The Seven Seas of Rhye

In the greatest of all worlds, in the mighty and ancient forest of Northern Rhye, walked a
lone man, the most noble, powerful and heroic of them all. He had been commissioned
with his quest by the sacred command of the Great King. He was to bring about the Great
Vision. For many years, he had waged terrible war against the most horrible villains and
monsters. He had overcome the torment of a legion of enemies and prevented the
destruction of many lands. He had slain countless kings and queens of beasts, both animal
and man. He had fought a grueling battle to unify the world and acquire the greatest of all
treasures. He was strong, fierce, cunning, solemn, and brave. At the completion of his
mission, he would unite the final elements and glory, beauty, harmony, and truth would
prevail throughout all lands, in all creation, forever and ever.

He came to the edge of the forest and looked down the hill into a sweeping valley
in which a small city neatly rested. It was ancient, yet it was alive with people who still
lived and loved there as they had done so for many centuries. The man’s eyes swept back
and forth and his deadened, rugged face was transformed. Thank the gods. After what felt
to him like an everlasting journey he had, at last, come home. He wiped something out of
his eye.

The worn and dusty traveling cloak he wore rippled in the gentle evening breeze.
The reinforced bronze chest plate that had saved him from so many attacks glinted in the
dying sun. In the leather pouch that hung over his shoulder, within its folds, sat three of
his great treasures, the final elements, as if they were ordinary artifacts. The fourth and
grandest of his possessions rested in a golden sheath upon his dragon-hide belt.

****

The first element that he had acquired was stolen from the chambers of the
wretched and controlling Black Queen, who had ruled over numerous dark and cursed
lands for many agonizing winters. It was the legendary White Abacus, which, in proper
and skilled hands, would bring about balance and justice in the affairs of all men, women,
and creatures, great and small. She had usurped it from the Supreme Ones to pervert the
minds of her subjects and subjugate the very will of nature. But then, by means of stealth,
force, and deception, it had, unfortunately for her, fallen into the right hands. Now her
and her minions were all dead and gone. See how justice moves, all ye of a wicked spirit.

The second element had been retrieved from the depths of a dark and slimy cave,
wherein dwelled one of the last great, enchanted dragons, possessed by the evil senator
Romoss. It was the Flute of the Fairy Feller, which had been crafted by the Feller to
inspire creativity, art, and everything beautiful and lovely. He or she who can play the
Ancient Notes perfectly in pitch and key, has the power, so the story goes, to command
the muses and spread the influence of beauty in all of it’s manifestations to the very ends
of the earth. Romoss, a corrupt and powerful leader who understood the liberating
strength of creativity, stole the flute away and guarded it deep in the earth and beneath an
awesome and deadly fire-breathing dragon in a place representing the antithesis of
beauty. For long and weary days did the great hero battle against Romoss’s greed and
violence, as well as the ferocious dragon attacks. Yet now, by the mercy or mere
allowance of the gods, Romoss and his great beast were, as the Queen before them, dead
and gone.

The third element was simple, yet it was one of the most extraordinary
incarnations of power ever beheld by men. Its origins, like the rest of the elements, were
clouded by myth and legend, and few people, even in the land of Rhye, had ever truly
believed in it. Its keepers for generations were the cold and hypocritical Lords and Lady
Preachers of Southern Rhye, living just on the edge of the grandest of the Seven Seas, the
Sea of Higany. They followed after the God Heuchler, who they claimed commanded
them to seize the great element, else the world be exposed to the supreme blasphemy, so
much so that it would destroy the minds and hearts of all people. The element was very
simply a small parchment scroll with seven seals. The first four seals had already been
broken. It was said that these seals represented four states of being: Life, Consciousness,
Self-Awareness, and Intelligence. The three unbroken seals, uttered ancient myths and
morality tales, were said to represent three as-of-yet unattained states of being: Wisdom,
Truth and Transcendence.

In order to obtain this element, the great hero descended from the heavens with all
the ferocious force of a great comet, scattering the followers of Heuchler like pigs from a
gun. He brandished his mighty sword, fiery and terrible, and laid the repugnant and
wicked men and women to waste. He stamped the ferocity of his violence upon their
feeble hearts, and so marked them, like numerous souls before, as the necessary sacrifice
made in tribute to the glory of the utopian future.

Destroying all obstacles in his way by the nearly almighty power endowed to him
for his noble task, he recaptured the sacred and legendary scroll, obliterated the last
crumbling ruins of the fortress and flew away from the place of ruin and devastation,
where the echoes of the last dying cries of so many wretched fools would live on
eternally.

****

Great and terrible things did the hero do to acquire his precious elements, and he
had spent many hours thinking about the lands he had brought together and the lands he
had torn asunder. He was not without a heart, yet he knew that his deeds would ultimately
be justified and rewarded. As he pondered his long, hard fight, he was curious as to what
the ultimate achievement would be. What would a perfect world be like? He was not a
terribly reflective man, but he had to wonder at times precisely what it was he was
sacrificing his and other people’s lives for…

As the man stood on the edge of the hill just above the grand valley below with
his home stretching out in front of him, he could hardly believe that it was almost over.
Not just his journey, but everything. Soon, all things would cease to be as they had been.
The world, all worlds, would become unified and glorified. People would stop hating and
controlling and killing each other. There would be no more disease or pain or death, for
as an ancient and mysterious text once described, in a much different way, the old order
of things would pass away, and everything would be made new. The man considered
what would happen to evil in this new world, and for that matter, evildoers. How would
individual people be changed, whether they are good or bad? How would that fit into the
concept of a utopia? For various reasons, the man did not desire to think about these
things very intensely.

What the man did desire to think about more than anything else was the fact that
soon, very soon, he would be reunited with his lost love, his long departed White Queen,
who haunted him still. Long before he had embarked upon his journey, he had suffered
the terrible blow of having his precious wife die of a horrible and ravaging disease. The
last glimmer of life had been extinguished from her delicate form as he had held her in
his arms in the dead of a cold, brutal night. For many hollow months, he had felt the
piercing cold within the gaping hole of his heart and had cried out for salvation from the
crushing emptiness.

He was contemplating a violent suicide when he had received the command from
the Great King to become his herald of might and power and bring to fruition the glory of
a redeemed and perfect creation. He had been chosen out of all the great warriors of the
kingdom for reasons that only the King himself knew. His mission was to subdue the
grandest of tyrannies in preparation for the reign of harmony and truth.

And so he had journeyed and fought and conquered for an excruciating amount of
time; yet he did it with a willing spirit if it meant that, perhaps one day, some day, he
could again see and feel his beloved wife, to know her voice and her caress…

****

The hero sat down on the warm grass, relieving his burden in more ways than
one. Although he greatly desired to see his home once again, there were few people in the
city who would recognize or even remember him. He had left no relatives or family, and
he had never had many friends. Perhaps some people would remember him, but for what?
He dreaded old memories. But by coming home, his mission would be at an end. Here,
the King would come.

The man took the pouch from his shoulder and laid it gently next to him on the
ground. He slowly and carefully unbuckled his belt and laid it out on the grass. From its
golden sheath he withdrew his great sword, stained with blood and smoke, yet gleaming
red in the fading rays of the sun. He looked around wearily yet saw nothing. He had come
to have great respect for this sword. It was by this simple instrument of honor and war
that he had accomplished his mighty and terrible deeds. It was the sword that had
endowed him with unyielding power and endurance. And with the ancient and magical
weapon, by the hands and authority of the King, the final elements would be brought
together in absolute harmony to achieve their grand purpose.
 As the hero slid the sword back into its sheath, he heard a soft whisper. He looked
around and behind him but saw nothing. It must have been the wind, he thought tiredly.
He readjusted himself on the ground and peered down into the valley. He had always
wanted to come back to the place where he had lived, worked and loved for the first half
of his life. He needed to see it just one more time before everything changed. This was
the place where he had been born, the place where he had grown up, and the place where
he had been married. He would never know another home. As he looked down into the
city to see if he could locate any people going about their business, he realized that he
had a feeling that above all, men of all realms had battled since the very beginning of
their existence. He felt undeniable fear. He closed his eyes and searched his heart. He was
afraid of—he wasn’t sure…

Suddenly, a deranged man ran out from behind a tree, screaming madly and
flailing his arms. He was dressed in filthy rags. The hero, his eyes now wide open, was
utterly surprised, though immediately he realized that he shouldn’t have been. But before
he could do anything, the lunatic had seized the dragon-hide belt, unsheathed the sword,
and swung it swiftly through the air.

The hero’s head hit the ground a split-second after his torso did and then
proceeded to bounce and roll down the hill, an expression of utter astonishment still
etched on its face. At the bottom of the hill many excited and expecting people, awaiting
the hero’s glorious return, would be thoroughly shocked.

As blood seeped out from the hero’s headless corpse, the lunatic grabbed the
leather pouch and dumped its contents on the grass. A finely crafted wooden flute, an old
colorful abacus, and a small scroll with three red seals still holding it together fell onto
the ground along with a canteen of water and some leftovers of food. Tossing aside the
pouch, the deranged vagabond, who had a small amount of fairy blood in him, brandished
the sword once more and reduced the final elements to beads, splinters of wood and
scraps of parchment.

Every known land, country, realm, planet, dimension, universe, and world fell
apart, dissolving into infinite oblivion. All life, hopes, dreams, and visions ceased to be.
All dead and gone. So sad that it ends as it began.