Prelude II - Sage

Chronicler, you might have heard of the stories about am not being of this world. Well, that is in fact true. I come from another dimension, far different than yours. A world where the only intelligent race is that of humans. There are animals of course, but apart from humans there is no other intelligent species that we knew of. It is hard to explain the differences between the two worlds, but suffice to say that in that world without magic, the intellect of humans is what made up for it. Humans managed to build flying chariots and high palaces of glass and stone, golems of our own which we called "robots" and tools that would allow one to access all available knowledge called "computers." From that point of view that world did really seem magical but as all worlds, evil was in it. I was a successful...merchant. In that world, my type of merchant was called "corporate businessman." I had great wealth and great power but then I... lost interest. Running every day to acquire more power, more wealth to then die and become dust, was that all that life was? I decided to travel for some time, leaving my underlings to manage my business, and traveled around the world. I loved, hated, cried and laughed, looking at it now those were truly beautiful times. I had learned many things, or so I thought.

As the last trip of my travels, I decided to cross a desert which was known as Sahara.

You may not know it, but as humans we paid dearly the price for our technology. Our streets and cities were filled with light and life both during the day and during the night, but the price for that was sacrificing the natural light of the sky. Because of the excessive human light, I had never seen the starry sky with my own eyes and so I decided to end my travel with that vision, I wanted to engrave the image of that sky on my soul before returning, and that desert was on the best places on my world to do that. After those few years of travel I lost interest in my wealth but I still had a family to return to, so under the guide of a local I started what I thought would be the last step of my journey, but what proved itself to be only the beginning. After some days of travel, we were caught by a sandstorm and the mount on which I was, which was known in that world as "camel", got scared and ran into the vastness of the desert with me on it. When the storm settled, I had lost the guide and found that the camel guided me to an oasis. I decided to camp in the oasis and set up a fire to signal my presence hoping that the guide might not be too far and notice the smoke. As night started to fall and the sky rolled like a scroll, the stars started to come up. One then two, ten then a hundred, after a few hours I had lost count. The spectacle of thousands of stars struck me, and in that moment I felt that something had changed in me.

I set up camp and after using the tools in my backpack to start a fire and eating while rationing my food and water, I decided to explore the little oasis as I was not seeing any trace of the guide. The oasis was geographically attached to a mountain so I hoped that if I could climb at the top with a torch, I could hope to either see the guide or let him see me from the top of the small mountain. As I climbed and reached the top and started overlooking the desert seeing no one, a wind started to blow calm at first and then stronger and stronger. I decided to get down for I feared that another sandstorm was approaching and as I descended, I noticed that the camel was getting more and more agitated. I started to rush toward the little camp when I saw the camel free itself from the knot that tied it to the tree and run into the open desert. I rushed down from the little mountain trying to call the camel back and a great anxiety was overtaking me. Without a mount I had no chance of returning to the nearest city for I roughly knew the area where I was when I lost the guide and it was far from any city or human settlement. By the time I got down from the mountain the camel had disappeared, and rushing into the desert at night would have been meaningless, so I decided to sleep at the camp and think of a plan.

While I was lying down angry and scared trying to recollect my thoughts, the wind kept getting more and more unforgiving and the sand blown by the wind started to cover the beautiful starry sky. I closed the tent hoping that it would protect me and waited for hours. My mind was filled with the sound of the howling of the wind which like a hungry pack of wolves was lying in wait ready to pounce at me if I tried to get out of the tent. As I was waiting, I got more and more drowsy until a sound woke me up, the defeaning sound of the sudden silence. The wind that tirelessly howled for hours suddenly stopped and nothing could be heard except a deafening silence, so loud that I could hear my own heartbeat like the beating of a drum. Like a thunder.

I decided to get out of the tent and when I did, I found a man standing by the lake at the center of the oasis. The temptation of jumping from the joy was rapidly exchanged with fear and anxiety for I knew that the man must have seen the camp and could have been a bandit. He was just there facing the lake with his back toward me.

"Excuse me," I said trying to gather all the little knowledge I had of the local language "I am lost, could you help me?"

The man then turned toward me. He had the look of a sage, with ragged clothes, a turban, brownish skin and intensely green eyes. "Lost indeed." Said the man smiling. His smile was not at all reassuring and it only made me more anxious.

"Can you help me?" I repeated in confusion.

"That will depend on you." Said the man. "I have been looking at your travel. Tell me, what have you learnt?"

I answered "My travel? In the desert?"

"Your travel during these years." Said the sage.

"How do you know..."I answered.

The man replied "I know many things of you Lode."

At that point I got scared, how did he know my name? I decided to run and as I took a step back facing the man I tripped on my own backpack and glanced at it for just a second. When I turned my eyes toward the man he was gone. As I turned my head to take the backpack and run, I saw the man behind me. I screamed, took the backpack and ran as the man was looking at me smiling eerily. I started to run as fast as I ever did, not looking back, I just wanted to be away. Away. Away.