by Casandra Lavallee

Created on: January 31, 2009

The wool of her cloak brushed lightly upon her sleeve. Her sensitive skin cried in agony from the harsh fall wind. It was the darkest of nights; the moon hid itself from the world, anticipating the coming evil.

She continued through the rows of the neat wooden houses that came together to create this sleepy town. Keeping a slow yet steady pace as she walked, hardly making a backwards glance.

The lights of the village had long been out, including the lantern in the steeple of the ancient church that towered over the dwellings of the townsfolk. That told her that even the steadfast and dependable bell ringer had also laid his weary head to rest.

Click, clop the cobblestones said as the hardened souls of her shoes repeatedly hit the ground. This road cut like a great river through the town, and it spread far to the North, East, and South. Yet as she made her way towards where the sun had set hours ago, the vast sea of rock ended abruptly, cutting all passage off to the West.

No one knew for sure just what exactly lay beyond the border of the western woods, but there was no shortage of tales and theories from those who had never ventured more than a few yards beyond the town. Yet only one of these rumors seemed to survive the hundreds of years of contemplation.

Once, long ago it is told that a king ruled over the known lands he had conquered. Under his control he had gained the crude warriors of the north, the skilled craftsmen of the south, and the prosperous planters of the east. To seal these commands he had over the ignorant commoner, he had taken a chieftain's daughter as a wife from each of the nations.

Yet, there was one nation he had not yet taken under his command. The west remained largely unknown. It was common superstition that it was populated by blood thirsty heathens and monsters no one could speak of for fear that calling their name might bring their horror down upon them.

The king was both greedy and nave. He felt the world was his birth right, including all the valuables in it. Thus he sent all of those who served him to bring back word of what the west was truly like. They returned to tell of nothing but villages of nomadic people and a wide continent with nothing but thousands of acres of forests and fertile land, the king himself traveled to the forbidden west.

There he built a great castle in monument to himself, taking no heed of the forest dwelling people that made to stop his work conquering the west. Until one day, a humble soothsayer

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