Rimsack was having a regular day. He lived in a beautiful place surrounded by an assortment of trees. A river ran through their tiny town. In the very middle of the river was the most amazing waterfall, which never made a sound. Surrounding it was the town. It was a fair number of houses and buildings for purposes besides living.
Slightly out of town, near the woods that surrounded them, was a shack. Though it wasn’t as nice-looking as the buildings of town, it certainly wasn’t at all unattractive. It belonged to a friend of Rimsack’s by the name of Colest.
Colest was a fair person who loved to grant people’s wishes. If he gave someone something that was unfair (say X got something to hold against Y), then he would come back and make X’s position worse than before, despite having helped X in the first place.
All of their buildings were made out of wood. The system by which the buildings were made was rather complex, which would explain their brilliant appearance. It seemed that they were made, not of any type of wooden structure, but rather a magically formed structure of something for more dazzling.
Rimsack went to school, where he learned of something that would change him for the rest of his life.
“Help! A doom is to befall us!” screamed his teacher.
Make that the rest of his incredibly short life.
After the teacher calmed down a bit, she described the situation in a more understandable way. “All technologically advanced artifacts on earth are doomed because of an electrical storm that will cover the earth for a few seconds. Since we have gotten ourselves deeply immersed into technology, it has become part of our system, which means that we are doomed.”
It was the class’s turn for uproar.
“Now, now, class, settle down,” said the teacher. “There is more.”
Rimsack was 27 years old, but because they had learned so much in their whole history (about 300,000 years total), they had a total of 30 years of required education. He still had 7 years to go.
“The destruction of technology spreads to other artifacts that are close but not quite as technologically advanced. I’m sure that we all want this beautiful place to survive the storm, but I’m afraid that means we’ll have to leave, for otherwise, our destruction will spread into the buildings and make them more unattractive than a cave.”
“And that means…” one person in class began,
“We must leave this place,” finished the teacher for him.
Rimsack was back at home packing up. He couldn’t help thinking about when he first came to this amazing place.
He went outside for a last look before he would leave. When he was 15, he joined a group of more than a hundred others trekking through the woods. They really had had no reason for doing this except to explore.
And after ages of walking, they had finally come across this miraculously huge clearing, shaped in a perfect circle with a diameter about 4 feet across. It also had the most beautiful waterfall in the middle (later found to be situated in the very center of the entire forest, not just the clearing). They had decided to live here, and got to building.
Though the structure used for the wood was rather complex, they were able to do it in less than a year, as a result of their advanced technology (as usual). At last, he had been able to have a good night’s sleep on a civilized mattress.
Rimsack went back in and continued packing. He couldn’t help wishing he could have lived here much longer. They had gone on this exploration, and now they had to leave, more than 10 years later.
Finally, he was finished packing, though his luggage (rather small, because he would be hiking through the woods) was very wet from tears.
The next morning, they all went to the edge of the forest and waited for the slow pokes. At last, they gave their last look back at their home.
Rimsack spent the whole day running with everyone else through the forest. The trees weren’t very dense, so he was able to run through them easily. They had a few apples from the trees for lunch, and then immediately continued running.
Thump, thump, thump, went Rimsack’s four paws. He felt them burning on the ground, and desperately wanted to stop. But they continued running. Stopping was not an option, for they had to get out to the other side of the woods as quickly as possible.
Rimsack felt his black-colored eyes straining to stay awake. His long tongue hung out of his mouth, and fluid was falling out of it every second. His tail-less behind was feeling much of the stress from the constant up-and-down motion.
The pads on his paws were wearing down quickly.
They stopped for a quick dinner, during which one of them was lucky enough to find some meat, and then continued on the wretched trail, wishing they had just stayed behind so as to avoid this torture.
At last, they stopped and went to sleep. Rimsack collapsed onto the ground, his soft fur feeling very rough upon the rocks and soil. He rolled over onto his back, stretched his stiff legs, and nodded off.
For some reference to confusion, no they were not dogs; while dogs can sometimes be incredibly smart, they cannot hope to create their own civilization. These creatures were a different species, with much larger brains than dogs, which were descended from a strange type of creature that had both the advantage of strength and intelligence. The reason there are no clues today that point toward this ancient creature is the storm, obviously.
7 days later, they arrived on the other side of the woods, at last. Rimsack couldn’t help noticing that Colest was absent, but it truly didn’t strike him as a curious fact. He himself couldn’t deny (though others wouldn’t be unlikely to beg to differ) that he had almost died. Perhaps someone had had the misfortune to actually fall into their death; it did not at all seem unlikely.
Rimsack couldn’t shake off the need to have the knowledge of the place live on, though. He just had to do something, anything, no matter how useless, to tell someone who would survive the storm about it.
There was actually a creature that fit the very description that Rimsack was hoping to find—nearing intelligence, but not so far as to die (though they would suffer much pain, as animals do use electricity to operate, just not as much). The Homo sape was a type of creature that lived in caves, and drew carvings on the wall in the form of pictures.
Some of them had even come up with their own strange patterns. We now know them as hieroglyphics, but these creatures knew them as pictures (duh). They didn’t have any special name for them, because there was no reason for them to name them. But the pictures gave Rimsack an idea—he could draw his own homeland.
So he entered a cave after seeing the Homo sapes leaving, and took a sharp rock in his mouth. He raised his mouth toward the wall of the cave, and smashed the rock into the shockingly hard barricade. He could have sworn that his jaw had broken, but he opened and closed it to check, and though it had been a hard collision, it had not caused any major injury.
Of course he couldn’t draw anything that way! How foolish he had been! He would have to scrape at the rocky wall.
And he did so, with some success. He carved a round circle of trees, with the clearing in the middle. Total, there were only 6 trees, but it was a carving, not meant to be taken literally, but more metaphorically.
But it seemed so empty; it wasn’t at all metaphorical to the feel of the place. Yet he had no wish to draw the actual place; it was far too complex. Even the river and the waterfall would be too difficult.
He decided to settle with a cloud, which, though difficult, could be done in less than a minute.
Of course, Rimsack was not the only person that decided to draw pictures of the place on a cave wall. Everyone else had had the same general experiences with the place, and therefore had the same attractive thought to pass it on. Almost every other one of these creatures felt the urge to do so.
At last, the storm came along. Though they had prepared for it by setting up protective shelters, they had not at all prepared for the shock of it. The majority of them died away a few seconds after being thrown off their feet, and those that didn’t regretted their extra seconds of life bitterly.
And gradually, the storm spread over the entire earth, shocking every creature that depended so greatly on its built-in electrical devices. Eventually, any alien that wanted to destroy the earth in order to get through to the other side got scared and immediately flew off. Of course, there weren’t very many aliens that fit this description; most would argue that there were none and leave it at that, and some would give a mathematical analysis of the probability of that happening, and still others would say that it could certainly have happened.
Afterward, the Homo sape did indeed interpret the mysterious carvings after the doom came along. At one point, a Homo sape wrote down a repetitive statement about the carvings. They brought it on their journey through intelligence, though very few of them actually knew about it; it was mostly just hidden deep away in their primitive libraries and such.
At one point, the idea became famous, and many chased after the idea, but it wasn’t long before it was forgotten. They also came to know themselves as a slightly lengthened version of their name: Homo sapiens. But that’s another story.
David Clark was a perfectly normal, rather adventurous kid. It was the year 2003. He was in the 6th grade. He had been assigned a History-Fair Project. Today he was to turn in his chosen subject on which to do it. So in History Class, he turned in his paper, which had A Brief History of Legends written across the top, and reasoning in the middle (only one paragraph; there wasn’t much to say), and his name on the bottom.
“Good,” said his History teacher. She put 100% across the top, and gave it back. Afterward, he went home.
“Mom, I need to do some research for legends now!”
“I can’t go out right now!”
David had no idea what to do, so he watched TV. Then his mother came in the room, and scolded him for not doing research.
“But you said that we couldn’t go out and research legends!”
“I said we couldn’t go out. We have technology. Check out the internet!”
So that’s what David did. He clicked his user—Adventure Man—and typed in his password—Desert Terrain.
It took a while for the computer to settle down for him, as usual.
And then he clicked on the internet icon.
Ages passed.
And finally, he clicked on the domain line, and typed in www.google.com. And then he typed in legends.
He scrolled through the choices. There were plenty of urban legend sights. There were also well-known legends, like famous quotes that aren’t known to be true.
And his eye suddenly caught one. Another World, it was titled. In the woods… This legend is a little known…
He decided it would be the subject of his project, whatever it was.
Another World
“In the woods you will find a beautiful place. A deep wood exists which contains a place that lies in your dreams. To find this, you must spend many months hiking through the trees.”
This rather redundant quote is an ancient one, the origin of which is unknown. The earliest known script that contains this says ‘according to another person.’ This legend is a little known fact (though some would say it is an opinion, as it has never been discovered, even with technology such as satellites) that has never been proved or disproved.
But where did the legend originate? Sure, someone before that earliest time this quote was made might have gotten it directly from his brain, but few are content with such an explanation. The story was dubbed legend in 100 CE, when someone looked at it and said, ‘this hasn’t been proved!’ This is probably the only time it really went public so that it was common knowledge. There are more than 1,000 recorded events of someone going into the woods in search of such a place.
Since then, there are no such recorded sights. The adventurous person is one in a million, and the person who knows the legend is one in a billion. It has survived through the 2-6 people (at a time) that have known it throughout the ages. Otherwise, either one has seen it but dismissed it and forgotten it, or they have never seen it at all.
But now there is evidence that it never was anything significant. We may not have seen the earliest script that contained this quote, but we have likely seen the earliest pictures that describe this quote.
Recently, archeologists have discovered specific carvings in caves that have been known to contain dead remains of ancient humans. Though they knew nothing about the legend, they did publicize the findings, and no one interpreted them in any way except for us.
The carvings were simple—a series of trees with a circular area left alone, in which there was something to represent freedom or happiness, such as a cloud.
So the legend might have originated as a person’s dream, which was soon interpreted, and the quote lived on. And then in the year 100, they dubbed it a legend. And now we can see how it was originally a dream.
David, after reading this, felt a gigantic urge to tell someone. So he called up his friends, who were also very adventurous kids.
“It’s the most amazing legend! You won’t believe! Get over here this instant!” he said each time someone answered.
Finally, they were all in his house. His mother was complaining that he hadn’t told her that he was inviting friends over, and to get on with his project. He replied that this was about his project, and then went straight to the computer room with his 5 friends, 3 of whom were girls.
He showed them the article.
As soon as everyone was finished, one person, apparently having waited until the slowpokes were done reading, burst out saying, “My parents are experts on that thing, legends, and they never told me about that!”
“Well, duh, if it’s so little known—I mean, we would equal the number of people that know alone, according to that article!”
“But we must try to get in! I mean, we would be the first ever, wouldn’t we?”
“Not counting these thousand or so that went in almost two thousand years ago? Sure.”
“But their technology was too low for them to have actually made it, surely?”
“You never know; wonders have occurred ‘Before the Current Era’ (In case you are too uneducated to know, that’s what BCE stands for, unless you’re a Christian; then it’s BC, ‘Before Christ’).”
“But we could never actually do it!” cried David, who had just clicked on a link, which said the following:
While most carvings are very ambiguous as to which wood it actually is, a few of them imply one particular forest. This wood is a huge one without a doubt—according to calculations by mathematicians who measured the distance around, it would be approximately 1,000 square miles, though they know the total area is even greater than that as a result of the Earth’s curvature. No one has attempted at these calculations, as the Earth’s curvature is mostly unpredictable.
“You’re right!”
“It would be impossible! Assuming it’s at the heart of the woods, we’d have to travel more than 500 miles!”
But David couldn’t help remembering the legend. Each time he stepped up in education, he couldn’t help but think that this was leading nowhere besides toward his freedom to explore the legend. When he graduated high school, he almost thought it was pointless to go to college when all he wanted to do was go into a forest and possibly die.
And of course, his five friends also kept remembering these things, being just as adventurous. And they never separated; they were always friends.
At last, they were out of school.
And they met up together, all knowing exactly what they were all going to talk about, and all pondering whether they would actually do it.
And, of course, they were all correct.
David immediately burst into talk about the legend and what they would do. “Now that we can make our own choices, we can probably go into the forest. Is there any law that says we can’t?”
“No, there isn’t,” the other people chorused.
“So, why don’t we try it?”
“Of course,” the other people continued.
“We know at least one thing!”
“What’s that?” they all said truthfully.
“It is very likely to be in the heart of the forest.”
“Let’s do it!”
They packed up, and went into the forest that the article identified. It took them ages to get to their destination. The woods were so big that, though the trees weren’t thick, they couldn’t see much of where they were in comparison to the forest’s actual size.
They go at an average speed of 4 miles per hour. That comes out to about 250 hours for their grand total, and they spent 5 hours a day hiking. So it took them 50 days to get to the heart.
When they did, all they found was a huge clearing. It was clear that it wasn’t the edge of the forest, but it certainly wasn’t clear where the forest continued. Apparently, it was a big circular clearing. The six people cautiously went forward. Before long, they found a river. They followed the river away from the woods from which they came, though they knew that they were going toward woods on the other side. As they followed along, they saw specks of white up ahead.
Eventually, the specks turned into the most beautiful houses. Their enchanting white color blazed in the sunlight. They continued to follow the river. There were many houses in the area. They were larger than mansions, and the river went through a clearing between them.
They continued to trek through the mansions, next to the river. Up ahead, they saw that the river appeared to end. When they got closer to investigate, they realized it was not the end of the river, but simply a waterfall. But it didn’t seem to make any sound at all.
They realized that the waterfall was situated at the heart of the clearing, or the heart of the entire forest itself.
One person figured that the clearing, if it was a big circle, would have a diameter of approximately 4 miles.
“This is the most beautiful place!”
The person who said that was soon to be partially disappointed. Though they were expecting perhaps even more riches beyond, what they found was a dirty and unattractive shack. Its air was a rather terrible stench that was expelled from it. They were done.
“Well, looks like we’re stuck here, unless we want to spend another 50 days of walking through the woods.”
“Yep, we’re staying here for life.”
“And that means we’re going to have to create our own culture.”
“Yep, that too.”
“So, let’s do it!”
“First off, calendar.”
“Who says?”
“I says!”
“Ok, so what are we going to do?”
“Today will be the first day of the year. We will keep with those weird month names, January, February, March, etc, even though the timing’s off. For Leap Years, we’ll just have an additional day on February every four years, and if we need to shift the days over a bit because the year isn’t exactly 365 1/4 days, we’ll just do so on agreement.”
“What about the shack?”
“Obviously, it’s haunted. We’ll classify it under ‘Must avoid at all costs.’”
“What happens if we have descendents living here?”
“We won’t be here to see them. Nothing bad will happen, will it?”
“No, but I’ve just discovered that there were indeed people here before us.”
The person picked up a skull from the ground.
“This is from those people in the year 100, no doubt.”
“So they had descendents. So what? They found this beautiful place, the technology of which was way beyond them. Did they use it? Why are they dead?”
“I suppose you’re right.”
David Clarke was a boy in the 6th grade. It was morning, and he was about to begin school. He packed his bag, and left.
On his way to school, he looked in the distance, and could just barely make out the long range of trees, about 2 miles away. But he didn’t have much time to look; school was a short distance away.
Though David was in 6th grade, his teacher treated them all like babies. “Now, class, what day is it today?”
“February 18th, 1500,” the class droned in bored tones.
“Good! Now, while I deeply disagree with the curriculum that has been set for me, I must follow it, which means it is about time you knew about the legend. David, I do believe you will find interest, as you are named after it.
“According to our beliefs, the year 0 was the beginning of time. That was when everything was created by the good spirits of the woods. The evil spirits of the shack have since attempted to destroy our world, but we have been able to hold on for 1500 years!
“But there is another account as to how everything began. According to this legend, there is another world beyond the woods. Before the year 0, a concept that is considered nonexistent, a group of people, 3 men and 3 women, trekked through the woods, and finally found this place, and came to populate it.
“We are descendents according to this legend. This is a legend that no one believes. There are only two facts that support the legend. 1—there is indeed a shack that we all avoid, which is part of the legend. Of course, it is also part of our beliefs, which state that it is a dirty old shack with evil spirits from a long time ago. 2—there is indeed a wood that surrounds us, the size of which is too great for us to know. But of course, our explanation is that the wood represents the good spirits that created this world.”
Now, we must talk a bit about the shack, despite the fact that this isn’t learned just yet. It is rammed into everyone’s brain that the shack has evil spirits. This is done so incredibly well that they never have the faintest though that maybe, perhaps, the eerie air that comes out of it might be their subconscious, or something of the sort. Even the legend, which no one believes, doesn’t touch this idea; it states that the shack is clearly ‘haunted.’
Later on, everyone was just hanging out. The total population was 763 people. Suddenly, they heard a noise. They weren’t entirely sure what it was, but it sounded a bit like the sound of animals moving around in the woods. The men, though unfamiliar to the slight change in sound, nevertheless immediately got up and rushed there in hope of food, with their guns and arrows.
They trekked toward the woods as quickly and silently as they could go. Finally, they were next to the trees. A few people peered through the branches. It was difficult to remain hidden, as the forest was not at all thick. Suddenly, they heard voices.
“But we’ve gone so far in; we must have gotten to the heart by now, and yet we haven’t, and now-”
Suddenly, a huge group of people turned up out of the edge of the woods. “Whoa, man, it must be true! Take a look at this. And it’s already populated; we’re too late!”
“Of course, the legend is far too ancient to have not already been investigated,” said another person, clearly the leader of the pack. “These are people descended from that attempt 1,500 years ago; we discovered there was only one recorded case of attempt after 100 CE. They were seen at the last minute, but they never came out. Of course, with their cruddy technology, those people could have come out undetected and lived in secret. But that thought isn’t going to last much longer, at least for us.”
The people just gaped at each other. “We want to live here. Surely you can do that for us?” That was the leader of the intruders.
“We will talk about it,” said the king. There were still people emerging from the trees; it looked as though this group contained hundreds of people.
“They can’t just intrude on us like that!” cried several people at the short-notice conference. “And now they want to take it away from us!”
This created a major uproar. The king stood up and called for order.
“Well, we have our options. They didn’t give us any choice that would give us a hundred percent chance of keeping the land, but they didn’t give themselves any advantage either.”
In the end, they decided to have a ‘debate,’ a concept that belonged to the intruders. It sounded like the best idea.
They set it up.
The intruders went first. “You’ve had this land for 1500 years! It’s time we had it! Also, you people are such ancients! You have made no progress in technology. Big whoop! We’ll beat you up with mechanical sticks!”
Then the natives spoke.
“But we never made a deal to give you the land. If you had agreed with the people 1500 years ago that in 1500 years, you would be allowed to take over, we would gladly give it up. Also, we have never had any reason to increase our technology; we have everything we want here; food comes from the trees, and these houses have apparently lasted even more than 1500 years!”
There was no particular way to identify whose argument was better, unless you had a wise person. The problem with that idea was that each side wanted the wise person to be coming from their people. Therefore, they agreed to have a one-on-one battle to decide the fate of the place.
The leader of the intruders would face the king of the Natives. They each had an almost-equal number of people, so no one had a cheering advantage. Everyone agreed that they would leave if their side lost; they would not hang around and supply another argument.
The majority of the town was busy either watching the king getting armed or arming the king. Both the King of the Natives and the Leader of the Intruders got the same supplies, though the Natives didn’t entirely understand what the computerized armor was for, being people who lived in the 2000s. They hardly even understood the computers.
And then they went out for the battle. The leader of the Intruders couldn’t help smirking at the crude arrangement of armor, as well as the fact that it was the king fighting, not his servants or something.
They weren’t in any stadium; they were just in a clearing where seats had been set up. Most people were watching from far away, because the view was worse behind heads than from a distance.
For reasons too obvious to discuss, they both struck at the same time when the bell introducing battle rang. And they both hit armor, as there was little that wasn’t armor, advanced or primitive (though some would argue that the 2000s were not at all primitive, as they did have computers and such).
The circle they were confined into was rather small, and therefore it was difficult to have a real battle, even though it was such a small one anyway. After about a half an hour, they agreed to have a time-out. Neither one was drastically wounded, but they were both tired out from the effort of attempting to wound the other.
The king sat down to rest. Several people came to his aid, but he held up his hand, saying, “I’m perfectly fine; don’t bother.”
Almost every one of them backed away, except for David Clarke. “I do not need help,” the king said, but it was to no avail.
David held up a small box. “Open this with the top of it directly in front of your eyes. It will give you strength. I know that you are not wounded, but neither is the Leader of the Intruders, and our two goals are for you to survive and for him to die. You must have strength in order to do that.”
“Where did you get this?” the king spat.
“I just realized that according to the legend, which has now been at least for the most part confirmed, we really didn’t know what was in the shack, until now. I decided to investigate, in hope of something that might help us. I went in, this green puff of smoke with a face appeared in front of me, and I asked for something that would help my king, and he gave me this light-source, which, if opened correctly, will give you strength.”
The King hardly pondered over it. He knew that the battle would no longer be fair, but that wasn’t what was important right now. Their cause was far more important than the fairness of their battle.
“Very well,” he said. He took the box into his hands, and turned it so that it was positioned just right. And then he opened it. Everyone saw a blaze of light flashing, but only the king felt the effect of it. The blaze was not so bright, so no one noticed it unless they knew what was going on.
Then he stepped into the circle. The Leader, sitting on the other end of the circle, looked up, and stepped forward. The bell rang, and the king killed the Leader within a minute.
The people, having agreed that they would not argue, were forced, not by the Natives, but by their promise, to pack at once.
The king walked around the town, watching as the intruders finished packing. He knew perfectly well that it had been an unfair battle. But the thought of telling about his aid was not allowed; it would only make matters worse.
He hadn’t gotten around to getting a coffin to bury the leader, though he had promised that he would. The leader was still sprawled on the ground where the battle had occurred. The king walked over to where the leader was lying, and looked down at him.
There was nothing particularly gruesome about his look. He had a bit of dry blood across his cheek, and his color had left him a bit, leaving but a faint pinkish color. Other than that, he might as well have been lying down in a deep sleep.
When he returned home, everyone was in great spirits, as they had destroyed the enemy only 2 days ago. Even the king consented to a challenge (oh, the usual, just eating from the end of his spear, and also removing a sword from the ground that no one else could get), though he was rather mournful about the whole situation; his mind was still cluttered with guilty thoughts.
The next day went much the same. He watched as the intruders continued packing; they needed enough food for 60 days, and they couldn’t get all of that out of the apples and animals in the woods. Therefore, it was going to take them at least 10 days to finish packing; it is difficult to gather 6 day’s worth of food and eat 1 day’s worth of food.
Again, he walked over to the dead leader. The leader now had an orangish color in his face, and the blood now almost matched the color of his skin, so it was hardly visible. For a second, the king could have sworn that the leader’s finger had moved at least a tiny bit, but then he saw a leaf next to his finger, which looked shockingly like his finger, and had just moved because of the slight breeze.
When he got home, he announced that he wasn’t in the mood for any challenges. He just ate off his fingers that day, and as for the sword, it was to remain where it was for a while.
10 days had passed, and the king became bedridden. He wasn’t dead, but it was quite clear that he was getting pretty close. He had to be fed soup through a spoon by an assistant in order to survive at all.
Another 5 days passed. His assistant for the day, Rockitch, was a very wise person, though not as old as most. Everyone knew of the king’s aid; it was secret only to the intruders.
He was feeding the king through the tiniest spoon—the better to get it into his mouth. The king was doing hardly anything; law-enforcement had dropped as a result of his handicap. Half of the Natives couldn’t help but point out that it was very sad that their king had to support their customs.
It happened in a flash of flesh against door. Rockitch saw the door fly open, and slam into the wall behind it. He saw the hinges jump at the sudden friction. He saw the most dreaded face of them all—at least since the intruders had come. The leader of the intruders himself was standing in front of the door (which had been completely unhinged at that point), apparently having returned from the dead. And he was looking much more monstrous than anyone had ever seen—literally.
The king was too weak to notice this. One could see his throat moving as it sucked down the soup, but otherwise he seemed completely unaware of his surroundings.
Rockitch was going through some quick thinking. The light source had strengthened his king. Now his king was bedridden, and the dead victim of his power had come back to life.
In other words, the aid turned around on itself. Obviously, the light-source only operated initially to strengthen a person. Afterward, the person in question would be weakened greatly. All victims of his strength would return to a greater power than before. This was why the king was bedridden. Later, the king said that he had had flashes of memories of the leader’s skin color, and realized that he had been gaining rather than losing skin color over time.
There was only one thing for Rockitch to do—go straight back to the source of the whole problem.
He knew that it was their only hope; their enemy had gained strength to such a magnitude that the chances of winning again were virtually zero.
Of course, the shack was an old building that had only ever had entrance by a human once, and it was therefore very gloomy to go in there and discover what hidden secrets might exist that would repair everything.
Often, you may find that legends contain something spooky when they want to point out that this person, place, or thing is gloomy and impossible to enter. One of the most popular examples of this is when they say that someone went in there a long time ago, but never came out. The funny thing about this legend was that it didn’t have any of that. The only evidence of its danger was its outside grime.
So, even according to the legend, Rockitch was only the second person to ever enter this place. But right now, he was halfway through feeding the king, and there was the most monstrous creature right in front of him, the leader of all the intruders. He was standing right there, clothes half torn, giving the most unbearable roars, and having been enlarged to a size twice that of his original.
The leader of intruders then ramped out of the room, perhaps looking for something else to destroy.
Rockitch quickly got out and went straight toward the shack on the other end of the town. A mile later, he was at the shack, and it looked far worse than it had ever done. The usual grime that constantly snuck down the old, wooden planks of wood looked quite eerie in itself.
*
A half hour later, he came out of the shack. He was in a slight shock, but he knew exactly what to do. He walked right back to the king’s house-hold, and dragged the king all the way back to the shack.
Rockitch took the ruler in, sighed, looking up at the owner of the shack, and left the room, left the king all alone, a victim of all anger that ran through his veins.
The king just lay down on the floor of the shack. He hardly realized what had just happened. He turned over on all fours, not even thinking that he might possibly be only the 3rd person ever to touch these boards. Suddenly, he felt a slight surge of strength running through him. It was most certainly not enough to win a battle with that monstrous leader, though.
It was enough, however, to observe his surroundings. The inside of the shack was just as grimy and unattractive as the outside. There was one plank of wood in particular that seemed strangely loose, so that the light came in and illuminated the green muck that ran across it, giving an eerie look of constantly trailing downward but never reaching the floor. Up above him a green puff of smoke hung over him, with a pair of eyes and a mouth; it was a giant green head floating in midair. He had one long unibrow, giving a strange sight about his eyes. His mouth, when closed, looked simply like a long black line that stripped across his face bellow the eyes.
“The person that gave you your aid came into this very hut, I’m sure you know. He astonished me greatly; he was the first to ever enter this space since my death. My name is Colest. You are wondering, I’m sure, why you have become bedridden. You may not have noticed it, but your rival also came back from the dead while you were being fed. There seems to be a similarity between these two events, doesn’t there?”
The king bowed his head.
“You knew that the aid your friend gave you was wrong. Yet you took it. That is why it comes with this side effect. Obviously, I would not force you to live the rest of your life like this; that would be more evil than your cheating, by far.
“You must vow that you will not do any such crime again before you have a chance of surviving at all, much less defeating. Then I will lift this spell that has been placed before your eyes.”
The king thought for a moment. “Ok,” he said, finally having figured out where he was.
“Hold up your hand. Although your custom is quite different from mine, I will use yours; it will do better, because you will be more likely to interpret it as a vow than if we did it my way.”
The king lifted his arm, but his hand fell limply; he was still rather weak, though he was exaggerating it a bit.
Colest laughed. “That will do. Repeat each line after I say it.”
Though the king did do this, it will not be done here, to speed things up a bit:
I will not make a promise and break it. I will not kill without debated reasoning (the king had not done this, but he did have to promise not to do so anyway). I will not give myself advantage without informing the victim of my advantage before he or she becomes the victim. I will not do anything that I think may be wrong in any way unless the target of the action consents to it.
Suddenly, the king felt a surge of strength stirring through him. Finally, he was no longer too weak to walk, no longer too weak to do anything that the average person would be able to do (there are many things the average person wouldn’t do even if they do have the capacity).
The leader, likewise, was reduced from infuriated rage to an angry but calm, normal person.
The king came back into town stumbling slightly, not having walked for 5 days, but clearly healthy. There were many people standing at the edge of town, just waiting for the king to come. When he finally did, they cheered. “Thank you,” said the king in a loud, official voice, trying to hush it down. “I have to make an announcement,” he added to no avail.
At last, the applauding died down. “Thank you very much,” said the king, “but I need to make an announcement, without interruptions, preferably, so you may either leave if you just plan to cheer yourself hoarse, or stay if you want to hear what I have to say.” The king waited. No one moved.
“Ok, I am going to truce with the—um… people that have come into our town to our displeasure.” The king refrained from saying the word ‘intruders,’ because he wanted to change the air of talk of these people. “We should have done this from the start; we were very thoughtless, and I, in particular, cheated them, which was a would-be controversial action.”
There were a few boos from both sides, as they both had some reasoning, though the king knew now that neither of them had strong hard-core justification.
“We can certainly fit a few more people into our land. We may not have the materials required to build the houses that David Clark discovered so long ago, which have lasted to this day and, hopefully, even longer, but we can surely still figure it out.”
*
Well, that’s the story. Moral: justification can always be found in Colest.