Pangaea-world.dk

Father and Son

"Many people ask me why I have such a disgust towards necromancers... you know, those that wear black and conjure the undead. I have a more... personal reason.

My father and I were very close. He would tell me stories before bed of the imp that took the gold coin from an ancient dragon, and I'm sure all you young ones know what I am talking about. He would always retell the story a different way. Sometimes the imp snuck on the dragon's scaly back or clung to it's jagged teeth while it trampled through the dark dungeons. One day, me and my father were walking in the forest to get apples. It was ordinary for us to look for food in the area than to buy them at the food market. We always grew up with nature, instead of just purchasing food because it was more convenient. As I walked towards the tree, my father saw I was too small to get up the branches. He lifted me up onto his shoulders and I would swing my arms towards those delicious red rubies just dangling from within arm's reach. We did this until we had a full basket, but we had two more baskets to fill up, and the apples were higher in the branches. My father asked me if I trusted him, well of course I did. He told he would swing me up into the tree to get the rest of the apples, and if I did what he said I wouldn't get hurt. As I climbed throughout the tree, reaching for ripe apples in the branches I nearly had the other two baskets filled... I looked down to show the prize of apples in the baskets and then my father...was nowhere to be found! I am especially good at hearing, once my mother was eating in another room in our cottage and I could hear her spoon fall behind a closed door. I looked around as much as I could and hair stood up on the back of my neck once I realized he was nowhere in sight.

I hurriedly tried to climb down the tree and landed hard back-down to the ground, seeing stars appear before me. In the distance there was a dark cave, my father has always told me to not go into dark areas, but I convinced myself that is the only place he could have gone! I crept into the cave slowly, the darkness began to consume me as I could not see any further in. ""Father!"" I screamed, and my voice echoed down the long corridor of stone. I was able to make out a torch-like flame in the distance so I started walking towards it cautiously. I had a lunar mace that I carried with me in my backpack and I was sure to wield it. I clutched the mace harder as I reached closer and closer to the torch. The torch illuminated a light that revealed stony stairs that seemed to me to stretch to the abyss. ""Father!"" I cried, and only once again I heard my voice return to me in a cascade of echoes. As I lurched down the stairs another orange torch light. Then, as I gazed down the stairs I saw something that still makes me cringe to this day. A seemingly paste of some sort of red was smeared and rubbed into the steps. Blood? It seemed to get darker and darker as the steps progressed, as I looked behind me the color was less and faded. I was now trembling in fear, I have never seen anything like it! I clutched my mace even harder, I was not sure what was drawing me further down the stairs but I eventually made it to the last step, leaving my shoe covered in blood up to my ankles! The stench followed its way to my nostrils and I gagged and spit and started running back up towards the lighted torch, I ran up towards the cave, towards the door by the next torch and I was back in the cave! I ran towards the entrance and I see my father I start to smile and....Two black-robed figures were standing there behind him. One had a skull-capped staff and another donned an odd shaped wooden stick with a curving silver blade, which I would later recall it was a scythe. And my father.. He had the most peculiar look on his face..It was showered with guilt, fear and helplessness.. This is one story my father had never told me."

-Daren Priesten

The Scum of the World

*Daren takes a satisfying sip of the finest wine brewed exclusively from Britain's Blue Moon inn from his shiny silver goblet encircled around with glistening light green emeralds*

"The two black-robed men with revealing pink daemon-bone armor gloves and helmets peeked out from their hoods and long midnight sleeves chanted in the distance. The one with the odd skull-capped staff raised up his arm and a wave of light blue lightning blasted in an area effect around them like a spider web. I closed my eyes in reflex, and looked back up, they were gone. Along with my father! In a feeling of confusion, hate, sadness and regret I cried there on the grass, hoping it was just a dream, I even tried pinching myself. I remember gathering the dusty apples scattered on the ground, trembling and dropping more than I wanted back into the baskets. Then I had a terrifying thought. I had to tell my mother what had happened! This was just terrible, I had no idea how to even bring it up to her! But, perhaps she could give me some sort of clues as to what had happened, and perhaps a piece of the puzzle needed to find those men in black and exact revenge! Thoughts were whirling in my head on my way back home.

As I journeyed over the rolling hills the sun slowly became heavy and dropped further further down and my sight became limited in the darkness. I continued towards the door to my home. I was scared and heaving, holding onto my knees just as pillars hold up buildings and I peered down, making out a color I recalled earlier in the torch light in the cave. A sickness fell into my stomach. I did not want to open the door. I did not want to open the door! A tree branch snapped behind me and I dived into the tall grass nearby and pulled out my mace in preparation for anything. It was just a stray cat. It continued on to Gaea knows where. I laid forward in the grass watching blood poor lightly through crack of the bottom door. I now stood vertical and approached the door. I slowly opened it, clutching my mace. As the door opened, the corpse of my mother fell before my feet and I screamed in horror. She was naked, with strange carvings in her flesh, her face was gone and replaced with an oval mangled cluster of flesh and blood. I couldn't bare the sight of her.

The interior of my house was covered in blood and symbols written with tar ink, candles were lit in shapes of zig-zag and the tables had bowls of unfinished soup on them. The struggle was apparent, the chairs were topped over and one of the curtains was pulled to the extreme of being ripped from the bent rod that supported it. I looked back at my mother, by Gaea she was pregnant! What sort of scum of the world would do such a thing? I looked near our cauldron we used for making stews and there was a rusty meat cleaver on the ground, covered with blood, I trailed it to my mother's butchered stomach, the fetus that was once inside of her was missing. And then I did something I should of done a long time ago, I fainted."


Daren Priesten

Cold, Black and Pale

"Dreadful to hear dreadful to hear...And what happened next?"

"Six harsh years passed. But I did not put them to waste. For years, I trained, I hunted orcs. I would hunt them with a friend I made while buying loaves of bread at a local bakery. We hunted the orcs that had durable skin, not durable enough for my mace I had acquired from their ""Dragon Defender"". The mace would let off a crispy chill after each cracking blow. Their mages would squeal words of incantations and my friend would greet them with arrows to the face. She had a fine aim! Once she was able to shoot a manastone out of a nearby wizard's pack unknowingly... So perfectly that only the manastone fell to the ground and rolled right towards us. Her finesse was just absolutely remarkable.

But yes, I trained. Before I knew it I was wielding a war mace and shield. I often had targets I would use for attacking, I would ensure to place a black robe over them. It helped. I studied anatomy by books that the scribes had in their libraries to the public. I not only trained my body, I also trained my mind.

We were returning from a hunt one day and we passed by the graveyard in Britain. A black cloaked man was humming incantations next to a gravestone. It was not unusual for me to attack necromancers on sight. I grabbed my war mace and stormed towards the pale emaciated figure. He held a black staff with a skull cap. As I neared closer and closer to him he looked at me with cold blue eyes and I immediately recognized those eyes. I charged towards him and swung my heavy war mace at his knee and I heard it crack, I hit him again and lunged the handle into his mouth with great force so he couldn't speak. His tongue snarled around uncontrollably. ""YOU! I know who you are!!" Is all I could really let out, and he looked up at me like a helpless feline, I saw saliva pouring down his chin now, like water pouring down a waterfall.

My companion had no idea what was going on, she was frightened and ran away. ""Where is my father!?"" I pushed the war mace's stalk further towards his epiglottis. ""Where is he?!"" As if I would let him speak. By now I was amazed I didn't make him suffocate in his own secretions. I removed the handle, but was prepared for anything. Or, so I thought. I suddenly felt a sharp pain come from the back of my head and saw nothing but blackness.

I woke up, upside down in a cave-dwelling and my head..throbbing! I was so focused on exacting my revenge at that moment I forgot of any possible company the necromancer may have had. The two black-robed menaces were conversing to each other in another room off in the distance as torchlight filled the room and sweat trickled down my body like raindrops competing in a race on a slick tree. I looked around the room as my vision slowly blurred into clarity. Then I saw the skinned face of my mother staring at me, upside down. I cursed. The necromancers must of heard me, they walked slowly towards me, couldn't see their eyes. I bet they were pale cold and black.

A third figure walked into the room. He walked briskly with a red book, flipping it and humming a tune I recognized. The black robed man came closer and closer, then his hood inched back enough so I could see the side his face now. And then I noticed.. No, it can't be. Another captive was in the room with me, dangling just as I was. It was an older woman. The third dark robed figure cut a curved knife into her stomach and cut down from the abdomen to the chest of her exposed breasts. The scream of death echoed the stony room and the other two necromancers danced and laughed. After the figure gutted the woman like a pig and took out the meaty flesh and dropped them into a nearby pot, I looked in horror and could see clearly now,it was my father, only wretched and pale. He had blood all over his hands and then started walking towards me with the same steel blade, he said to me, ""Son, there is so much to tell."" His eyes were wide and black.

At this moment, I thought of all the years I was alone, yelling at the moon to somehow bring my father back. And now here he was, developed many wrinkles and as pale as cotton and on his way to kill me. So many questions whirled in my head but all I could do was just look at him in disbelief, in shock. A stew was being made. It smelled wonderful. Beef and broth swirled in the distance and danced towards my nostrils. Ah, a hint of carrot too. The necromancers started throwing blobs of meat into the stew. Then my stomach curled. The heat was intense. I squirmed in my upside down prison of rope, to no use. ""It must be done!"" The skull capped demon snarled at my father, who was drawing even nearer now towards me. Apparently the red book he was holding was a cookbook.

I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable, flexing my abdomen. And then, randomly, a butterfly gently landed onto my nose. I stared at it cross-eyed and surprised, and then the dark cave was suddenly filled with an immense light. Two golden-robed men with green vibrant armor were into view and the necromancers started screaming incantations and preparing against the attack. I looked towards the other skull-capped staff necromancer and his lips were pressing into his mouth as if a force was stopping him from being able to speak. One necromancer summoned a demon and pointed towards the green man, but he quickly chanted and lightning flashed from seemingly all directions. My father turned to attack one of the men with his bent blade but was quickly crushed by a heavy green maul. His head caved in from the force of the blow and he knocked over the stew and it poured all over him and the room, one necromancer slipped on it and met his demise by a shiny green sword impaling his head. Blood oozed from his forehead and his cold dark eyes seemed to return to a normal hue of blue within seconds.

I fell to the hard stone cobble floor and realized one of the men had cut the rope hoisting me from the air. I was given a robe and food. A knight bellowed to me, ""Fear not captive, we will get you back home safely."" The words were like sweet nectar. But, what home? I remember thinking suddenly. If it wasn't for these saviors, I would have been killed, and seemingly eaten! The rescuers grabbed me carefully and brought me out of the tomb. I took one last look of my father, mangled and now boiled skin. We continued towards the ostards they had waiting outside of the room. A priest turned to me and asked, ""What do you know about Gaea?"".

``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
"Ah, this is quite the story Daren. I never knew of your dark past"

"I often ponder, what convicted my father of doing what he did? What sort of brainwashing did he undergo, or had he always carried this evil sickness within him?

But I will tell ye what I do know Brother Argyle. I hate necromancers."

Daren Priesten