by Gold Baron
"I don't know how much longer I can wait. Events are in motion that are beyond my control. The game is afoot." The sword hummed gently, casting a reassuring light around the dark warehouse. Outside it was an overcast night.
"You've waited this long. What difference does it make if you wait a few thousand more years?"
The Gold Baron seemed to recoil away from the sword, then slumped back into his same atrophy, leaning against the heavy blade. "You don't understand, you can't understand how import--"
The conversation was cut short by a tall figure clad in brilliant white against a cool blue and gold background. "You really shouldn't speak to it. It won't listen, anyway; it has its own agenda."
Color flooded back into the Gold Baron's face, and he straightened his posture, eyeing the man with suspicion. "Who are you? What do you know?"
The man leaned back on his heels as if set back by the question, but then a hearty laugh escaped his lips. "I once wielded it. I know well the contours of its handle, the fell edge, the sinister sentience within."
The Gold Baron took a defensive stance back, his red cape flowing down around him and concealing all but his glowing eyes. His eyes adjusted and then again sized up the intruder, swirling light cast out like great wings, an extension of the being. "I thought I destroyed you all, all of you!"
The air rippled to match the anger in the tone, but the man, if it could be called that, seemed unfazed. "No, no, not one of them. Your destruction was quite complete. Quite a temper you have. No, I am something more or less than an angel, if you wish to use so blunt a term, but yes, I am here to parlay with you."
The Gold Baron turned a cold shoulder toward the man. "If you know so much, you know I don't make deals."
The man took another step forward. "At least let me impart a warning."
"I live a dangerous life."
A grin spread across one side of the man's face. "The revelation might shake your very foundation, the foundation of your cause."
The Gold Baron seemed to be paying little attention to the conversation, watching the dancing light of a marker on the waves some distance from the docks. "My foundation is solid. Try your best to shake it."
The faint sound of an amulet being produced from within the folds of the man's cloak gained the Gold Baron's attention as he turned to see it. Viewing it, he scoffed, saying, "Bah, nothing more than a trinket. Is this supposed to shake my very existence?"
The man stepped forward underneath the cobweb-ridden light, which danced to life for the first time in many years. "No, not just any trinket, one not unlike your own." He pointed to the intricately carved stone, shaped in the likeness of a shield with a bright star within, a glimpse into the cosmos.
The suspicious look on the Gold Baron's face began to soften as he looked upon the amulet for the first time in many millennia, since her... The Gold Baron closed his eyes as if to shut out the painful memory.
"Yes, you too once called yourself a defender," the man spoke, "bound to the fate of humanity, to fight on in an endless battle, to bring the light of the stars to the one. You know what I speak of. I was the founder; you are the deliverer. Where will the hammer fall? Who is the keeper?"
The Gold Baron again turned away as tears streamed down his face. "It's not so simple; things have changed." His voice seemed to tremble on the point of collapse.
The man had now cast aside his robes, his armor shining in the moonlight through the high windows as the skies cleared. The Gold Baron slowly turned, his cape shrinking away into a clasp about his neck, to see a perfect copy of himself, like a mirror image, a snapshot in time of his younger days as a paladin in the forgotten order.
His knees trembled, and his foundation fell. He sank to the ground and knew no more, falling into his first rest in countless millennia, a reprieve from his hellish nightmare, of past glories and defeats, and the life he once knew. The Gold Baron was reborn.