Dungeon Raider System

Chapter 126 Remember the Alamo

The book looked old but well preserved. Although the pages were ashen and their border was eroded by time, some extracts could still be read. Uriel opened it and realized it was a diary of some sorts, then he began to read it out loud.

"I want to explore Texas before coming back. Those were my parting words and I meant them. Because exploring means to submerge oneself into the unknown, to unravel the mysteries of what lies beyond the very limits of reality. It's been long, too long, and Polly dear must miss me terribly as so do I.

Some days I go out at night with my good ol' pipe and I wonder what led me to uproot my life and face the hardships of the southern wilderness. But then I remember the exact moment everything begun.

I was sick, so very sick. No doctor could heal me, I visited every parish, hospital, barbershop, but no one knew what was wrong with me. It was then, at the verge of death, that an old Indian man with a name too long to be remembered was presented to me.

He was a Navajo that came from the west, and he told all those wonderful tales of beautiful lands, islands within islands and single trees standing at the center of the world.

My feverish dreams mixed with some of his stories, but I remember them. Stories of heroes of past times, of grim creatures and of evil men who could wear the skin of their victims.

But among all those stories, the one that stuck with me was the one about an enchanted metal with prodigious qualities, so strong and sacred it could drive away the darkness and defend mankind from beasts and evil gods alike.

The witch doctor strapped me into my bed and started singing old songs alternating between his tongue and English, and then one different to anything I've heard before. He then started burning herbs and the room was filled with dense smoke I couldn't even see him anymore.

All those herbs, his medicine I reckon, they made me something. They turned me into something. I was a boring man, that I was, but I woke up with a bold heart and a longing for travel. My home, my office, the streets even, they were too small for me. The city was no longer my home and I only found peace in the endless horizon walking under the moon."

"I don't understand how come this place went unnoticed for so long, why no one came to extract the prodigious metal, and yet everyone seems to want this place for a reason.

It's been years since the states bought Lousiana from France, and now they're claiming they also bought Texas. Are they in their right mind? Very much so, someone must have told them about the prodigious metal, someone must have betrayed me.

Let them play their political games, everyone has an agenda these days, but in my name I, David Crockett, declare that the independent Nation of Texas will forever be free."

The next pages were crumpled and most of them was just unintelligible gibberish that made it difficult for Uriel to read.

"I'm so close to finding the entrance, I know it in my heart, but they just won't let me. The Mexicans, the Indians and even the republicans, they're all sided against us. I must tell someone about the tree...

[...]

Santa Ana draws near, they're here to seal this place and I can't allow that, not after getting a taste of what this metal can do. They're hundreds if not a thousand, but two hundred Texans and Texians will spell the death of them."

A whole portion of that page was missing and Uriel was left with no choice but to skip to the last page.

"I found it, but It's the end. Now I get it. I finally understand my mistakes but it's too late. I should have listened to Santa Ana. There's something within that place, something that sends nightmares to the creatures of the night... and now it's awake."