The Ageless One: Beginnings

The Ageless One: His Beginning

            What am I?  I am a Twyla.  Don’t know what a Twyla is?  That’s fine, I can explain.  We, the Twyla, ordain all magic.  We are supernatural beings who live on a higher plane of existence, and it is we who decide what incantations or rituals cast which spell.  We give magic order and purpose to protect the mortal realms, otherwise there would be chaos. 

            But this story isn’t about us.  It’s about a young boy called Doelan, a mortal I’ve been observing for some time.  You see we, the Twyla, try not to interfere in the affairs of mortals, but sometimes, to prevent darkness from destroying them, we have no choice.  There are times when we must give mortals a fighting chance, and one of the best ways we can do that is by watching certain people whom we know have a great destiny.  Whether they devote their lives to fighting evil, or just happen to be at the right place at the right time, we make certain they have everything they need to fight the good fight.

            This young boy, Doelan, is one such person.  You may ask what was so special about him, and why the Twyla would watch him.  You might wonder what great destiny could possibly be in store for him.  My answer is simple.

            I do not know.

            You see sometimes not all Twyla can foresee a particular future.  As it stands only our esteemed queen, the greatest of all Twyla, knows exactly what this Doelan will do, or try to do.  She is the queen of the Twyla, and of magic itself, and she is convinced that this boy is destined to be more legendary than any hero before him.  However, there are some who would question her judgment.

            Why?  Well, there are a few reasons.  For starters, the land Doelan has called home for the first few years of his life is Halhor.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but Halhor is home to the gislers, who are not considered a very strong people, owing to their eternal youth.   That might not seem such a bad thing, but other races grow up big and strong while the gislers are locked in the bodies of children throughout their entire lives.  They do not die of old age, but as weak as they are no one has ever wanted them as allies during wartime.  War, it has been said, is the work of men, not boys. 

The gislers tried many times, most notably during a council with the eagle men, who were waging a war against snake-like monsters called slefah, one of the evilest dark creatures of their world.  The gislers wanted to help, but the eagle men Chieftain said, “it would be dishonorable to bring children onto the battle field.  I am sorry young ones.” 

At the time, the gislers were still under rule of the Ciniceros Empire, where the human emperor declared, “I understand you want to help, but you must stay under our protection.  It’s for your own good.”  However, some gislers at the council believed that the other races merely envied their youth, and one mayor of Halhor infamously declared, “Too bad we cannot fight against time itself, then you’d be scrambling to be our allies.”

            It didn’t go over well.

            Whatever the reason, most other races view the gislers as weak or in need of protection, while the gislers disagree.  They view themselves as just like any other species, and this is the race that Doelan was born into, an eternally young species called the gislers, also known as the Ageless Ones.

            Or so it seemed.

            What Doelan saw for the first few years of his life wasn’t exactly true, you might say.  However, he will not discover this for some time, so for now, let’s pretend everything he saw was as it seemed so we can focus on Doelan himself.

            The second reason one might question the Twyla queen’s interest in him is quite simple.

Doelan grew up in an orphanage, the kind of place you don’t expect someone great and legendary to come from.  He was raised under the care of attendants, not parents, in a stone building with many rooms for the various orphaned children.  Not that Doelan knew what stone was when he was young, but the building was made of it all the same.  Actually not knowing about stone caused him a bit of confusion once.  Only a few months old and just learning to walk, older gislers (boys and girls who looked no older than fifteen) would pick him up and take him to the window to let him look outside.  He couldn’t go there yet, but they let him look and he saw the gisler houses; richly decorated marble cottages with impressive looking columns holding up the porch roofs.   They were pretty to look at, unlike the drab stone building Doelan lived in, but he didn’t really know that.  Since he had never seen the exterior of his building, he naturally assumed that it looked like the marble ones on the outside.