Deadly fangs of human mind

envisioned by children pretending

a sorrow unlike any kind

...a world slowly ending

from "Other World"

Introduction

The light was harsh and glaring, even through his closed eyelids. It was so bright, it burned him just to lay there, but when he opened his eyes and looked around, it was no more than a single flame, dancing atop a candle. He turned, and looked at the cot he had been laying on, and a cot it was no longer, but the long, curling tail of a noble blue dragon. Somewhere in the distance, there rose up the sound of a roaring flame, and the room was bathed in the lights of a thousand flickering candles. Destin stared about himself in amazement, awash with curiosity and wonder.

Destin...

The young lord looked about himself, though he knew with a strange certainty that he would not find the source of the voice.

Awaken, Child of Fate... thou time is nigh...

Even as the voice echoed through the vast chamber, candles began to flicker out one by one. Atop a pedestal in the center of the room, around which the noble dragon coiled, the pages of a vast tome rustled in a breeze Destin did not feel. He stepped forward cautiously as yet another candle went out.

The pages of the tome, though old and yellowed, were still legible, though just barely in places. It read, as far as he could discern, ...A thousand and ten years shall pass from the time of the Great War to the rise of the new King of Hell. In those thousand and ten years, the Stars of Destiny shall fall, one by one, to the darkness, until only Ryukaon, the Radical Dreamer, remains. It is to this Star that the Child of Fate will be drawn, and it is upon the shoulders of this child the future hangs...

Here the script ends, and only blank pages follow these words. Destin turned the pages desperately, hoping for more, an explanation, anything at all, but just as he found another page of writing, the candles blew out.

He stood alone in the darkness, knowing with absolute certainty that the Dragon, the voice, and the tome were gone. He stood in the center of a swirling mass of not the darkness caused by the mere absence of light, but the absence of anything at all. It was not the darkness of a windowless tomb, but the darkness found only between the stars.

Even as these thoughts burst into his mind, a single flame, as of a solitary match in a world of shadows, lit the distance like a lighthouse in a storm. Destin ran toward it, ansd though he ran as hard as he could, it never drew any closer. A voice rose up in the darkness, a voice no less terrible for it's disembodiment.

Child of Fate... The Destined One... The Chosen Boy... you will fall to me. You and all you hold dear. You are as a fly in my web, a helpless babe in the wolf's den. Your 'fate' is inescapable! You are mine!

A great armored form rose up before Destin, and he backpedaled hurriedly to avoid running headfirst into it. The black armor of the thing somehow stood out clearly against the darkness, and it's sillouette was far from human. The head was too low on the chest, and too broad. The horns that thrust out from the sides of it's great dome were curled, like the horns of a ram. When it reared back, it was far to muscular to be a mere man, and the enormous axe in his hand was at least as broad as it's weilder. The voice that echoed from deep within the monster was more like a thousand screaming worms than the voice of one thing. It laughed mirthlessly, and Destin knew, without any doubt, that inside the hideous armor, there was nothing at all.

You are as nothing, boy! You are naught but a worm before my master!

The Ogre, and Destin knew instinctively that's what this beast was, brought his axe up, preparing to tear the boy in two with a single blow.

Destin reached out, and his fingers closed instinctively on the hilt of a sword. He brought it up, and caught the blow almost casualy. When he rose to his feet, pushing the beast back, a blinding white light washed out from the golden armor he now found himself to be wearing, though he had been clad in just a bedshirt only moments before.

He pushed back on the beast until the huge creature fell to first one knee, and then to both. The beast howled in agony as the Destin's light filled the empty eyes of it's massive, dog mawed helmet. The young lord pulled the blade back and said, a half smile on his lips, "Send my regards to your master."

The blade fell, cleaving through the ebon steel of the Ogre's massive head. The Ogre itself fell back, now nothing more than empty, lifeless armor. The light slowly faded away, as did the golden armor, until only the darkness remained. The one flame Destin had seen in the distance drifted closer, and Destin could see, in it's light, the face of a beautiful young girl. Destin had never seen her before, but a strange warmth flooded through him. He fell to his knees before her, though he could not say why.

She looked down at him, a small smile on her lips, and said, "You should rise, sir. There are always dangers about."

Destin did as she advised, feeling a bit foolish.

"I have come to give you a warning. You cannot trust what you see. Not everything is as it seems.", She said, "You have to learn to trust your heart, and you must choose your friends carefully."

When she had finished speaking, the light faded, and with it, the girl. Before she had faded completely, she spoke just three words, "Wake up, Destin."