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From its high tower, the Timekeeper watched all that occurred in the land of Erdrea. It watched as the Luminary returned after the Fall, rejoining his comrades and regaining his Mark as he traveled across the land. It watched as the Luminary rose in power, renewing the people’s hope as he pierced the veil of darkness engulfing the land.
It witnessed his epic struggle, where the heroes’ great power forced the Lord of Shadows to abandon his already-formidable mortal form in favor of that of a hideous skeletal serpent through the magic of the Sword of Shadows.
And it witnessed the grisly deaths of the Luminary’s closest companions, the honest thief and mighty sage, before the Luminary too fell, murdered by the immense and unstoppable dark wyrm.
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The Timekeeper gazed at a world that grew ever darker, with its remaining heroes (the knight and the jester, the old mage and the warrior princess) barely clinging to life as they sought a way to avenge their lost comrades.
As they were, a direct assault would be fruitless and end as tragically as the original had. So the heroes were forced to craft a plan, and outwit their mighty foe. However, above defeating their enemy, the heroes recognized that their first priority had to be ensuring the safety of the poor souls who remained in their blighted land, and so first sought a way to accomplish this goal.
The warrior princess concocted a plan that would aid the heroes in accomplishing both goals, remembering the pocket dimension that she had once been trapped in. She led the heroes in seeking access to this removed reality, reasoning that the surviving humans could hide there for a time.
While the knight and jester sped across the land, gathering up what people and benevolent creatures they could, the princess opened a portal to this strange dimension with the aid of the old mage. They soon succeeded in reclaiming the enchanted garb that had once resurrected her from death, hoping to use its magic against their mighty foe.
Once the evacuation was completed and the garb re-donned, the heroes set out into the ruined lightless land, intent on confronting the evil that threatened it one final time.
They found it in the Last Bastion, feasting on the Spirit of the Land itself, draining the earth of its power (it had already consumed the northern lands, more than half of the world was gone).
The heroes fought valiantly, unleashing every spell they knew of and every one of their many skills in an attempt to slay the beast. The warrior princess fought the hardest of all, unleashing her mightiest techniques, taking the greatest blows, dying and reviving again and again through the power of her enchanted garb.
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Time passed-the princess was unsure of how much-when she rose once more. Unlike the many times before, she rose to find herself standing alone against the dark wyrm, her companions dead and dying around her.
The wyrm was relentless, its blows crashing over her like the waves. The beast no longer sought to rule the world, now it lived only to destroy and consume. The princess fought and fought, losing her life and regaining it again and again and again. But the wyrm never tired, relishing the endlessness of its great task.
The princess reluctantly fled to recuperate, knowing that to continue on as she was without regaining her strength would inevitably lead to failure. And in her absence more of the land and even the sea vanished, all consumed by the wyrm’s insatiable appetite for destruction.
After seeing the result of her respite she never rested again, battling endlessly in what she now knew to be a truly futile struggle. She did not possess the power necessary to destroy the wyrm, all she could do was delay it until it found a way to end her life for good.
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The wyrm’s power had only grown greater since they had begun their fight, its bones slowly being enveloped in a hellish golden glow as it consumed more and more of the land and sea and sky.
The warrior was pushed further and further back until there was nowhere left to go, only a small speck of land left before the surface of the world gave way to the endless void. It was then that she finally fell, fading into nonexistence like the rest of the world within the wyrm’s great maw.
There was no solace to be had in the princess’ death. The people she had fought so hard to protect were devoured soon after her demise, the wyrm having turned next to the several pocket dimensions connected to the now-depleted reality.
Soon all that remained of the world was the floating fortress that was once the wyrm’s seat of power, saved by the lingering and delectable scent of despair left over from the heroes’ initial defeat. The Timekeeper was long gone, the wyrm having sought out the Tower of Lost Time and consumed Time’s Sphere to grow ever more powerful.
Having finished its great task, the wyrm paused and gazed upon the world, looking upon its ruin with a mixture of satisfaction and displeasure.
Its hunger had not yet been sated, perhaps it never would. And so, after a brief moment of consideration, the wyrm began to devour the wall between its reality and another that existed in parallel, tearing into and consuming another world, and another, and another, in a cycle without end…
...Until it found a new reality, one radiating brilliant light to match its own unending darkness, and after a lengthy battle it finally fell to the heroes of that world, the only reminder of the worlds it had consumed being the undigested Sands of Lost Time and the indestructible garb of the warrior princess.