Doom’s Gatekeeper – Part 2

Last week, I went off the rails.

I want to sit here and provide excuses, I want to sit here and say how hard my life is. 

But everyone has a hard life.  Everyone has troubles, everyone has setbacks.  The difference between writers and wannabes are how we react when the chips are down.  So far, I’ve reacted just like some laptop wielding yutz who will never do more than stare at a blank word document and wonder what could’ve been.

The world I want to make with Doom is one of Arthurian intrigue and wild vistas.  I want Forest to become a place of wonder and danger, where anything and everything can and will happen.  That’s far away from where this story idea originally started, but I’m okay with such derivations if they can serve a greater purpose. 

Without further pontifications…

Doom’s Gatekeeper, Part 2

In Haldraxx, magic is real.  Not real in that only a jealous few may harness and utilize the magical energies which pervade it.  Magic is real in Haldraxx, and all life wield it to some degree or another.  Plants, unsurprisingly, are most adept at it’s use.  Magic requires a subtle touch, and years of practice and knowledge to wield effectively and efficiently.  Plants of sufficient age became so adept with their magics, so saturated with power, that they became sentient.

The oldest, and by far the wisest, of these plants lives in the deepest, densest, and most dangerous jungle.  Within his shallow basin, he waited with the Blood of the High Kings.  Twice, in all of Haldraxian history, humans have gone to the pool and come back bearing it’s mark.  Their bodies branded with the yellow-green lightning, their minds and eyes forced open as far as they could go, then forced further.  Hayoan, the first High King, the Mother of Galdria, Midwife of Empire, was the first to escape from the pools depths. 

Hayoan Bandeleth was condemned to die.  The daughter of a minor chieftain who was overtaken in battle, her life was left in the hands of her father’s killer.  Never a beautiful woman, features chiseled and narrow like the bird of prey who’s name she bore, Hayoan refused to yield to her captor.  After weeks of escape attempts, fighting every one of her captors, and refusing physical advances with her teeth, the new chieftain gave her to the mercies of the Heart Jungle.  It was as good as thrusting the knife in her himself, yet left his hands clean in the eyes of gods and men alike.

Yet Hayoan would not be so easily conquered.  She was the daughter of the chief, tasked with remembering all of the songs of her people so that they could be passed on to the next generation.  She knew that the forest, for all it’s danger, housed wisdom and intelligence as well.  She did not head into the forest with horror; she was filled with resolve.

She marched deeper into the confines of the jungle, singing as she went, weaving her modest magical talents into the songs so that the forest would know she meant no harm.  Beasts and insect alike regarded her, then dismissed her as neither predator nor prey.  The deeper she went however, the more the trees themselves pressed their attention upon her.  These were trees of the First Forest, as old as Haldraxx itself.   They regarded her with all of their might and accumulated knowledge, and she felt smaller under their watchful eyes.

She walked for days, steadily moving deeper into the forest, subsisting on nuts and fruits she found on the ground, not wanting to disturb the elder woods for her meals.  Her voice was cracked and raw from the efforts of singing, but even this deep in the woods, the beasts would feast upon her if she showed weakness.  Finally, when she was certain she could go no further, when her footsteps fell one after the other in a stumbling line, she cleared the grasping roots of the forest floor, and came upon a well manicured clearing.  The clearing was free of any leaves or other debris, and the sunlight from above shone down with crystalline perfection.  The only feature this clearing possessed was a small pond, contained in a raised stone plateau.  The water upon the surface was as smooth as glass, not a ripple marring it.

To be continued…

Pondfully,
Justin