Rhistmaege

Beginnings

Dovi fell through age and time, from darkness to light, from birth to death and back again to the beginning. The beguiling cycle of life swirled through him, ran by him, pushed back against him, and ultimately, cradled him in its arms. He knew them all. He knew the first. He knew the last. He knew those who almost were, and those who wished they had never been.

And so he fell.

He wore the Crown as Alreeg Greyseer, Lord of Avrenhalde during the Age of Reformation, who stretched the crooked land by might of iron fist, and made it straight and narrow once again, reaching far and wide to steady the unwashed masses who served the snakes of The Sunimedran. By sheer will alone, he cleansed the red-stained shores of Van Marquilian and steadied those left to writhe and waste away upon the bloodied banks of Beckenber.

He took wing and sailed the crimson skies as Mekkoi Halisshedge, the Watcher on the Wyrm, who cast Arbrelon and his Pentragoons back into the Sea of Ash, and swept away the squalor and filth in which his people were left to rot.

He saw as sultry-eyed Dark Raven, Finnobywn of Kassgareth, who through Rhist and Wit and stiff-backed spine, bent but did not break beneath the harrowing Time of Sickness. She sacrificed all to strike down the StekenKing of the stalking Stekenkag, who served the Black Wives of Waterdown, who poisoned brook and river and lake. She alone held the shattered bridge between man and his last breath, single handedly keeping the line of Men unbroken.

Dovi's eyes rolled from sheets of icy blue to great, green fields of thimble beans, to blackened, dripping orbs reflecting upon the butchery they had doled.

He was a merchant of exotic powders, carrying casks of ruby cinnabar, chests of cadmium and barrels filled with ghost of antimony across the scorching Barren Lands, all to please the fancies of the wicked women who groped usurpers who had taken his own land.

He knew them all.

Spanking newborn to tumbling toddler, to friendless, sobbing teen, to strapping youth, and back again to the covered corpse beneath the ground.

He knew them all.

Friend, enemy, lover, conquerer. Baker, Mother, Father, mourner, fisher, seamstress, scholar, tracker, judge and juror.

And so he fell, careening wildly from lifetime to lifetime. Through Wit or Folly or Venom, he suffered. Without Wit or Folly or Venom, he suffered.

When he last thought his days were meant to cast adrift upon this shifting sea of those who passed before, the falling stopped.

Fingers felt hard stone and he scrambled to his feet. He was Dovinicus Macabre once again. A blinding light struck like a tidal wave, then shattered upon as a smiling face of madness. What new prison have I built?

"Welcome to Meregrund, Dovinicus. We're most glad to have you," said a soothing voice from deep within the yellow haze.

Dovi held up a hand to shield his eyes, desperate to see who called him to this place. "W-Who are you? Where- am I? What h-has happened to me?"

A chuckling laugh bounced upon the balmy air, as the blazing brightness receded and slipped away. In its wake, standing before Dovi, on the pebbly shore of some magnificent, emerald green lake, was an older man with the most amiable smile Dovi had ever seen. He immediately felt at ease. The man was neither tall, nor was he short. Dovi tried to put a finger on the fellow's shape, but could only surmise he was neither thin as a whip nor round as a tub, falling somewhere in between. His well shorn hair sat atop his head as a neat and tidy table-setting. His skin was papery and drawn tight across high cheekbones, but where Dovi expected deep worry lines, there was a face without lax. Try as he may, he just could not put a finger on the man's age. His neck and hands and feet fared less well against the rub of time, as crisscrossing lines hinted at decades upon decades of wear. He wore rough woven tan breeches and a sagging, creamy shirt, both seeming to have worked years beyond their duties end. He carried the simple wear as if it were tailor-made, seemingly brilliantly cut of the latest fashion, fit for entertaining high Lords of Avrenhalde. So bizarre. Who is this?