Storytime: The Tale of a Teller Who Never Wanted One. Prologue

My name is Serik. I am a storyteller.

The people know me and my vocation, but they do not know Serik, he is but a storyteller. We talk of great men and women, the storymakers, but never of ourselves: we are not important. We do not make the stories like the others do, we simply relay them. However, that is an important job, for without us Tellers, the storymakers would have no way to share their glorious tales.

What are storymakers, you may ask? They are the champions that lead armies to war; the valkyrie that overthrow kings; the thieves that steal from the omnipresent; the wizards who summon demons, and the simple peasants who rise in rebellion. These people are all storymakers. It is no profession, but a title of honor. I was a storymaker myself once. I was younger, then, and my heart pulsed with a vainglory ambition to be known all across the world. To be loved, hated, feared or worshiped, it made no difference to me. But I am old now, as all storymakers become, and youth is wasted on the young. Now, I am a beacon of hope and inspiration for the next generation of storymakers to come, for it is my duty to tell those men and women, whose faces are not yet wrinkled and worn from Time's presence, the stories of people before them and their grand achievements, that I may inspire them to be like the ones I tell tales of. It matters not to me whether they succeed. In the end, I get their coins.

You are lucky, my good friend: for I am feeling particularly generous this select morning. I will tell you a story only four women and four men know the end to. Where I come from, fresh stories are of great value, and the greatest are only sold to the highest bidder. The price for this story will not be paid in coin. You will pay me with your ears and your patience. Know that you are not to relay this story to any other, for doing so would incur the wrath of those other who know this story by heart.

The grand tale I will tell you is of a man who never wanted one. He went by the name of Sven.

He is not like the other storymakers, for he gave up that life long ago. Though he is a young man, one brimming with life and ambitions like I had, he chose the life of a storyteller early in his age. He did not wish for the same fate that his father met those many years ago: his throat split open right in front of the poor lad, and so he refused the life of a storymaker, and told only of the stories of heroes he never knew and never wished to be. Nobody in his time would ever come to realize that he, the humblest of people, would become one of the greatest storymakers known to man.

And you, my dear friend, will hear it, if you are willing...