Pure One
Disclaimer: I don't own any of David Farlands characters and the ideas in this story that come from the runelords books are not mine.
They had forgotten me, five hundred feet beneath the ground I was trapped. Hunger forever blazed in my stomach, thirst; my throat felt like the dessert in a summer storm, my suffering barely registered. Immortality the bonds of my never ending pain. Yet I was stronger than any mortal, faster than a falcon on wing, my knowledge of the world as vast as the seas; every moment the earth revealed small pockets of knowledge as I stared at the rough grey surface of my rocky prison.
Even now I had endowments vectored to me through dedicates upon dedicates, for thousands of years it had continued but my heritage refused to let me die. Thousands of endowments of brawn, metabolism, wit, sight, voice and even a few hundred of will coursed through me, every now and then I would feel a negligible loss as a dedicate passed away from old age or illness. I wondered if the people vectoring endowments even remembered why they carried on facilitating, if they even knew who the endowments were going, what was the purpose of it?
I was the last of valhare; a group of pure beings not unlike the bright ones, our lesser cousins. We were the culmination of the breeding of the first and purest beings when the world was one and life was fresh. When the world split it was only our souls that were strong enough to stay complete, our souls contained no dark veins to perforate and destabilise.
But there was one of who wanted more, to have more than to exist and so he took power, tainted his soul, giving up his right to be called valhare. We were disappointed and cast him out from our realm thinking nothing of his dishonesty, we knew of lesser beings of other worlds who had tainted souls but led virtuous lives and so we gave no attention to him and instead considered and debated about if we should intervene between the affairs of another world; our distanced cousin the torch bearer was facing an evil foe upon his world. It was as we debated upon our intervention - as we took meddling in the lives of lesser folk very seriously that the start of our downfall came rampaging towards us.
The corrupt one had come back, vengeful and newly named, Valherite – meaning purest in the old language, such was his vanity and the irony as he laughed in our faces, "I am pure evil made by pure ones". We pitied his corruption but it soon turned to anger as he slaughtered us, cutting us down with his new found power. None of knew how he had gained his power and few of us fled his onslaught. Over the next generations he hunted our diminished numbers down until the few remaining of us decided to fight back.
We formed a small group and discussed what we could do. We had heard of a magic from the torch bearers world, an old magic, the magic of runes the basis of creation! So we left our world to be taken over by Velherite, we planned to take endowments from thousands if not millions of creatures throughout existence, we jumped from world to world teaching the people of their world about rune lore and taking endowments from many, dedicates could not help but give themselves to us as they stared into our light filled eyes. On the original dedicates were placed many spells by my kind to allow them to live endless lives, age would not touch them. But soon Valherite learned of our plan and before we gathered enough endowments he cut us down one by one.
I was the last; I had come to hide on the torch bearer's world. It was while I ran from Valherite that I began to wonder why he didn't kill my dedicates and it was then that I realised that he did not know of rune lore, he was far too arrogant to busy himself with the knowledge of the lesser folk!
As I hid in the eventful world - as even in this world a darkness gathered I chanced upon an earth warden. He looked at me, stared straight through and told me, "I know where you can hide". He led me to a cave deep underground and next I woke bound by chains. I tried to break free but even with my hundreds of endowments I could not break free, spells bound the chains to me and there was nothing I could do. The earth warden stared at me as he said, "You will save many worlds but not this one, here you will hide until your strength grows and you are able to break your bonds. Until that time you will stay here for your presence in outside world draws attention and the dark ones gaze".
And so I have been stood here for millennia, covered in cobwebs. No point in trying to break free, I had long since found the chains tiresome. I felt a curious sensation on my face, a spider had just crawled across it which was not an unusual occurrence; I was a living statue of cobwebs which protected me from outside sensation. But the spider had chance to crawl upon flesh and I began to itch, it was but an automatic reaction my right hand lifted to scratch. A green flash. The cave rumbled. The chain on my right went slack…