A Ripple in The Void

"When i was young i always used to be mad at my father, what did i used to say... ah yes 'DONT YOU HAVE ANY AMBITION! WHY CAN'T YOU JOIN THEM SECTS, THEM GUILDS, EVEN THE WARRIOR'S ASSOCIATION WILL DO?'..... ahh did i scare you just now?" asked a middle aged man with pale complextion and a honest visage, to a child not more than seven years old who was a little shocked at first, but then quickly reverted back to his usual precocious countenance.

"I am alright, Aba" said the child with auburn hair and black eyes.

"Okay then; So you see I was not a good son, always angry and frustated about the minimalism we had to endure. You see the problem wasn't that it was always one of us that had to go to sleep on an empty stomach, which was always your grandmother. No, the problem more severe, it was that I didn't see an end to this midgetry of desires, this lowering of our head in front of the ever-changing nature, which seemed like it stood still for people like us, and it will always be the same unless something drastic happened" said the middle aged man while oiling the hinges of his sallet helmet, which he had to wear the next morning when he ventured into those dangerous Orichalcum mines.

"So, did something drastic happened?" inquired the child while fiddling with a queer-shaped rock

"Yes and No, Hermes" said the man while chuckling.

"Not another puzzle, I still haven't solved the last one" said Hermes in a brooding way.

"Patience, son, its not just a virtue, it is the greatest weapon one can have. Without patience you are going to miss out on all the mystics of the world for there are too many" said the man solemnly.

"Please not today Aba, Orion is waiting for me at the Bazaar, there's going to be an amulet on auction today, they are saying that it can control lightning." spoke Hermes with a disquiet visage.

"ALRIGHT ALRIGHT, but riddle me this first, that why there haven't been any war in the past two thousand years?" inquired the man.

"Dont know" said Hermes impatiently.

"Because of plagues, son, epidemics, and not the likes of Black Death, these were of the mystical kind my son. And there were no cure, there were only malice and death. Even the most stubborn warmongerer did not have enough time or patience to spread their war-doctrines amongst the general populace to incite wars. So there were only small scruples amongst various guilds and sects, and they were also economic in nature. These mystic-plagues were given different names in different epochs of time, once it was even called 'God's Judgement', but to us, the common working class the name didnot matter as much as the horror and despair it caused." said the man as he stood up checked the Ether-Dial, a relatively new invention that uses the Mana or Ether in the atmosphere to measure time accurately, as if time can ever be measured, thought the man with dark lines beneath his eyes.

"So what happened then?" asked Hermes.

"Then huh....., well one of these mystic-plagues happened when i was fifteen. It was absolute Chaos. Being as ambitious as i was, i remembered an ancient tenet that Chaos is also an Oppurtunity, but soon i realized that whomever that philosophised that tenet wasn't talking about this. But ....." the man stopped speaking and pointed at the Ether-Dial.

"But what, But what?" spoke Hermes impatiently.

"What about friend Orion who is waiting for you in the Bazaar?" asked the man.

"Well he can wait a bit longer." said Hermes reluctantly.

"Well alright then, you see during the last plague something strange happened, people who got infected didn't become sick,on the contrary they were becoming ridiculously strong, they were changing into something, that was simply not human. The most i remember were their skin, there were archaic patterns engraved on their skin, black and grey were they, paterns of divine structure or maybe some mystical formulae that mankind wasn't capable of solving. I drew almost every one them i saw, here take a look." said the man as he kept looking over his shoulder and just as he lifted the tile where the word 'arcanum' was inscribed, Hermes couldn't control his emotions as he jumped in front of his father and tore the rustic pages from his fathers hand as if it contained the ancient secrets of all that is mystic had been all along under his playing abode.

Just as Hermes laid his eyes on the pages, he realized the gravity of the situation. He was afraid, because he had always heard whispers about his father's legendary temper, it seemed like he was going to experince it firsthand today.

"Do you know what you have done boy?" said the man solemnly.

There was absolutely no words or even a noise that came out of hermes's mouth, but a vast number of thoughts and words were flowing through his head.

"You just desecrated the most valuable thing i had in my possesion." said the man angrily.

"I thought i was the most valuable thing in your possesion." spoke Hermes coquettishly.

Both father and son stared at each other for a while, until the father gave in and started laughing and then he said " Your wit will either take you to greatness or disaster. So do you like it."

"It is rather strange that I dont know what these patterns are but i like them very much, it that even possible." said Hermes.

The man gave a light chuckle and said "Ofcourse it, you just experienced it. So do you want to hear the rest?"