The Arrival: Part 1

Numerous people have, on numerous occasions, suggested that I write a set of memoirs. It was a sensible request. I ran into enough adventurous mishaps to fill more lifetimes than the two I have been alloted, and bore witness to several key events in recent history, meaning at least some of what I could write would be of use to future historians – who should, nonetheless, be warned that this particular work is intended primarily as a piece of entertainment, and as such won’t conform to proper academic form. But it is only now, in the idle years of my retirement, that I have found the time to take such a pursuit seriously.

Thus, I bring this first volume of my memoirs to paper. I had trouble setting the scope of this literary excursion. Eventually, I settled on covering the early years of my life, from the moment I awoke in a necromantic test tube to the conclusion of my service under King Philoctetes of Manea. My life would make a dramatic change afterwards, so I found it to be a suitable finale to the first chapter of my story.

Well, it would be more accurate to call it a second chapter. It is no secret that I led another life before Arthacyros worked his magic, but, to the disappointment of, no doubt, many of my readers, I will not go into detail on this topic. It was, in all honesty, a fairly dull life. I was born, I studied, I worked, I had a wife, I had no kids, then it suddenly ended without much fanfare. Of what the afterlife I temporarily inhabited looked like, I have no recollection. When my consciousness was reformed, I found myself in a glass tube, suspended in some manner of liquid.

I could barely make out the room the tube was in. I could tell it was circular, and I was in its center, judging by the dim light of torches on the walls. There were also muffled sounds of battle somewhere in the distance. Logically, I should have found such a state of affairs alarming, but after being rudely awakened from my death, I wasn’t yet in full control of my mental faculties. So I hung in the tube, trying to collect my thoughts.

It was probably several minutes later that multiple figures emerged into the room. They halted suddenly, in shock, I assume (I wasn’t able to make out their faces through the liquid and the glass), and then started talking in a language I was unfamiliar with at the time. Then one of the figures approached the glass and swung a huge warhammer at it. Cracks appeared in it. He swung again, and the cracks became bigger. Finally, he swung a third time, and the glass shattered. Liquid poured out of its container, and I plopped to the ground like a dead fish. I tried to get up but couldn’t quite control my arms. As I was gasping for air, I lost consciousness again.

When I woke up, I was bound in chains and placed inside a cart along with multiple soldiers. They were armed with spears and rifles, clad in chainmail, and were as terrified of me as I was of them. None of them would get close to me, and all of them were crammed at the front half of the cart, eyeing me with suspicion. I tried speaking to them, but it was in vain. My native tongue sounded like gibberish to them, and at this point, my mind had already fully cleared, so, grasping the gravity of my situation, I was entering a state of panic. Eventually, as my raving was making an already tense situation worse, I gave up on demanding to know where I was being taken and resigned to my fate. As I calmed down, so did the soldiers, and after exchanging a few whispered words, one of them handed me some bread and water. I devoured them greedily, finally becoming aware my new body was capable of hunger.

This uncomfortable situation lasted for several more days, and it was one of the most unpleasant periods of both my lives. My circumstances would, on occasion, become more dire and more tragic, but never again would I feel quite so helpless. I had no idea what was going on and no power to change it. I was a prisoner of some sort, that much was obvious, but I had no idea how I ended up in that damned tube, nor what conclusions my captors drew from me being there. Was I to be executed? To be used as a guinea pig in some experiment? I didn’t know, and that lack of knowledge filled me with dread.

Thankfully, the journey eventually ended. We arrived at a walled city – Hieropolis, as I would later learn – where a victory parade was taking place to welcome the returning army. As my cart was covered, I could not see much of the city, except tiny bits of wide, marbled streets and the cheering crowds lining their edges.

The cart eventually came to a halt, and I was dragged out. I took brief notice of the beasts of burden that had been pulling it – their slimy, reptilian form was unfamiliar to me – and then led to a corridor of some kind, where I was made to wait a few hours. Then I was taken to a throne room – a large space filled with statues and ornate pillars, its floors covered in the finest carpets, which would gleam in different colors depending on the angle at which light fell upon them. I was made to kneel, and then some advisors explained my circumstances to the king. He was in his mid-forties, dressed in purple, dark-haired, and bearded. He looked at me with piercing eyes, sat in silence for a minute, then whispered something to an advisor. I was once again taken away.

At this moment, my treatment took a surprising turn for the better. My shackles were removed, I was placed in a room, given clean clothes, and allowed to bathe. I was still kept under lock and key, but the fact that some effort was put into making me comfortable made me hopeful for the future.

It was around this point that I fully realized my new body was completely different from my old one. For one, I was unreasonably tall, and even for such height, my limbs were long and gangly. My skin was also unnaturally smooth, feeling almost like rubber to the touch. There was barely any hair on my body – only a few locks on my head, which were such a sad sight that I would later keep them shaved. In time, I would learn my body was, in its way, finely crafted. It was stronger and more durable than most men, and it was able to heal from injuries at a faster rate than normal. But those details would not come into light just yet.

A day or two after I was placed in my cell, an old man was dispatched to teach me how to speak. He seemed quite scared at first. After realizing I was mostly harmless, he relaxed a little, but never really warmed up to me. He assigned me a nickname, which I use to this day, as my original name would be difficult for most to pronounce, and I wanted to keep my new life separate from my previous one. Said name was Clossar ot-Vani, which I would later learn meant “wanderer from beyond” in an old dialect called High Borchian. Several months passed in this arrangement, and then one day the old man informed me that His Majesty the King had decreed I was to be given an education.