My Chapter – Call from the Deep

He watched the lake; its pristine, clear surface the only thing still undesecrated in this, his home. Its mirror surface clearly reflected the soft, glowing halo which indicated an active Seal of the Ancients. He turned to look at the children.

There were six of them left. He originally had a party of fourteen. He blinked back tears as he remembered how each of them had been taken by the monsters which lurked just outside the Sanctuary...

It had been their third day, and still they could find no food. The children were already half-starved, and he knew he could not hold out for much longer either.

It had been then that he had decided to go on the ill-fated first trip. Despite the fact that it brought them food, had he known the price he would have to pay, he would never have tried it.

His hunting party had gone out with eight members today. He returned with only three.

He remembered how they had left the blue glow of the Sanctuary. It protected only against dark powers, and did not hinder their exit.
They left the blue glow; and found themselves in utter darkness.

Holy Arrow

He arced his hands in the air, pulling one back against the other, then pushed his palms outwards. An arc of light shot up straight into the air, then burst into a brilliant stream of light. Even without his wand, it was still extremely bright. Now they could see.

They found themselves in a maze of corridors stretching out in every direction the eye could see. The blue glow of the seal still shone behind them, but the further they got from it, the less safe they felt.

Nervously the children followed him. They knew not what to expect; their encounters with monsters rarely meant anything larger than a Poring. With great trepidation, he rounded the corners of this natural maze; hoping that they would find something they might eat in this hostile environment. Already a thought was forming at the back of his mind that using Holy Arrow to illuminate the tunnel might have helped the monsters more than it helped them.

It wasn't long before they came upon their first find. A bush which appeared to be constructed completely out of stone. The berries on the bush looked succulent enough; and the children were soon gorging themselves on their first meal in a long time. But he wasn't so sure... What had he seen in his father's books that filled him with a sense of foreboding...?

A flash of darkness, and a menacing crunch.

He spun around to see a strange plant making its way toward them. The children hardly noticed it, but his instincts had warned him of this. He remembered now. His father had had a book of some length of the strange adaptabilities of these plants; the nependeaths.

Nependeaths. Devious beyond the human capacity to understand. It seemed as though this particular one had developed a symbiotic relationship with the strange bush...

A sudden feeling of dread in his stomach; he turned to the children, who had not noticed the plant behind them. It silently glided through the soil... except that it was solid rock. He stood in awe of the beast, but beyond that, for fear of the children's safety. Shouting a warning cry, he concentrated again, his arm weaving arcane shapes in front of him.

Nependeaths. They might be strong, but they were still plants.

Fire Brace.

He unleashed a stream of liquid fire at the nependeath, expecting it to wilt under the intense heat. The children had noticed now, and they stopped to stare at the sight; unable to comprehend the danger that they were in.

The heat of the flame was strong, but the nependeath had no intention of being roasted. As he held the flame in a steady stream, he could not concentrate on anything else. The nependeath shied away from the heat.

That's done it, he thought.

A scream from behind him. He whirled to see one of the children being attacked by the roots of the nependeath. He rushed forward to try to save her, but she was sucked under the surface before he could move. Her last screams he would hear forever...

Only three members returned through the seal. He felt sorrow for those who died; but he had not come back empty handed. He weighed the object he had found in his hands. Back in a past world, he thought, it would have been worth millions.

It was an item bag. He had come across it only once before. It carried a little of the Creator's power, he knew. He had only to visualize an item appear in the bag, and it would.

Their lives will not have been wasted in vain, he promised himself.

He was overcome by a fresh wave of sorrow. The other children were gone not because of him; they had wandered off themselves, but he still felt he was to blame. Frustrated, he reached down and picked a rock up.

To hell with the world.

He flung the rock with all his force into the centre of the lake.

"Whaaaaa---?"

It started from the centre. The ripples slowly spread outward, slowly, reflecting the light of the Seal. Gently it touched each of the eight stone columns positioned on the outer ring of the lake. For the first time, he saw, it was a perfect circle.

As the water reached the edge, it did not halt. It rushed up the sides of the stone column and in the top. Each column glowed with a bright blue or red light, each bearing the symbol of either a bow, a sword, a throwing star, or a staff. A small glass orb was positioned above each symbol, and it was into this that the lake's water fell. Slowly, the lake emptied, and all that was left of it was a basin of pure marble base, slowly resonating with a pulse which he felt in his own heart.

As he stepped closer to the lake, the column with the blue staff on it glowed brighter, and the lake water in it trickled down into the blue symbol, turning it white. As he stood, amazed at the wondrous miracle he beheld, he heard a voice call out to him.

He almost choked; he remembered it as well as he had those three hundred years ago.

It was his Father's.

My son...

He started; tears began to form again, but he blinked them away.

If you are hearing this; everything that we feared might happen has happened. The darkness has overrun our world, and there is nothing left but this.
We call out to you, us four Wisemen of Maple, to deliver us from this darkness we are trapped in. The prophecy has come true at last, as we feared it would.
In this darkness we are trapped.

He gasped in astonishment as his mind filled with images; people; places; things he had never seen, words he had never known.

He fell back against the pillar, exhausted. It was then that he caught a word he recognized. He started, and looked at the crumbling stone pillar. The runic inscriptions blurred for a moment, then refocused themselves. It was written in the ancient Maple tongue, one that no one could remember, or had remembered, for centuries.

Until now.

The words written there filled his mind.

On darkness tide there rides a storm
Creation ending submission
Destruction chaos returns
To how it was before the light
Entered; pierced; returned
Eight people; children of fate
Give back that which was taken
The dark; light; and in between
Balanced; once again.

He sat there, motionless, understanding but not comprehending. Then he felt the presence of his father again.

The castle in the sky...

A flash of light

Palace of the Crescent Moon

The abode of darkness.

Orbis

And he had to get there; somehow.