Dark Destinies

It’s amazing, you realize, how quickly a lifetime of promise can be destroyed by a single poor decision.

You grew up in Haleve, a town known for its cider and orchards in the heartlands of Galania. Your parents were of good blood; your father a knight and your mother a merchant’s daughter. You were taught to revere the Angelic Court and uphold the virtues, to stand proud and upright and to speak truth to power. All your life it seemed certain that you would go on to great things; crusades against the demonic hordes at the gates of the Underworld, honors and triumphs handed down by the King, wealth and renown and a wife and children who would then carry on your family name and forge their own legacies.

But you barely registered these portents and expectations, consumed as you were by the joys of youth and the distractions of nature. Twenty years you lived in Haleve; twenty autumns bringing red leaves and full cider-cellars; twenty winters of red cheeks and white snow; twenty thaws bringing rain and harvests; twenty summers filled with the buzzing of insects and the ring of laughter. Twenty years dreaming of adventure, and running after a girl with raven hair and wine-dark eyes.

And now it’s all gone. You’re trapped, wandering aimlessly in an inhospitable jungle, across the sea from the land of your birth and farther still from the town where your memories and family and the girl you cherished still reside. All because of one man’s poor choice.

Three hundred souls, and you are all that remains.

You are now trapped on Varast, the Shadowed Land, with nothing to your name but tattered clothing, dented armor and a dull blade. The cavern you’re currently traversing is only survivable because of the brilliant glowing corals that seem to grow from the walls. And the luminescent mosses that cling to the floor.

Your name is Nero, and you are going to die here. You’ve been to make your peace with it, and you are now only hoping to find a place where your can be calm and painless.

Perhaps there is such a place, deeper in this cave….