The Story Teller's Debate

Chapter II: Things Best Left in the Dark."Not even the sun can thaw frozen hearts."Wind whistled throughout the barren wasteland, snow and sleet nipping at Bryan Edur's young earbuds.Young....Was he young? He couldn't remember. He felt like he had just awoken from a long sleep.But he hadn't. He had come back to consciousness while his body was still half frozen.Those brutal first few hours came back to him in a wave of repressed agony, crashing over him like an icy wave. His eyes had opened to white. The white was blinding. It seared his eyeballs far greater than any fire ever could've. Blinking, he recovered. He began to make out darker shades, then shapes... Soon other colors became visible.Not that there was much color to this land. It was just bleak white snow for as far as the eye could see. Well... mostly that is, except for the other people. They were just starting to thaw, not yet awake, not yet feeling. They were in for a heck of a surprise soon, though.There would be the initial awakening. Dizziness would set in, and then the sickness.But the cold.... that was the worst.After you recovered from the fact that you were alive, the pain of the freezing ice surrounding you set in. Bryan had screamed for hours, having to cry frozen teardrops of anguish as he waited for the sun to free his hands. Once he had those, he began to beat his icy prison with the frozen excuses for fists he possessed, until he was free and he could begin to feel warm again.Warmth was a beautiful thing. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt the suns rays. They seeped under his skin like an internal blanket, giving him a feeling of life that, at one point, he thought he might never feel again.Instead, the feeling of dread and hopelessness... no, worse... failed hope, had replaced the one of life. Feeling like a dead man walking is one thing, but knowing that you are is a completely different emotion, or lack thereof. There is nothing. You neither wish for death, nor life. Faith has failed you, and allegiance has been broken. You don't particularly wish to be destroyed, but you don't know why you would want to survive, either. Life has nothing left to offer you.This was what it had felt like... during the final moments of the March. The March of the Many... which was the great civil war which had torn the land to shreds, was a battle fought between wizards, with their pawns being caught up in the middle. Bryan shook his head in disgust, and spat twice at the thought to try and rid his mouth of the bitter taste it had suddenly acquired.He had been foolsih then, a young man eagerly seeking to do his part for what he thought was right. But it has been said, "War is merely a game filled with the greed of old men, and the stupidity of young heroes."Yes, young heroes. He had been referred to as just that once, a young hero. Bravery that was lauded among men and women alike, strength that put men far older than he to shame, and a smile and intense blue eyes that could ensnare any woman's heart he pleased. He had believed he was invincible. The Morthlings, great wizards who had broken free from the Order, recruited him as their general. They promised even greater fame, riches, and women. But none of those had interested Bryan. What he so greatly desired was power... the ability to crush king's skulls beneath his boot without consequence... and he had believed that they could provide him with such. Instead, he just became another item at their disposal.So he killed for them. He had slaughtered thousands of his own countrymen by sword, bow, axe, and even his own hands. Angrily tearing through entire villages, never realizing the monster that they were making him into. His had been the March, in which he and his ten armies had burned, razed, and scorched the lands of their own brothers. The campaign lasted for months, and their numbers swelled to even greater heights as the weeks wore on, from their large numbers and rapid recruitment rate, the March recieved its infamous name.But, the Order wasn't as frail and powerless as he had been led to believe. He should've stopped when he saw the first signs. The rain was the first one. It began three months into the March, when all but the last few cities had been destroyed. Bryan's favorite mess genocidal weapon of choice, fire, was not prepared to stand up against this ceaseless foe. It severely hampered the progress of his military, as he had to begin using machines and men to physically tear the houses down stone by stone, straw by straw.But he never lost his zeal. The chance to be the ultimate leader of all of mankind was far too great of a temptation for him. He practically shattered rocks with his own hands in his wrath at being slowed down by this unnatural act of nature. So they continued through the undending rain, powering through the torrential downpour.The snow came next. The flakes, which were soft and delicate enough to be a child's favorite plaything, also proved to be the doom for a great deal of his men. Frostbite practically ate the limbs of his soldiers, and the ice froze the wheels of his machines. Greater was the loss to the bitter cold than the loss to enemy combatants.And yet, like a bull, he charged on towards the thing that angered him. The final stand of those faithful to the Order came at the three newly formed towns of Unfare-Ceal, Stonebridge, and Laye. The battle was long and hard fought, lasting weeks on end. Despite their heavy casualties due to the freezing weather, Bryan Edur and his army still numbered in the tens of thousands, and they were thirsty for warm blood. However, the ruling men of the three little villages united as one against their common foe, an act which had never been seen between three rulers since the dawn of man. Together, they repelled advance after advance of Bryan's men... but it was not enough.Their buildings were starting to fall. Great towers, hastily constructed, which served as citadels for the people's defense, started to sway and crumble under the onslaught of the ferocious attacks. That was when the true power of magic had revealed itself. As the first of the citadels began to teeter and collapse, as the screams of the dying could be heard for many floors above, and as Bryan stood grinning fiendishly, the tower was caught. It's savior had been blue light.... a magic that hadn't been observed in action for millenia beforehand. The Order had intervened officially and directly, something that had only been whispered in fairytales.That was when Bryan's true power was revealed to be the laughable excuse it was. His armies were crushed by blue men, with blue swords, and blue armor. They were pierced by blue arrows, shot from blue bows. Blue light announced cracks in the very ground they walked on, which then opened to swallow them into eternity. Bryan and his finest warriors, those who had survived everything up until this point, fled.They ran outside the city walls, and fled for miles and miles. Finally, when they had lost all pursuers, and the color blue and the horrors it brought were all but a receding nightmare, the final blow struck.The sun stopped.Bryan had been sitting, watching the sun rise over the three sister towns, seeminly a single city from this distance. He watched as it unveiled the mixture of blue magic, still supporting the fragile buildings, and the river of red that flowed through the streets. He remembered shedding a tear... one solitary tear. It hadn't been for any wounds he recieved, nor for his men, not even due to remorse at the actions he had committed.He had cried, because he had no power.And just to mock him, just as he was ready to feel the embrace of the same sun which had always been there, even when nothing else was left.... it betrayed him also.It had literally stopped, yards away from Bryan's very feet... and began to retreat back to the cities where he would never again be able to return to.And there, as the days went by, he resigned himself to his fate, an ice sculpture of what was once a fraud, a stick figure that thought himself to be a warrior. He was cold, lonely, and powerless.But now, here he was. He was awake again. Somehow, after an amount of time which even he didn't know, he had awakened once more. He didn't know why... he didn't know how... but he did know one thing...He was still hungry for power, and he would do whatever it took, once more, to achieve possesion of it.A scream pierced his thoughts. One of his men, the first to come back to the world of the living, was experiencing the pain, and the horrible, bitter, unforgiving cold. But Bryan didn't move to help him. His men were like him, and they understood that they were all alone. If you couldn't survive on your own, then you had no business being in their group. Bryan merely waited for the screams to die into whimpers and fits of rage.That's when he heard him. There was a voice, belonging to a man whom he did not know. Bryan turned and readied himself to face his possible assailant, instincts telling him to reach for the weapon at his side which he knew was not there.An oily voice called out from the white, melting, snow. "Good morning, master Edur. What a lovely surprise to see you here."Bryan scanned the surrounding white blur for the voice which seemed to echo throughout the hilly area. He didn't respond."Oh? Not going to chat with ghosts, are we? Fair enough." A sudden whoosh sound eminated from behind Bryan, and he rolled forward, spinning himself to come out facing the source of the sound.He was a shadowy fellow, maybe around five and a half feet tall, and nothing to be concerned about when compared to Bryan's own size of 6' 3". His new mystery acquaintance also appeared to be considerably older than himself.... but then again... Bryan hadn't seen his own reflection recently, nor knew how long he'd been frozen."Perhaps I'm being a bit rude, Mister Edur." The man stated, seemingly correcting himself. "I am Corbal, Lord Corbal."