The Beginning of a 2000 Year Old Tale

        “Well, this is certainly not what I expected,” Sylvarien said. “I was thinking this place would be barren and devoid of life.”

       “For the amount of time it took us to get here, I’d hope it would be pretty,” Corbin said, sitting down and enjoying grass for the first time in a week.

       “This place looks incredible.” Valerith looked around at all the greenery. “To think something like this would be in the Sivketh’s territory is unbelievable.”

       “I’m sure if they could’ve gotten their slimy bodies on this place, it would’ve been gone a long-time age,” Corbin said.

       Sylvarien held her hand out for Corbin to grab.

       “Why are you lying down? Let us go explore this place.”

       Corbin took her hand and heaved himself up with her help. The three of them walked through the gate and entered the city area.

       “So much history here.” Valerith stared at each building ruin intently. “I would love to stay here for years and explore each spot thoroughly.”

       “Too bad we do not have years. Can we go to the temple?” Sylvarien begged.

       “Can’t we all just compromise and spend some time exploring the city before going to the temple?” Corbin suggested.

       “Fine,” Sylvarien pouted. “I guess that is acceptable.”

       “Speaking of the city.” Corbin surveyed the area. “This place seems less like a city and more like a small town. There’s not much here that seems important besides the temple.”

       Valerith rushed into the town and didn’t look back to talk to them as he ran.

       “It doesn’t matter if it’s important or not, it’s still a sight to behold. Are you guys coming or what?” 

       “You’re just as bad as Sylvarien!” Corbin and Sylvarien ran after him and into the pathway where the buildings resided.

       “Let’s go into that one!” Valerith excitedly went into the nearest building, a small one-story stone structure, as soon as they caught up to him.

       They entered the house behind him and observed their surroundings.

       “Isn’t this place great?” Valerith asked.

       Corbin picked up a shard of some kind of clay off the table and inspected the intricate design on it.

       “It would be a lot cooler if I could understand what is going on in these pictures,” he said. “Maybe I should’ve gotten into archaeology back home.”

       “What is archaeology?” Sylvarien asked.

       “It’s the study of old things from the past,” he explained. “Finding old things and exploring it.”

       “Does that mean that we’re doing this ‘archaeology’ right now, then?” Valerith asked.

       Corbin put down the shard and shrugged.

       “I suppose we are. It’s not like there’s any professionals to correct us if we’re not.”

       “Can you tell what happened to this place?” Sylvarien asked Valerith.

       “I don’t believe that I am good enough to decipher that,” he responded. “But it doesn’t hurt to try and figure it out anyways.”

       “So more looking around?” Sylvarien groaned.

       “It’s not that bad.” Corbin slapped her back and smiled. “This place does seem cool after all, so I think I’d like to look around too. But I promise even if Valerith doesn’t come with us, I’ll go to the temple with you by the sunset.”

       She blushed slightly at his words. 

       “Okay then. I will take that offer. Right at sunset, I will drag you out of whatever house we are in and Valerith can choose to follow us or not.”

       Corbin gave her a thumbs up.

       “Where to next?” he asked Valerith.

       “I’m not sure. I want to see if I can find any sort of building with some knowledge or books.”

       They left the building and looked around, casually looking in each of the buildings for any kind of books or papers laying around.

       “Just to remind you,” Sylvarien said. “It is almost sunset.”

       “Okay, okay.” Valerith picked up his pace, trying to explore as much as he could before they went to the temple. “It’s not sunset yet. We still have time.”

       “How did these two do anything together before I got here?” Corbin thought to himself.

                                                                           ...

       “It is sunset now!” Sylvarien tugged on Corbin’s shirt collar, pulling him along with her.

       “You don’t have to actually pull me. I’ll go with you without resisting.”

       Valerith looked behind him and noticed that they were leaving without him.

       “Wait for me. I also want to go to the temple.” He ran after them to catch up.

       “So, is there anything in that scroll about the temple here that says exactly what’s in the temple?” Corbin asked.

       “Unfortunately, no,” she said. “All it says is that there is a temple in the Sivketh’s territory. Well, it does not say their territory exactly, it says the east side, but that is mostly the Sivketh’s domain, so we hoped that it was here.”

       Valerith kept trying to go into buildings he found interesting, but Sylvarien pulled him back by his hood every time. 

       The three of them finally reached the temple after a few minutes of walking along the paths.

       “This place sure is at the center of the city, isn’t it?” Corbin looked up at the tall ruins of the temple.

       “Was that not obvious before?” Sylvarien asked. “We could see it standing over everything else from the entrance.”

       “I know.” Corbin sighed. “I was just trying to say something cool, but I couldn’t think of anything that sounded good on the spot. I should’ve practiced on the way here.”

       Sylvarien quickly glanced at Valerith to see if he understood, but he looked just as confused.

       “Should we go in?” he asked. “I’m sure you weren’t excited to just stand at the entrance of the temple.”

       “You are right, my apologies.” Sylvarien pushed the stone door inward and revealed the inside of the temple. The circular room had pillars with unlit torches lining the walls. Only the light from the sun lit the room up, allowing Corbin to see slightly in the darkness.

       “This place is a lot more barren than I thought,” he said. “I was expecting a lot of stuff in here.”

       “There is still that middle room to explore.” Sylvarien pointed to the middle of the room where a square room laid. “There could be something incredible in there.”

       She went over and tried to open the door, but to no avail. It wouldn’t budge, even when she put her full strength into it.

       “Maybe if we all push at the same time it will work,” Valerith suggested.

       “I could not move it with my full strength,” she said. “What makes you think that having two more, not that strong people, would accomplish?”

       “It wouldn’t hurt to try it.” Corbin went up to the door with her. “Sometimes the power of friendship works out.” 

       As Corbin put his hands on the door to help her, the torches on the wall all lit up with an orange flame and the door opened slowly.

       “How did you do that?” she asked.

       “I don’t know, all I did was touch the door.”

       The three of them looked through the door into the room.

       “It looks a lot bigger on the inside,” Corbin pointed out. “Is there some kind of magic that’s doing that?”

       “Not that we know of,” Valerith said. “It must be from long ago. Maybe even from before the seven races came into existence. Oh, this is quite fascinating indeed. Why didn’t we come here sooner?”

       “Because someone wanted to look at the boring buildings outside,” Sylvarien retorted.

       She went to go into the room but was blocked by an invisible force.

       “Oh great, a barrier.” Corbin went to touch the force, but instead of stopping, his hand went straight through. “Huh?”

       “Try going all the way in,” Valerith suggested.

       Corbin did what he was told and stepped into the room with no problem, while the two of them couldn’t enter.

       “This is torture,” Sylvarien complained. “New information is right there, and we cannot reach it.”

       “I’ll tell you what I find in here,” Corbin said. “It seems like we can still talk to each other, so I’ll just yell when I find something cool.”

       Just as he said that the door slowly began to close.

       He panicked and tried to leave but the barrier kept him inside, not letting him leave the room.

       “What do I do?!” he asked frantically. 

       “Explore around in there!” Sylvarien said. “We will try to find a way in from out here.”

       The door fully closed and sealed itself shut.

       “Well shit.” Corbin looked around, now isolated from the only two people that could and would protect him from the dangers of the world.

       The square room was also as barren as the first room, nothing besides the torches.

       “Well, there’s absolutely nothing in here. What am I supposed to do?”

       His voice echoed around the room, nothing or no one responded to his voice.

       Corbin yelled as loud as he could, wanting to hear how long it would bounce off the walls for.

       “Oh yeah, that was a good one.”

       He laid down on the stone brick floor and looked up at the ceiling. All sides of the room were the same material.

       “Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve eaten anything today.” His stomach rumbled right on cue, signaling his hunger.

       As the rumbling ended, he heard something soft land on the floor in the middle of the room.

       Corbin went over to look at what it was.

       He picked up the piece of rolled up paper and opened it.

                                                                           ***

       “I guess we’re on our own for now,” Valerith said.

       “We have to find a way to open the door again,” Sylvarien said. “The door seemed to react to him, meaning that he might be the only person who can open the door to these types of things.”

       “That would be the most logical reasoning, did you forget that the old tale specifically called for someone from a different world?” 

       “Your sarcasm is not helping,” she said, trying to stay calm. “Let us split up and try to find something to open the door again.”

       The two of them separated to opposite sides of the temple and felt all along the wall for any hidden buttons or levers.

       “I didn’t find anything!” Valerith said in her mind.

       “I have not found anything either,” she responded. “You go up to the second level and look there, I will stay down here and continue my search.

       Without another word, Valerith rushed upstairs to investigate the ruined floor. He hopped between the cracks in the floor using the wind.

       A small shake disturbed their search, throwing them off balance.

       “What was that?” she shouted to the floor above.

       “I’m not sure. Maybe just something natural.”

       Another shake, larger than the last, made some of the loose bits of wall fall to the ground. The temple’s walls began to glow orange softly.

       Sylvarien heard a loud click and looked behind her. The door was glowing the same orange color as the walls and slowly opening by itself.

                                                                           ***

       Corbin unraveled the paper, revealing a blank sheet.

       “What the hell kind of game is this?” He looked around at the room and shouted. “What am I supposed to do with a blank sheet of paper?!”

       Just as he finished his sentence, the paper began to absorb into his skin and into his body. The pain Corbin felt was agonizing, like dying ten times over.

       He fell to the ground and coughed up blood. He rolled his body around in pain and screamed at the top of his lungs, trying to shake the paper out of his hand as well.

       The paper got fully absorbed into his body and the pain stopped suddenly.  

       Corbin got up, confused. His body felt fine, like nothing had happened just a second ago.

       All the pain converted into hunger. His stomach agonized. It felt like he hadn’t eaten in years and all the hunger from that time hit at once.

       His head spun, unable to process the amount of hunger he felt. Corbin’s primal instincts came into control, and he looked around the room savagely for something, anything, to eat.

       The dust and sand on the ground swirled around the room and formed into three of the creatures that Corbin saw when Sylvarien and Valerith were explaining the races to him.

       All his brain could register them as was food at the moment. Once the Gravgaren, Thrumvak, and Varren were all completed, they charged at Corbin.

       His immense hunger heightened his senses, dodging the attacks they threw at him.

       The Thrumvak swung its large club at Corbin, but instead of getting hit by it, he used a gravitational force to redirect it into his hand. Corbin bit into the club, making it explode into particles and being absorbed into his body.

       Without a weapon, Corbin easily lunged onto the Thrumvak and bit into it too.

       After the Thrumvak, he turned his attention to the Varren, easily pulling it in with his gravitational force and tearing it apart.

       The Gavgarin was an issue, Corbin tried to bring it close, but it just flew backwards, nullifying the pull.

       Corbin ran into it, avoiding the molten gold that it spewed at him. He jumped onto the wall and pushed off, allowing him to get on the Gavgarin’s back and kill it.

       The particles absorbed into his body and he fell to the ground, returning to his senses.

       “Oh goodness, I feel way too full.” He vomited onto the floor and stood up slowly.

       An image appeared in his head of a fang of some type along with whispering that he couldn’t understand, after a second, the image and whispers disappeared.

       The door began to open slowly.

       Corbin dragged himself slowly over to the door, desperate to get out. 

       The door opened fully, and Corbin stepped out.

       “You are back!” Sylvarien shouted excitedly.

       “Yeah, I made it out.” Corbin fell backwards, unable to stop his exhaustion.

       Before he hit the ground, a draft of air saved him. Valerith descended the steps saved Corbin’s head from hitting the stone.

       “Is he okay?”

       “I am not sure,” she said. “Corbin, are you fine?”

       “Yeah... I’m all good,” he said weakly.

       “What happened in there?” Valerith asked.

       “I’m not sure, but right before the doors opened, I saw an image of a fang in my mind. I’m pretty sure it was a Sivketh’s fang,” he explained. “I also heard whispering in my mind in a language I couldn’t understand. I could be completely wrong on this, but I think we have to get a Sivketh’s fang.”

       “Oh, crap.”