CHAPTER 1

Then it is so that such a small mouth opens up to a steep hillside road that oversees the Lake of Lorn and the first signs of the Westmarshes. A large flat road barred by the so-called reeds-of-the-sour or reeds-of-the-priest: small cattails that bloom someday but not this day. And it is so that you see, that the waters brace the road and the land becomes mud. But the road never gives way. You follow it for some time until the riverways give way to some wet hills. Yet the cattails remain ever present among the foggy ways.

It is in the distance that the Inn, your destination, rests. It is an inlaid building made out of slashed rock; small concave windows illuminate the fog-ridden path. A carriage, something you've not seen in many ways, sits near a beetle pen.

The small animals eat food remains: offal, meat droppings, root and herb cuts. It is that the bigger beetles, the breeders, make small grubs. These ones are served at the inn.

You've longed for a warm bed. It has been only two days but it feels like the entire world has spun twenty to thirty times around itself. You feel dazed. As you approach, you see a brooding man; he spits chewing root at the beetles.

"Man! You're huge! You..." he gets up on his feet "You comin' from Jaghn? How...how did you get past them?"

"Perhaps I was just lucky. The road was empty of them."

"Empty....? Then why are we here!?" he barges inside "Someone is here! Ey, a huge man, an executioner! He says the roads are empty!"

A measly man in pelt robes glances at you:

"Come inside!"

As fast as he left he enters again.