The Arkanist

The Fire Within

The Fire Within

There was once a grumpy old tinker who found a golden key. He knew not whom it belonged to, nor did he know what it opened. Everything he tried to unlock would not budge. And so he sought to find what it opened.

         This, you should know, was very unlike the tinker, for he was an old and withered man, beard like snow upon his chest. He cared not to travel or even leave his home, but set up his sad little caravan of useless tools outside his door for sale. Nobody ever came to his caravan or bought anything. And so all day the old tinker would sit on his rickety wood bench and smoke a pipe of weed.

         Then, one day, as he was puffing out his smoke rings, the key grew heavy on his mind. So heavy that it seemed a burden to carry about day after day. So heavy that one day, he took the gold ring and tried to smash it to bits with his axe, but to no avail. The key would not break. Yet his axe was blunt as a wheel.

         So he went back to his bench and continued smoking, watching the clouds drift by and the seasons change. By autumn, when the trees blazed like fire in the sunlight and their leaves blanketed the ground, the key was so heavy he tried to take it out of his pocket, but his arms could not lift it. Then, as a light drizzle began to whisper through the grey morning, pattering against the leaves, he knew, deep down, that he had to find the chest or door this key unlocked, for he could not bear the weight any longer.

         On that same rainy day, the old tinker closed his shop and set out along the road in search of whatever the key opened. He brought his entire life’s savings and garbed himself in a good travelers cloak and hood. Along the short road, he stopped twice before leaving his town, asking if they’d seen a gold chest or door around. They didn’t, yet all bid him good luck on his journey, and watched his old form, leaning on his birch walking stick, disappear from view.

         The old tinker traveled near and far. After seeking the commonwealth, he walked north, to the frozen reaches of Vorae, asking the barbarous Ilmar and Old Varr if they had such golden chest. They asked him what the word gold was, and what it meant. After he showed them the key, they shook their heads and waved him away, giving him on of their bone masks, their vaerchars.

Being denied once again, the old tinker walked back south, over the Mountains of Varrin, asking the mountain folk, but they had never seen a golden chest before in their lives either. Yet they gave him valuables for his troubles before he left them. All through the north he tread, up and down rivers, through villages, even to the Heart Sea, where he walked the wooden city-on-the-sea, asking everybody he saw.

         Then, fruitless still, he bought a ship and sailed into the Aden where he asked the woodsmen if they had one. No nodding of the head lightened his heart, only a grim and depressing shaking of the head, one that had become all to familiar to his old eyes. Yet still, the woodsmen were generous. They fashioned him a fine yew bow and a leather quiver bristling with arrows, if he were to run into trouble. The old tinker accepted the gifts, fastening them to his back, his journey lingering ever on.

         So he set off north again, and climbed the highest mountain know to mankind, Mt. Haerdriq, as the mountain men call it. When he reached its snowy peak, he asked the great and powerful monks who lived in a temple wrought of snow and stone, their wisdom beyond compare. Yet still, they said no, never seeing a golden chest or door in their long years. Driven mad with his failures, the tinker decided to climb the Stormfather Mountains, the great range that walled off the land. Nobody had ever gone through and lived to tell the tale, but the old tinker was determined.

         Along the way, he met the Azka'r, or the stormsons, as they called themselves. They proved to be great warriors who garbed themselves in gleaming silver plate armor, with weapons that conducted electricity. The stormsons had never seen anything gold in the mountians though, but agreed to travel the tinker through to the other side of their dominion. And so the Azka'r protected the old tinker from stone giants, the fierce lighting storms and the stone dragons the stormsons called the Ahkta'r, whose wings lanced with lighting and who breathed crimson blue fire. The stormsons gave him a staff of lighting to replace his old wood stick, which they said could command the skies to rain down a storm of lighting on his enemies. Each of these things the tinker encountered, and all of them he evaded with the aid of his staff and the stormsons bravery. After several months trekking through the jagged mountains passes, the old tinker was on the other side of the Stormfather Mountains, in a land lost to the eyes of mankind.