An Epistrophe of Ships - Prologue

[Shyriath]

Picture a house...

It had once been a great house; indeed, it had been a mansion. Its beginnings had been laid thousands of years before, in a time of greatness, and throughout the ages it had been refurbished, and added to, and cared for, even as its importance dwindled and its masters became more often local dignitaries than great lords. Those who had lived here had been able to see out windows on one side of the house, and look over the edge of the cliffs at the rolling sea beyond, and on the other side watch the wind dancing across the fields of grass that stretched to the uplands; and it had been a reminder to them all of how precious the house was, and all the land that they watched over.

But at last, disaster had befallen the house, and Time had since begun to reclaim the remains. Rooms lay exposed to the elements; floors had fallen in; stunted trees grew in what had once been a stone-paved courtyard, and the great hall had sunk into the ground by half a foot, its tiled floor the bed of a shallow pond. But none of these things were as eerie as the damage to the west side of the house, the side facing the uplands; for that entire wing lay shattered and burnt, as if a meteor had hit the ancient building from the side. Only one tower, on the southeast side, seemed in decent condition, though even there the stones had begun to crumble.

Picture a room...

Once, it had been an office. On the top floor of the southeast tower, its occupants had made plans and strategies for ruling their people. There had been good plans, and bad ones; but in the end, there had come a time that no one's plan could have accounted for. The people had scattered, and were gone; and there was no more use for rulers.

The last one to occupy this office had left evidence of his presence, and some remained even now. On the mantelpiece, a tarnished plaque, its lettering illegible but with a shield of arms engraved in the aged silver; within the shield one might have discerned a long-fanged skull and a scythe with a rose. On the walls, faded paintings of sea-girt cliffs, far taller and greyer than the ones nearby; they had been done by the occupant himself, lovingly, but vaguely, as if there had been details that he'd been unable to quite remember.

Around the room, furniture, most of it arrayed around the remains of a desk. Most had been ordinary chairs; but opposite from them, the only seat on the other side of the desk, was something else. Although it appeared that the occupant of the room would have been seated there for meetings around the desk, the object was not so much a chair as a sort of wide, concave bench, which at one end inclined upwards and ended in a dish-shaped attachment. It did not appear as if a human being could have been comfortably seated on it, but possibly a being that did not stand entirely upright could have done so, using the dish-shaped attachment as a headrest.

And indeed, by a long-broken window, there was a... creature.

It was a scaly thing, very slightly larger than a human being, but extremely gaunt, as if it had once been bulkier but had been ill; its scales, a sickly gray, hinted at what might once have been a vibrant green. The folded wings on its back were tattered; its serpentine neck seemed stiff and unmoving, and its eyes, milky and clouded, stared out at the sea, unblinking. Were it not for the slight movement of its chest, one could have mistaken it for a dead thing, and it showed no inclination to move or cast its gaze elsewhere.

Aside from than tiny sign of life, the room was still; and as the days continued to pass on, it remained still. But there came a day when the sea and the sun were veiled by a grey mist that rolled down from the hills. The creature did not sway its gaze, although there was nothing to see; but the room filled with the mist, and damp gloom settled around it.

After a time, the mist seemed to move, not as if stirred by wind, but as if the mist itself had chosen to drift together and coalesce, so that a thicker cloud of it accreted in the air near the creature's bony flank. And at last, it took on a shape, as of a figure armored, cloaked and hooded in white. No face could be seen beneath the hood, but two otherwise unseen eyes were marked by small yet intense circles of light.

The figure regarded the creature with an undefinable air of sadness, and after what seemed like an age extended a ghostly hand to touch it.

"Awaken, young one."

For a time, nothing seemed to happen; but at last eyelids slid slowly down over the pale eyes, then rose again. The head slowly turned, and the neck curved with a sound of a popping, crackling spine. A long, emaciated face looked into the eyes of the misty apparition, staring for a while; and then, slowly, as if trying to remember the words, it spoke.

"Young?... I would not have thought, even for one such as yourself, that I could be considered young anymore."

"One cannot exist in the plane of Order and remain bound to Time in the same way as a mortal. The years pass like a swift-flowing stream, and those who are in it are carried from our sight; too soon, all too soon. And the years, it seems, have not been kind to you; or perhaps you have not been kind to yourself?"

The half-dragon narrowed his eyes. "Well may you remember," he croaked, with a voice rusted by time, "that I have seen far more years than nature allotted to me. I should have passed on to my rest long ago; and you should not be surprised that I attempted to achieve that rest."

"And did it help?" the figure in the mist politely inquired. "It seems that it did not, although you certainly have the semblance of a corpse. Refraining from food, I suspect."

"Indeed so," the dragon replied bitterly. "And from sleep. And those only after all other attempts ended, by extraordinary chance, in a complete failure to harm myself. I should have died from old age, but only grew older; poison only made me ill; swords and guns failed to strike me; neither fire nor explosion could burn me; lack of breath does not choke me; and though I do not eat or drink or sleep, I feel only hunger and thirst and weariness, until I grow used to nothing else."

"On the whole, it seems you would have been better served by just carrying on with life."

The half-dragon's face twisted into a mask of pain. "Better to take the chance than passively endure all of it. My relations cast me out, long ago; the humans who I came to call my people are scattered to the winds; this place is waste and empty, and I cannot rebuild it. I am a walking remnant of things that have already died, and I should have died with them; I fail to qualify as undead myself only on the technicality of breathing. Why will you not let me go?"

"Not I, but the Gods. They have a task and a fate for you, as I once told you."

"Then why not give it to me and be done?"

"You could not have done it. The time had not yet come."

The creature opened its mouth, then hesitated. "It... had not. Is it coming?"

"That is so. The things that time has carried you away from have not been dead, merely awaiting the time of their return; and the Gods have determined that you must help bring them forth, or they will fail."

The half-dragon turned his clouded gaze to the ground, and stood in thought. At last he said, "They wish me to bring back the wanderers... the Pennà. To call them home?"

"They have wandered in their ships for ages; their island, though fondly remembered, is only legend now. Is it not time for them to return?"

"Others have tried to colonize this island; I watched them. Their works were impressive, but life on the Isle has been hard and prosperity vulnerable from the effects of the Devastation. The government overspent, the economy fell, the people dwindled, the buildings once again fell into ruin. Some villages still remain, I think, but the Port stands empty again. What will the Pennà return to here? How will they avoid the same hardships?"

The ghostly figure slowly shook its head. "You cannot guarantee them success; you may only show them the way. Maybe they will succeed where the others failed. But the Gods know this: one day, the last battle with the forces of Balgurd will come, and on that day, the children of the Isle, as many other people, will play an important part. But their efforts will be wasted if all of them are scattered and wandering. They need a home, a place to build themselves up to their strength; and indeed they have one, if only they would remember. You must go to them, and remind them of what they have left behind them."

The creature was silent for a long time, and the only sound was that of the wind picking up outside the window, and thunder rumbling in the distance. At last he asked, in nearly a whisper, "And if I do this? Will they let me go, at last?"

"They have not said."

"Then I have no guarantees. If I refuse, the task will pass by, and I may die or I may live. If I carry out the task, I may die or I may live."

"There was a time," the apparition noted, "when you would not have thought in terms of what you would receive for doing what it was right to do."

A brief look of rage crossed the reptilian face, then one of shock, and finally settled into one of deep sorrow. "Yes," he replied quietly, "that is true."

He looked to the window again, shook his head, and then turned away from it. "I will go. They are still my people, after all this. I will go, and bring them home."

[Erik Mortis]

YAY!

[Shyriath]

*Bows*

I apologize, though, if it's a bit unpolished. My writing skills are on the rusty side.

[Harald of Froyalan]

A very pleasant read.