The Tale of the 3 Brothers

There once was an aging king called Thurom who had three sons called Nadyn, Roseryn and Sovrum and, gathering them together before him, he said to them, “I must know who among you is the wisest, so that I may leave the largest portion of my kingdom to him and so I am sending each of you upon a quest to find the most important thing in the world. In the harbour there are three ships waiting; one for each of you. Take them and go and find that most important thing”.
And so, each of the brothers set sail upon their ship.
And, after sailing several days and nights, they came to an island called the Island of Gladoria upon which everything was made of gold; the trees were gold; the earth was gold, even the rivers were so filled with gold dust that they looked like liquid gold.
And, Sovrum, the eldest of the three Sons, deciding that gold must be the most important thing in the world took as much gold as he could from the island, piling it up upon his ship.
However, when he tried to sail away from the island, his ship, weighed down by all that gold, sank beneath the waves of the ocean.
And the eldest Son might have drowned but, thankfully, the youngest son, Nadyn was kind and loved his brother and so he pulled Sovrum from the water and saved him.
“Come and share my boat”, he said to Sovrum, “And we’ll search for this most important thing together”.
So now there were only two ships but the brothers sailed on regardless.
They sailed for three more days and nights until they came to an island called Glysserin which was an island of pleasure, inhabited entirely by young, beautiful women who did nothing all day but sing and dance; drink,make love, sleep and play games.
And the second eldest brother, Roseryn, deciding that pleasure must be the most important thing of all said to the other brothers that he would like to stay on the island.
“Go and leave me here”, he said, “For here is where I am most happy”.
And so Nadyn and Sovrum sailed away without him.
The moment they did, however, all of the women upon the island began to change into hideous monsters with scaly skin and claws and faces like fish and, terrified, Roseryn ran back to his ship to try and escape the island.
But, to his horror, when he got to the shore he saw that the monsters had set fire to his ship to stop him from leaving.
Thankfully, his two brothers saw the light and smoke of the burning ship and, realising that their brother must be in danger, turned their ship around and sailed back to rescue him.
Now they only had one ship left but still, because they had not found the most important thing in the world, the three brothers sailed on.
And they sailed for another three days and nights until they came to the Island of Paramor; an Island upon which time did not exist.
Summer there did not last just one season but all year round and its inhabitants were all children because they never grew older.
“This surely must be paradise”, thought the youngest son, “Nothing ever changes. It stays innocent forever”.
Unfortunately, the moment that the three brothers set foot upon the island they broke the spell that kept out time and, suddenly, everything upon the island began to change.
The weather became colder because Summer started to change into Winter and the Children started to grow older.
Now the inhabitants of the island were so frightened of these changes which they had never seen before that they got angry and attacked the three brothers with sticks and stones, trying to drive them into the sea.
Fortunately, however, though battered and bruised, the three brothers managed to escape and, getting back into their ship, sailed away, taking with them three girls who had, in a matter of minutes, grown into women and were curious to see the rest of the world.
Now the three brothers thought that perhaps they had discovered what the most important thing in the world might be and so they sailed home to their fathers kingdom.
And, when they returned to their palace, their Father, Thurom, asked them, “Did you find the most important thing in the world?”.
“We did father”, replied the Youngest son, “We believe, because we could not have survived without each other, that our brotherhood must be the most important thing in the world”.
But then, to their surprise, their father flew into a rage.
“Why, my sons are idiots, all three of them!”, he yelled, “Power is the most important thing in the world. A weak person can do nothing and one must be number one always”.
And the king ordered that his three sons be arrested and thrown into a dungeon and that he would have them all executed for being worthless.
Fortunately, together, the Brothers managed to escape the palace guards and, returning to their ship and taking the three women of Paramor with them, they sailed away.
“But without our fathers inheritance”, said Sovrum, sadly, “We have nothing. We are not princes anymore but merely three beggars in a boat”.
“That is not true”, said the youngest of the three, “We have the most important thing in the world; each other”.