# Treading the Paths of Immortals(A First Age of Man Story Hour)



## blackshirt5 (Aug 24, 2003)

The Lord of Darkholme strode across the field towards the tomb that he had tried to open for the last 10,000 years.  Flaim, with his brindled flesh, dark red feathered wings, and a handsome face marred by an eye long ago plucked from his right eye socket and a mouth full of jagged fangs, stood a full head taller than the giants who now assaulted the tomb, trying futilely to break through the immortal walls.  As he approached them, the workers stopped to bow low before him.

"Stand", he commanded them, "and continue your work!  I want that tomb opened!"  He motioned over Braxus, his master builder, who ran quickly at his master's insistence.  "Braxus, how much longer?  How much time will you waste in failure?  Must I send another soul to our brethrens hells?"

"No, my liege!"  Braxus bowed low, his golden hair hanging in his face and the stumps of his wings dripping blood from the wounds where Flaim had torn them from his body 9,000 years earlier.  "There is one who seems to be making progress.  One they call J'onn."  Braxus motioned to the top of the pyramid where, over 300 feet up stood a young giant with a mattock, repeatedly raising it above his head and slamming it into the squared off top of the pyramid.

Flaim grabbed Braxus under the shoulders and began to rise. "You will show me to him." Beating his wings, Flaim, with Braxus in tow, rose to the top with ease, realizing that it must have taken considerable strength for the young giant to climb to the top on these sheer walls.  He lit atop the structure and looked at the young giant first with haughtiness, then with shock.

Memories came rushing back to Flaim, with the old wounds accompanying them: his fall from grace; a young man approaching him in his own throne room of Darkholme, offering him absolution and the gods' forgiveness, if only he'd serve man, and Flaim's own laughter at the ridiculous notion; the young man returning and slaughtering half his court, a full 50 of the 400 angels that had followed Flaim's rebellion against the gods 12,000 years ago sent to death by a boy armed with a pair of Faeglass swords, all the while telling Flaim how he himself had damned the assembled host; the difficulty of his battle with the boy; and the most painful memory, of feeling his full powers sealed away as the boy died, one name spoken on his lips, Tempest, Flaim's own brother, a loyal servant of the old gods.  And remembering how the tomb had grown up overnight from where he had flung Tempest's body, in full regalia and with his twinned swords, from the balcony of his throne room.

The young giant was the spitting image of Tempest.  With black fires blazing in his eyes, Flaim drew his golden falchion and struck the young giant's head from his body.  He sheathed the sword, picked up head and body, and looked at the eyes, already growing glassy in death. "Do not return for your weapons next time, dear brother.  Come finish things with your own hands."  And with that, he threw head and body off the height of the pyramid to the ground.

Down below, the giants mourned J'onn's death; he was a hard worker and always kind, even to those not of his clan.  They cursed Flaim as a devil, but only because a devil was a familiar kind of evil; Flaim was something far, far worse, something not so easily explained.


----------

