The Guardian

Morak stood atop the temple’s stairs, searching the horizon for a sign that the darkness had abated.

For three hundred years, the keepers have hidden away in this mountaintop temple, hoping to remain undetected by the advancing hordes of the Dark Lord.

Every morning, Morak would climb the steps and survey the landscape, hoping that the distant fires of the war were gone and the Dark Lord vanquished.

When that day came, he would gather his brothers and their books and head for the cities, for there would be much work to be done since the Dark Lord came and crushed the people’s will, making them slaves of both mind and body.

On this day, the horizon is filled with smoke, and the distant sound of cannon fire echoes through the mountains.

“Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps then we can return and start a new, to bring light to the darkened land,” said the monk. Then, like every other day, he descends to the catacombs to continue writing the chronicle started so long ago by the great Lebowitz.