(Page 1 of 7) Lord of Embers - Prologue by Brian CareySUMMARY: I think the initial entry was a bit long, so here is the prologue.
Lord of Embers
By Brian Carey
"When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream. How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?" - René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
"A lucid dream is experienced when our awareness breaks through the self-inflicted illusions of dreams. Upon realising the true nature of our surroundings, we find that what was once a rigid external reality is nothing more than ethereal clay to be shaped by our imaginations.
But what if I were to ask you then, to take that same conviction, that same force of will which subdues this fantasy, and apply it to the world around you? What illusions might you uncover? With what sharpened mind bend the world to your will?" - Elric the Exalted, Letter to King Segastes of Adraea, 112NE
Prologue
THREE CRUMBLING TOWERS PROTRUDED FROM THE SANDS LIKE warped and weathered fingers grasping at the purple evening sky. These were among the last grey bones of an ancient city, slowly succumbing to the desert that had swallowed a civilisation, centuries before. Seat of a long-forgotten empire, its songs and stories eroded from stone and memory, even its name was now lost beneath the sands. Known simply as "The Ruin" to the tribes which still inhabited the land, its true name, Riel, had not been uttered aloud in over a thousand years.
Decades ago, historians from the Adraean Empire had travelled hundreds of miles north to examine the dead city. What little of it they managed to uncover provided a tantalising glimpse into a time before even the first Adraean colonists had arrived on the continent. But years of excavations and attempts to decipher eroded symbols had ultimately proven futile: Riel refused to give up its secrets and the scholars returned home to disappointed patrons.
Local legends gave several versions of Riel's history and downfall but none of these were even close to the truth. Riel was not destroyed by the great red serpent that lives beneath the sands. Its people were not so decadent and corrupt that the gods punished them with rains of fire and rivers of blood. In fact, Riel had never been destroyed at all. It was not a dead city as the tribes and scholars had supposed; It was merely sleeping. In time, as with all things within the Dream, it will wake. But for the moment, Riel sleeps. Dreaming its own Dreams. Remembering. Recovering.
In the centre of this sunken city, a small yellow bird alighted on what was once and what will be again a magnificent conch-shaped dome. Its long, slender beak probed between the many cracks which ran like veins through the dull grey stone. Nearby, its mate sheltered beneath a half-buried arch, shivering as the twilight deepened.
Long blades of shadow stretched out across the grey expanse, the pale watery sun dipping beneath the dunes on the horizon as the first stars revealed themselves.
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