Prologue

Life as seen through the eyes of any one man is short, it is hard and most importantly it is vivid. Through the eyes of time itself you would imagine that life is repetitive often generations follow similar paths of those before it and for time in all its endless existence it must be a sad thought......life. The term itself suggests the vastness of possibilities that could uncover the mysteries of the world or change the universe into the image chosen by man. The reality of life in its destructive, chaotic and often pointlessly cruel must be a blow to the very soul of those who have seen the rising sun for all of time.

Rare it would be if any such man had come to live on this earth who would raise the banner of hope for the immortal presences of this world. The men of our past who have lived lives that dwarf the reality and deny the rules of their times to stand out as legends. The names of those men ring in the ears of mans stories even thousands of years distant from their own times. There are some men who lived just such a life that the gods would look upon them and nod to show their pride that didnt take the path of conquest, fight.....of course there could be no other choice, but to conquer I doubt the thought ever even crossed his mind.

I am not from his time, in fact i was born on the other side of the world from the man whose name still echoes out from the conversations of the gods. I am simply a man who was given an extrodinary gift and I used that gift to glimpse the life of a man..... a man i wish I could meet even once. I watched as he was born into this world and even then you could feel the magic  reel back from the power he radiated. I watched the tapestry of time bend around his every thought and action as if the tapestry of time was written by his will alone. Any normal man follows the paths of time with only slight changes in the patterns based on any number of anomaly's from sickness, death to sheer luck. However this man couldnt of cared less about the tapestry of times grand plan than if it was a rug to catch the mud from his boots.

I suppose to tell you of the man you would have to first understand who it is thats telling the story, my name is Garret. I am a priest born in the midst of war, this specific war is being fought due to a changing of the monarchy of my home land. Our new king is of the belief that he is the only one we should be paying homage to and that our previously accepted religion worshiping the source is an act of treason to even mention in public. I cant even begin to explain how frustraiting it is to be told by a man who just got done murdering his brother and his entire family quite brutally that I should worship his.....mercy.

My problems are a story I shall save for another night, what is important is that you understand that in my reality I was running out of time. I had begun to have recurring nightmares about a great battle, I believed at the time that it was a battle yet to come. Now almost 30 years later I realise that those first dreams were the awakening of the gift given to me by the source, I was given the gift of what I called glimpsing, the ability to view the memories of my anscestors.

Many are the paths of the future, only even attempted by the fools of old who believed that they could bring about events in the future by altering the current events around them. They would drive themselves mad over every detail and plan their entire lives for one moment only to have that moment come and be completely thrown off track by something as simple as a gust of wind. No, the future is not within our control it will come or not come without our concent. The best any man can do to achieve what he would consider the ideal future would be to live his life the best way he or she see's fit. The odd twist of fate will likely steal from him the grand finish but in the main a man who lives by his own rules can raise his head high with pride.

The past....now there is an interesting concept, what could you learn, how much better could we live our lives if we could learn in an instant the errors of our ancestors. I decided long ago that I would walk the paths of my own ancestors lives and learn their secrets, what I have learned since is that though I can glimpse the past in an instant I will spend my life trying to forget what I have seen.  But in the gloom of my past where I witnessed murders, deciet and chaos in countless generations of hate filled men and women there was one man who was a light amongst the shadows.

He shares my namesake of course, though that begins and ends our similarities, his name was Arrin Sylus. The story I would like to tell you is of Arrin, whom I watched from birth until death, a death I might add that came at a moment when he was needed most.

He was born at sea, his mother and father or my great grandfather eight generations ago were crossing the sea of Falon in an effort to start a new life. In Arganon where they had lived for many years there was a great sickness that was killing off those who were either to young or too old to survive its wrath. With a child about to be born into their family the risk was too great, and so they had set out for a settlement just outside of the port city of Recur.

The trip was to last a few weeks as they traveled directly south on the war ship Cutter which was now a mercenary vessel captained by a former general of the Forgotten war. His name was Captain Zarl and by all accounts he was a man who lived by a code all his own. He was known for bouts of great anger towards any who would cross his path with less than kind intentions. There were tales, though I did not take the time to scry his path, of a thief who once boarded his ship with a plan to steal from the Captain. The crew of the ship would often speak of the theif in quiet corners of the ship and point towards the bow of the ship, it was only later in Arrins life that I learned of the skeleton nailed to the ship. The screams were said to be inhuman and lasted for days before finally the thiefs pain came to an end as Captain Zarl mercifully slit his throat.

As the trip entered its second week it became very clear that the baby would be born at sea. The Captain had the crew clean up a boarding room and the ships doctor readied himself. Nian went into labor in the early hours of the morning and as the sun rose at mid-day Arrin was born. To those around the ship the birth of a baby boy on the ship was a great time of rejoice, most of the men have been on and off of ships their entire lives and had never had they seen the birth of a child aboard any ship. Nian and Caul looked down on their baby boy and neither of them said a word, neither of them could seem to find one.