Lore Excerpt: Valley of Kings

 

IT WAS INDEED A strange day. The mountains soon flattened out into a saltpan, cool became heat, and then they skirted a red lake and thereafter a sulphurous lava field that stank and caused them to gag.

They crossed an arid desert gasping for breath, struggled through a humid forest dripping sweat and then walked long distances beside a roiling, green ocean, eyes drawn to an unnatural horizon. A landscape of spikes? No one dared ask.

Each setting was distinct; it was evident they were the different worlds Torrullin warned of. There was no likely explanation to conquer the strange enigma.

The pace was fast, although not overly so. Rose lagged at one stage and Elianas reversed direction to go to her aid. He laid a hand on her brow and after she had no difficulty with the pace. Elianas received intrigued glances. Was he a healer also?

Mid-afternoon they descended a contoured hill. Low stonewalls prevented erosion and vegetables flourished on the slopes. The place was akin to Beacon Farm and the team wondered if it was that world, but no one asked and thus was no one enlightened. Beyond the slope was a mighty plain dotted with distant pyramids.

Torrullin called a halt at the foot of the hills. “If you ever want to know more about time, revisit this place. That is the Valley of Kings, Old Earth, but little of this mastery remains in present time. Pity.” He glanced over his shoulder. “We rest for a half hour.”

They sat or lay down as the desire took them. “Are we to cross that?” Teroux asked. “That’s a fair way.”

“We are turning in there.” Torrullin pointed right where a stone road led through similarly contoured hills. It certainly seemed an easier road.

“How do you know where to go?” Teroux questioned.

“A Walker feels it.”

A brief excerpt from THE NEMESIS BLADE, a small event in the grand scheme and yet it's large in my mind, so much so that whenever I find an image of the pyramids (see gallery below), I keep them.  I'm guessing one needs to read the grand tale to understand why this mention is so important :)

His name is Elianas.

 Torrullin’s sanctuary is invaded by a desperate call through the spaces. Someone has stolen the Xenian seer Lowen Dalrish, and he suspects Agnimus, the draithen who nearly annihilated his world and then vanished without a trace.

 It is time for the Animated Spirit to stand forth.

 Meanwhile three Valla heirs await the rising of the Valleur Throne; only one will be chosen as Vallorin. When a prophecy is uncovered about Three Kingdoms and rumours of an army secretly building to prevent it, Torrullin realises the three heirs to the Throne are in danger, for the warmongers believe he will carve out three kingdoms, one for each heir.

It is time to deploy Nemesis, the mighty blade forged of two, of both darak and lumin.

As activity becomes frenetic in the spaces, the dark man of Torrullin’s visions and dreams stirs and becomes aware of the newness in the ether. He now seeks release from his long incarceration. He knows how to find the missing seer; more than that, he is the catalyst to releasing long-suppressed memory.

 It is time for Torrullin’s Nemesis to stand forth. His name is Elianas.