What is the Warden? This question weighs heavily on me. My mind is still reeling from my conversation with Dermond. I find it difficult to believe his tale but the Warden stands before me and I have seen him in battle, seen his prowess. I remember well the strange lighted orb he had used during our first meeting. He is not one of us, one of the mortal race. I believe he is something more.

I sense something shifting in him, something building. When I am near him it is as though I am standing in a lightning storm: my hair begins to stir. And he has grown darker somehow, driven himself further inward if such a thing were possible. I believe he is steeling himself for violence.

The sun never broke through the thick curtain of clouds. Instead of a sunset there was just a gradual dimming until we could barely see the ground at our feet. By then we had arrived at the banks of a large river. The Warden told us it was the last barrier between the marshes and us and that we would have to ford it in the morning.

After a quickly cooked meal I crawled into my tent and heard the marsh come alive around me. Never had I heard such a collection of noises. A thousand, thousand insects made a strange sort of music. I could hear animals, though goodness knows what they might have been, moving in the trees.

Tomorrow we will reach our destination.

Dermond recounted how, as a boy he traveled alongside his father. Dermond’s father worked as a courier; ferrying messages from the city to other smaller hamlets. From him he learned how to survive in the wild. How to spot paths through the forests and mountains. How to identify which plants were good to eat and which were poison. His father taught him how to ride, shoot a bow, and fight with the sword.

I can see the sorrow in Dermond’s face as he continues. One night, raiders wearing masks and riding upon great horses. They came from the woods as Dermond and his father made camp. Dermond’s father met the raiders head on, killing one of the raiders and holding several more at bay. Dermond struggled to fight, but only being a boy, the raiders overpowered him. When his father sought to protect him, A raider slashed him across his back and fell.

It was then that a stranger came to their aid. Charging forward, he dispatched the remaining raiders. It was like watching a hero from legend.

It was the Warden.

Just as he looks now, not a hair unchanged. He flew into the raiders and tore them apart. It was all over in less than a minute. The Warden knelt by Dermond’s father. Dermond’s father seemed to recognize him. They had a whispered conversation and then Dermond’s father succumbed to his wounds and died.

The Warden rose and studied Dermond for a time before turning and heading back into the forest. After burying his father that evening, Dermond set off for the castle to finish his father’s task. He has not seen the Warden, or anything as powerful since. He is doubtful that the Warden would recognize or remember him.

After Dermond’s tale, I returned to my tent eager to write. The Warden has not returned but Dermond remains by the fire. I can see his shadow cast upon the canvas wall of my tent. I think he is praying.

He has been near silent since the battle with the raiders. I wonder, having seen his brutality and curious efficiency in combat, if I did right to seek his aid. My early admiration has grown to a fearful awe. Is he of this world? Or from somewhere beyond it? When I tried to speak to Dermond of it he hushed me and hurried further along the trail set by the Warden. He knows more than he has let on, or at least I think he does and he feels the same way about the Warden as I do. I recognized in his eyes the same mixture of reverence and fear. I need to know more.

We have taken a break from our traveling to find some respite from the heat of mid afternoon. Tonight, after we make camp, I must try to draw Dermond away from the Warden and find out what he knows of this matter.

This silence continued as we made our way across the great fields towards the town. During the journey the Warden seemed to change. He became fearsome. It was strange that, despite his large stature and obvious strength, until now I had never though of him as dangerous. He had, before my eyes, become a predator. Dermond followed a few paces behind, breathing deeply, dreading what was to come. I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking. As we approached the hill that overlooked the town I could smell the burned buildings. I felt a pit grow in my stomach as images of the tragedy that had befallen these people flashed through my mind.

We crossed over the hill. Nothing will ever match the horror made in our own minds, yet even in the light of day this town, or what remained of it, seemed eerie in the light of morning. There were many tents of dark cloth staked in the town center and smoldering camp fires from the night prior. The Warden moved out ahead and motioned for us to stop.

As he approached the tents I could sense the energy growing in him, like the feeling one’s body gets when you stand outside during a lightning storm. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The Warden let out a great shout. It was a terrible, inhuman sound like the clap of thunder. And then it was all violence and noise.

Raiders began to spill from the tents, bleary eyed but with their weapons drawn. The Warden dashed toward them, moving faster then a person ought to be able. In another moment, a heartbeat, three of the raiders closest to the Warden were down on the ground. The Warden whirled around and moved to another group of men, their weapons now raised high above their heads and black teeth bared. With unseen blows he bested yet another pack of men, dispatching every warrior that dared to challenge him. I feared for a moment they would overwhelm him but the Warden was untouchable. Then as soon as it had started the fight was over. The Warden stood in the center of a wide ring of corpses. His body quivered.

The Warden beckoned Dermond and I over. He turned to look at me.

“Are any of these men the one who wielded that blade you told me of?”

I looked around. The man I had seen was not among the bodies. The answer must have been plain on my face, for without speaking he knew.

“We will rest here for a time, and perhaps we will be able to learn where this man went”

I nodded, not knowing what to say.

As night descends I am writing by the light of small fire in an abandoned building of the town. Everyone, it seems, has fled or was taken by the bandits. Tomorrow the Warden wants to continue the search for the man wielding that strange sword. I am unsure why he needs us here.

The Warden questioned me without cease as we made our way down from his cave and back into the forest. It seemed, after a time, he asked his questions to prevent me from asking my own. I could barely get my own words in between his numerous observations of the natural wildlife and the endless queries he held for me. At first I thought he only wanted to know about the attack on the village but then he would ask me about the university, about myself, and my thoughts on the world at large and then no sooner would I have finished telling him about, say, a certain professor’s lecture or the materials oft employed by the masons of the city but he would hear the cry of some small animal and immediately recognize it. For a time I wondered if he had been a professor himself at some point. His knowledge seemed vast and deep and he seemed practiced at conversation, albeit with the uncanny whirring and clicks that were somehow layered into the sound of his voice.

There is something decidedly strange about the Warden. Besides the augmentations, those odd bits of metal that protruded from his flesh, he knows so much, so much more than I could hope to learn in a lifetime, and yet he could not be older than me by more than a year or two at most. His accent is unknown to me, his intonations foreign and yet familiar. I may only speculate and dream as to how he came to be as he is now. What accident befell him that led to the infusion of the metal into his body? Where had he studied, and with whom, to become so wise at so few years? And how had he come to be so tall?

I have never met or seen anyone like him before.

Before me rose a nearly smooth wall of rock, defaced only by a long, smooth crack that ran down the center of it. A stream, perhaps my stream, must have run down the face of this wall and carved a crevice over the centuries. I considered this rift in the rock for a time and then, driving my fists into it, began to climb. It was slow going but effective. I cannot say how long I took in my ascent but by the time I shakily pulled myself onto the cave ledge, lungs burning and muscles boiling, the sun had passed well beyond its zenith.

As I lay there trying to catch my breath, I noticed that there were runes carved around the cave like nothing like I had ever seen or studied at the university. They had been blackened, almost as if they had been burnt into the rock, and were rendered with an artisan’s precision. The mouth of the cave was tall, a gaping wound in the face of the mountain, and beyond the entrance was only darkness.

I had forgotten to bring any source of light with me but recognized the quartz just inside the cave walls and fashioned a crude torch from the sleeves of my shirt. I struck the blade across the flint and a moment later I had in my hand a few minutes of light. I set off into the cave with a determined stride, although I could not help but notice that the cave had truly been the wrong word to describe it: I was in a finely-carved hallway of rock, as well done as any of the architecture back at the university. How such a thing came to be inside of a mountain was a question I hadn’t the time to consider. I made my way deeper into the darkness. The torch was burning low before I came upon a second portal, much like the entrance way, bordered by a set of new runes. They bore the same precise quality I had seen before but these were different. A different message perhaps? I did not know and had little time left so I strode ahead into a smaller chamber. This is when I first heard him speak, his voice low and pleasing but…something was amiss in it. I could not seem him, not at first anyway, but heard him clearly enough. I halted in my tracks.

“You have come to see The Warden.”

“I am-“

What was I to say? In the haste to find The Warden I had thought little about how to frame my request to him.

“A scholar from the university,” he finished.

It was dark in the room, how could he know this? I raised the guttering torch about my head though I did not dare take a step further into the room. The chamber floor was smooth with a ceiling much lower than the hallway’s. I could not see anything else.

“How-“ I began.

“The insignia on your flask.” Again, something wrong in the voice. Something I could not place.

“And why,” he went on “have you come to see The Warden?” Still no sign of the man. How to begin? I took a deep breath.

“There has been an attack on a village. Many have been slaughtered, or captured. There is nothing we can do but watch them die and now we fear for our own lives. Geor, the owner of an Inn to the west, bade me to seek out the Warden and request help.”

The Warden, if it was he, was silent for a time before speaking, still cloaked in darkness, the torch mere embers by now.

“You would have me protect you from men?”

The answer seemed simple but I hesitated to answer. His question weighed more heavily upon me than my exams at the university.

“Yes.”

His reply was immediate.

“This I will not do, for it is a problem born of you and it is yours to resolve.” His voice was still mellow but this time, I heard it: beneath the pleasurable tone of the voice was a… whirring sound that I could not place.

“Please,” I suddenly began and was, just as suddenly, unsure of how to proceed. “Please, I saw them slaughter a village of people. They are animals, they are less than men. They are apart from us, they are not of us.”

“Nevertheless I shall not save you.”

“You have not seen them! You have not seen them cut an old man’s throat with a blade that looks like a row of teeth, or watched his lifeblood spill into the dirt. Or heard the screams or smelt their bodies burning in the remains of their homes. You have not. You must help us. If you are able I demand that you must.” The Warden was silent. The room was pitch black.

“Tell me about the blade.”

Why that?

“It was long, with barbs along the edge of the blade and pulsed with a strange energy. It was different from blades I had seen before.” I waited a moment before asking my own question: “Why?”

“This is of interest. This was not anticipated.”

And suddenly light was spilling into the room. I first thought that he must have opened a window or lit some sort of chemical flame for the light was brilliantly bright and was right in front of me. And then it dimmed again and I saw before me the shape of a man with a glowing sphere held out in his hand. But this was like no man I had ever seen. He was tall, well over six measures by my estimation and, curiously, there was metal, a good deal of it, driven into his face and chest and hands. But his eyes were kind and, as I grew accustomed to the light, I saw in his other hand he held a large tome.

“I am The Warden and I welcome you here.”

I have found the source of a forest stream and have made my camp here. The stream bubbles forth from under a rock formation, cold and clear. A draught of it is more refreshing than a night’s rest and soothes my blistered feet. The air is cool and the shade abundant. If my task were not so urgent, if lives were not hanging in the balance now, I would be content to rest here for some time.

I pray that Geor and Alarca spoke truly when they told me of the Warden’s location. I know not who he may be but it is my hope that I shall find him swiftly, before the raiders fall upon the inn. Though I have known them only a little while I find the thought of losing Geor, or Alarca, or Dermond too difficult to bear. Tomorrow I shall resume my trek and I shall endeavor to find this Warden before evening falls.

Since I returned to the forest my sleep has been free from dreams of watchful eyes or the shuddering rasps of the undead in the cave. It has been only a handful of days since Dermond and I first traveled to the caves and already it seems that a lifetime has passed. When, and if, I return to the university I shall not be as I was.

My camp is small and simple: a fire, a blanket, my pack hung on a low bough of a tree. I write leaning against its firm trunk. I have been told that The Warden lives near the base of the mountains of the west. Before I entered the forest I could see the mountains but now, beneath this thick canopy of leaves, I have lost sight of their tall peaks. Another day’s journey should bring me to their base. Once I am there I can only hope to find him swiftly.

I told them of what I had seen the previous night. I told them of the fire and smoke and of the giant and his wicked blade. They listened intently with worried eyes. After I had finished my story they both stood in silence. Geor spoke first.

He told me the raiders I had seen last night were marsh folk that lived to west of here. He told me that they had come before and the town would always plead for protection from these raiders however, they had very little to offer in terms of payment. Even when help came it was always too late and the raiders had fled to the safety of the marsh and would not return until the town’s would be protectors had left.

I told Geor and Alarca of my intentions to find help for the town and its people. With a deep sigh Geor spoke to me of a man that may able to help. The Warden they called him.

Dermond is still too weak to travel. It will be strange to travel by myself.