Confrontation/Chapter 22

Something of an explanation is owed to you who reads the events of this narrative likely many years after my death. For some months now, I have added nothing to it. What I am recording now I record well after the events happened. I cannot have helped but do this because of the nature of what happened to me. Some know of what else I have written and where the words are recorded. I, for one, shall leave those other narratives out of this. While they do play an important part of my story, they do not add insight into this tale as it is currently recorded. At least, this is the advice of the Traveler and since the Traveler is the historian of my tale, I can only entrust to his wisdom the recording of my narrative. For those familiar with those events, the entirety of what happened in those other places, to the intervening period and most of all your friendship and rescue of me, please do not think it a slight that I cover up those events with a gloss. It is not that they were unimportant, but rather they are so beyond the scope of this story that I cannot do them justice within its pages. Your salvation from Ryuusei's hands cannot be underestimated. Unfortunately, I can only predict returning to them again.

For those who have no clue about the rambling I have offered in the preceding paragraph, I can only tell you, dear reader, that for a time I left the world of Lore entirely. I traveled hence from this place to a world of wonders unlike any I have seen before, even as the power of that primal place was cast out of Lore to the world of the Traveler's origin. We thwarted for a time the effort of the Devourer of Worlds, but what that delay bought us cannot be determined except for in the lens of history. I have come in time to question we did the right thing, except for the fact that we did the only thing we could do. Somehow the Traveler survived. Somehow I survived. I lived for some months in the city of Manhattan on the world of Terra. While there, I discovered many things that challenged my very expectations about the way the world works. While there, I also challenged myself and was changed. The Devourer's agents extended even to that world and Ryuusei Cartwright, one such, captured me and enslaved me. I eventually was aided to escape and returned to Lore. The Traveler's guide, Falerin the Loremaster, brought me to the attention of the citizens of Battleon and they helped bring me back once again to Deren and to Tralin.

Herein the story begins again.

Someday, someone may tell the tale of that other world. I only fear it will never be me who tells it.