not been strong enough, his rage had not been strong enough.

The Sword crashed, edge first, many floors away from his revenge.



Next: The Tale of the Oldman

The Leap

The Sword's speed increased with each step. No bush, twig, branch, or tree could slow him now. As he rapidly reached the next peak he began to bound a little. His run, his rage, had left a swath of broken vegetation behind his trail. It was a mark of rage left to bear on the mountain. It was with this rage that The Sword now took the last step of the mountain's peak and leapt into thin air.

The Run

The Sword's resolution quivered for a moment; the expanse of land that lay tween him and his target was large indeed. No mere stone's throw. He drew back. And began to run downhill from the peak where he had stood. The Sword ran away from, not towards to, his target. After he had ran a few paces he began a wide turn drawing an arc that would soon line his path towards a near peak. With each step his speed increased. And soon even before he had begun to turn, his speed had surpassed what could be achieved by any man. All the while The Sword ran, only one thought occupied his mind...

Revenge.

The Castle

The Sword looked upon the horizon. Far away, nestled tween the evergreen valleys of the countryside, lay the stones that would have melt upon his gaze. Know, o reader, that The Sword pretended to storm a castle so magnificent, that foreigners from the western lands cried with joy upon laying sight of it. Not only that, but the castle stood leagues apart from whence The Sword stood. And he pretended to reach it, merely by exerting the power of his incandescent revenge. The fire that smoldered his soul would propel him towards his destiny.