I was bored waiting for maintenance and I decided to start a project I've been putting off for a while. This is the story of my character, Andol Mo'Uhn, and his trials, tribulations, and travels. I'll be adding more parts as I go, but I thought that this would represent a fairly accurate beginning. As you may notice, it does not start at the beginning, and paints Andol out to be one bad dude, as well as possibly bat**** crazy! I assure you while at least half of this statement is true, You can't judge a character entirely by the first chapter. This story is about new beginnings, atoning for past wrongs, and remembering better times. It will explore inner demons, as well as outer ones. Also there will be cake, so stick around!

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy reading about Andol.




BLEAK HOURS IN THE COLD; THE STORY OF ANDOL MO'UHN:
By L. Moon
PART 1: Desolation and Redemption

The ground is choked by the ash of burned memory and frozen humanity. A cold thing. A broken thing. The laughter and joy that once filled every corner of this fallen land are now gone. Blown away by a fierce wind of steel and blood. All that is left is this decaying husk. A horizon as utterly bare and devoid of life cannot be found.

Perched upon the precipice of solitude and insanity crouches a lone figure, a stalwart companion to the death and putrid decay that now permeates every part of this place. He knows not for what he seeks, only that it may be found within the clutches of this gray, lonely vestige. A dark man, broken and twisted, a murderer, a conjurer of devilish things, he is a man of nightmares, a man of deciept, his veins run with fire and his lungs exhale smoke. He is Andol, or rather was Andol; he is something different now. Neither human, though not entirely beast, not yet anyhow. His body frame is small, and though he does not posses the physical prowess of many of his kind, he has spent his life cultivating another in-born talent, sorcery. His delluminated face is framed by raven black hair that has been cut to the shoulders. Placed in the middle of this pale window sits his crooked nose and fierce burning eyes. A wispy black beard grows in patches across his chin and neck while his pale skin looks unhealthy and stretched, as if it is too old and has turned to leather. He wraps himself tightly in dark hides, with a dark woolen cloak and hood to mask his back from the bitter cold.

Moving quickly, eerily unburdened by the pace, he runs among the bones and rubble of wasted years, not stopping for anything, he can feel it, sense it, he is getting closer now. The dead told him the stories of this dark place as he moved ever onward. They told him of secrets, of lies, of long-forgotten treasures buried deep within the earth, in black cellars now covered by ages of sediment, but the dead of his past are not allowed to speak of that which he unknowingly seeks. Redemption. This bothers him not, for he has spent a thousand lifetimes dealing with the fragments of bygone days.

He is running now, running from himself, running to himself. Running for the sound. He does not think, he only moves. Silently and effortlessly his footsteps make no noise over the hard scrabble as a rhythmic pounding of metal on metal, deafening in its silence, rolls across the grey stone. He stops, a cool panic settles into his heart. The forgotten smith has ceased his forging. He is still lost and alone. Quickly he looks around, hoping to find the source once again, but to no avail. Exhausted, he looks up in resignation. The sky is a colorless blur of varying shades of gray. Heavy clouds cover it from horizon to horizon, though they never loose their rain. Occasionally flickers of lightning, also gray, streak out like messengers. While he is looking, one silently flashes across in a completely unremarkable display of futility, as if in mocking of his thoughts.

"Loo". A voice? The man stumbles. "Was that a voice, or have I finally gone mad?" He thinks this with all the casual attention and flare another man might wonder about what he should cook for supper that night, and then decided that he "was soaring with the fishes". He had begun walking again, but immediately halted so hard in his steps that he stumbled. "Where did THAT come from?" Had he heard it before? He couldn't remember, but thought that he had. "But from whom?" He was in the middle of puzzling it out when he heard the voice again, this time he was sure it wasn't his own. "Loo" It was a girls' voice, childish and vaguely familiar. It trailed off, echoing back to him so it was as if he were hearing it three or four more times before it finally diminished into nothingness. A flash, "just some more lightning" his mind told him unconsciously, but it was different enough to make him look up from the ground, where his eyes had wandered in his contemplation. "The lightning has no light." Looking around he saw it. The source of the metallic pounding he had heard earlier. His already slightly panicked mind slipped into overdrive as he recognized it for what it was. "No..." he thought meekly. "No!" This time speaking out loud. His hoarse voice clicked and skipped across his teeth and grated its way past his lips. It sounded like an explosion to his ears and caused him to wince against the noise which had buffeted him almost to the ground.

"LOOK!" The girls' voice once more, at full volume this time and sounding so familiar that a memory forced his way into the front of his brain. A girl, about ten or eleven standing in the open door of a stable and waving at him, a look of childish delight on her face. He had no time to contemplate this though, as the sound seemed to blind him in its intensity. Surely he had never heard such a voice in his many upon many lifetimes! Though truth be told, he couldn't ever remember hearing anything since he came here. That voice was one and many at the same time, thousands of people shouting, "whispering?" through one voice. The commanding tone in it, however, was unquestionable. He looked. Just ahead of him stood a door. Tall and plane, though the edges sparkled slightly in the dim light of the everlasting day. At first he didn't know what it was, it was so alien how it had just appeared, that his mind almost dismissed it in its entirety. Despite the fact that it was standing in the middle of nothing unsupported, which to Andol, "yes my name is Andol... I think", there was something even more peculiar about it. It was shimmering, as if underwater, and "things" were swirling all around it, emanating from the door itself. He didn't recognize them for what they were initially, but as he stared, names started coming back to him. "Green" and "red", "gold!" "violet"! His panic turned to excitement as he recognized the colors that had drained out of the world so long, long ago. They were amazing! He couldn't think, but his mind was racing. A thought would jump to the forefront of his consciousness then leap back to be replace immediately by another. Before he realized what was happening, he saw that he was closer to the door. Close enough to touch it, he shrank away in awe as the colors, "Yes that's what they're called, COLORS!", shimmered and swirled around him. They brightened and smeared together, making fantastic designs in the air. they would overlap and created new colors of which he was sure he had never before even dreamed! Everything was getting blurry then, and it was with surprise that he realized he was weeping. Tears poured from his eyes and he fell to his knees sobbing at the beauty and magnificence of the thing.

Andol lay there for what felt like a long time, though in truth only a few moments had passed. It was as if a great weariness had been lifted from his shoulders. Not daring to take his eyes from the door, for fear that it would disappear and he would realize that he had actually gone insane after all, he inspected it. The grains in the wood flowed like rivers over the surface of the fresh hewn planks that made up the face of the door. It was set into thin air with no frame that he could see, but was sturdy nonetheless. When he looked at the opposite side, he saw just that, the other side of the door. It was exactly the same on this side as it was on the other. Set halfway from the bottom, and to the right was a small wooden latch made of the same wood. There was no key hole, no window, and no other marks of any kind on its face. Hesitantly, he put out his hand, only to quickly draw it back as the colors intensified and combined to a bright white as his fingers settled on the latch. They immediately dimmed and went back to their original, separate colors. "Only they're not as bright as they were before, some of the life has drained out of them." That made up his mind. Wherever this door came from, it would not last much longer if he kept messing around. He steeled his once considerable, but now quite diminished resolve, placed his right hand upon the latch, and pressed.