Scroll of Transformation

The Second Scroll of Lylanth: Transformation

	Gaul, 220 AD.
	'm so very, very tired.
	I marveled at the oddness of this stranger’s voice. It was deep and masculine; but at the same time had an almost feminine quality to it. It was as if two separate people were speaking the same words in perfect harmony, in complimentary octaves. Yet it was only he who spoke and I found myself drawn to his melodic words. I could have easily fallen under a hypnotic trance if it weren’t for the deep sadness that permeated his being. His shoulders were slumped forward and his face did little to hide the burden that clearly rested on his soul.
	“If I had not blinded myself with the vision of what she once was, I could have stopped her rampage before all of this.”
	His hand gestured towards the ruins of a small village. All that remained were the burning embers of the town bell tower, the local market, and even my family’s home. All nothing more than a recent memory. My heart pounded heavily in my chest as the pain of this moment struck me again. My whole world had gone up in flames and I too would have perished if it weren’t for this stranger who sat before me. As I looked at him closely, I found his appearance to be strangely unsettling. He was incredibly tall, with arms and legs that were longer and thinner than I’d ever seen. His head was slightly misshapen, and his skin had a grayish hue that I could not dismiss. I remember hearing about distant barbarians who possessed strange eyes that matched the color of the sea and long, flowing hair as golden as the sun. This man was far stranger. Even the occasional dark-skinned travelers from the south could not compare. I began to doubt if he was even a man.
	He sighed and slumped forward a little further. I could tell that along with a sense of burden and grief, this stranger was also exhausted. It was like he carried the whole of the world about his neck and would not be able to continue without his spirit breaking under its immense weight.
	“So what is this vile creature that destroyed everything that I hold dear?” I asked not only to satisfy my own curiosity but in a hope that I could some how ease this stranger’s burden.
	“She was not always the evil destroyer you have seen her to be.” His face seemed to lighten as he spoke. “In fact, I was once proud to call her my friend. But that was long ago in a time that now seems faded and dream-like in my memory.”
	“So what happened to her?”
	“The story of her transformation begins in a time long before your oldest ancestors walked through these woods,” He sat back against the gnarled wood of a fallen tree and gazed into the licking flames of our campfire. “A time when I was proud to call her a friend.”
	With my interest piqued, I settled into a more comfortable position and listened as he began his tale. It wasn’t long before I’d managed to forget my horrible sadness, if only for a while, and was swept back to a time long past.

	Before all the horror, before all the misery, we were the founders of a glorious civilization that lay in a valley far from this place. The native inhabitants warmly welcomed us even though we were strangers to their land. They considered us to be their First Archons (people of high religious and political standing) even though they were at first wary of my strange appearance. Lylanth (as I knew her then) would spend many evenings wandering around the jeweled towers and gardens talking with me. She was a delightfully spirited person who had a good mind for philosophy and often challenged my thoughts and beliefs about the nature of the universe. She was one of the few people who didn’t treat me differently because of my extraterrestrial origins.
	Over time our society grew restless and began exploring the countryside. I shared in this fundamental curiosity and often joined them on their expeditions. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves traversing the nearby mountains the native’s ancestors once called “Abo-rah”, or Lands of Fear. At first we found little more than baby goats playing blissfully along the sheer rock cliffs; darting to and fro without fear of the perilous plummet that would befall them if they were to slip. It wasn’t until much later that we stumbled upon the caves.
	At first we thought the caves were a natural oddity. They sat alongside the shores of a river the villagers reverently called Alph. The river was soon cut short as it flowed into the gaping maw of the largest of these caves. All we could hear was the deafening sound of the rapids as they relentlessly raced along the subterranean passage. As we approached the mouth of the cave, the temperature dropped mysteriously. Like the razor sharp teeth of a ravenous monster, long jagged icicles hung menacingly from its ceiling. In hindsight these were powerful and foreboding signs of danger but we failed to notice them as such at the time.
	We entered the cave along a narrow strip of land not totally submerged in water. We soon saw the river become a raging waterfall that plummeted downward, deep into the bowels of the earth. Even with my superior eyesight I could not see where this waterfall ended. If there ever were such thing as a bottomless pit, I believe I saw it this day. As I continued to peer downward, trying in vein to discern where the waterfall ended, the ground began to shake.
	I do not believe it was what you call an earthquake. There seemed to be a consciousness and purpose to it. The ground shook at just the right moment and with just enough ferocity that all the members of our expedition team fell into the river. And dropped down the waterfall, deep into the bowels of the earth. If I had been human, I too would have suffered that same fate. It was only with my preternatural abilities that I alone survived. Just as the ground began to tremble, I instinctively reached out and touched the adjacent wall. As I did so, my hand began to unite with the hard stone surface. My whole arm took on the look and feel of the stone and it soon appeared as if my arm were melting into the wall itself. This linking secured me against falling but left me unable to rescue my comrades. After the tremors subsided, I cleared my mind and began to separate myself from the wall. It was a grueling process and took me several minutes of hard concentration to free myself completely. It took the last of my remaining strength to stumble back to the city and tell the others what had happened.
	We anxiously searched for the lost explorers. I held on to the desperate hope that somehow they had survived. As the days turned into weeks that hope slowly turned to despair. Even with our sophisticated tools and devices, we never discovered what lay at the bottom of the waterfall, nor where the river went from there. It was as if the caverns themselves swallowed the river whole, and nothing was left but oblivion. We could do little more than mourn the loss of our fallen brethren and give up the search. It seemed impossible that anyone could survive such a perilous plunge into that abyss. And yet, unbeknownst to me at the time, Lylanth had somehow managed to survive. Although it would be many, many years before I saw her again.