The Rune

What? This isn't a piece of a novel, it's just some short story! What's going on here?

Eons ago, all was Chaos and the void.  Then came Creation and all that which was Unformed and all that which was Formed.  There came the sentient creatures of Creation and the primal force of fate called Magic.  War came time and again, fought over the Fate of Creation.  Creation was remade time and again.

A seed of these remakings, born of Chaos, drifted through the eons.  It appeared as a rune, a pictorial representation of a protean concept.  And so it was called a Chaos Rune, a link to the time before Fate, before Magic had form.  While it was a tool, ancient and powerful, its very nature forced it to be lost and found in an endless cycle.

It came to rest, for a time, on a world very much like our own, but with only the lightest caress of Magic.  Here it became bound a key.  The key stood taller than a man, with a long shaft and a blade two hands long.  And the key called to a man.  A man shunned and ignored.  A man who felt betrayed by one as close as his brother.  So he took up the key and challenged what had been touched and Formed.  He sought that which was Unformed.

As that which was Unformed touched his world, their newest children, small and fierce entered the world.  They were like vermin.  They were like men.  Their skin drank the light and their bodies pure in the way in which the void is pure.  From the key they flooded, coursing out against the world of men.

But friend stood against friend and brother against brother.  Two, evenly matched, they clashed and the key was broken.  The link to that which was Unformed was severed.  And the man ignored was drawn into the void of the Rune, swallowed by Chaos.  In time, his nemesis, his friend, would follow.

The sign of Chaos drifted, stopping now and again until it found new and willing hands.  Like locusts, they moved from world to world, using, devouring.  Like hounds of war they went, crushing and enslaving.  Consuming.

Kobolds they were called.  The found allies in the desperate and depraved of dozens of worlds.  They taught them how to open the doors to the worlds of the Kobolds.  And when the hungry army marched through, the foolish allies were the first to be trampled.

Eventually, the ever-hungry army found a world in which Reality was rewritten in a grand cycle.  A world from which they could change their fortune.  A world they could enslave and renew when its resources were near exhausted.  The Brutes brought them.  And using the Rune, the Brutes the Kobolds replaced.  But their kind was slain in droves when the other natives of the world sought to drive them out and they lost their weapon, the sign of Chaos.

The Rune drifted, settling in the hands of one born of Life and broken of spirit.  She sought only to enhance her own station, to survive the dying of the Magic of her world.  And so she carried the Rune with her as she traveled to the last bastion of Human Magic, the Island Home.

She twisted them, becoming a new Mother of Monsters.  She experimented, strengthened by the power of Chaos.  A young prince, seeking an eternal rule, came to her.  She gave to him what he sought.  A hollow undeath, vampiric and barbaric, but one which would extend his rule forever.

But the soldiers of the Island Home could not bear the corruption at the heart of their land, the last bastion of Human Magic.  They rebelled and the magics of the island failed.  It sank, waters swallowing the island lost in time and Fate.  The Rune was lost.

For generations, she sought it.  At times she came near, perilously near to regaining it.  But always it eluded her grasp.  It appeared in many lands over many years.  It two brothers apart, driving one mad and the other to justice.  It taunted the heroes of a great war, leaving them lost at sea.  And then one of a circle of many found  it.

Found it and bound it away.  His spirit he bound to it, to force the Chaos Rune to wait.  But in time, it would be free, for such is Fate.