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Darkmoon 30, 2603 R.M. — Balgâzar Forest, Turod, Litheran
DERITH SYLVARADO SLEPT deeply, but not soundly. Before him floated spectral images from the events in his life. The memories were not at all bad. In fact, they highlighted some of his most virtuous acts.
Still, Silver had always been a lucid dreamer. Knowing his duty to feed his village, he attempted to awaken himself, only to be blocked by an unseen entity that pushed back more the harder he tried. “Guard the power” he would hear and be thrown back into the abyss of sleep. Silver floated like a ghost, unable to interact with anything as he watched each of these scenes play out like his whole life was a stage play.
The first such scene showed him as a young child, sitting outside in the warm air of an early spring, playing with a wooden horse his father had bought him the previous autumn for his fourth birthday. He had not assumed his family was well off, but they were certainly not poor. He went to school and his parents had the money to provide him with some comforts and luxuries, including a handful of toys.
Although Silver’s father had a farm like most people in the village, he made most of his income as a trader, selling and buying ancient Syl artifacts. This earned his family enough income to own land in the center of the village. Silver had never realized before that others may not be as fortunate.
That day, he saw a boy about his same age, sitting sullenly on the side of the roadway. Unlike Silver’s well built frame, his body was gaunt and his clothes tattered. Silver could tell his family had been unable to grow the necessary food to last the winter. He watched the boy as he simply sat, staring at the toy with a wistful grin on his thin face, knowing the simple thing was enough to bring him happiness. He eyed the toy with longing, not a hint of jealousy in his innocent eyes. Silver had seen the boy before, coming to the center of town to stare at the bigger houses, but he had never registered the interloper’s lack of material possessions.
Without a word, Silver rose to his feet and walked across the street. Holding the carving, he said in childlike tactlessness, “You don’t have any toys, do you?” The boy was quiet for a long moment, then shook his head sullenly. His bright gray eyes never left the doll. Silver extended the horse without any hesitation. “Here, take this.”
The boy looked ready to refuse, but Silver forced it into his hands. “It’s okay. It’d mean more to me if it made someone else happy.”
And it was true. Silver would regularly see the boy playing with the horse after that. What he might have forgotten about in months, the other boy would treasure for many years to come until the time his family moved away.
The scene closed, and another vignette opened, this time three years later at the end of a long, muggy summer. Silver was the first to discover the young stranger, collapsed outside the gates of the village. Silver told his parents and several aunts, but they did not take his worry seriously.
When no adults came, Silver went out to help overheated, delirious youth by himself. Sitting him up, Silver brushed the dust off his clothing and provided a canteen of water and a little dried meat. The boy tried to stand up on his own, but stumbled, so Silver helped him rise.
“Are you alright, guy?” young Silver had asked.
The stranger, his thirst quenched, replied gruffly, “I haven’t been ‘alright’ for a long time, kid.”
Silver just laughed. “You’re a kid too, y’know?” he said with a smile. “You’re the same height as me.” The stranger’s face was obviously older but his stature was small enough and his muscles lean enough to look arguably younger.
The stranger did not meet his gaze. He simply sighed. “After you’ve seen the kind of stuff I’ve had to deal with, you wouldn’t think of yourself as a kid either.”
Silver just grinned all the brighter. “My mom thinks I’m gonna be a kid forever.”
The teenager snorted. “Good for you,” he grumbled. He began to walk away, but Silver ran after him. Being about the same height regardless of their clear age difference, he was not able to get more than a few steps before Silver was on his heels.
“Is there a reason you’re following me?” the teenager asked coldly. He kept walking, but he clenched his fists repeatedly in agitation.
“What’s your name?” young Silver asked without answering the question.
“I don’t have time for...”
“My name’s Silver,” he stated cheerily, straightening his spine in pride. “Actually, no, it’s not. It’s Derith. But I wear a silver fivemark on my neck. It’s magic. Wanna see?” He held out his lucky charm for the stranger to see.
The stranger stuck up his nose at the small coin. “I don’t have time for your...”
“So that’s why everyone calls me Silver. Well, not everyone. My mom calls me Derith. It means ‘hunter’. I’m gonna be the village hunter one day. I keep telling people, but they just pat me on the head and say ‘that’s nice’.” He stared into space for a moment, then snapped back into focus. “What do you wanna be when you grow up?”
“I don’t have time for chitchat.” The stranger just kept walking, but Silver tagged along anyway. “Gold, was it?” He asked, teeth clenched in frustration. “Don’t you have someone else to bug?”
“Silver,” he replied eagerly. “It’s ‘cause my last name’s Sylvarado. It sounds like ‘silver’, but it’s not spelled the same.”
“I thought you had a magic silver coin,” the stranger jibed, stopping to look at Silver suspiciously.
“That too. It’s a fivemark. It’s magic. Wanna see?”
The other boy scoffed, but there was considerably less derision in his voice than before. “No, that’s fine... Silver. You go run along and play now.” He began to walk away again.
Silver crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You know, you’re really rude.”
The stranger stopped again. “What?” he asked coldly.
Silver’s face was contorted in a pouty frown. “I found you on the road. I gave you something to drink. I gave you something to eat. I cared about you when nobody else did, and you think you’re so much better than me.” He stamped his foot and crossed his arms petulantly. “You don’t tell me your name. You don’t tell me where you come from. I thought we were gonna be friends, but you’re just a grumpy meany like the grown-ups.”
The other boy’s face softened. He did not smile, nor was any sadness reflected in his eyes, but he seemed truly taken aback. He looked at Silver in the eyes and Silver saw the near total blackness of his gaze lighten for just a moment. “My name is Searin Labonic. I come from very far away. I’ve been wandering for a long time, ever since my parents were killed.”
Silver’s face flashed with horror and sadness. “I’m sorry to hear that, Searin.” Then, immediately, his demeanor changed and he said, “Wanna live here and be my friend? You don’t have a home, and I’ve never had a big brother before.”
Searin rolled his eyes. “You’re a weird kid, you know?”
Silver beamed at him. “So is that a yes?”
And they had been best friends ever since. With Searin having no place to call home, Silver offered to help him find a place to stay. Silver insisted the Mayor take him in and put him up in his extra room, and would not stop pestering the man until he did.
The Mayor finally agreed, but only if Searin went to school like a normal child. He quickly proved too smart to be schooled by the teachers in Maresde. Instead, he spent most of his time studying on his own, but that did not keep them apart. Silver frequently relied on him for help with his own studies.
Searin lived at the Mayor’s mansion for almost two years in an extra suite of rooms, but his dour personality did not endear him to the Mayor’s family. His nature did not disturb Silver, though. It was not long before Silver convinced his father to let him live with them. Even after Searin came of age and was able to own his own lodging, he still stayed at the Sylvarado house and pitched in like a member of the family, and Silver never thought of him as anything less than a brother.
Silver had almost forgotten he was still dreaming until several years passed by in a second and another scene opened. Arith, Silver’s father, had gone on yet another treasure hunt and had taken Searin because of his experience outside the forest. This left Silver in charge of accomplishing his father’s normal responsibilities, even though the boy was not yet twelve years old.
Some days after they left, Silver’s mother suddenly took ill with a debilitating disease. She was too sick to leave her bed for weeks, much less care for the chores of the house. Silver, without a word of complaint, took her chores upon himself in addition to his own. This was the hardest month of Silver’s young life. He went to bed each night fully exhausted, but always content, because he had fulfilled what he felt to be his duty.
His mother fortunately did recover. When his father and Searin returned, they found the house in an excellent state, as expected, and it had been Silver, not Plana, who had kept it that way. Arith was particularly proud of his son, but Silver demanded no reward except for the feeling of satisfaction.
The vision skipped forward again. When Silver was seventeen, the village hunter, the one responsible for providing most of the meat for the village, was brought back by his companion. He had been injured in the woods, bitten by a venomous rock snake. His partner was his medic, responsible for caring for his gear. While he would have been willing to return to the forest, his hunting skills were lacking.
When word came that the bite the hunter had sustained would paralyze his leg for the rest of his life, the village began to panic. They were afraid their small supply of vegetables would never sustain them. Some people proposed doing away with tradition and finally bringing in livestock, but the climate and terrain were not suitable for most domestic animals. Besides, nobody in Maresde knew how to take care of them except for one old curmudgeon with a gaggle of chickens he valued above human life.
After hearing the news and seeing his village’s despair, Silver used every spare moment to practice with the elm wood bow his father had brought home from his last journey to Elvandar. After several botched hunting attempts, Silver stood before the village counsel and promised to become the new hunter. He was nearly laughed out of the room, but a friend of his family stood up for him and gave him a chance. Thus began Silver’s destined career as a hunter.
Even for an experienced hunter, entering the forest was a great challenge. The deep woods spanned almost a hundred miles in every direction and were filled with many large and dangerous beasts that had retained their place at the top of the food chain by hunting in the dank, dark depths. For this young man, self-trained in archery, it was suicide. When he returned not just once, but month after month, year after year with catches, always uninjured, they praised him as the incarnation of his name, Derith the Hunter.
Silver, however, chalked up his victories to courage. His time in the woods, first alone, then later with Searin as his own medical specialist, gave him the experience necessary to become the bravest and strongest man in Maresde, though he was not yet fully grown.
Last of all in this sequence of dreams, he witnessed the events back in the woods. Most were a blur to him, but the words at the very end caught his ear, and he could not help but wonder what they meant. One thing he did know: the events he had witnessed, his own chronicles, so to speak, had to tie in somehow with the last words said by Stracht.
"Guard the power," the words echoed to Silver's right. He turned abruptly to see a smoky figure with glowing green eyes and an inverted blue crescent between them.
"Stracht?" Silver asked, walking toward the phantom. He looked down and realized the 'ground' he was walking on was also made of billowing, blue smoke. His feet disappeared beneath the cool folds as a large billow blew past his feet. The cloud slowly began to rise up his legs.
"You are different from the rest," the phantom said, his voice sounding garbled.
"What do you mean by different?"
"Not all of you desire to kill us." he continued, as though he could not hear. By now, the smog had ascended to Silver’s hips.
Silver tried to catch up to the phantom, but found himself thrown back by a wave of energy. “Guard the power,” the vision of Stracht said again, his face stoic.
“What does that mean?” he yelled out, confused.
“I chose you above my own kin,” Stracht said, his words deviating from those he said before. “You have shown me in our brief time what it means to be a hero. It’s up to you now to bring honor to the name Deretli.”
“It’s Derith Lican,” Silver said worriedly. “Not Deretli.”
Stracht’s phantom opened his arms as if for an embrace. “You will do well for us, Deretli Derith Lican Sylvarado. Please. I beseech you. Guard the power. Guard the power.”
