The
Mountain Of Fire
I
am a badger. Ceteruler is my name, I am the first Badger of Salamandastron.
They call me the Wise, that is because I can see into the future. I know that
in seasons to come a Badger Lady will be blinded in battle, and retire to a redstone
abbey. She will be well-loved by the young ones, and her wild nature – she was
almost permanently on the edge of the Bloodwrath before her blindness – will
have abated.
I can remember things that went on long before I was
born, and now, as I am dying, I wish to speak of them. I do not want these
stories forgotten.
*
This
is truly a mountain of fire. Periodically this mountain would explode into a
state where all who were hit by the liquid fire would die in agony – burnt
slowly, but there was no hope for survival. Eventually every creature left this
area, knowing that if they did not, they would die well before their time.
Then there were no eruptions for many seasons, and
creatures drifted back into the villages and homes they had left for so long.
Typically, the mountain spewed out every last drop of the fiery substance as
soon as there were over a thousand of the poor souls. They were all burnt to
death by the terrible liquid fire. As I said before, there was absolutely no
hope for them.
Then followed a long silence from the mountain, but none
dared to take advantage of it. I came, there was no one to tell me the
mountain's dangerous history, but I knew. I marshalled the small army of hares
I had brought with me, and we chipped away at the rocks inside to make
different chambers. We modelled it into walls, beds, ceilings and floors. I was
lucky, I was the most powerful of my tribe of badgers, and the hares were the
strongest and most determined hares I knew.
We shaped it into the daunting Salamandastron, famous for
it's military skills – or it's inhabitants are, anyway.
I have carved thrones out of the stone wall in the room
where the fire once lived, they will seat every ruler Salamandastron will ever
know. Proud and tall, we will live forever in the secret chamber I built, with
no help from my hares. Loyal and true as they are, this is no place for them. I
will never allow anyone else to enter here, and I feel sure that my successors
will not either. It is for badgers only, and except perhaps for mighty warriors
like a mouse I have seen in my dreams, it will stay that way. I know of a
redstone building in the heart of Mossflower Woods. It does not exist, this I
know from travellers.
But now I am dying. I have carved pictures into the walls
of my secret chambers that will tell the Badger Lords in seasons to come their
histories, their fates, and most of all – the story of our mountain!
