Journey To The Tower

          The gunslinger stood upon the cleft of the mountain, overlooking the running of the night. Shadows fell quickly as time rolled forward at a much faster pace. Clouds crossed the sky in fast forward, appearing, dissipating, rolling with thunder less calls.
          A voice behind him spoke, “The world is emptying now, is it not?”
          “Yes,” he replied regrettably, not bothering to look back at the one he was addressing.
          “It was said that this time would come to pass.”
          A hand came to rest quietly upon his shoulder and the man spoke once more as he gestured outward over the gunslingers shoulder with his gnarled staff. Pointing toward the center of the desert plains which lie below, he continued on. "You see it now, there among the shadows. The tower, the chrysalis, the black tower of Babylon which they have erected. Built here by the ancient ones who were not of this place. They came from other worlds, trying to better this one, but their plans were in vain. Thwarted by unforeseen events,things changed, but such is the way of the worlds, untamed, unforgiving, and unpredictable."
          "What makes you think we can stop this spiraling into the vortex of chaos?" the gunslinger inquired looking into the wizened face of the other.
          "Hope," he with the flowing white hair said with a sigh. "Hope my friend, for the gathering has begun. The tower is calling many forces unto itself now, from countless other worlds. Others such as yourself though of different times and places, for there are many doorways unto this place other than that through which you traveled."
          "And what may I ask is my purpose here?"
          "That I do not truly know," The other replied with a simple shrug, "but to journey there is your destiny."


          He entered the ghost worn citadel upon the mountaintop. In the dusk of the evening he saw castle spires rising wretchedly up into the night. A bleak countenance of a forgotten past, stuttered and torn by the winds of the ages, an ancient skeleton laid here to rest. Silence and foreboding covered this place like a thin blanket flapping in the breeze. The quietness lay cold about his guns, but he had been drawn here by long lost dreams. Nights that swept cold with gentle breath had sent forth visions of this place resting high here upon this mountainous rock.
          Pulling his cloak about him to keep out the chill air, he ventured forward upon the narrow winding path. In the distance heat lightening played running games in the sky, a fitting backdrop for this eerie shadowy place. The gates lay open before him, one tilted askew upon hinges torn from its moorings by the mechanics of time.
          He felt here the rift of time, the passage into another age which had been left behind because of the changing of the world. Entering,he passed through rooms sprinkled in dust, through foyers, halls, and anterooms. Just as his movement stirred the dust, his echoing footfalls stirred the heart of something down below, one long forgotten, the lone survivor of this place.
          Deep within the whorls of the castle, embedded in the bedrock of the mountain itself, the last remaining … whirs gradually to life, its form human but its skin of steel. Closed eyes open, as it tilts its head to one side to listen once again more closely for the faint sound of the footfall, the return of human contact. His time has come once more, a journey resumed.