Legend of Arcadia: Battlefield Ometin
-Prologue-
The old woman clutched her deck of Tarocchi cards hesitantly. Her guests were no damsels looking for love nor handsome courtiers hoping for luck in wooing the girls of their dreams. Indeed, today her guests had certainly surprised her. It wasn't every day royalty visits an oracle such as herself.
"Dama Fortuna," the regal King had introduced, "I've come to request your augery upon the crisis that the Dark has brought upon our fair land of Ometin...perhaps you have some hope for a hopeless time?"
"Your majesty," Dama Fortuna replied breathlessly, "I'd be quite honoured...please, leave your men to guard the front. I will escort you into the antechamber of the oracle."
The king dismissed his men with a wave of his hand and followed the timid Dama Fortuna through the moon-illuminated halls of the oracle. She brought him into a large antechamber and asked, "Your majesty, please change into the robes necessary for the ceremony of augery. We cannot risk any contamination in the main chamber." The king nodded and slipped off his royal robe. He donned the proper ceremonial clothes and followed Dama Fortuna into the main chamber of the oracle. He was feeling a bit self-conscious because he had lost the great fur robe he was accustomed to wearing which had been replaced by a ceremonial robe of pure white.
The king was mildly surprised when he found that the main chamber consisted of nothing more than a spacious table in the centre of a dimly lit room. However, the large oculus at the top of the room provided more than enough lighting by moonlight. The king sat down on one of the nearby cushions so that he had a good view of the central table. Dama Fortuna took her place at the opposite side of the chamber and threw the Tarocchi cards into the air. When the fluttering of the cards died down and most of the cards had fallen, the king realized that there were a few cards levitating in the centre of the table, illuminated only by moonlight.
"Your Highness, the cards you see...the cards that have not fallen reveal the future of Ometin!"
"Dama Fortuna, I see...can you see any hope for us against the Darkness? Or are we doomed to fall within its shadow...and to become tainted with its evil?"
"It is difficult to say, your Majesty. Allow me to perform the second part of the ceremony."
Dama Fortuna closed her eyes and fell into a deep trance. Muttering nothing but nonsense for about five minutes, she finally began speaking coherent English and wove the fabric of a poem:
The shadow will grip the land with a fearsome clutch;
Ometin feeling the icy touch;
Seven years of darkness, plague and fear;
Yet the people must persevere.
To end the reign of terror, the endless plight;
The future mages must combine, must unite;
In a culmination of our world and the next;
Only then, only in time we can dispel the wretched rex.
With the intervent of heaven;
Through time and space, a chosen seven;
Though young, and a motley band;
They will win the fight; and save the land.
The king slowly tried to absorb the cryptic poem when all of a sudden, an arrow whizzed through the air at in a furious path and slew the great king. Dama Fortuna panicked, how was she supposed to run? She ran for all her worth, abandoning the cards and the body of the dead king behind her. Using the secret passage that had been built for the safe retreat of all foreseers, she sped through the passageway out into the world. Looking back at the oracle, she realized that the king had been trapped with assassins on all sides. His journey had been made in vain for when he had heard that there was hope, he had been slain. However, as Dama Fortuna ran away into the night, she knew that one day, the chosen seven would come save the land.