When 3200 years old, and thus midway through life’s journey, Hoopla woke in the midst of a dark wood. Full of wonder was Hoopla, and unsure of the tangled and vanished way that had led from the straight, broad, and well-trodden path into the murksome woods. Drear was the wood, and rank, and noisome, and never before had Hoopla seen its like; to behold it stirred terror and fear of uncertain things. The fear of death moved in Hoopla, and fear of something more than death; some chord within hummed in nebulous anticipation that drove Hoopla like some rough farrier’s cart through the mazed valley.

Throughout a long night Hoopla walked, thick and heavy with weariness, until, as the stars of evening faded away, a small hill rose before stumbling feet. Hoopla raised half-lidded eyes to find lounging there upon the crest the stately circle of the sun, the stars of the Ram still faintly dancing around her. Then did Hoopla rejoice, for here indeed was salvation and deliverance from the tulgey wood! But, being weary, and ill-disposed to begin so soon a climb — even one that promised so fair a result — Hoopla turned and studied long the tangled pathless woods that stood to the west, as though to burn upon memory their rare horror. Hoopla had, while a sailor, been tossed overboard, and long struggled with the wracking sea before coming improbably to land; in just such a way had the sea then held the gaze and the mind of Hoopla.

In time did breath and calm come again to Hoopla, and then — how joyously! — did those feet which so slowly and so painfully had dragged over roots and rocks race up the beacon hill; each foot climbed higher than the one before, and no sooner was one fixed than the other had surpassed it. There Hoopla found the way blocked, for at the top of the first rise slinked a bristling leopard, who, although reluctant to advance or retreat, wound itself back and forth in such wise that in no manner could Hoopla pass. But bright was the sun upon the crest of the hill, and dark was the noisome wood behind! Hoopla determined to meet the beast in hope of sun-victory, and win to the day or to death, when from canyons unmarked burst a raging lion and a gaunt and ravening bitch-wolf.

In confusion and despond Hoopla withdrew, and thought to rest and plan upon the slighter swell of the hill, but this the bitch-wolf would not abide, and pursued and drove until Hoopla was once again forced within the sunless and muted woods.

In the six thousand and ninety-seventh year of a long life, when full of wanderlust and knowledge-hunting, Hoopla lived among the necromancers in the foothills of the great range that leads to destroyed Anquim, in the far southern lands beyond the Great Salt Desert, among the cedars and the pines, where the air is forever crisp with the frosts of autumn, and pungent and heavy with cinnamon and sandalwood and other, less familiar spices. There lie peaceless and lamenting the cities that were emptied by the great plagues that shivered the unconquerable southern empire into an archipelago of quarrelling, contumacious nations, each howling the vengeance of a hundred angry all-powerful gods; and there the unspeaking necromancers practice their unloved craft, drawing ritual signs and mystic diagrams upon the red clay of the hillsides or upon the bones of the empty cities themselves.

Though it is forbidden by their art for any necromancer to speak with the living, still are they gracious and patient hosts, ever joyous to receive a footsore pilgrim or irreligious archaeologist, and a thousand times more eager to house a willing pupil, such as Hoopla was in those days. Eleven months Hoopla stayed among the purple robed southerners, in their cool stone halls smelling of myrrh; eleven months, three weeks, and six days, from icy winter’s night to icy winter’s night through the long grim southern summer, learning all the exoteric art that the necromancers could teach. Strange runes they taught, and lays arcane, and songs of power and strength enough to chain the souls of a dozen dozen unquiet dead, but still was Hoopla curious and asked ever the secrets of death, that it should rest a cold unstinting terror so upon the brief lives of men. As a test of bravery and skill, on the longest winter’s night, Hoopla was haunted by the Lost Legion of Anquim, which none may see twice and live, and from this emerged a necromancer no more, nor student after their shadowed ways, but disquieted and contemplative.

The wanderlust came upon Hoopla’s feet, dragged to stranger climes, and further south, and the necromancers saw their pupil no more, and thought sorrowfully that death had come unsought-for in the ruins of Lost Anquim.