The Stone Lands

And so he came, through the waves of all that was good and trusted, the bearer of truth.  He threw up his hands in the air, stepping through the broad currents of Darkness, or Justice — it was undecided which was which.  Fighting his way through the last stretches of the pulling tide, he finally landed ashore, and his armor took its first step onto solid ground.  That infinite footprint will encase in the sand now, the first to dwell on land such as this.  Deep, and wet, with the lapping of the waves caressing the beach.  He already knew what was behind him.  He’d been there already.  He’d explored, and battled, and seen what there was to see.  It was sickening.  But now, now he had stepped through the barrier that was forbidden.  He had crossed the sea, and standing upon the sands of time and knowledge, he shielded his eyes with his black gauntlet on his hand from the sun.  It was uncomfortable, to be in the presence of anything that bore light, even such as this.  Unfathomable as it was, the sun flew in the sky, glowing a sickly black, as if it had burned itself into a pitch-colored ash.  It dripped with soul-less malice, as if it dripped with melting tar.

 

This sun was what truly existed.  It blocked view of all the stars, the moon, the flying balls of fire that slided across the night sky.  Irreplaceable as they were, they were now nothing.  They sat behind the coated darkness of this new “closest star to the earth.”  It was frozen in the sky, forever bearing its ebony light.  It was disgusting, yet magnificent in its own way.  It would never set, or rise.  It was, as he himself was, just there.  He wondered if his sword would become tarnished and rusted by the corrosive power of this accursed ball of dark fire. 

 

He walked, slowly, up the beach to where he could see what lay before him.  Each footprint left a new blemish on the unbaptised earth of the forgotten land.  The sand had remained soft and smooth during its years of unuse and neglegence.  It was during this that he realized what beauty could do to itself when left alone. 

 

It seemed as if this desert would never end.  After what must have been billions of steps, billions of trudging movements forward towards what he thought he could discover, he glanced backwards for the first time to see if he could still view the tearing waves which he had fought through for so many, many years.  It seemed as if he had never moved, for they still lapped only a few yards behind him, as if a coiled and decayed hand from the Darkness, reaching out at him to tear him back into the Known and away from the Unknown.  Each step lead him nowhere.

 

The black sun still glowed softly in the sky.  He was sweating inside his armor.  His breath left the small grates in his helmet in sharp bursts of steam, evaporating into the air that had never before been breathed.  It tasted like blood.

 

He began to run, to sprint.  Fire was at his heels as he flew swiftly and silently across the endless sea of sand, the soft dust kicking and swirling through the air behind him.  The light powder could barely be audible as it fell back to the ground.  He was beginning to outrun the ocean torrent behind him.

 

He reached the horizon line, the peak of this desert.  He stopped and stood tall, staring at the sun in utter defiance.  He stared at the sun for a long time, listening to it, as if it were speaking to him, laughing at him.  And then he realized why the sun was laughing.  He tore his gaze away from the black fire in the sky, the darkness blazing in his eyes, and looked forward, away from the sea, forward to where he had been running for so long, never tiring and never giving up.  He’d finally reached the horizon, he could see everything before him.  What he saw was nothing.  Nothing.  There was absolutely nothing before him.  He saw no life, no formations of any type that drew any attention.  It even seemed as if the air had stopped at this point, as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff into a vaccum of space and time.  He stopped breathing.  Was this the untouched land?  Was this Truth? 

 

With an unrelinquished roar, he threw his hands to his side and drew forth the Sword of Darkness and held it high, as if to threaten the sun of this land.  Foam erupted from his mouth as he seethed with rage and disgust at the land before him, and he once again began to run, into the airless, motionless abyss in front of him.  Breathing not, but roaring and snarling endlessly in rebellion to all that existed, and all that did not exist in this wasteland.  His sword held high, ready to strike when the moment arose.  Fire burned in his soul.

 

The Hero still runs, to meet his destiny at the crossroads and slay it as he has so many destinies before this.  Now he faces his own. 

 

It seemed to be ages ago when those thoughts and images raced through his head like a deralied train flying through chaos.  He remembered how angry he was, how frustrated he got when he first saw the Infinite Sands.  He vividly recalled how he wanted to pluck the black sun from the sky and crush it underneath his boots, smothering its pride and tearing away at its deathly rays of non-light.  It was a disgusting sight to see, that sun, and now, four years later, it was no different.  It took him less time to get used to it this time, however.  The feeling in the pit of his stomach that told him to bend over and vomit went away much quicker than it had so long ago.  He turned his gaze away from the sun, and looked ahead at the desert before him.

 

There was nothing new about it.  Completely unchanged, unending…unfair.  He sighed, trying to find some flaw in the glass-like desert that spanned before him until the waves from the heat blurred it into a magnificent Monet of grains of sand.  And on it went, seemingly forever. 

 

He took a step forward.  The sand was hot underneath his feet, but he didn’t notice the burn.  The calouses that had developed over the last time he traversed this sickly desert had yet to fade, and there was no longer any reason to cry out in pain.  There wasn’t a reason for him to cry out in anything, lately.  Maybe that’s why he was going back.

 

With each step he took, the wind snuck up behind him and blew it away, erasing any trace that he might have existed in this forbidden realm.  So few had crossed this desert.  Even fewer had made it back.  Of neither category were there any records, any historical documents, save the typeface of his mind.  Within that odd chasm of information, every detail of his journey was recorded in perfect detail, like a photographic memory that never quit, never ran out of storage space. 

 

He wasn’t nearly as angry as he was when he first saw it.  The Sword stayed where it was, he had nobody to strike here.  Not yet.  He continued walking forward. 

 

Why wasn’t he running?  Was it a lack of passion, or was it simply because he had seen this before and he knew what to expect?  This was the Never Changing.  It wasn’t until he reached the Abyss that he would start to expect the unexpected, and prepare himself for Battle at every turn.  Here there was no enemy but reality, and at that he could offer a hearty chuckle if he was in the mood.  He was not.

 

Ah well, continuing on.  He had a long walk ahead of him.