The Ageless One: Beginnings - The Ageless Author (fox in socks read aloud txt) 📗

Chapter One
His Beginning

What am I? I am a Twyla. Don’t know what a Twyla is? That’s fine, I can explain. We, the Twyla, ordain all magic. We are supernatural beings who live on a higher plane of existence, and it is we who decide what incantations or rituals cast which spell, and why. We give magic order and purpose to protect the mortal realms, otherwise there would be chaos.
But this story isn’t about us. It’s about a young boy called Doelan, a mortal I’ve been observing for some time. You see we, the Twyla, try not to interfere in the affairs of mortals, but sometimes, to prevent darkness from destroying them, we have no choice. There are times when we must give mortals a fighting chance, and one of the best ways we can do that is by watching certain people whom we know have a great destiny. Whether they devote their lives to fighting evil, or just happen to be at the right place at the right time, we make certain they have everything they need to fight the good fight.
This young boy, Doelan, is one such person. You may ask what was so special about him, and why the Twyla would watch him. You might wonder what great destiny could possibly be in store for him. My answer is simple.
I do not know.
You see sometimes not all Twyla can foresee a particular future. As it stands only our esteemed queen, the greatest of all Twyla, knows exactly what this Doelan will do, or try to do. She is the queen of the Twyla, and of magic itself, and she is convinced that this boy is destined to be more legendary than any hero before him. However, there are some who would question her judgment.
There are a few reasons for this. For starters, the land Doelan called home for the first few years of his life is Halhor. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but Halhor is home to the gislers, who are not considered a very strong people, owing to their eternal youth. That might not seem such a bad thing, but other races grow up big and strong while the gislers are locked in the bodies of children throughout their entire lives. They do not die of old age, but as weak as they are no one has ever wanted them as allies during wartime. War, it has been said, is the work of men, not boys.
The gislers tried many times, most notably during a council with the winged eagle men, who were waging a war against snake-like monsters called slefah, one of the evilest dark creatures of their world. The gislers wanted to help, but the eagle men Chieftain said, “It would be dishonorable to bring children onto the battle field. I am sorry young ones.”
At the time, the gislers were still under rule of the Ciniceros Empire, where the human emperor declared, “I understand you want to help, but you must stay under our protection. It’s for your own good.” However, some gislers at the council believed that the other races merely envied their youth, and one mayor of Halhor infamously declared, “Too bad we cannot fight against time itself, then you’d be scrambling to be our allies.”
It didn’t go over well.
Whatever the reason, most other races view the gislers as weak or in need of protection, while the gislers disagree. They view themselves as just like any other species, and this is the race that Doelan was born into, an eternally young species called the gislers, also known as the Ageless Ones.
Or so it seemed.
What Doelan saw for the first few years of his life wasn’t exactly true, you might say. However, he would not discover this for some time, so for now, let’s pretend everything he saw was as it seemed so we can focus on Doelan himself.
The second reason one might question the Twyla queen’s interest in him is quite simple.
Doelan grew up in an orphanage, the kind of place you don’t expect someone great and legendary to come from. He was raised under the care of attendants, not parents, in a stone building with many rooms for the various orphaned children. Not that Doelan knew what stone was when he was young, but the building was made of it all the same. Actually not knowing about stone caused him a bit of confusion once. Only a few months old and just learning to walk, older gislers (boys and girls who looked no older than fifteen) would pick him up and take him to the window to let him look outside. He couldn’t go there yet, but they let him look and he saw the gisler houses; richly decorated marble cottages with impressive looking columns holding up the porch roofs. They were pretty to look at, unlike the drab stone building Doelan lived in, but he didn’t really know that. Since he had never seen the exterior of his building, he naturally assumed that it looked like the marble ones on the outside.
It was when he turned one year old that he discovered the truth. By that time he was allowed to go play outside. It wasn’t so bad at first. The grass felt cool and soft beneath his feet, and he had tons of fun chasing bugs and stomping on flowers, until he noticed that his building was as unpleasant to look at on the outside as it was on the inside; just a block of stone with windows. When he saw other children playing around those shiny marble cottages, and with their parents no less, he realized he was different, but he couldn’t be certain how.
Now Doelan didn’t remember this, as he was too young. But he kept seeing those buildings and making that same conclusion, so when he did start remembering things he would look at those houses and just know it. To him, it was as if he had always known he was different. However, it wasn’t until he started talking at five years old that he learned how. He was being tucked in by a gisler who was twenty, but of course looked fifteen, when Doelan decided to ask a few questions.
“Why do we live here and not with our parents in the marble buildings? And why are there more children here?”
“Well Doelan,” said the older gisler. “This is an orphanage. We take in children whose parents can’t take care of them.”
“Why can’t they take care of us?”
The gisler answered, but Doelan was still at that young age when older people, especially adults, felt the need to protect him from the truth. “They had to go on a journey,” he said. This of course meant they had passed away. In Doelan’s case, however, the circumstances were a little different, but he wouldn’t find out how until later…as I understand it. At this point, the older gisler just covered him up and said, “now go to sleep.”
So now he knew. He didn’t have parents to watch over him, and that’s what made him different. However, that wasn’t the end of it. You see Doelan was expected to show respect for his elders. He learned this by asking questions about people that visited Halhor. He would look out the window, see the cyclops people in their huge suits of armor and ask, “Is their armor really indestructible?” Or he’d notice the eagle men with wings on their backs and would absolutely have to know, “Can they really fly?” He also saw that the eagle men had feathers instead of hair. The only hair they had was for beards, and Doelan was tempted to ask if they had feathers in their armpits too. However, he knew he would probably just get scolded for asking rude questions, so he kept that to himself.
However, he would still ask a dozen questions and the elders would respond in one of two ways. They would either remind him of his manners, telling him to say “yes sir,” and “no sir” respectfully or they would send him off with, “Doelan, I’m busy.” But still, Doelan learned to use manners with his elders.
Now his elders were eternally young, so by human standards they looked fifteen. This didn’t bother him at first, for he knew the taller ones with deeper voices (more so than his own at least) were the ones to say “yes sir” and “no sir” to. Therefore he could always tell who was of a greater age, and with whom he should show respect. But one day, something happened. Doelan was seven by this time, and the mayor of Halhor came to the orphanage. He was said to be forty-six, but he looked like a fifteen year old, skinny blonde boy with blue eyes. His clothes were fairly regal; a sort of scarlet cloak compared to the normal brown cloaks most wore, but that was it.
Erid, the head of the orphanage, was supposed to be thirty-two years old, but of course he didn’t appear to be. Before this day he had always looked like the oldest person in the room, and acted like it as well. This day he looked like the oldest, if only by a little, but didn’t act like it. As Doelan looked back and forth between the two of them he could not tell what made the mayor older than Erid, who bowed to the mayor as if it was so. Erid was dark haired, big for a fifteen year old and even taller than the mayor. He said “yes sir” and “no sir,” the way all of the orphans were expected to, and Doelan just didn’t get it.
He went up to Erid later and tugged on his shirt, “Erid, is the mayor really older than you?”
“Of course he is Doelan. Why would you ask that?”
“He doesn’t look any older than you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Neron looks older than me, and those…um…eagle people who came here had grownups who looked old…but you don’t.”
“Oh the eagle men aren’t gislers Doelan. We stop ageing, but we really are adults.”
“How do you know?”
Erid sighed in irritation, “We just know, now please stop bothering me, I’m busy.”
Erid walked off, and speaking of Neron, that very same boy was listening. He, a dark haired and freckled boy who was seven at the time, came up to Doelan and grinned.
“You don’t like it when we stop growing up! Oh! You don’t want to stop growing up! You want to grow old!”
“No I don’t.”
“Yes you do. You want to grow old. Hey everyone! Doelan wants to grow old!”
“Stop it!” cried Doelan.
“Neron!” cried Erid from across the room, “Stop!”
Neron stuck out his tongue at Doelan and ran off; from that moment Doelan knew once again that he was different, even in the orphanage. Little did he know that it was just going to get worse.
Neron started talking to the other orphans, and wherever Doelan went they would make fun of him. Doelan hadn’t exactly made a lot of friends