The Stone and the Flame

In the years before the Third War of Reality, a girl was born in a far flung, rural region of one of the ancient human kingdoms.  From almost the moment she could walk, her deep red hair attracted the attentions of the people near parents' farm.  She explored the forests near her home incessently.

Before she was very old, her brother was born.  Even as an infant, he was large.  The bond between them was instantaneous.  By the time the boy could walk, his sister was taking him on her adventures.

Both siblings developed a stubborn streak as they grew, often taking on difficult tasks and refusing to give them up until completed.  For her creativity and inquisitiveness, the girl was often called the Flame, for fire has often been the companion of inspiration and wisdom.  The boy, who had grown sturdy and large to match his stubborness, was called the Stone, for few things are more steadfast than rock.

Together they worked their parents' farm, far from the politics and pressures of the Human kingdoms.  Still, their mother told them stories of how one day a War would come and reshape the very Reality of their lives.

In the last days before the War, an army began to rise from within the lands of the Humans and the Fae.  It carried allegiance to no one land, but honored them all.  Led by the Great Sorceress and the Child of Light, the force was the Watchtower, the army founded by the Heroes of the past two Wars for Reality.  They called to all the citizens of the lands they crossed, asking for those who would pledge themselves to maintain the balance of reality, not raising up one race over the others.

Having been told of the War and the exploits of the Watchtower time and again, the girl called the Flame and her brother called the Stone left their home and their safety to pledge themselves to the cause of the Artifacts of Fate.

And so, like so many of their generation far across the Human and Fae lands, they went to War.

The Heroes

In war, men and women are tested. Some collapse.  Some hold steady.  Others rise to notable levels and become heroes.  In the War of Reality, these Heroes could rise a point at which they become bound to Fate.

The first heroes rose in the wake of the appearance of the Artifacts of Fate in the First War of Reality.  These Heroes were a small, elite group.  They turned the tide in several key battles, driving back attacks by the Brutes and Undead time and again.

Like the Artifacts, the Heroes became bound to Fate, spun out into the world in times of need.  By the time the Second War of Reality dawned, the Heroes had lived hundreds of lives, fighting one another and the forces which would threaten their world.  It was almost bot enough.

The Kobolds were summoned by the Brutes shortly into the War. They subsumed the Brutes and cut a savage path into the world.  They consumed, driving deep into Fae lands and corrupting their essence.  Brute bands, fleeing the fall of their bretheren, stormed into human lands.

A beautiful and powerful Fae queen took up the cause after her sister was lost and a great city destroyed.  Gathering a cadre of heroes, set made war upon the Kobolds, killing droves of the canine-like humanoids.

Other groups of Heroes formed bands which hunted the rogue Brutes, ceasing their efforts to rape and pillage in human lands.  When the Child of Light fell, these Heroes rallied to the Great Sorceress and decided the outcome of the War.  New members joined their ranks and a few faded away, but as a group they remained vital.

Once more the Heroes were bound to lives of meaning time and again.  When the Third War of Reality began, they were a highly skilled force.  The War was a difficult one, though.  The Kobolds had completely supplanted the Brutes, and children of that which was Unformed roamed freely in the darker forests of the world.

Many of the Heroes fell.  When the Child of Light fell as well, they were too few to turn the tide in favor of the Great Sorceress.  Some work with She that Wields the Shadows to destablize the Undead.  Some departed to create the defenses which would preserve the Island Home.  Others rallied to service of a haughty Prince.  Those who remained worked at the behest of the Great Sorceress to protect the people and re-unify their peers.

Ultimately, their efforts were not enough.  The Prince changed reality to his whims.  Since that time the Heroes remained the agents of Fate.  They have fought across many nations, still driven to defend their people.  Many have fallen, never to rise.  Others have fought their bond to Fate.  And some have embraced their role despite the fact that their reality is gone and the one which replaced it rings hollow.

These Heroes have fought the Devouring Mother.  They have inspired the tales of gods and heroes.  They have fought great battles and discovered new knowledge.  And in the times to come, they will be needed.

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.