Amaden pulled me into a small atrium. Inside the atrium was plant life of
varieties I had never seen before. It was obviously meant to be crop plants
but they had overgrown their boxes, and had began sprouting in cracks in
the flooring and on the rotten wooden edges to the soil holders. The
builing was apparently a self-sufficient one but now barren.
Before I could get much farther in my thoughts Amaden began speaking, he seemed to have calmed down from his previous angry state but his words were rushed as if he thought he only had a little time to speak, "As you can see this place is empty. I knew the occupants. I was young. Barely two-hundred years old then. I am sure that seenms like a lot for you but time passes quickly for me in the scheme of things.'
"You will most likely not beleive more than a word of what I am about to tell you. I ask only that you listen with open ears and try and accept it. It is the only answer you are likely to get. The occupents of this building were not of Earth in any sense of the word. Of this I am certain. I cannot tell you the name of the people because it consists of both sounds that I cannot create and that you cannot register. the host party could speak elvish as well as the languages of all the other visiting embassadors."
I put my hands over my eyes to stare at my palms as I was tilting my head back as far as humanly possible. I groaned. I am stuck in all this with a lunatic, I thought. A lunatic who can read minds, I remembered and tried to focus on what he was saying so that I would not make him angry at me again for stray thoughts.
"I told you that you would not believe me from the very beginning." He eyed me with a feral look that shook me like a wilted leaf.
Make that insane and dangerous, I thought.
"But if you SO desperately want to know about what part you play in all this I suggest that you hear everything from the beginning.'
He continued his tale, "It was an assembly of beings from all the nearby worlds in the relatively close area. They had a specific name for it and like so many other things I cannnot recall it no matter how much I try to. Overall the assembly could be labeled as a big fat failure. The host group selected all the embassadors randomly. The creatures that were to become embassadors were brought to the host planet with out any briefing or explanation at all. I was one of those creatures. It was entire chaos. Dangerous beings with no understanding of where they were ran around ungaurded, as a threat to all the others. There could be no communication between the embassadors to anyone but the host group and overall nothing was organized. In the end the host group politely attempted to give me their thanks for joining them and touched my forehead with part themselves only reconizable as something similar to a limb. Thus my little trinket of a going home present was my protection ward which you have seen in action a few times. The next time I blinked, when my eyes opened I was sitting in the middle of a mud puddle on my lady, Galdariel's step. I told her of what happened to me and I have been learning from her personally ever since on how to use my new gift."
Insane.... but Mordor... that sounds like it all fits together.
"Yes and not insane. Believe me for once. As I have already said this is all the explanation you are getting from anyone. Shall I continue to where it involves you?"
I nodded once and sat down next to the overgrown shubbery sticking up through the odd square stone flooring.
Before I could get much farther in my thoughts Amaden began speaking, he seemed to have calmed down from his previous angry state but his words were rushed as if he thought he only had a little time to speak, "As you can see this place is empty. I knew the occupants. I was young. Barely two-hundred years old then. I am sure that seenms like a lot for you but time passes quickly for me in the scheme of things.'
"You will most likely not beleive more than a word of what I am about to tell you. I ask only that you listen with open ears and try and accept it. It is the only answer you are likely to get. The occupents of this building were not of Earth in any sense of the word. Of this I am certain. I cannot tell you the name of the people because it consists of both sounds that I cannot create and that you cannot register. the host party could speak elvish as well as the languages of all the other visiting embassadors."
I put my hands over my eyes to stare at my palms as I was tilting my head back as far as humanly possible. I groaned. I am stuck in all this with a lunatic, I thought. A lunatic who can read minds, I remembered and tried to focus on what he was saying so that I would not make him angry at me again for stray thoughts.
"I told you that you would not believe me from the very beginning." He eyed me with a feral look that shook me like a wilted leaf.
Make that insane and dangerous, I thought.
"But if you SO desperately want to know about what part you play in all this I suggest that you hear everything from the beginning.'
He continued his tale, "It was an assembly of beings from all the nearby worlds in the relatively close area. They had a specific name for it and like so many other things I cannnot recall it no matter how much I try to. Overall the assembly could be labeled as a big fat failure. The host group selected all the embassadors randomly. The creatures that were to become embassadors were brought to the host planet with out any briefing or explanation at all. I was one of those creatures. It was entire chaos. Dangerous beings with no understanding of where they were ran around ungaurded, as a threat to all the others. There could be no communication between the embassadors to anyone but the host group and overall nothing was organized. In the end the host group politely attempted to give me their thanks for joining them and touched my forehead with part themselves only reconizable as something similar to a limb. Thus my little trinket of a going home present was my protection ward which you have seen in action a few times. The next time I blinked, when my eyes opened I was sitting in the middle of a mud puddle on my lady, Galdariel's step. I told her of what happened to me and I have been learning from her personally ever since on how to use my new gift."
Insane.... but Mordor... that sounds like it all fits together.
"Yes and not insane. Believe me for once. As I have already said this is all the explanation you are getting from anyone. Shall I continue to where it involves you?"
I nodded once and sat down next to the overgrown shubbery sticking up through the odd square stone flooring.
