The journey to the town of One Stone had taken Barick almost two months by his estimation, though he had lost track of the days after the first couple weeks. Travelling at night to avoid the scorching heat of day, he scavenged for food and water and tried to avoid the predators that roamed the darkness searching for an easy meal. He had almost been killed several times during the trek: psionic plants that sucked his lifeforce if he got near; six legged lizards that hunted him mercilessly for nights on end; and acidic rain that threatened to burn his skin from his bones. Hunger and thirst were his only companions for most of his travels, though delirium-born-of-exhaustion would occasionally show up to keep things interesting as well. At times, only his new divine sense of purpose kept him moving, with the Serpent With a Hundred Eyes guiding his feet and keeping him on the path.
He had arrived in the small town twenty pounds lighter, his lips cracked from dehydration and his skin burned raw from the freezing night air. He now wore an unkempt beard upon his face and a look of mad intensity in his eyes as well, but instead of looking like a crazed outsider, he was surprised to find that he fit right in with the hard-living denizens of One Stone.
Once in town, he immediately began searching for the people from his Vision, their ghostly visages dancing around in the corners of his memory, never fully in focus. He wasn’t sure how he would know them, just that somehow that he would. And so he hunted through the town for them, introducing himself to everyone he met, looking for some clue as to whether they were the ones from the Vision. When he found nothing, he began searching the outlying areas and the distant towns, but still nothing. Perhaps he was a little early he wondered, and so he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The weeks turned to months and then to years. Once the years had closed in on a decade, he began to feel like such a fool. Of course his grand Vision, as prophetic and powerful as it had seemed at the time, would have actually been just a fantasy born of the venom that coursed through his body coupled with his proximity to death.
Without this divine sense of purpose, his life lost all meaning, and this realization led him to the Tavern and to the distractions within. Drink and song and idle entertainment numbed the pain of the loss, but only for a moment. He opened a small shop and used his meagre physicker skills in an effort to help the poor and unfortunate, accepting only what they could afford - often nothing at all - as payment, in the hopes that this small gesture of goodwill might fill the giant void in his soul.
It did not.
After his nights at the Dragon Head he would return to his small room and he would often contemplate the sharpened scalpel in his physicker bag, wondering whether this would be the day that he would finally be brave enough to end his own suffering. But the image of the silver serpent would always jump to the forefront of his mind in those dark moments, and he would stay his hand and let drunken sleep win out instead.
And then he met her, the young dark-haired girl, brash and brave and always getting into trouble as a result. She was eight years old when she first came to his shop, her slight form in the arms of a burly guardsman, a large gash on her temple and the skin of her hands and knees abraded raw. She had tried to climb the stone wall that surrounded the town in a fit of adolescent bravado, but gravity had shown her who was truly king on that day.
She wouldn’t even have stood out to him amid the dozens of people he treated each day except that the wound on his leg where that snake had bitten him all those years before, began itching and tingling as soon as she was brought into his room. He had ignored the sensation at the time, focusing instead on treating the nasty wound on her brow, and when she left a few hours later on her own accord, the sensation in his leg faded slowly away.
She would visit him many times over the years, always getting into scrapes and accidents on account of her headstrong ways and utter reckless fearlessness. And when she began training to be a member of the town guard she would become one of his most common patients, as she threw herself into weapons training with the same bravado that she did everything else. And each time she visited, he got that same tingling sensation in his leg. Perhaps the vision hadn’t been wrong; perhaps he had just been early?
Then the young dwarf arrived in town, griping about the quality of the mead in the tavern, preferring to add spices to his that made the drink smell like feet, or so it seemed to Barick. His leg tingled mightily the first time he met him as well, and the sensation also faded away shortly after leaving his presence. Could this be another of the group he was fated to meet?
Then the tattooed man leading the caravan of camels arrived in town, quiet and mysterious but unabashed in his heretical beliefs in some Morninglord, a god thought long dead and forgotten. His blasphemies would see him burned alive in one of the major cities, but here in this remote town they hardly earned the man more than a curious look, though a few of the more devout citizenry might covertly flash the symbol of the Five towards the man to ward off any strands of heresy that might cling to them merely by being in the presence of such blatant sinfulness. When this man was near, Barick’s leg would tingle as well, and now it occurred to him that this could not be coincidence...could it? Either these were the people from the prophecy or else his desperation for some sense of purpose coupled with the hundreds of gallons of ale he had consumed over the years had finally pickled his brain.
Barick was playing cards at a corner table in the Tavern the night that the handsome young stranger walked through the door, the dirt and weariness of the road looking completely out of place upon his face. Barick’s leg had been itching badly all night since the dwarf and the tattooed heretic and the dark-haired girl all happened to be drinking in the Dragon Head as well, and the explosion of sensation in his leg when this figure approached the bar almost knocked Barick to the floor with its intensity. The tingling sensation also brought with it a flash of white-hot heat that did not stop at his leg, instead spreading quickly throughout his body. Though he was seven pints into his usual dinner of ten, the light that flowed within him easily burned away the numbing cobwebs that the drink had lovingly placed within his head, leaving him clearheaded and cleareyed for the first time in years.
In that moment, he saw the Serpent With a Hundred Eyes in all of His glory in front of him, each eye staring directly at him, His silver scales shining with a light from within. As the serpent stared at him and the same prophetic vision he had received all those years ago flooded back to him in a wave, and Barick felt a sense of shame wash over him as well as tears began to well up in his eyes. “I’m sorry I doubted you,” he blubbered at the image in front of him. “I should have known you were telling the truth.”
The serpent slowly faded from view leaving a scruffy bearded man holding seven wrinkled cards in front of his confused face sitting across from him. The man looked down at the meagre pile of ceramic chips on the table between the two of them and back at Barick. “Well, look, I wudn’t bluffing if dat’s wut yer on about, but you ain’ about to lose that much coin,” he said, showing the 3 dragons and 4 staves that adorned the cards in his hand. “It ain’ worth cryin’ bout…”
But Barrick didn't hear the man, he simply pushed the half full mug of ale aside, suddenly ashamed of its presence, and continued apologizing in a soft whimper.