The Chosen One

The Chosen One watched as the spikes retreated back into the floor. The wizard's directions had been perfect. The maze had been no problem, and the trapdoors afterward had been just where he'd said they would be. He'd made it past the boulders, successfully answered the riddle of the great serpent, who lurked in the cave of bones. Even the counterweight puzzle had presented no difficulty; the wizard's notes spelled out the solution perfectly.

He moved along the darkened corridor, eyes open for the next challenge. He wasn't sure how far into the tomb he was now; he had to be close to the inner sanctum, surely. There, waiting in centuries of dust and darkness, the blood-red Eye of Argos waited for him, and him alone. The Chosen One.

The going was noticeably easier now. When he had first entered the tomb, the floors had been littered with the bones of those who had come before. As he got further into its murky depths, the remains of the unfortunate would-be tomb hunters had grown thinner and thinner. Now, as he stepped carefully from stone to stone, following the proper order of the markings, it seemed to him that the bodies of the luckless were increasingly sparse. There were only two here, and one up ahead along a well-lit but narrow stretch of tunnel. As he passed them, it seemed to him that the bodies here were more recent, not very long dead at all if he was any judge. Well, that made sense didn't it? People learn. He moved on.

He reached the next length of corridor, and lay on his belly, flattening himself as best he could, and begin to ease his way forward. He had traveled about three feet when a stone shifted under him, and he heard the telltale grate of ancient devices lurching to life. Ornate carvings on the wall beside him slid away, and the air was peppered with the hiss of poison-tipped arrows. He kept himself flat, wriggling forward slowly, not daring to raise his head even as he crawled by the still-festering corpse of the adventurer who had preceded him. Poor guy; looked like he'd tried to make a run for it. The Chosen One shook his head sadly, and wormed his way to the end of the corridor.

How long ago had it been? If he concentrated, he could remember—dimly—his old home, his old life. He remembered the fourth-floor studio walkup he had somehow called home; the petty, endless treadmill of an insurance adjuster's world, forever crunching numbers for other people's lives. Hadn't he known, even then, that he was special? Hadn't some part of him felt that he was destined for something greater? And then the wizard had come in his dreams, and revealed to him the truth: he was the Chosen One, whose destiny was written in the very stars.

The corridor opened into a round, open chamber, all of twenty feet across. There were four ways out, counting the one behind him. The three before him were unlit, doorways into total darkness. The leftmost one, the wizard had warned him, led to death. As for the other two...well, he had been strangely reticent about that. The wizard would only say that, as the Chosen One, he would know when the time came which path to choose. He stepped into the middle of the chamber, looking back and forth between the two featureless porticoes, and waited for a sign.

After a while, a small slimy creature emerged from a crack in the walls. It crawled towards him; in the torchlight it seemed like a cross between a slug and a rat, and very nasty indeed...he eyed the creature warily, hand on his sword.

The creature stopped a few feet away from him, and looked up. It seemed to eye him critically, sizing him up. Then, uttering a guttural chirp, it turned away and scurried through the middle door.

Of course! It was a sign—it had to be. He grinned; the old man had been right. He took a torch off the wall, and strode boldly into the middle doorway.

He had traveled about three paces into the corridor when the light of his torch revealed a dead end. Puzzled, he held the light up to each wall, looking for hidden levers or switches. There was probably a secret entrance somewhere...ah, there. At the end of the corridor, on the otherwise unadorned back wall, a simple rusty switch. He strode forward, lay down his torch, and gave it a tug.

He never saw it coming. There was only the click of the switch, and the rumble of machinery, and just the sensation of a blur in his peripheral vision as the ceiling came down like a pile driver. It was all over in a heartbeat.

After a moment, another mechanism in the hidden depths of the tomb was activated, and the ceiling winched slowly back into its place, leaving behind only a rather unpleasant stain.

#####

In his tower, high on the Mountain of Storms, the old wizard sat back from his scrying crystal. He shook his head sadly, brushed a tear from his eye. He eased himself up out of his chair, and shuffled to the ancient oaken table in the middle of the room. He gazed over the parchment map that took up most of its surface, his finger tracing shakily along the path, through endless scribblings and annotations, until he came to the round chamber. He picked up a tattered quill and, dipping it in the ancient inkwell, drew a very careful X over the middle doorway.

He cast a weary eye over the rest of the map. Close to the goal now, yes... but therein would like the greatest dangers, it was certain. Well, that was all right. He had time. And as for the other thing...

He pulled an ancient tome from a nearby shelf, and opened it to the tattered silken bookmark. This page, like all others, was column after column of names—what strange names, and what strange peoples! He had often wondered whence it had come: no book in this kingdom had such thin paper, or such tiny engraving. It was a mystery what the numbers by each name meant, and why half of the pages had been dyed yellow. Well, perhaps one day he would find out. In the meantime, he had work to do.

He traced his finger down the list of names, until he found the first one that had not been crossed out. He drew a line through it, his hand drawing the quill unsteadily...there. He read the next name, muttered it to himself a few times to make sure he'd gotten it right, then sat down. He closed his eyes, let his mind drift across the worlds; calling, searching...

(A beacon; a faint light in the darkness of the void. He followed it, letting the soulsign guide him swift and true...ah, yes...there.)

And in a one-room efficiency in Trenton, a young man thrashes in his sleep, and a deep, resonant voice whispers, “Smith, David! Arise, my son! Arise and embrace your fate, for you...are the Chosen One!”