Andir set out that evening in search of a monster.
He had learned, as all children must, that adults are capricious with the truth. His parents seemed to believe that Andir’s age precluded any serious disclosure of why the world worked as it did. His persistent questions were most often met with a sigh and a tired "because." If he caught them in a particularly dark mood, they would answer his question with a wry story invented on the spot and see how long it took Andir to get the joke. For the bulk of his ten years, Andir had believed his father’s tale of the uncharacteristically kind Ghôl who delivered presents to obedient children on winter’s longest night. Their jokes grew increasingly bitter as the boy grew older; his parents were simple people who believed that an active mind led to nothing but laziness. Far better to bring honor to the King through hard work.
Over the years Andir began to wonder how much of what he knew was true. Age was not a guarantee of wisdom, honesty or kindness. If adults could lie or joke about some things, what was to stop them from lying about the rest? So many things he took for granted might be half-truths, or even preposterous fantasies. A precocious child in many respects, Andir found this notion depressing.
He considered what he knew - or thought he knew - of recent history. Some of the people in his village were veterans of the Great War, and the rest spoke of it so often one might be forgiven for thinking it had ended sixty days ago rather than sixty years. In light of Andir’s developing skepticism, many of the tales told about the war seemed suspect. Hordes of reanimated dead defeated by small, ragged groups of mercenaries and volunteers? A severed head that spoke, lies slipping through its lips to an audience that would soon be dead? Alric, then simply a wizard of immense power and not a King, plotting and fighting against the walking dead without so much as a scratch on his chin from Balor’s rotting armies? Balor himself, with a legion of creatures bound to him through sorcery and intimidation, unable to stop Alric from lopping off his head? And Soulblighter - the towering, mad thing who cut off his own face and tore out his own heart as part of a ritual too dark to speak of?
None of it seemed especially believable, although the adults still spoke of Soulblighter in hushed tones; according to the stories, no one had ever discovered what became of him. Andir was now inclined to dismiss this as superstition, but chose to reserve judgment until he could learn more about the war. So he set his sights on a goal closer to home: learning the truth about the caves in the forest near his village.
The forest was full of dead trees which had a habit of falling over and killing things. Knowing this, his mother told stories of a terrifying blur of claws and fangs that lurked in caves and fed on young boys.
|