Resting by my fire. Looking deep into it＇s flames.

My mind must have been somewhere else

Far beyond these plains.

I am suddenly aware of a pair of eyes staring at me.

I turn around and behold the most ugly thing I have seen.

The woman standing in the glade like a shadow in the night

Points her wretched finger at me with a wretched smile

And she asks me in a voice that sounds as if it＇s been so long

since she spoke, if I seek magic then I should come along

I＇m but a man. Mortal, a man.

But she leaves no footprints in the snow

Still I follow on to where she is going

For she has promised me magic if I follow on.

She takes me to a part of these woods few have ever seen.

Where the sun surely won＇t reach

Still the ground ominously gleams.

She says she＇s seen me coming and that she knows where I＇ll go.

But before I leave she says there is this one thing I should know.

She offers me the ability to take a fatal wound.

Every cut by sword or spear will be absorbed by her tree-womb.

The magic will remain until it＇s time for me to part with this mortal world.

And all she＇ll claim is my young heart.

I＇m but a man. Mortal, a man.

And I＇ll need all the help that I can get.

So I give my heart to the woman of the dark

With or without it...my life is not over yet.

Wing of bat and lizard＇s eye.

Dust of a star fallen from the sky.

Tears of a virgin, *** of a god.

Thirteen drops of an infant＇s blood

A twist of a cat＇s spit and oil of the moon

Stir for a while and very soon

A salve to be applied upon the chest

close to where the heart beats strong.

No pains will occur when her hand is pushed into my flesh

She＇ll slowly draw my living heart out of my open chest.

She＇ll place my heart in the pit of the snake and behold the years go by.

Hers to keep from the moment when the time has come for me to die.

By a lake in an open part of the Eternal Woods...

Noon...

＂The one eyed old man had told him of a lake. Its bottom uniting with the

end of the universe, Fall into it and there is no return. To reach its

bottom will take a thousand generations. When this world was anew, the one

eyed old man, then a young wanderer, hidden behind a tree, had overheard

two gods speak as they walked by. All the knowledge of all worlds, old and

new, was kept safe in a lake in a part of the Eternal Woods. The one eyed

old man had found the lake after having taken away by a magical blizzard.

Throwing his left eye into its black water he had gained not only all the

gathered knowledge of all the worlds. He had also been granted the sight

into the future. Set to find this lake, the young man mounts his satllion.

Riding with the speed of the winds high in the sky, he all of a sudden sees

the sun reflected in a lake. Standing by it, he throws both of his eyes

into the depths. Now he will not need to stare down the beast on the day of

The Battle.

Now he had gained supreme vision offering his eyes to The Lake...＂