The great plains of Merna, though they were, as their name implied, great, and had held that title since before human language had been invented, had never in their long career seen the likes of Rayfield the accountant.
A thousand years before Rayfield was born, a herd of centaurs from Tafril came through the forests of Ern into the wide, rolling hills of the great plains of Merna. Their armor and spears glittered in the bright morning sun as they marched, crushing the grass and the dirt into a road of mud in their wake. Their captain, the largest centaur ever born, galloped in the lead, standing nearly four meters tall. They marched the length of the plains, shaking the earth as the went, and then continued onwards to some horrible war where they all died.
But still, nothing quite like Rayfield the accountant had ever come to the great plains of Merna.
A thousand years before the centaurs’ march, a meteorite plummeted through the atmosphere with a tail of fire crackling behind it, and by the time it touched the ground of the great plains of Merna, it had burned away until only a crumb remained. But it was a fiery crumb, and rain had not fallen on the plains for nearly a year, so the grass was easily lit. The fire burned away six square miles of dry yellow grass before it stopped.
In the fresh ash, strange new plants grew up, for the meteorite had brought more than fire down with it from the outer reaches. These new plants grew quickly, and their leaves glittered like diamonds. Their shining refractions of light drew flies and men alike amongst the fields of otherworldly plants. None ever returned.
The king of the nearby kingdom of Brendal lost seventy of his best knights and his only son to those fields. He wept a single tear for the knights, but for his son he mumbled two words to his most trusted sorcerer: "Burn them." The sorcerer, who had been beside the king since the day he was born and had never spoken a single word to any other man, knew what the king meant. He hurried away and locked himself in a secret room in the tallest tower of the castle. Heart-rending melodies floated from this tower for three days and nights. Then, an expendable scout was sent to check the great plains of Merna and the fields of glittering plants from which no man or fly had yet returned. But return the scout did, reporting that he had found nothing of the shining plants but ash on the bare soil. Normal grasses soon grew up again, and no one ever spoke of the glittering otherworldly plants, the seventy knights, or the king's son ever again.
An unfathomable number of beautiful, horrible, and somewhat-impossible things had happened in the great plains of Merna. And so many other, mundane things had happened as well. Nearly every eventually had taken place there at least twice. But nothing even slightly similar to the coming of Rayfield, the accountant, had ever happened.
To his credit, Rayfield was no ordinary accountant. He was the most skilled of his firm, and for that reason he, and he alone, had been entrusted by his jealous colleagues with the prestigious and usually deadly task of confronting Valentino the gangster about his back taxes. However, the blunt honest fact was this: nothing like Rayfield the accountant had every happened there because nothing as mundane as a shortish man in an overpriced suit had ever gotten lost enough to be able to arrive at the great plains of Merna.
A thousand years before Rayfield was born, a herd of centaurs from Tafril came through the forests of Ern into the wide, rolling hills of the great plains of Merna. Their armor and spears glittered in the bright morning sun as they marched, crushing the grass and the dirt into a road of mud in their wake. Their captain, the largest centaur ever born, galloped in the lead, standing nearly four meters tall. They marched the length of the plains, shaking the earth as the went, and then continued onwards to some horrible war where they all died.
But still, nothing quite like Rayfield the accountant had ever come to the great plains of Merna.
A thousand years before the centaurs’ march, a meteorite plummeted through the atmosphere with a tail of fire crackling behind it, and by the time it touched the ground of the great plains of Merna, it had burned away until only a crumb remained. But it was a fiery crumb, and rain had not fallen on the plains for nearly a year, so the grass was easily lit. The fire burned away six square miles of dry yellow grass before it stopped.
In the fresh ash, strange new plants grew up, for the meteorite had brought more than fire down with it from the outer reaches. These new plants grew quickly, and their leaves glittered like diamonds. Their shining refractions of light drew flies and men alike amongst the fields of otherworldly plants. None ever returned.
The king of the nearby kingdom of Brendal lost seventy of his best knights and his only son to those fields. He wept a single tear for the knights, but for his son he mumbled two words to his most trusted sorcerer: "Burn them." The sorcerer, who had been beside the king since the day he was born and had never spoken a single word to any other man, knew what the king meant. He hurried away and locked himself in a secret room in the tallest tower of the castle. Heart-rending melodies floated from this tower for three days and nights. Then, an expendable scout was sent to check the great plains of Merna and the fields of glittering plants from which no man or fly had yet returned. But return the scout did, reporting that he had found nothing of the shining plants but ash on the bare soil. Normal grasses soon grew up again, and no one ever spoke of the glittering otherworldly plants, the seventy knights, or the king's son ever again.
An unfathomable number of beautiful, horrible, and somewhat-impossible things had happened in the great plains of Merna. And so many other, mundane things had happened as well. Nearly every eventually had taken place there at least twice. But nothing even slightly similar to the coming of Rayfield, the accountant, had ever happened.
To his credit, Rayfield was no ordinary accountant. He was the most skilled of his firm, and for that reason he, and he alone, had been entrusted by his jealous colleagues with the prestigious and usually deadly task of confronting Valentino the gangster about his back taxes. However, the blunt honest fact was this: nothing like Rayfield the accountant had every happened there because nothing as mundane as a shortish man in an overpriced suit had ever gotten lost enough to be able to arrive at the great plains of Merna.
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