Mythlands: Mythical Origins

1. I rose to a Great Height

A long time ago I fell. It was not a fall that came in pieces, but an absolute.

My Fall was not coincidental but orchestrated by both human hands and the hands of fate.

Once, I was young and happy.

Once, I loved a woman but another coveted her affections.

I was betrayed and imprisoned on false charges. 13 years of anguish lay before me. 13 years of hell, but I had within me a spark of something that would not allow me to lay down and die. I made friends with a fellow inmate and became privy to a great secret, but one alas, that I could not make use of in my current condition.

For my rise to begin, I must first die ... and then be resurrected. There was only one way out and that by means of a crudely stitched sack that would serve as my body bag. I could not fathom how to fool my jailers into believing I had passed, but opportunity arose in the foulest form. My friend ... my only friend, was dying. He begged me to enter his cell through the small tunnel we had chipped away throughout long years of imprisonment; I was to wait until he was gone and in the brief time between the warders placing his emaciated frame within the sack and their return with guards to carry the remains, I was to remove him into my cell and substitute myself. He begged that I do so and that I make good use of the secret he had bequeathed me.

With great trepidation I enacted the plan and to my surprise it worked. I was flung from the ramparts into the sea. Secreted about my person was a sharp implement that had taken years to construct. Using this, I ripped my way free of the confining cloth and kicked my heels surfaceward.

Luck was with me. I came ashore at a nearby island and was later rescued by a passing ship of smugglers.

It was then a matter of making my way to another island, where my friend's legacy awaited me. A fortune was buried there and now it was mine. My rise began.

Venturing back into the world, I reinvented myself as a nobleman and I sought out my betrayers. None who met me could connect the youngster of 13 years before with the white templed aristocrat, aged more than 13 years should, by the harshness of his imprisonment.

I used the anonymity and my newfound wealth to enact my revenge and finally my rise to a great height culminated with the most splendid prize of all ... I was reunited with my one true love.

We spent decades living together in blissful happiness ... I remember it all so clearly. I remember being an old man on my death bed and then ...

Suddenly I was as I had been, in that first year of freedom, the year of my revenge and rise, but now I found myself somewhere strange. My first reasoning was that I had died and been transported to a strange afterlife.

What else might one assume, when one finds himself rejuvenated and almost run down by a hurtling monstrosity which roared from nowhere belching steam! Atop it sat a clothed squat frog-like demon who yelled at me to get out of the way.

Many decades have passed since that day and now I have come to understand that I am somehow in a new reality and those I took for demons and their devices, are naught but fellow travellers.

The creature turned out to be quite friendly and a decent sort. 

'By jingo,' he greeted me. 'I almost ran you over ... you're not by chance a new arrival are you?'

Though still in shock, a gentleman never forgets his manners and so almost instinctively I replied. 'I suppose I must be. My name is Dantes ... Edmund Dantes, also known as The Count of Monte Cristo.'

My strange new friend smiled warmly at me. 'Splendid to meet you Count. My name is Mr Toad.'

And so I rose to a new height, in a new and marvelous existence.