Originally Posted by
Nik Hasta
PROLOGUE: THE JOURNEY
*snip*
All this and a thousand thousand more, you leave a trail of confusion, disarray and destruction across the face of all creation as you, something that should not be in that world, momentarily collides with it.
Your journey is from one place to another but to Khazan is to travel through all places.
You lose count of the steps, you lose all sense of how long this has been your existance and for a moment you fear that this will just be your life for the rest of time and then suddenly it stops.
The steps stop.
You stop.
You are covered in small wounds and are bewildered by the sheer sensory overload of perceiving so many things so fast.
Your feet touch solid ground and, for once, it does not instantly shift into somewhere else. You collapse slightly, stumbling as if pushed and you realise you have arrived at the end of your journey.
Before you is a gate, higher than any that you have ever seen before or since. Something in you knows that this isn't just "a gate", this is perhaps the idea of "gate" made manifest. What all other gates are informed by. As you look at it, the moment your attention wanders, its composition and design changes incrementally. If asked, you would be unable to say what specifically had changed but after a few moments of inattention, you would suddenly realise what was once great varnished timbers is now stone is now metal is now bones is now solidified magical force and so on.
It is constantly shifting but when you look to try and catch it in the act of changing, the gate remains static and impenetrable.
The gate is set into a set of walls that loom impossibly higher than the gate itself. That same thing in you knows that it would not be possible to climb or fly over the walls for, despite you thinking you could see the top from the ground, they could stretch up into infinity. They are always tall enough to seem imposing.
The walls rush away in either direction, at some point in the far off distance seeming to curve. Behind you is a great ocean of dark stardust, endlessly deepy with small ripples that cause translucent lights and sparks to dance in its depths. Above is an impossibly complex aurora of points of light joined by shimmering strings of energy. You suspect that you might be looking at all possible creation from the outside.
It is quite, there is a light breeze that slightly disturbs the innumerable fallen leaves on the ground. There are a number of dead bodies from beings of dozens of species around you, the variety of wounds and states of the bodies suggest that they did not survive the journey as you have. Some are in pieces, some just skeletons, some on fire, all still and definitely dead.
The gate ahead of you is open, just wide enough for a horse to pass through and what lies beyond it awaits.