Unused to having such a fragile son, as Korel’s older brothers were experienced lumberjack prodigies, his father pushed him beyond his capabilities until one day tragedy struck. While high atop the treeline, Korel fainted from exhaustion and the heat of the sun. He fell fifty feet to the ground below him. The fall would have killed him if not for the soft ground covered with newly grown grasses and shrubs, but he suffered a broken shin and multiple lacerations.
Bedridden for two months, and having lost his father’s confidence, Korel despaired. Korel’s Mother, a kind, delicate person with a tendency to talk too quietly, helped Korel by giving him chores that he could do from his bedside. Most of the chores assigned were practicing his letters and learning the alphabet from his mother. Quickly, he learned the basic principals of written language, and was soon reaching the limits of the knowledge his mother possessed. Understanding that he was more adapted to quieter surroundings using his mind instead of his muscles, he asked to be apprenticed with the town’s brewer who was also the town’s only scribe.
His father gruffly accepted the offer and sent Korel away to live with the brewer with an urgency that upset and further alienated Korel from his father. For the next few years Korel learned all that the brewer/scribe had to teach. It didn’t take too long until he had exhausted the brewers knowledge pool as well, but during the time he had become a scribe of some note. He took his skills, said goodbye to his mother (his father refused to see his son off), and left the small hamlet to the larger city of Hendren farther inland, which housed the famous Abradene Academy of the Learned Arts.
Without much money for tuition, or any means to show family pedigree, he wasn’t allowed into the Academy upon arrival. Discouraged, Korel sought out the guidance of the temples in Hendren. Not being overly religious, he visited the first one that caught his eye. The sculpture in the front of the temple depicted a beautiful maiden dressed in dark purple robes holding forth a bloody dagger. Mesmerized by the sculpture Korel entered into the Temple of WeeJas. Inside he met a man who sat down and listened intently to Korel’s story of how the Academy wouldn’t accept him, and of his father’s distancing himself from him. The man’s name was Lamentae. Lamentae took pity on the scrawny young man and offered him a place to stay as long as he promised to help out around the temple and join in the services. Korel quickly agreed and ended up staying at the temple for three of the most memorable years of his life.
During his stay, he learned of the order known as the Euthanatos. Lamentae was the leader of this extremist group who was a part of the WeeJas doctrine. The Euthanatos focused their knowledge and studies on the darker side of the religion; the side of death. Intrigued, but afraid, Korel turned down the invitation to join in the cult and instead focused his time and energy on getting accepted into the Abradene academy, and with his relationship with a beautiful cleric woman named Leradrill.
Leradrill and Korel were bound together from the first moment they met. Intrigued not by her beauty, which was astounding in it’s own right, but by her intellect and her ability to tax Korel in their debates over many ranges of conversation. It was finally Leradrill and Lamentae, both of which had ties to the Academy, that convinced Abradene Academy to admit Korel on a trial basis and provided the funding necessary to finish his training as a master scribe. Grateful, Korel thanked his closest friends and moved his trivial belongings into the Academy.
Immediately the Academy realized that Korel’s training as a meager scribe was a waste of talent and ambition. He was quickly moved into the arcane studies program and shortly thereafter began his training as an arcane manipulator, or a Wizard. Korel learned the lessons given quickly and surpassed those who were assigned to him as partners. Soon Korel earned the feared reputation of a prodigy, and was shunned by his fellow classmates. His instructors, oblivious to the prejudice of the other classmates, gave Korel more and more difficult tasks that were completed quickly and without error.
While in his second year of training at the Academy, he met his only friend he would acquire throughout his studies there. His name was Henri. The pairing of Korel and Henri was odd at best for Henri was behind in almost all of his magical studies, and was not much for mage material. But the two became fast friends despite Henri’s shortcoming. It was during a final assignment in the second trimester that Korel suffered his first act of treachery from a trusted friend.
Henri was struggling to finish the final project for his studies, unable to grasp the lesson behind the subject matter. In a desperate move, Henri stole Korel’s project and presented it in front of the instructors as his own. Enraged at the deception, Korel allowed Henri to finish with the presentation, and then began questioning him about specifics about the project. When it became apparent that Henri was unable to answer the questions, Korel exposed his friend as a cheat. The instructors stood up in defiance at Korel’s statements and began asking Henri if the allegations were true. Henri fled the Academy hall with tears in his eyes never to return.
Later that week, still in shock of what Henri had done, Korel took the day away from his studies and fled to the surrounding hillside to contemplate his situation. When the sun was nearing it’s setting, he was approached by the familiar sight of his beloved Leradrill. She sat down, noiselessly by his side. Feeling comforted by her mere presence, Korel decided not to burden his loved one with the news of what had transpired. Instead, he began a discussion with her that quickly turned into a debate over using truth spells in a court of law. Immediately, Korel sensed that something was wrong. While she debated her side eloquently, she did not add any passion to her argument. He stopped their debate by holding up his hand, their sign for truce, and asked her what was wrong. Leradrill told Korel that she had been assigned a mission by the Temple of WeeJas which would take her far to the north and that she would probably not be coming back to this area. Realizing now that he was hearing her say good bye, he decided instead not to scream over the injustice, or cry for the cruelty of the events of having two of his closest friends betrayed him. Instead he accepted her statement and rose to embrace her. He felt a part of him leave with her as she walked away down the hillside.
Korel stayed on that hillside until the sun rose the next morning. Unable to cry, for he was too sad, and unable to feel, for he was numb, he simply sat there; unmoving. When the sun did rise in the morning, much to Korel’s disdain, he stood up, brushed the grass off himself and headed back to the academy to collect his things.
He left Abradene Academy that day, never to return. He collected his belongings and texts, which he had scribed with his own hands, and went to see his longtime friend and confidant Lamentae at the cult of Euthanatos. He went there with the desire to find out what his friend had spoke of all these years, he had a curiosity about death and it’s meaning. Sensing Korel’s state of mind, Lamentae took him to a quiet, unadorned cell and placed him and his belongings inside. For three days Korel was fed unobtrusively through a hole in the center of the door where a tray of food was set, and left to his own thoughts. When he emerged those days later, he was a much different man than he was before he entered. Unwilling to trust so freely again, he chose to lock his heart away from others and attempted to detach his emotions from his actions relying on thought and logic to see him through.
He studied vehemently the material put before him about the Euthanatos and their death-relationship with the goddess WeeJas. So entranced he was at the material being given, that he neglected food until forced upon him. He neglected sleep until his body prohibited anything less, and he awoke the next day with the same tome on his lap to begin again. Lamentae was pleased at how quickly his friend and student was progressing and delved into the subject matter as deeply as Korel. The two of them became inseparable in the months to come. Which one of them was the master and which was the apprentice was hard to determine, as both’s knowledge in the matter was nearly equal. Korel deferred to Lamentae’s wisdom and experience in matters of question, and the two worked tirelessly until the teachings of the Euthanatos were as if it was all they ever had known.
Korel finally approached his friend and teacher one day and said that he was ready for the test of true faith. Lamentae, having expected this, took Korel off into a side room where he underwent forty-eight hours of meditation, fasting, and herbal infusions into his body. Once his body and mind were cleansed, he was brought out to a small assemblage of the congregation who encircled him in the Euthanatos ceremonial robes. They began chanting a ritual whose roots are hundreds of years old. One member of the congregation came to Korel’s side and produced a small dagger coated with an opaque blue substance. The dagger was used to slice a small cut in Korel’s flesh and the blue substance was wiped over the oozing cut. All sense of reality slipped from Korel’s already weary mind and body and his consciousness, his spirit, fled from its fleshy cage to take the Euthanatos test of faith…
***
All around, all I see is thick smoke. I feel as if trapped in a smoker’s ashtray, for the air is hard to breath, and the stink of this smoke clings about me. I look down expecting to see the ground filled with ash, but all I can see is more smoke. I am floating. There is no up or down, only empty space without direction or gravity. I feel lost and hopeless, what am I doing here, why was I banished to this place. Won’t someone help me? What am I supposed to do? “Help, help” I cry. Why doesn’t anyone answer? As far as I can see there is no ground, no door, no way out of this place. So much time has passed, has it been hours or days, I can’t be certain. Nothing is changed, how do I get out? Where am I?
Light opens from above me, and I can tell there is something else there below me as well now. All around me I see hazy images of the circle of the Euthanatos. They are still chanting, looking at me. I can feel a dragging from each of the three points of light. One from the bright light above, another from the images of the cult surrounding me, and a third from directly below me. I can guess what the one is directly below me; I don’t want to look at it. It is dark and hot; I can feel it burning the bottoms of my feet as I hover above it. I move instead closer to the bright light above me. I can feel it guiding me towards it, and I can make out some of the shapes that the light is made out of. They are my family. I can see my grandfather and my grandmother. They are beckoning me towards them, I can feel their warmth, and smell their homes. All these memories flooding back into me. They are comfortable; the light is comfortable and peaceful.
But I don’t want to die. I am not ready to meet my end. In defiance, I turn my head away from my loved ones, and they disappear. The light that shrouded them disappears as well, as if it had never been. I am now left with two choices. The hazy images of the Euthanatos, which I perceive is the view from my eyes, and the dark place below me. I hesitate at looking down there. I don’t want to know what it really is. To me the danger feels too great, but my curiosity wins out over my loathing of the dark place and I look down.
The searing heat of the darkness is overwhelming. I hear a faint screaming sound coming from the dark place, the absence of light. I try to break away from it’s pull, so much stronger than the light that was above me. I try to reach and pull myself out, but there is nothing to latch onto, no handholds to grasp. My arms and legs flailing, trying to catch anything, anyone. The screaming sound of the darkness is getting louder as I come closer. I reach out and pull my knees to my chest tight with my arms. Cowering like a whipped dog I hold my self as I can feel my flesh being burned away layer by layer. I open my eyes against the heat and look out away from the dark place. I call upon all my will, all my knowledge and encase myself in armor of my own defiance of death. It helps just enough. I can feel the burning subside, but the screaming is now deafening. I stare away from the black towards the hazy images of the Euthanatos and make my decision. Not yet, not yet…
***
Korel woke to the sound of his own screaming. The burning sensation he had suffered shown no damage upon his body, but he knew that the damage had taken effect on him nonetheless. The damage wasn’t on his body, but somewhere deep inside. He shut his mouth with his hands and lay there, shaking, in the circle of the Euthanatos gathered close. Some congratulated him, some walked away without comment, but all filtered out of the room except for Korel and Lamentae. Lamentae gathered his friend to him, and carried him to his cell where Korel slept for nearly a day.
Upon awakening the following day, Korel sought out his friend and told him of what he had seen during his test. Lamentae sat patiently asking questions only when refinement was necessary while Korel relayed his tale. Lamentae told him that he had undergone a powerful test, and that something of the test would always remain with him. Korel thanked his friend for his council, and retired to his room where he cataloged his experiences with as much detail as he could remember. The specifics of his visions were beginning to fade, and by the time he had finished his writings, he had forgotten how it had all started. His only remaining link to what had happened during his test was in the written texts, half of which he couldn’t even remember writing.
Quickly, he re-read the tome to put the memories fresh into his mind, but they would slide from his memory as if slicked with oil. Frustrated, he closed the book and put it on a shelf in his cell. Korel then took a moment to quietly contemplate his situation and the future of what all of these things had meant. He knew now that he didn’t fear death, but respected what it offered. There were many mysteries to uncover in the realm of un-life, and he was interested in discovering as much as he could, but that would have to wait until it was time. For now, he had to discover what it meant to live, and how best to use the opportunity granted him in the realm of living.
Leaving his cell, he visited Lamentae for the last time. He told his trusted friend that he needed to go and explore the world to find out what his purpose in life was to be. Lamentae understood and offered Korel an oilcloth wrapped package, then stood back to await Korel’s reaction. Surprised that his friend had read him so easily as to expect him to be leaving, Korel stared at his friend a moment, and then finally opened the offered package. Inside contained an ornate robe of purple and red. Surrounding its collar were bright opals with silver fastenings. Belted at the waistline of the garment was an ornate dagger sheathed in a silver scabbard; the dagger from the ceremony. Reverently, Korel re-wrapped the garment in the oilcloth and hugged his friend with tears in his eyes. Lamentae told him to contact him if he ever needed anything.
Korel gathered his things, and the two of them walked to the doorway of the Temple. Again, Korel marveled at the stone sculpture of WeeJas that had brought him inside to seek help so many years ago. He thought back to his meeting with Leradrill, his love. He thought of Lamentae, and how he had frightened him when he had originally spoke of the Euthanatos, before Korel fully understood their obsession with death. He thought momentarily of Henri, his friend at the Academy, and quickly brushed that thought from his mind. He looked back at his friend Lamentae and found his face an unreadable mask of emotion. Korel stepped down from the doorway and proceeded south out of the city, he looked back only once to see his friend still staring out after him.
Four months later, Korel had managed to book charter on a ship heading to the northeast parts of the coastline. Looking for adventure and a way to practice and utilize all the knowledge he had acquired thus far, he decided randomly, to head towards a city called Freeport in the center of the continent. The travel was treacherous, and the people on the boat kept mostly to themselves, and Korel’s skills at making fast friends were lacking. He stayed below deck as much as possible and practiced his ability to transfer magical energy into a scroll of paper. The travel was slow and uneventful, and it was nearly three weeks later when the captain called out that they would be landing in Freeport Harbor. Excited at the prospect of adventure, Korel packed his things, went to the deck and prepared himself for what would become a grand adventure.
More on the Freeport adventure is detailed in Korel’s journal
