The Lore Anthology: Lore of the Underlings: Episodes 1 - 5 by John Klobucher

these poor folk here before the Troubled Times.”
    “In the next scene the bearded man is gone and the people seem to be wandering…”
    “Lost. Lordless and forlorn. With countless of their untold number frail and falling for four panels more. And longish panels they are at that. They take a good half of the door. See there? What an epic journey it must have been, a quest to test the best of men, and women and children as well…” Morio nodded knowingly. “But this is the gist of the few fabled tales that I’d heard somewhere and a time ago. So I’d swear that it all rings true to me.”
    “And that brings us to here,” said John Cap. He stretched out his fingers to touch the figures and shapes before him at arm’s length. The rosewood was smooth against his skin and smelled of something flowerish, a fragrance set free when it met his flesh. He could tell that it had been tooled and rubbed well with perfumed oils to make it shine. But his findings too made him raise a brow, for such craft did not fit in this box of pyne.
    And another surprise — these panes portrayed a happier time. “Something has changed. What’s happening?”
    Morio took a look and spoke. “I recognize the great plain that we crossed, albeit airborne thanks to the ogs. So this must depict their trek here from afar with dawn’s rising orb as a guide or Pole Star. (I’m just guessing about the Pole- ish guide, but the carver does show the sun on their side.) Then their nights turned to halcyon days in this place, sweet dreams washing the nightmares away — wiped clean like a frown from each sunny face. No mourning on them anymore.”
    “I’ll take your word for it,” muttered John Cap with a telling smirk. He moved his hand to the form of a man in the midst of a speech to a crowd by a wood. A multitude was amassed before him, all enthralled by whatever he said. Some marks were inscribed beneath his feet. “H Hurx ~ Treasuror III,” they read.
    “Hurx? I think we just heard that name out in the field tonight. Isn’t that what they called those boys?”
    “Their uncle too,” added Morio, “our friend with the little red riding beard.”
    Distracted, the young man did not hear. He pressed his thumb to one of the marks then studied the fresh impression it made — lines and angles on his skin. “So ‘treasuror’ must be some local leader, like a governor or mayor.”
    “Or an electryon.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Most likely like one of those two you bespoke. But ‘twas how we knew office holders back home, when it was still a free land called Merth.”
    “And let me guess — they were usually crooks.”
    “Crooks or things much worse. But how…”
    “I’m learning that some things are universal.”
    “Yet exceptions there are, some giants among us. Those meant to make their place and time.”
    John Cap surveyed the remaining scenes. “It seems like H Hurx must have been such a man, judging from the rest of this side…”
    Yes, the artist showed life going well for a while with a bounty of all that they might want or need. Game for meat. Greens and seed. Timber or stone. Time to breed.
    And a leader beloved, wise, and kind.
    So much heaven sent to a folk so forsaken. Redemption. Rebirth. The smell of bacon.
    But then there by the floor, at the foot of the door, the magical yarn got caught in a knot. A tragic tangle of the tale. For in the final frame they found not chords of joy or sweet string sounds but notes of fond farewell and grief. Runes etched around an empty seat told of a treasured man’s defeat as Guard and folk and elders sung the tune of a life too brief.
    H Hurx was gone or lost or ghost.
    Yet to his place a young man rose. A handsome one, his elder son — “Ayryx of Hurx” it said below. As all bore witness to his grace, he bowed his head and turned his face in humility to the sacred ground. And the mantle of Treasuror was bestowed upon his shoulder with a pike.
    Thus was this enshrined for time to