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I stretched my arm out in front of me. The runes were a flat black, not like the Ripper’s runes that glowed bright blue. I knew that he said it would be best to not touch the runes on the wall, but could it really hurt to finally understand the language around me? I looked at my untouched arm before stretching it out once more to touch the left wall. The instant my fingertips brushed the symbols the runes on my right arm exploded in a blinding flash of blue light.
I felt the runes being carved into my left arm, I watched them fade from the wall once more but appear again on my arm. One rune at a time, the pain felt like forever, but it was quickly finished. I made a fist and held up my arm, it glowed dully then faded again to black, with a tint of transparency as if not
fully there.
I twisted my arm around to try and read the passage that was there but was confused when I found that it stopped mid sentence.
Only in death will your soul escape the…
I pulled the sleeve of my shirt up hoping to find more. What I found instead was much more than I had wanted. The passage did indeed follow up my arm, then across my collar bone and neck, back, and chest. I couldn’t finish the passage without a mirror, for the rest of it looped around to my back.
I let go the fact that I had a mysterious message on my body and entered into the darkened passage of the tower. The passages held secrets I would have known nothing about but I fully understood the runes on the walls around me. The wall talked of a time where ancient beings guarded the realm, a place meant only for the banished or the powerful. It talked then of the fall. The beings of power fought each other for power, or over right and wrong. At the end of the hall it looked like they had eradicated each other.
I found myself at the first doorway since I came into the tower. It was locked tight bared to keep intruders out. Upon the door was an ancient sketch of a beast; one that looked too much like a mouse for any comfort. If this was a place for the worst type of mouse, the most dangerous or most powerful, then I sure didn’t want to come across any ancient forgotten beasts.
I took a hall that led past the door, and to a set of crumbling steps. My footsteps echoed off the empty walls. I could feel the power that this place once had. I closed my eyes and could envision the battles that brought upon its fall. When I reached the next floor I wandered aimlessly for a while before I finally found a door that hung open.
My heart jumped when I saw a room full of people. But I settled it when my brain finally realized it was a room of mirrors. Most of them were shattered or cracked but many still stood in their frames in a circle around the stone room. Each mirror had runes etched along the frame. These were different somehow, almost like they were too old for anyone to decipher. I never considered an ancient language could have been any older than it was, or any more forgotten.
My reflection stared back at me. It was me, but I was different. More rugged, worn down and beaten. My new tattoos glimmered in the room, tasting the magic of old. Curious what my body now looked like I took off my shirt. I had built muscle from all my travels but that wasn’t the most notable thing. it was the ancient symbols that now dressed my body. Curious what the message on my arm, and once the entry way, had said I twisted my form around to read the markings.
Only in death will your soul escape the judgment of the Wraith.It sent a shiver down my spine. I didn’t like the sound of judgment, and I sure didn’t like the sound of death but I wasn’t even sure what a Wraith was. The rest of the passages on my body were mostly the same, the constant story of what had happened to this ancient kingdom. I was just about to turn around when a symbol caught my eye. It wrapped itself around my neck and I hadn’t looked at it before. It was my name.
What my name was doing in this place was beyond me. I shook my head and backed out of the room feeling completely creeped out. If only there was a door from me to walk through. I did a once over in the room thinking maybe all the mirrors had made me disoriented but I found no door. Just mirrors. Hundreds of reflections glaring back at me.
I snapped my eyes shut trying to calm my nerves. I let the energy in the room calm me, flow through me. When I had stopped the panic I reopened my eyes and found the tattoos on my body glowing blue. I was tapping into the ancient energy source this place still had. That or I was about to run into something dangerous.
“PLANKRUN!” boomed a voice from nowhere. I stood frozen for a heartbeat then flipped around trying to find something other than my own reflection in the room.
“Who’s there?” I answered back
“You do not belong here hunter. Where have you gone wrong?” questioned the voice.
“I don’t know what you are talking about. Show yourself!”
“If you insist.”
From the shadows of the room stepped a creature unlike anything I had seen before. It was neither man nor beast but some strange combination of the two. There was a strange haze around her body, for there was no doubt it was a she. The haze caused her essence to fade in and out as she shifted.
“Who are you?” I said in a quite whisper.
“I, am the keeper of the realm. Or what’s left of it anyways. The rest of my brothers have fallen and I soon too will join them if I remain without a purpose. And you hunter why have you come here, do you seek judgment?”
Her eyes flashed red as I stared dumbfounded back at her. She eyed the runes upon my body. I knew then she had to be the Wraith.
“Not many can pull the runes from the walls of the gates.” She mentioned in an afterthought.
“I don’t know why I was sent here.” I said truthfully. I regretted it.
In a flash her body was behind mine and my arms were locked to my side. I felt her power surge through me but it was nothing I could tap into.
“Sent?!?” she growled at me. “Those who are sent shall never leave. Those that are banished can never escape.”
“No, no, I was sent by the Realm ripper, he saved me from the Acolytes, the old ones.” I choked out as her grip tightened around my middle, threatening to crush my lungs. She loosened her grasp and stepped back.
“Come with me.” she walked forward, I wasn’t sure where she was headed, there still was no door in the mirror room, but she continued to walk straight. When she was inches from walking into a mirrored wall she smirked and then vanished into nothing. An illusion. I followed after her. Every nerve in my body told me to not walk into the oncoming solid object but I ignored the impulse and vanished into the mirror. The other side was dark, just the stone hallway I had first been in before I entered the room.
The Wraith stood waiting for me. When she turned away from me I could not help but notice the runes etched into her back. Her dress draped over her shoulders delicately but the back of the dress lay open. The runes were the ancient ones, which not even I could read.
We walked the distance of the hall and turned again. We came to a dead end. Upon the wall were the old runic stones I had seen the acolytes with before I was snatched away. She pushed each of them into the wall in an order that she seemed satisfied with. I was itching to speak; it had been so long since I had spoken with a being that wasn’t an enemy. But I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to anger a being with her kind of power.
The wall rumbled and the runes on her body glowed dimly. Then before my eyes the bricks faded into nothing and we were standing at the doorway of an ancient library.
“Prophecies of your world originate from here first. Not all who ended up here were prisoners. At least it had been that way. Until man stole the secrets of magic, stole ancient prophecies from us, stole the young that we had created.”
I had a sneaking suspicion of what the “young” may have been. She guided me to a decaying shelf and unrolled a scroll before handing it too me.
“This was the last thing written before the war. A war fought over what was right; should our creations have been released into your world or not. We never agreed. This particular prophecy is about you. War is coming Plankrun, and if you do the wrong thing, more than your world is at stake here.”
With that she vanished, leaving me holding a decaying scroll confused and alone.
