Delsus stretched out his finger and touched the orb. In doing so he destroyed the world of Mystor, and, as a consequence, ruined the story I was going to tell you, ‘The 100 Runes of Mystor’. In stretching out his spindly grey stick like appendage, he messed up my chance to tell you about the 100 Runeholders who held together the fabric of Mystor. Chosen apparently at random by unknown method. The Runeholders brought order across the solar system. Where there was chaos they brought order, intelligence where there was stupidity, valor where there was cowardice, strength where there was weakness.
      Delsus’s antics make it seem churlish to tell the valiant stories of courage which had shaped Mystor until this moment, when a planets history and a trillion stories disappeared in an ironically beautiful blue flash of light. 

 Stories about great characters such as Belthra the Fisherman, who once caught a thousand fish in one afternoon, but, was really famed for defending the village of Senna against all odds for 3 days, using his great skill of confusion and trickery, sometimes tricking and confusing even himself. Or Rith, who, up until five minutes ago when Delsus touched the orb, had been the greatest Runeholder of all time. A brave genius who lived to look after the people, not himself, who’d travelled far, and sometimes wide to solve mysteries, battle enemies and fix sticking hinges on doors. 
 It hardly seems worth putting fingers to plastic squares, to tell you about the Valley of Rune and the Golden Sea of Tela, where Bacculus Fish floated like huge bloated airships in their migratory passage across Tela to their mating grounds. The Runeholders would gather here once a year or during times of stress to debate, drink, and save the world from danger. Only six months past on Mystor’s equivalent of a Wednesday, they’d met to discuss the increasing number of Runeholders who had been mysteriously killed or had disappeared in the previous 12 months. Although Runeholders lived longer than the other residents of Mystor, they were not immortal.   

 When a Runeholder ‘passed’, another resident of Mystor would wake on the morning after the full moons, to find he or she had been ‘chosen’. There was no letter, email or golden light at the bottom of the bed, but, the person chosen knew they were now somehow different and would now follow a great path from that moment on. Relatives, on finding one of their brethren had been given ‘the Gift’, would celebrate for three days, drinking copious amounts, after which the new Runeholder would travel to the Valley of Rune to learn their gift, and be doused in the Golden Sea of Tela, which served no purpose except to continue the old dictum of ‘well, that’s what we’ve always done………so…’
 So, there’s probably no point in telling you Mystor consisted of several different Ikar. Some were humanlike in their appearance, some were so scary looking. If sofas were something the Ikar of Mystor had, they’d have hid behind them. All Runeholders were chosen from each Ikar apart from one. Every story has to have an evil Ikar and the Dakar were just such an entity. Luckily, despite being the main reason for blood, death and gore over the centuries, the, possibly worth describing as ‘evil’ Dakar, kept themselves to themselves, except during the period of Mosun when they became idiots again, killing, pillaging and planting flags.
 Thinking about it, despite Delsus ruining the whole story for all of us, it is probably is worth summarising how we ended up at this end game. Let’s start with Eltra and Tarsum ( I would have used Bert and Angie as names but it just didn’t sound right ☺️) Eltra of the Talek Ilka had become Istar in the third premium of the Age of Haren ( i have no clue what that means but i’ve gone all Tolkien because i love him ☺️) They stood in the main Treehouse in Achar, a little village north of Eydehavn.
 ‘I feel a darkness around us Tarsum’
 ‘I have another candle…..just give me a second’
 ‘No……no……you know what i mean………a ‘darkness’ is among us on Mystor and the planets within our system’
 ‘I have more candles if that’ll help’
 ‘You’re such a buffoon Tarsum. I’m being serious. Something is not right. I can feel it. A twelvth sense* , a notion, a feeling, a sensation, a consciousness………a darkness is within us’
 * the inhabitants of Mystor had soon realised that having a sixth sense wasn’t quite the resolution they required. 
 ‘that’s a bit stereotypical is it not. History has many descriptions of many ‘darknesses’ coming upon us, which turned out to be generally just village arguments about Ikar robbing grobeks from other Ikar’
 ‘I know i love you Tarsum but you’re so stupid sometimes. Something is not right. Something is wrong. I know it’
 The next day Eltra discovered Boll of the Hark Ilya was found murdered…………….
 ‘We must herald a meeting of the Consternium. Immediately’
 ‘But, Eltra, this has not happened in two Ages’
 ‘I do not care how long it is. Boll is the fourth Runeholder to die or disappear in the space of six months. We are close to the time when i will step down and someone new will take over. Only one Runeholder has passed in all the time I have been Istar. Now we have four in six Ters. This is unprecedented…………………’

 ……………..on a planet far away
 ‘Once the Runeholders and their stupid planet is out of the way, we will take the other planets in the system, 🌎 kill the primitive inhabitants and take over the whole system.
 ‘Krystar, there is still hope we can retrieve the situation on our planet. Worst case we have another thousand years before we need to leave’
 ‘We cannot wait. We have the means to travel to the other planets. The only barrier to a new life for our desperate people are the Runeholders. If we stay here, whether it be a thousand years or ten thousand years, we and our people will die. Let’s make sure we ensure our contact on Mystor carries out his instructions………..’
 Delsus had been promised riches beyond his wildest dreams to destroy his home planet, with the promise of solitude and wealth on Meros, the 5th planet of the system. He would live out his days in peace, solitude and wealth. A price he was willing to pay for the loss of his family, friends, his species. He touched the orb……….. but…………nothing happened………….he touched the orb again………… again….Mystor did not explode into stardust………he hit it twice more……..
 ‘Keros’s mind sat in a pool of concentration. If he lost concentration for one second Mystor would be gone…..sweat dripped not only from his forehead, his armpits but several other orifices…..he had to prevent the explosion…….only he could hold it off ….until Rith arrived………’

Episode 1 ‘The Runes of Mystor ’ was brought to you by David Linden and Dodo Productions © 2016 you can follow me on Twitter @qosfc1919