Magus Draconum – Prologue: A Man Alone

Copyright 1999 Robert B. Marks, all rights reserved.

The man watched the light snow kick up at his feet as the wind howled around him, icy and biting. The blue-white glacier underneath his feet still radiated some of its former evil, but it no longer tried to drink his life.

He could remember when it had.

The man looked around the frozen landscape with his haunted blue eyes, ignoring the chill biting through his leather boots. He wore a heavy woolen cloak and robes, and he rubbed his leather-gloved hands together.

“My world,” he muttered with a sad, soft voice. “This was once my world.” It had been called Mideorth, a world filled with life and beauty. But the name was meaningless now; all the joy had fled from it.

He remembered so much. He remembered when the world was green and full of life. He remembered the times when his life was filled with joy. He remembered the thousands of years...

He blinked. Had it really been six thousand years? Had it all passed so quickly?

He turned around again, watching as the sun began to set over the luminous ice. Somewhere to the south he knew the ice ended for a short distance, but that little, free land was a wasteland of snow for most of the year. He had been back so often, seen the small settlements that remained of what had once been a great and noble people, watched as they tried to fend off starvation with what little they could grow in the mere four months they had before the harsh winter swept down upon them again.

But still, the source of the glacier remained a mystery. It had simply come and destroyed all that he knew, transforming a fertile world into a wasteland.

"I am Delric, Magus Draconum!" the man shouted at the top of his lungs, listening as his words echoed for an eternity and then faded. "You will not destroy me!" he shouted again.

The echoes surrounded him, a mocking reply to his challenge, and then all he heard was the howling of the biting wind.

Delric looked at the sun, watching as it sunk beneath the horizon. How deep was the ice now? He seemed to remember it being two thousand feet deep. Or maybe it was three thousand feet deep; for some reason that memory eluded him slightly.

He drew his cloak closer around him and began to walk, the rough ice only slightly slippery beneath his feet. As he walked, he remembered.

Six thousand years. It had been that long. And he remembered so much...