William nodded eagerly. He knew many of the stories about the Old Masters and the strange powers that they’d commanded. Of course he’d heard this entire story a dozen times before, it was one of his favorites.
“You have to remember that the Old Masters might have looked and acted a lot like us, but they weren’t human,” Gerard continued. William grinned. Though he’d had his father tell him the story a dozen times, there remained a magical fascination that made each telling feel like the first.
Because they looked so much like us, our ancestors thought that the Old Masters were the same. Some tried to attack the newly arrived strangers, but those who did died in strange ways. Most simply ignored them, concerned more with their own lives than with the comings and goings of strangers. But when the Old Masters claimed that they’d come to study the elder evil, everyone laughed. There was no studying the elder evil, the people knew that. A nothingness worse than death awaited those who tried. But the Old Masters demanded to be taken to the elder evil’s resting place, and gathered thirteen of our ancestors to show them the way.
These thirteen people wept and cried out in fear, for they knew what the elder evil would do, but the Old Masters commanded them and they had seen the horrible things that happened to those who defied them. Knowing they had no choice, they left to show the Old Masters the way.
“And when I say that they had no choice but to lead the Old Masters, I mean that they had no choice,” Gerard said. He turned to William and gave him the intense, frightening look which another adult would immediately read as an over-dramatization, but that children believed with all seriousness. William played his part, shrinking back onto the bench and shivering, unable to take his eyes off his father’s.
“It is said that two of the humans even tried killing themselves to escape from the Old Masters but that the Old Masters powerful magic kept their spirits from leaving and brought them back to life. According to what the Old Masters believed there was a special power in the number thirteen, and they wanted all thirteen people of the land with them when they went to see the elder evil.”
Still, all of the people of the land were expecting to vanish into nothingness, as all who had sought out the elder evil had before them. They were this land’s children and if the land would not defend its children from the elder evil’s hunger, then what chance did these foreign sorcerers have?
“As it turned out,” Gerard said, “The Old Masters held a secret that the people of the land did not know. For the Old Masters, with their mysterious and powerful magic, had created the elder evil.”
