The Girl and the Guardian

OF KORMAN. Korman, the Last Guardian, was reared in the High Cliff City of Dragonflight on Kor-Tinnama, by the wisest warrior of that city, Hillcrest the Farseeing. Early in his life he learned the Way of the Great Labyrinth, and after passing all the tests he was initiated into the Order of the Red Dragon. After fighting many bold campaigns in his native world against the Aghmaath to avenge the slaying of his mother and father, he was given the post of Guardian of the Tree of Life in Aeden. His great sword, forged in the secret smithies of the World of Fire, infused with Arxphare Orbalax, the Flame Unquenchable, hung from his waist, and no enemy dared pass him to do harm to the Tree of Life, until one day he looked upon a son of Athmad, and let him pass, thinking the boy could do no evil. Then was the Arcra-Nama stolen, and so it was that Aeden fell to the Aghmaath. For these were already abroad in the land in secret, in ones and twos, disguised. And when the Tree’s power faded they set to work quickly, poisoning the land and stopping up the fountains of water and sowing their thorn vines and brambles throughout the land.

  Korman was then cast out from the Order of the Red Dragon, and he tore his robe and drew his sword to seek the lost Arcra, but the boy had returned through the portal to Edartha by the power of the Stone, and Korman could not follow. Long years he kept vigil there in the place where the boy had disappeared, waiting for the portal to open, and doing battle as he could with the Aghmaath. There he was met one day by a Seer, a hermit of the hills, who told him to watch the place well, for one day here would cross over a child, the Chosen One, who would find the Stone and return it. Meanwhile the Tree withered and a forest of thorns grew up around it. And the waterfall was silenced and the Lake dried up and the birds departed and the land was silent but for the creaking of the thorns and the crack of drying mud.

  But at times he took it upon himself to leave the place of watch, giving it into the hands of Moonwit, the hermit-outcast who lived in the hills, though with trepidation lest he should miss the coming of the Chosen One And when Korman worried, the hermit would laugh, and say, ‘As it is written, so will it come to pass- the Chosen One will come to you – where is your faith?’

  When Korman went abroad, he disguised himself as a beggar, one of the many farmers displaced by the Thornmen, and he showed not his weapons. And sometimes he would sit in the local tavern and listen to the gossip, and talk with those who did not shun him (of whom there were few) and so would learn some of the happenings in the land -most of them evil, a new thorn thicket established here, an Aghmaath abduction there, and always rumours of people turning to the Dark and of betrayals and deceptions. Grim tales were being told of the stronghold in the valley of the Skull, somewhere west of the Valley of Thorns, in the desolation of thorns, where prisoners were brought into the Dark Labyrinth for questioning, brainwashing and endarkening. -Ennead of Aeden, ‘Of Korman, the Last Guardian of Aeden.’