my first kiss—I never quite got it straight. But I remember that Simon walked off and got on his bike without talking to any of us, seemingly immune to the lure of alcohol and the glamour of a Friday night party. He biked home in the warm air with his Walkman on, listening to the Violent Femmes on cassette, which he listened to every single day.
In the dawn of time, way back in what Simon called the Prime Age, the great Powers of the World came together and created Endoria. They were a multitude—the Power of Fire and the Power of Earth, the Power of Lightning, the Powers of Mercy, of Calculus, and Last Resorts. They made the world and its many wonders and riches, working alone or in combination. Just before they left they made the Firstcomers, a mighty race of humans whose wondrous works fell scarcely short of the deeds of the Powers themselves. So began the First Age, with generosity and measureless hope, but that’s not how it ended.
It ended with a little boy. This little boy lived in the great palace Chorn, at the heart of the nation of Hyperborea, built on a mountain atop the remnants of an old palace, where they say the twin Powers of Memory and of Change once lived.
The boy’s father was dead, but the boy was too young to take the throne. His mother ruled as regent, so in the afternoons the prince played idly in a walled garden at the heart of the palace with Zara, daughter of the castle blacksmith. His mother soon married again, to a much younger man who despised the young prince. To be fair, he didn’t look like much of a prince, just a boy dressed in a set of cut-down royal robes.
One day his mother came to him and explained that he would have to leave. His stepfather could no longer stand the sight of him, and wished to put his own son in his place. The following day he was to be sent away to a castle on a far coast.
But that night, in the single bravest act of his life up to that point, Adric ran away. He found his way by moonlight down the mountain and rested among the rocks by the side of the road while his stepfather’s men searched.
Where Adric went next no one knew. Some say he became a bandit and assassin; some say a wizard; some say a simple fisherman who married and had many children.
Adric’s stepfather was the one who stole the Hyperborean Crown, a simple silver circlet with a huge emerald set in it, and sold it to a dark Power who lived under the mountain. The crown dated from the time of the first Powers, and no one knew what its significance might be.
Not long afterward the Dreadwargs began to emerge from the deep places under the mountains and the Shatterwar began, a war that nearly destroyed the world.
It is recorded that two decades later, in the final siege of Chorn, Adric returned, but much changed. The boy had become a lean, bronzed man, and he carried Mournblade with him, the sword he himself had forged. He took his place among the defenders of Chorn, and sometime in the hours after the castle fell, he drew Mournblade and held the enemy back for a time while the castle’s survivors made their way out through a magic portal. Adric didn’t follow—he dueled with the mightiest of the Dreadwargs, the one to whom the crown had been sold, and fell.
The castle was laid waste, ice flowed over it, the Hyperborean Empire fell, and its name was all but forgotten. But somewhere amid the vaulted halls and the underground lakes and the city beneath, down in its secret heart, the crown waits, there to remain until the end of Ages and perhaps beyond.
In the cataclysm that followed, the Dreadwargs perished, the Firstcomers were divided, and their descendants became elves and dwarves and humans and lizards. And little was left of the Powers and their great works except the strange places, poisoned mountains, odd forests, and deep tunnels, with their curious denizens. Lesser nations rose, and the great empire of Hyperborea, which seemed poised to restore the world, was never heard from again. But Mournblade was not lost to the world, not at all.
Chapter Fourteen
I played Tomb of Destiny for a solid week, at night, while trying to suck up modern-day Realms knowledge during the day.