Bloom

My name is Robert.

I am a peasant.

My father farmed his entire life.

My grandfather farmed his entire life.

My peasant stock is born and bred, hardier than the mountains surrounding our village.

Today, I am writing in my small expensive journal stolen from a caravan that passed through the village early last year.

It’s about the Madness Maze.

Word has passed throughout the nations of the world about Celna.

They have a Holy Tree.

They have a Holy Spirit of the Tree.

They have powers that are greater than mortal men or women, things that sound like the fairytales told around the fireside.

And today, they have proven everyone wrong.

It’s said the Empress her great self, Emily the First, reached up with power granted by Heaven and called out for us all.

And the heavens they say responded.

A giant cube, named the Madness Maze, something that grants powers to those able to pass through.

Rumors say few make it out alive, but those that do, well they are stronger.

Those rumors are what drove me to walk the nearly five thousand kilometers from my village to Celna’s Capital.

I am a peasant.

I have lived in the dirt all my life, farming like those before me.

But. I. Will. Be. More.

A maze of madness cannot hold a candle to the insanity of a peasant that desires greater things. Whatever spirit, demon, monster, or such lives inside the Maze it should fear me.

I may not have powerful weapons, incredible magic, or ancient potions.

I have more.

I have the centuries of my forefathers being crushed beneath the garbage nobles of this world.

I have will.

In all the rumors about the Maze, one thing always repeats in the stories.

The maze doesn’t test your power, lineage, birthright, or intellect.

It is a test of the inner fire. The spirit that all creatures hold within.

For those that fail the test, the flame is extinguished.

I will not fail.

I am Robert, and I will be the first of my family to rise from the dirt and reach for the stars.

Putting away my scribbled journal, I pay the copper fee to allow entry to the Stairs. Walking up the giant cube above me grows ever nearer, the hold cut in a side corner, seems like the mouth of a massive beast.

Fear flows in my veins, before being quickly burned out by desire.

I will return. I will live. I will change.

The darkness of the Maze beckons as I step inside.