Forgaettable Raelms 0 - Destiny's Dragon

Foraettable Raelms, Prologue: Destiny’s Dragon (2nd draft)

         Baertholomew was an average looking twenty-something down on his luck man who happened to live in Elme Village. It was a rather small village, with several round wooden huts, with a big hut right in the middle that the village referred to as the Town Hall. Elme Village was relatively peaceful, and it sat on the edge of the Ocean of Infinity. The ocean was a bit of an oddity in the Raelm, because there were no other large bodies of water. It never rained in the Raelm, which is just one of the many oddities of the place. People were afraid of the Ocean, though Baert was always fascinated by it.

         Baert’s first twenty or so years of his life were quire boring. Nothing exciting ever seemed to happen to him. He felt that excitement always happened to those around him, but it never managed to quite land on him… until today, of course. This would be a pretty terrible story if it was about a bored slacker where nothing fun never happened, and then he stayed that way forever until he died, the end. No, this story is better than that.  Slightly.  Basically, don’t get too excited, but you could a little bit if you wanted to.  Might as well, I mean, you are planning on reading the whole thing, right?  Might as well try to enjoy it.

         I guess I should start by explaining a bit about the where this story takes place.  Every good fantasy story has an interesting setting, so let’s talk about our setting!  You see, our story takes place in The Raelm, which encompasses everything.  It’s the universe in which everybody lives in.  Within The Raelm, there are all kinds of nifty places.  One such place is called Lelek.  Lelek is the province in which Elme Village is located.  Lelek consists of nine villages, arranged in a square.  The middle village is called Hubville, as it’s surrounded by the other villages, and it’s where many useful things are located, like shops and stuff.  Lelek is surrounded by deep forests, and each village is separated by smaller forests, with paths that people travel on to get from village to village.  Elme Village is located in the Middle-North of Lelek, and lies right on the Ocean of Infinity.  Pretty neat, huh?

         Anyway, today was a special day, because of course it was.  It started off as a typical boring day in which nothing spectacular was happening.  Baert was admiring his true love (according to him), Jewel, from across the village.  They have never actually talked to each other, but Baert was certain that they would be great together.  It’s important that you understand that Baert did not believe that they were destined to be together, only that they were super compatible, or something like that.  Baert didn’t believe in destiny; he didn’t care for the idea.  Baert believed that people could choose their own paths, and that they could be whoever they wanted to be.  He certainly hoped so, because if his life was destined to be the way it has been (dull and boring), then he wanted no part of it.

         Luckily for him, a dragon attack was about to happen.

         “Dack!” Baert called across town.  Dackson Bronze was the town’s buff and handsome blacksmith.  Dack was very well-liked, and people always took the time to visit him at his blacksmithing station.  Most people shared some “juicy gossip” as they would call it, which Dack didn’t much care for.  He was generally a good-natured man who didn’t want any harm to come to anybody.  Dack always liked Baert because of his extreme simplicity.  Baert never really had any gossip to share, since he didn’t really talk to many people, and he was easily impressed and entertained.  Dackson felt people visited him not because of the armor he made, which was actually quite good, but because of his good looks and manliness.  Dack knew that Baert was generally interested in him as a person and as a blacksmith.

         “What?” Dack replied back to Baert.

         “Are you busy, buddy?” Baert shout-asked back.

         “Yes.”

         “Oh, well do you want to take a quick break?”

         “Not really,” Dack wanted to say, as he had a lot of work to do.  In this age of evil and monsters and whatnot, he had a lot of armor and weapons to make.  But, like I already told you, he liked Baert, so instead, he said, “Maybe, what’s up?”

         “I want to show you a new sword I got!”

         “You got a new sword?” Dack responded.  Baert’s old sword was quite pitiful, and being a blacksmith, he was genuinely interested in seeing his upgrade.  “Look at you!  You’ll be slaying dragons in no time!”

         “Yeah, probably not.  Hey, can you, like, come over?  All this shouting is making my voice go hoarse!”

         “You got a horse too?”

         “What?  No!  Hey!  Just come over, yeah?”

         “Hey, why don’t I just come over?”

         “Yeah, why don’t you?”

         “Kay, coming over!”

         “Cool!”

         It took Dack several minutes to cross the village.  It may have been a shorter trip, had it not been for the people who kept stopping him to say hello.  Seeing Dackson Bronze walk by their huts was probably the best part of their sad boring little days.  Dack had many ladies who flirted with him, but his heart belonged to Jewel.  They were destined to be together forever.  Baert, of course, had no clue about this, or he may have felt jealous, especially because he had absolutely nothing at all to compete with.  Not even a little bit.  Seriously, Dack was everything that Baert wasn’t.

         “See?  Lookie,” Baert told his buddy.  “Isn’t it awesome?”  Baert revealed his sword to Dack.  It looked…strange.

         “Hmm,” said Dack, “this doesn’t look quite right.  Where did you find this?”

         “I bought it off of some shady looking hooded figure in a dark alley down in Hubville.”

         “Didn’t your mother ever talk to you about not buying stuff from shady looking hooded figures?”

         “Well, when I was nine my mother went crazy and brutally murdered my father and was later slaughtered by monsters while on the run, so no, she never really got to that.”

         “Right, sorry.  Anyway, uh, you should never buy stuff from shady looking hooded figures, especially when they are selling stuff in a dark alley.  I thought everybody knew this.”

         “Well, see, I assumed it wasn’t a good idea at first, but he was very well spoken for a shady looking hooded figure.  Plus, I mean, look at this thing.  This is a really neat sword.”

         “What’s its deal, anyway?  Why is this sword giving me such bad vibes?”

         “I don’t know, Dack, but it’s my sword and I like it!”

         “Does it have a name?”  Dack’s curiosity was complete now.

         “Yes.  See, I wanted to name it Deathslasher, but it already had a name, and I didn’t want to confuse it by giving it a new name.”

         Dack, not sure if Baert was joking or not, stood there in silence for a few seconds.  “Alright, so, uh, then, what’s its name then?”

         “Well, this shady looking hooded figure…”

         “…in the dark alley?”

         “Yep, he told me that it was ‘The Sword of Non-Destiny!’”

         “The…the what?”

         “The Sword of Non-Destiny!”

         “That… is not a catchy name.”

         “Well I didn’t name it, remember?”

         “So then, what does the name mean?”

         “Well, the shady looking hooded figure explained it like this: ‘Many Swords of Destiny have been sold throughout The Raelm, but I have right here,’ and he pointed to this beauty, he said, ‘I have right here the only Sword of Non-Destiny.  Some people believe that certain people are destined for greatness, while others are not.  This sword could not care any less about all of that.  It’ll slice and dice for you no matter what your destiny was.’  Then he cackled and mentioned something about seeing me again soon, but I wasn’t really paying attention to anything he said after I bought the sword.  Anyway, this thing obviously appealed to me, Dack, because I don’t like the idea of destiny.”

         “I don’t know,” said Dack, “I kind of like the idea.”

         “Well of course you do, man!  Look at you!  You are pure manliness, harnessed into a mortal body!  You’re obviously destined for greatness, but what about me, Dack?  Nothing interesting ever happens to me.  I can’t even get the attention from the pretty girl on the edge of the village.”

         Not realizing that he was talking about Jewel, because there were several pretty girls on all edges of the village, he tried to be encouraging.  “Nonsense, Baert.  You’re great.  You just need to be patient.”

         “Easy for you to say.  If there were a God of Manliness, he would look just like you, right down to the perfectly sculpted mustache.  Seriously, how do you even get that thing to look so perfect?”

         “Yes, we have already established that I am very manly, but manliness isn’t everything, Baert.”  He paused.  “After all, you have something that I don’t.”

         “Like what?”

         He paused again.  “I don’t know yet, but I’m positive that there is something.”

         Just then, a dragon attacked.



         It was absolutely giant.  Elme village stood no chance whatsoever.  Being a relatively peaceful village, they were totally unprepared for such an attack.  Thankfully, most people were able to escape the destruction by running really fast in the opposite direction of the dragon.  Most people, because it was such a nice day out (well, it was, anyway), were outside, and were able to see it coming in the distance.  Unfortunately for Dack and Baert, they were inside Baert’s hut admiring the new strange sword.  They were unaware of the impending doom.  The hut caught fire, and Baert was able to make it out just in time.  Dack, however, was not so lucky.

         “A dragon?!  What would a dragon want with Elme Village?  Dack, what do you make of this?  Dack?”

         Dack did not respond.  Dack was dead.

         “Dack, are you dead?  Please don’t be dead.”

         Dack still did not respond.  Dack was still dead.

         Baertholomew watched the dragon fly away, because there wasn’t much else that he could do.  As he was watching, he noticed something was being carried away in the dragon’s talons.  It was a person!  Oh no!  The dragon was flying around in the sky for a bit, and it finally got close enough where he could see who it was.  It was Jewel, because of course it was.

         “No!  My true love!  I must save her!  She is my damsel in distress!  This is my moment!  I shall take my Sword of Non-Destiny with me and save my love interest.  I shall…Dack, are you there?  You really are dead aren’t you?”

         Eventually the flames died down enough for Baert to see back into what was left of his hut.  Dack was definitely in there, and it looked like the village would be looking for a new blacksmith.  “I’m sorry friend,” Baert said.  He looked up into the sky towards where the dragon flew off, which happened to be to the south.  “I will slay the dragon and save my true love.  I will be the Hero of Elme Village!  It is my dest…er…it is highly probable that this will be the outcome of my adventure!  Good bye, friend, and thank you for being nice to me.  Thank you for taking the time to notice me and to talk to me.  No one else ever did.  You…you will be missed.  Dack… don’t, er, don’t worry about cleaning up while I’m gone.”

         Dack still being dead, didn’t say anything, but if he were alive, he would probably say something like, “Oh no!  That’s my girl!  I’m going after her, Baert.  You stay here because, while having good intentions, you are far too weak to do anything, except immediately get killed out in the wilderness.”  Baert, however, liked to think that he would have said something more like, “Goodbye, Baert.  You were my favorite person ever, and I hope you find Jewel, who is obviously your true love.  May your adventure be successful, and may you return home, fix up the village, and repopulate it with your beautiful and talented children.  Beautiful because of her, and talented because of you.  Goodbye Beart, go slay us all a dragon!”  Yes, this is totally what Dack would have said.



         “I’m going to slay a draagooooon

         I will save my loooove

         I’m going to slay a draagooooooon

         I will cut him uuuuup

         …with my blaaaade!”

         Baert wasn’t very good at making up songs, but he sang on his journey anyway.  He sometimes pretended that life was a musical, and he would just sing random things.  Nobody liked that about him.  Baert travelled all across the Raelm and met many wild people and creatures.  They all had wacky adventures on the way, but since they all eventually got killed and have very little to do with this story, we’ll just skip over that bit and get right to the part where he finds the dragon’s lair.



         Baert, looking extremely ragged, was practically dragging himself up to the dragon’s lair.

         “I’m going to kill this draaagooooon

         I will avenge all my frieeeends

         I will murder this draaagooooon

         I will kill it deeaaaad

         …with my blaaaaade!”

         Baert stood (barely) in front of the dragon’s lair.  It was an odd mix between a cave and a castle.  It was almost like it was a cave at first, but had rocks and stuff rearranged to make it look like a castle.

         “Do dragons build things?” Baert asked no one.  “They always seemed pretty stupid to me.  Oh well, time to slay this giant and extremely intimidating dragon monster.”

         Baert walked into the mouth of the cavastle, which is what he decided to call it.  Suddenly, he heard a roar coming from deep within.  He decided, against his better judgment, to move forward.  He thought it would be colder in this strange cave, but it was actually quite nice.  He wondered if the dragon had a fireplace that he would light with his fire-breath.  He would have to ask him before he slayed him.

         “Excuse me, are there any dragons home?”

         “What was that?” he heard in response.  Odd, since dragons didn’t talk.  It was definitely a female voice.

         “Er, that was me, asking if there were any dragons home.  I’ve come to slay it!”

         “There aren’t any dragons here anymore!”

         “Sorry, what?”

         “I said, there aren’t any dragons here anymore!”

         “Well,” Baert said curiously, “where’d it go?”

         “I’ve slain it!”

         “What?!”

         “I said I’ve slain…

         “That was my job!”

         “No,” the female voice responded with an annoyed tone, “it was my job!  Actually, I was supposed to have had help.  Hey, you don’t have Dack with you, do you?  Hello Dack, are you there?”

         “I…I’m all kinds of confused here.  Listen, can I just come in, my voice is going a bit hoarse from shouting.”

         “You brought a horse?”

         “You know that’s not what I said, I’m coming in!”



         Baert walked through the cavastle a bit more.  He finally reached the main room, and he would never forget what he saw.  It was Jewel, dressed in shiny Dackson Bronze Custom Plate Armor.  She looked absolutely beautiful, with her long dark hair looking perfect, her Sword of Destiny in her right hand, her shield of Truth and Justice in her left.  Compared to Baert, with his raggedy clothes, his Sword of Non-Destiny in his left hand and his Shield of Mild Adventures in his right, Jewel looked stunning; like a professional warrior; like she was born to wear that armor and slay that dragon.

         Like it was her destiny.

         “Where is Dack,” she said, looking a little more than slightly worried.  “He should have been here by now.”

         “Dack?  Well, heh, Dack!  See, Dack is, er…”

         “Who are you, anyway, haven’t I seen you before?”

         “Oh, I’m Bartholomew, I live in th…”

         “Baertholomew!” she said, looking more than slightly surprised and possibly a bit mortified.

         “Oh, you’ve heard of me?”

         “Where is Dack, Baert?  Where is he?!”

         “Well, you know how you and me are, well, alive?  Well, Dack…isn’t like that.”

         Jewel’s eyes got really big.  They were absolutely beautiful.  They were deep blue, looking like sapphires.  Her name probably came from the way her eyes looked, like jewels.  He could stare into those eyes for days.  In fact, he might just…

         “Dack is dead?!”

         Baert was jolted out of his daydreaming.  “Yep” was all he said.

         Destiny was practically screaming at this point.  “He was supposed to come here and we were supposed to slay this dragon together!  We were to become the Heroes of Elme Village!  We were destined to be together!  He was to be my valiant knight, and I was to be his muse!  YOU KILLED MY KNIGHT!”

         “I did no such thing!”

         “Yes you did!  He was supposed to be here.  You were the one who was supposed to die in the dragon attack!”

         “Sorry, what?”

         “I said, he was supposed to be here, and you were the one who was supposed to…”

         “…die in the dragon attack?”

         “Yes,” Destiny said, not quite yelling anymore.  “Dack and I were supposed to slay this dragon together and you were supposed to just be a casualty in the attack.  If the dragon attacked the village, but nobody died, then it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal and we wouldn’t have had any real motivation to go slay the dragon and become heroes.  But if somebody important died in the attack, well, that would just be too sad, so it was just supposed to be you!”

         “So what you are saying is that my whole purpose in life was just to die in a dragon attack, because somebody needed to die.”

         “That’s pretty much exactly what I just said, yes.  It was our destiny to…”

         “Oh I am just sick of that word!  Destiny this, and destiny that!  Well, it doesn’t matter anymore anyway.  I’ve got this here Sword of Non-Destiny.”

         “…What?”

         “I said I’ve got this here…”

         “I heard you, mouth-breather.  Where did you get this?”

         “I’ve already been through this, and it’s not all that interesting.  The fact is, I have it.”

         “Do you have any idea whatsoever of what this does?”

         “Apparently,” Baert said while admiring his sword, “it switches heroes and losers.  I rather like it.”

         “YOU KILLED MY KNIGHT!”

         “Hey, you should try to calm down just a bit, yeah?  A little bit?  Maybe?”

         Jewel, not being one to hide her feelings, responded with “AHHHH!” and charged Baert with her sword.

         Somehow, Baert miraculously defended himself against her attack.  “We don’t have to fight, you know?  You can be my muse!  If we had children, they would be both beautiful and talented!”

         “I WILL MURDER YOU!”

         “Okay, so, I’m going to do what I usually do in rough situations, and run away from my problems.  Goodbye!”

         Just then, a dragon attacked.



         Baert stopped running, and Jewel stopped trying to murder Baert.  “So there are two dragons, then?” he asked more to himself that anyone.

         “Hmm…” Jewel said, “yeah, I guess that makes sense.  That would explain where those dragon eggs I saw came from.  The papa dragon, the one I killed, and this one, the mama dragon.”

         “Eggs?  You could have mentioned that you saw eggs and that there might be another dragon.”

         “Sorry, I was too busy finding out that my entire life from here on out is ruined.”

         “Right, hey, we should run, yeah?”

         “Run if you want.  I’m staying here.  I really, really need to kill something.”

         “Right, well, cool then.  Okay, I’m leaving then.”

         “Good.”

         “You sure you want to stay?  We could repopulate the village…”

         “Leave.  Now.”

         “Leaving.  Now.”

         Baert left.



         Jewel stayed behind to fight the dragon, however, she was able to learn that the papa dragon was very mean and that the mama dragon was very grateful that he was slain.  Jewel and the dragon became fast friends, and she swore revenge on Baert for being responsible for Dack’s death.  She was able to convince the dragon to be on her side.

         Jewel also decided that she would no longer go by her nick-name given to her as a child.  From here on out, she would be known by her real name.

         Destiny.