I am an utterly average existence, no, perhaps lower than that. Slightly above average talent for magic, below average talent for athletics and horrible communication skills. That’s the kind of existence that I am

A redeeming quality? If I had to say it, perhaps it would be that my thirst for knowledge knows no bounds and that I intuitively grasp concepts much faster than anybody else I know.

But what use is it? When push comes to shove, I am never able to make good use of all of that knowledge. In the heat of the moment it always seems to fly away to some other place.

Teaching probably isn’t suited for me either, as I am never able to put things in simple terms. It always feels like people that I explain things to just don’t get it. They might smile and tell me that they understand, but I can see it in their eyes: Maybe I should ask someone else. Its what their eyes always tell me.

Born in a medium-sized town to an officer in the town guard, who married the daughter of a successful merchant. It was probably my fate to grow up, perhaps join the army of some noble lord, be a middling magic soldier, then die somewhere far away from my hometown, in one of the many skirmishes that constantly plague my world.

Almost everything pointed to such a life for me, but things did not end up that way. I can say without an ounce of doubt that there were two things that completely changed my destiny.

The first happened many years before I was even born: The appearance of a Dungeon roughly two days away from the city I live in. Dungeons are a sort of natural occurrence, even if nobody understands exactly how they appear, a few things can be deduced about them.

Even if most of the time Dungeons have exotic architecture, it can usually be traced to someplace else in the world. Some scholars believe that sometimes when ley-line crossroads naturally form or collapse, a distortion forms in the surface above it. This distortion will form a building, the Dungeon.

A Dungeon is a crystallization of people’s culture: How they believe things should be built, what kind of monsters haunts their dreams, what has value to them and what is power. All of this determines the layout, size, difficulty, monsters and rewards of it.

Coming back to the Dungeon nearby my hometown. It was one of the rare exceptions, as even its outward appearance was completely alien. Some believe that the cause of Dungeons such as that is the following: Most likely it is based on the imagination of a small number of people or even a single person. A smaller number of people believe in another explanation: These Dungeons are formed by cultures that exist in other worlds.

A smooth dome made of steel with only a small part that seemed carved out, in this carved part, small fissures that likely indicated some sort of entrance could be seen. Next to these fissures there was a small and strange window, inside of it was completely dark and nothing but a strange red light could be seen. Many tried, but none could enter the Dungeon. As with all other Dungeons, the structure was not harmed by any kind of magic attack and no amount of brute force could open it.

“The Impenetrable Mountain of Steel” became its name. And nobody knew anything about it, except for one person, that is.

At the same day that the Dungeon appeared, a man was found wounded in the outskirts of the town. He wore strange clothes, he couldn’t speak a word of our language, and he had strange accessories with strange symbols on them. He was a complete stranger. But he always denied having any connection to the Dungeon. In a way, he wasn’t lying.

It didn’t take long for the man to learn our language and our numbers, no matter how much people questioned him and became suspicious, he never said a single thing about the Dungeon.

For the entire time that he lived in the town, he made no friends and rarely spoke to anyone. The only exceptions were merchants, who he always seemed to be selling some kind of scrolls to, then using the resulting money to buy various things. There were few people who didn’t think he was some kind of rogue wizard. As a result, many were afraid of him and just as he did not actively seek the company of others, nobody would seek his company.

One day, the man entered his home and did not come out. “Good thing it’s in the outskirts of the town.” “Never enter a dead wizard’s home.” “He probably botched a summoning.” There were various things that people said after it was apparent that he had died inside his own home. Some talked about burning it to the ground, but nobody was brave enough to even try to do it.

That was when I was still a toddler. Years later, when I was ten years old, the house was still standing and I found myself in front of it along with many other children of the town. At the time I was known as Gaius.