Hedron toiled. His pick swung again and again into the side of the mountain, and the wall of stone gave way bit by bit. It was a slow and tedious process forcing the earth to give up its riches.
The laboring man really was a strange sight. There was a certain aura of strength and menace about him, and yet his appearance was unremarkable. He wore light armor, and an average blade hung at his side. His clothes were well made, and yet certainly not extravagant. The muscles that played beneath his skin were strong and solid, and yet there were more like those of a worker peasant than those of some great hero… and yet… and yet. There was more here than there seemed to be.
Any watchers who might have puzzled at this subtle mystery would have been enlightened if they could have heard the thoughts and seen the sights echoing inside the man's head.
Inside of Hedron, the memory played of his life as it had been. He saw grand circumstances, admiring crowds, revolting deaths, epic battles… Oh the battles he saw - contests of guile, strength, and magic that broke the earth beneath him, and shattered the sky above him. He heard thousands whisper, sometimes in terror, sometimes in awe, the name "False Prophet". This was no ordinary man.
Swing, clank, thud
Swing, clank, thud
Swing, clank, thud
The mining went on as Hedron felt the echoes of his life in another realm reverberate through him, and endured his life as it was now. For this was a new world. The False Prophet had fled the land he had been in at the last moments as it had crumpled in on itself, destroying everything forever, and had traveled to this one.
And now he was here. A bland, tedious place called Sosaria. When he had first arrived, his new body and mind had been weak, but the iron will that had propelled him to greatness in world after world before this still dwelt in him, ice cold, and metal hard. He knew that with each new realm that he traveled to he had to begin again, but it was never a daunting task to him. The ages of combat and strife in world after world had made him wise, and his climb to dominance in each new world had always been quick and sure, and where it had been neither quick nor sure, it had always been exciting.
Swing, clank, thud
Swing, clank, thud
The sound of the pickaxe continued.
This world was different, though. When he had first arrived, he had inhaled deeply of the air, and felt the familiar rush of legends waiting to be written. But now that he had been here for some time, he knew the truth. This world was NOT a world of heroes and gods, emperors and priest-kings. No, this was a world of miners and tailors. He had come to learn that the physics of this world did not permit the grand excesses of his past lives. He could not rise to a position of dominance here, because this was a world of balance. Each expenditure of great power required that you first expend the effort and the money to produce it. In this world gaining the fuel to expend in titanic wars meant weeks of labor for every minor clash.
But this was not right. When he had obtained a sense of how this world worked, it felt instinctually wrong to him. The gods who created worlds did not do so for the sake of balance and economics. They created them for their amusement! For the doing of great deeds, and the clashing of great armies! They created worlds to look down on as the beings that inhabited them mustered all of their might and burned themselves away in flashes of glory.
And yet here in this world, no one burned in a flash of glory, instead they just grew gradually smaller as the demands of obtaining power sanded them away.
When he realized this, Hedron took himself to a quiet and deep cave and closed his eyes. He meditated, and in a magical state of trance, he began to hear the words and intentions of the gods who had created this world. It was true! As obscene as it was, no greatness could be obtained here. The laws of this world demanded that so much time be spent in honest labor that conquest was merely a hobby practiced on weekends after long days of work. And the gods had meant to do it!
Swing, clank, thud
Hedron began to regret ever coming here. He could sense no hope for this world, and like other stagnant lands before this one, he could see its future. The strong would migrate away to better lands where their energy and ambition would lead to becoming lords of the realm rather than leading to a need to become a peasant. Meanwhile the weak would stay here, secure in their familiarity, and yet slowly dying off. In the not-too-distant future this would be a cold dark world. And Hedron would not be here to see it. That much he vowed.
This world would change, or he would find better. With that in mind, he began to plan a journey to the temples of the gods who had created this world, where he had decided he would offer up a prophecy. Not a prayer, for Hedron prayed to no being, man nor god, but a prophecy. He would tell these gods their future, and they would either listen and prosper, or ignore him and whither and die.
Hedron turned, his resolve strong, and took two steps down the road. Then he remembered… no one in this gray and depressing world could do anything without first doing the work. He set aside his adventurer's nature and closeted the desire he felt to rush out and live life, and instead he started the preparations for his long and boring journey to come.
Swing, clank, thud
Hedron
The False Prophet
KAAOS