Not So Epic- Prologue

Author’s Note: This Tamalarian Tale of the 4th Age first appeared as an audiobook presentation on the author’s Bitchute channel. It has not been published elsewhere yet in text format.

Prologue

            The elder council members muttered among themselves, waiting for the last of their members to arrive for the meeting. Even in the strange new technological age of wonder that was Tamalaria’s Fourth Age, monastic orders such as theirs kept to the olden ways. Where the vast majority of organizations of any size were relying more and more upon the machines the gnomes, dwarves and kobolds had created over the course of the last century, holding meetings without even being in the same room or same city, the Brotherhood of the Enlightened Fist stayed within their cloistered monastery. They held these meetings once per week, gathered in the high-ceilinged earthen chamber carved out beneath the outdoor training yard. The rock of the chamber was a pale brown, the room filled with a piney scent wafting from pots of pine oil the brothers gathered from the forest north of their monastery and placed at even intervals around the outermost walls.

            Elder brother Renkit, a stodgy lizardman dressed like his brothers in the loose, dark yellow robes of the order, leaned his forehead on one hand, elbow crooked, eyes roving about the room. There was only one way into the great meeting chamber from above, an enormous pair of oaken doors two dozen feet tall and engraved with various runes and symbols said to be sacred to the order. Half a dozen other passages led into the room from other parts of the undercroft, the chambers where the elder brothers crafted the wares they sold to support their community. From these passages came drifting a few more elder brothers, but he paid them no heed. He was waiting for their Chosen One.

            “You know how he’s been lately,” said the elder brother to his left, a svelt young elven man by the name of Falstow. He was the most recent addition to the elder council, but Renkit did not begrudge him his age or newly acquired status as elder. He begrudged the man his ever-running mouth, however. “He is surely using the inner sight to watch until we’re all gathered. Once we’re all here, he’ll make his way in, and we’ll go through it all like the last twelve times.”

            “Not this time,” Renkit snarled in reply. Falstow cocked an eyebrow at the lizardman, who didn’t even deign to twitch his eyes in the elf’s direction. The dull green scales around his nostrils writhed slightly as he sniffled. “Brothers Sadel and Perik have decreed that this is the night we begin the great undertaking.”

            “You don’t sound all too pleased,” said Falstow.

            “I’m not,” Renkit said, finally looking the elf in the eyes. “He has the training, yes, but he’s too full of himself, has been ever since we told him about the prophecy. Now that he knows he’s the Chosen One, he’s insufferable. When I was trying to instruct his group last week on the sutras of the light path, he had the temerity to make jokes. Jokes,” he repeated, banging a fist on the table, garnering several disapproving looks from his fellows. He met their glares to a man, and none held his eyes for more than a moment. Renkit had a temper, and few of the other elders would test him. “When the announcement is made, you can just bet he’s going to declare himself exempt from all chores and studies in the name of preparing for his journey.”

            Another brother, seated to Renkit’s other side, cleared his throat. A dwarven fellow with a neatly rounded black beard and shaven head, his burliness bordering on the obscene, brother Rockpin said, “I concur with brother Renkit here. The lad’s head has gotten too big, and I don’t think this evening’s proclamation is going to help any there. Still, it is what it is. The Chosen One receives his quest tonight.”

            Before the final elders arrived, one of the great doors creaked open, the echo reverberating heavily for a few moments as a young human man in the white robes of an acolyte came jogging in. He approached several of the elders seated around the large round table dominating the center of the chamber, and Renkit could hear him say to them, “Elders, there is a traveler come through the main gates seeking safe haven for the night, a minotaur warrior of some sort.”

            “Does he offer coin for such hospitality,” asked one of the elders.

            “Yes, or, at least, I think he did,” said the acolyte. “I must profess, it was difficult to understand him wholly. I believe he is drunk. I asked him to wait in the center of the training yard for my reply.” Several nearby elders muttered among themselves as the last of their brothers arrived from elsewhere in the undercroft, finally telling the acolyte that he could tell the traveler to await an audience with the elders to discuss hospitalities beyond the great doors. The acolyte nodded and scurried off, leaving the door open so that the Chosen One could slip inside.

            As Renkit had predicted, Suderis Palm, the Chosen One, had waited until all of the elders were present before producing himself to them, stopping at a barely visible red line chalked in the earthen floor several yards away from the great round table of the council. Prophecy or no, however, the young human monk was not an elder, and would not be allowed past that red line unless acting as a messenger. He stood there at the line, hands behind his back, his handsome, smooth features brimming with mirth and a faint air of arrogance. Renkit wished for just a moment that he could slap the boy.

            “I have come as requested, elder brothers,” he said clearly. Whatever faults Renkit found in the boy, he could not list his voice among them. Whether simply speaking or singing one of the few hymns of the Enlightened Fist’s order, Suderis’s voice was like audible honey. “What would you have of me?” Elder brother Sadel, a gray-haired half-elf who was revered among the Brotherhood for his knowledge of the scrolls and tomes housed in the monastery, stood slowly from his seat at the table. He had become a whisper of the man he’d once been years before, but he still held the respect of his peers. He cleared his throat and folded his hands together, then spoke.

            “Brother Suderis, you know that our order has been host to many seers over its long and storied history. Our most recent seer, brother Gintai, passed away thirty-three years ago. But before he did, he wrote four prophecies. Three of them have come to pass in the time since his death, but this last is, without any doubt, his most vital.” Without turning, he reached back and to one side, and one of the other elders quickly rose and scurried around the table, handing him the scroll as arranged earlier. “This scroll tells of a great evil, one that will come crawling into our realms from another world, a destroyer that cannot be allowed to walk Tamalaria unopposed. And to ensure that he won’t, the prophecy also foretells of a great weapon which shall be forged of the bones of a white dragon. This weapon,” he said, shaking the scroll in the air, “shall be wielded by a grand warrior, one of our very own. We believe you, young Suderis, are that warrior, come to us in your childhood not because of the loss of your parents alone, but to fulfill this part of the prophecy!”

            The elder brothers lightly pounded one fist on the table repeatedly to show support, all except for Renkit and Rockpin. They didn’t put either hand flat on the table, however, which was the traditional way in which elder brothers showed disagreement or protest with announcements made by whoever had the floor. They were simply remaining neutral thus far. Brother Suderis raised his hands up in a thanking gesture, and the chamber fell quiet once more.

            “I thank you for this blessing, elder Sadel,” said Suderis, folding his hands behind his back. His grin was cocky, by Renkit’s estimation, but that was the same as ever it was. “I am honored, truly, that the great seer viewed my life as worthy of this mighty burden, and I vow to fulfill my duties as you have all trained me to over the years of my life.”

            He was about to continue, but the chamber vibrated then with the sound of something pounding four times upon the giant doors, rattling the elder brothers where they sat. As monks, they were every man trained in the arts martial, and could square off against any man in singular combat with confidence. However, whatever could cause that kind of noise to echo through the chamber from the doors was no mere mortal man, surely. Suderis spun from the doors to the elders, eyes wide, mouth drawn.

            “Could the evil from the prophecy already be here,” he asked.

            “Impossible,” said Sadel, shaking his head. He clutched the scroll tightly in his hand and waved it up and down for a moment.  “In every interpretation of this prophecy, the evil will come no sooner than another full moon cycle.” Suderis wheeled back to look at the doors, hands balled into fists.

            “Then perhaps it is a vanguard or emissary of the evil, come to proclaim its intent,” the young monk said, taking a ready stance. “If that is so, let the wicked fool come and discover the strength of the Chosen One.”

            What happened next came as far from heroic as one could rightfully expect to ever happen. The right-hand door of the giant twin set let out an ungodly ‘BOOM’ as it was struck in, the hinges snapping violently from their anchoring spots on the doorway. As the elders watched in dumbstruck horror, Suderis seemed to move in slow motion, getting his body turned to his own right, crouching down ever-so-slightly to gain the necessary spring he would need to leap clear of the falling door.

            And as his belly and groin cleared the swiftly sharpening shadow of the door, there was a split second of hope-

            -after which came the harpy-shrieking agony of nearly a ton of wood falling across the backs of his knees, dragging him to the floor and obliterating his legs from the knees on down. He had no time to even register that terror and pain had forced him to soil himself before the world faded to black around him.

            The elder brothers, Renkit included, were scrambling toward the wounded young monk in a frenzy, cursing and shouting among themselves while some few were trying to make out who or whatever was standing in the doorway freshly and aggressively opened. The lizardman elder stopped a few yards away from Suderis, watching as the tall, bulky figure came shambling into the chamber, weaving a jagged path toward the elders.

            As the man drew within ten feet, Renkit could smell the alcohol practically radiating off of his body. A towering seven foot minotaur stood before him, dressed in black boiled leather armor and a half-plate cuirass, a broad-headed war axe over one shoulder, throwing axes on his hips. In one hand sloshed a nearly emptied bottle of scotch, his eyes rolling, horns glinting in the cavernous chamber’s light. The thickly muscled minotaur looked down at the broken Suderis, hiccupped, and wiped his mouth.

            “Should’a answered th’door,” the minotaur slurred, taking the last swig of his drink and unceremoniously tossing over a shoulder. Renkit felt his hands curling and uncurling, the urge to kill this sot near impossible to hold in check.

            “You have crushed the Chosen One, you blithering dolt,” one of the other elder brothers screeched at the minotaur. The newcomer looked at the broken Suderis once more, snorted, and shook his head, hands on his hips.

            “Chosen One, eh? Hope he wasn’t someone important,” said the minotaur, just seconds before he let out a belch that echoed through the room and fell down into a drunken blackout.