Every night, my dreams are the same…
My life, accelerated, melting and melding together in such a way I can no longer find what once sat within the gaps.
I wander the crooked alleys of a city now long worn to ruin. Zedyn-Heldite, looking up at the great Step Pyramid as it shades the tightly packed hovels of my birth from the sun.
I had a name then, a real name, though it was rare to hear it. I wish I could remember it.
I remember the faces of my parents, warped and drawn by the ages. My mother towers above me, and my father has to look up at me once I enter my teens.
They had names once… I think.
I am not Edeni. Not then. Half was far from good enough for the folks who lorded over our lives, even though, at that time, such judges were bakers and fishermen.
I was far from important then, far from anything, but a nothing could still join the military and fight for the love of our Primarch against the barbarians at our doorstep.
War.
The Northern Front is a constant, befuddling bloodbath.
Fog ever seems to be on the enemy's side. Our casters attempt to hold it back, shift it aside, burn it away, and yet ever on it clings, clogging our lungs, shading our sight.
And the enemy is never far behind: the damnable Fey, their blades and claws seeking our necks.
They are vicious and chaotic. While our screams echo in the silvery dark, they laugh and cheer, falling with smiles on their faces.
They do not fear death. They believe it has no hold on them. At first, I thought it was just a fable. Now I know it to be true.
Each is a horror in their own way, the Not-Elves with the coal black eyes and gleaming blades that seem to guzzle blood as eagerly as the vampires of the Primarch’s Court.
They vanish and appear with but whispers, cutting and carving, only to turn to mist the moment before our blades can find purchase.
Then there are the Winged Ones, cruelly capricious, sneaking into our tents on their shimmering wings to poke out eyes, maim ears, wrench out teeth, leaving mocking tokens of bent copper coins in their wake.
The true monsters are the Half-Beasts, the Goatmen with their hypnotic songs, and the Half-Horses, who readily mash bones and skulls to pulp beneath their thundering hooves.
Or the strange blathering beast with the gleaming eyes, whose cries stew a man’s mind until it comes burbling out their ears and nose.
They can be killed, but they don’t go down easy. Every death is a struggle, like spearing a boar. They fight and writhe, seeking to take at least one of our numbers with them as they laugh their way to the grave.
Why are we fighting?
I am told it is because the Fey stole the Children, the Firstborn of every family across the Empire.
If that is true, why did they not take me?
I believe it, though; how can I not? The Primarch, in her gracious benevolence, would not seek an unjust conflict.
I am a nothing amongst no-ones, dying for something more akin to a lie than truth, and yet… without it, I would not be here, dreaming it all over again.
Kneeling on cool marble floors, the kiss of sun on the back of my neck, the only warmth I could feel as nerves threatened to unravel me.
I am in the Court of a Primarch: my Primarch, the cunning and beautiful Heldite.
Never in all my life had I thought I could have ascended so high. I was surrounded on all sides by my kin, yet betters, their whispers and eager stares portioning out my personage as digestible gossip.
I am pretty sure some of them hate me.
They had been born into this splendor. I was but a soldier, a child of farmers, yet I stood tall enough to look each of these Highborn in the eye.
I find it funny. I thought I understood stature then.
For, even though I kneel, my bent neck a perfect spot to place their boot. I was one of them. Not a simple Edeni, better than the Half I am. I was Promeath, one of the few that emerged amongst the common folk.
And I was being honored that day.
My gaze shifts up, beauteous diamond and rose quartz patterns scattering before me as I look upon the throne before me and the resplendent woman draped across it. Her visage has faded with time, but I recall her rosey skin, raven locks, and silver eyes reflecting light like pools of oil.
"Behold, the latest to rise above the dregs to find their place in our court," she states with a coy smile, raising a hand in my direction.
The court claps and cheers as her eyes sweep across them. Many hate me, many care nothing at all, and few think of me respectfully, but their cries are beyond boisterous, for they fear her more than anything.
The Primarchs. The First Promeaths. The Seven greatest archmages the world we now call home had ever seen.
Yet… I am what remains of my people's shadowed legacy.
And it is all thanks to her.
"He has risen far, awakening the magic of his blood to join us at the pinnacle, and what is more, he has forged himself into a peerless blade within my armies." she continues, her voice dripping with honeyed praise. My eyes fight to remain locked on her as her gaze sends infernos of anxiety coursing through me. She judges me, even as she conducts this ceremony, and I must always rise to a challenge. That was the way of the Promeath. Ever prove your strength, or be cast aside.
And if a Primarch demands your presence and states a boon is yours to claim, you appear before them without question, even knowing the fickle and cruel minds that lurk within them, the greatest of the Edeni.
She should have all of my attention, yet my eyes are drawn to over her left shoulder; her daughter stands tall, the only one who looks at me with anything other than barely disguised judgment. There is true intrigue there, the smallest of smiles greeting my gaze. Mine lingers on her pointed ears. She, too, is an outsider in this room.
"Long has he battled the conniving beasts that assault us from all directions. Without his prowess, our Northern Borders would now stand besieged. Instead, our borders grow, and children of the province can sleep soundly, knowing they will not be taken in the dead of night." Heldite continues. More cheers, more clapping, I hear thunder from below, the striking of shields, the shouts of hundreds as her voice and my visage are projected across the city beneath us.
I was not alone on that front and was far from the bravest, the mightiest, or the most cunning. Yet, I am their hero. Her hero. All because of the luck of my blood.
Only half Edeni. Yet all Promeath, so here I kneel.
"Because of this, I have chosen him to be my champion in a new cause!" she cries, "Crushing the Fey's impudence!"
My breath hitches.
"Rise and show us who you are, Champion." Heldite commands.
I do. Fighting to look steady and the change is easy, for my emotions already rage in a torrent beyond my control. My skin becomes like quartz, threaded with patterns of purple amongst the white.
"Do you accept your charge?" she asks, her voice dripping with honeyed compulsion. The flavor is more bitter than before. I can not say no.
"I do!" I shout. What else can I do?
My eyes flick to the daughter once more as cheers rumble in the distance and whispers echo nearby.
"Good. Yet, to perform your mandate, you require a weapon, and a grand one at that—one worthy of you and your goal," she continues.
She raises her hand, and an image snaps to life before me. I step back, as staring down at me is an Avaliun, the greatest weapon of war created in this age: a towering man of stone and metal, yet no simple golem, a being of fluid motion, one that was now mine to command. A pillar emerges from the dais beneath my feet, a medallion of white stone set with a gleaming blue diamond awaiting my reaching hands.
"With your spirit to guide it, you will be a thing the Fey will learn to fear. My Hunter, My Rebuttal, a Cage ensnaring all that have wronged me… and our people!" she states, her eyes burning with unhindered malice.
She did not tell me how the bond is forged, but it is not as if I would have refused if I had known.
The Avaliun are works of wonder, pinnacles of arcane design, but it cannot be said that Heldite was the one who unlocked their wonders.
No, it was a rival, though his name escapes me. Not that I have met him. Primarchs deign to see none but their fellows, and even then, it is rare to have two stand in the same room for more than a moment.
But he, Primarch of Greed, had the coffers and artisans required to shape the first Avaliun, and by coin or theft, the craft spread across the Empire. Yet, he kept some important truths for himself—an aspect of the binding ritual.
I feel the chill touch of the table I lay upon, all else a foggy void of stone.
“Let us hope you are as strong as she believed.” the haggard voice of Heldite’s binder murmurs, a gruff and haggard thing, caked in soot and shadow, magic pouring from its fingers into the medallion hovering in the air above my bare chest. It reeks of burning metal and the air before lightning, and it oozes and smokes from his hand like bad water.
I do not know how he can voice doubt about her and live, especially with how harsh he appears. Heldite has no need for worn things.
His true features are too muddled to pick apart, yet his golden eyes I will never forget.
For they are the last things I see as the medallion lowers on my chest, and I feel like I have dived into the sun.
I awake boundless.
I had always been strong, a head above my supposed peers, even as they stepped upon my shoulders just to look down on me.
And then my Sparking catapulted me above them. Yet, with the Avaliun, I understand power. I am monolithic.
My height can be counted in stories, and my strength in tonnage.
Yet I move with the grace and speed of a pronghorn.
Colors are more vibrant, and my sense of smell and hearing are enhanced, or perhaps that is just the nature of my hunting ground.
Touch suffers, a numbness that radiates somewhere I can never grasp yet lingers when I return to my true body.
But the strength! The strength is unparalleled. A twitch of my fingers can powder stone. Sound and wind warp around my punches as if I can scar the very air, and I can move upon the earth like a living earthquake.
Yet, if I wish, my steps would leave a ghost of a footprint on the ground and little else. And all I speak of is what I can do unarmed—a rarity.
My first hunt is exhilarating and where I learn the truest boon of my Avaliun and why Heldite has sent her first against the Fey.
I carve through the latest net of vines as my target flees ever deeper into this besotted tangle.
It fights me the whole way.
The land protects its own, but as much as it tries to restrain and choke, it finds no purchase.
I am stone, bronze, and burning arcana.
“Quit this game!” I roar as the latest tree that rises to defend them is hewn in twain.
They laugh at me, even as they are in an utter rout. It is… infuriating, but I keep my focus. I will have my quarry. That is what a good hunting hound does. I do not know the crimes of this particular Fey, nor do I care. They are likely too numerous to count. Regardless, each had a hand in the theft of our Children. How can that not be the case? No one being could do that on their lonesome, surely.
Their latest barrier is weaker, and I blow through it as easily as snapping a match stick. We have reached a towering cliff face that curls and roils into the sky in defiance of all that is natural.
But such is the way of the land of the Fey.
The Fey whirls, one of the Not-Elves, skin the vibrant orange of Fall leaves, a thin, whip-like blade clasped in one hand, fairy fire igniting in their other palm.
“So, brute, our chase appears to have concluded,” it remarks in a sing-song tone, head bobbing back and forth.
I draw my blade. They are not worth my words.
‘“You seek to kill me, oh how deluded.” it continues, backing further and further towards the wall.
I look around, eyes hunting for a hint of treachery. There appear to be none, but the Fey are ever waiting with one last trick up their sleeve.
This one gives his away with a grandiose gesture.
“For your demise, I have, in fact, colluded!” the Fey cries, and they throw their hands wide.
The cliff opens, or perhaps simply vanishes, revealing a wide cave mouth. Standing there, dozens of other Fey, varied in form and function, armed far more heavily.
They don’t know what they are facing. They think I am but a simple construct, a tool to be tossed aside mindlessly.
The first realizes their mistake when they try to dart around me, believing me slow and plodding.
My blade burns to life, sickly green light bathing the clearing, and their body falls to tatters, blood steaming to nothing along the length of my blade as I pivot quicker than they can counter.
Another charges. My fist catches that one, and their viscera paints the ground behind them.
They begin to fan out, poking and prodding at me, trying to bait me like an enraged boar.
I shatter the ground beneath their feet with but a step and seed the ground with their bones.
I am glory.
They turn to run, and I prove my name; Heldite named me her Cage.
And with a gesture, a net of the same ugly energy that makes up my blade snarls to live in a dome around me. The fastest fails to slow herself.
Her diced meat falls to the ground with a smell far too akin to roast lamb for my comfort.
My quarry’s smile has long faltered and I turn to stare at them. There is a fury in their eyes.
“Yield,” I state.
“You can not harm me in any way that matters,” they remark.
I lunge towards them, and their grin widens, crackling light snarling up their arm as they point it at me.
“Now let us see how your toy shatters.” they taunt, and a torrent of arcana bleeds across me like a hurricane.
Yet I feel nothing, not an ounce of pain, not even discomfort, until the magic begins to seep into the Avaliun.
Then… then I only feel stronger, as if I have stepped beyond the peak and ascended into the sky beyond.
The Fey’s expression falls to confusion, and for the first time I have ever seen from any of their ilk, fear.
Their arcana seeps into me, and as I loom above them once more, I feel it rippling and cascading within the Avaliun like the beat of my mortal heart. Somehow, I know I can manipulate it, turn it to my will, an instinct of the Avaliun, but that makes little sense even then. I am the Avaliun. I am the Cage.
There is no knowledge to gain.
Yet as I reach for the stored power, it channels down my arm, grasping my sword. The blade grows, igniting with kaleidoscopic flames.
Before the Fey can even acknowledge what is happening, my blade is severing their legs from their body. The wound is cauterized instantly, and the movement is so swift, so clean, they fall backward, and their limbs remain standing.
The Fey screams and roils, attempting to clamber away from me, yet I cast my blade aside and, with but a finger, pin them to the dirt.
“Finish it!” the creature snarls, whimsy gone, a feral, maddened thing glaring up at me, “This is a hollow victory.”
They don’t know. The hunt has been long, and the high of the energies swirling within me is bleeding, smirking confidence. I am staring into the eyes of a being who has likely slain dozens of my kin while laughing like it was all a grand joke.
“I’m not here to kill you,” I say, hand reaching back and removing a device of black metal and eerie green flame.
Their eyes go wide, and they begin to shriek and writhe once more, fear growing as the lantern, a Black Lantern—grows ever closer to them.
“I am Heldite’s Cage.” I state as I hold the Lantern, so small in the Avaliun’s immense hand, before their face, “And you’re coming with me.”
They scream as the Lantern opens like a hungry maw, and their screams turn hollow as, piece by piece, they are pulled within. The flame lashes forward like a hungry mantis, spearing, carving, and chewing its way up their arms. Each piece if drawn within, and through it all, I am surprised to see a lack of blood, there is no sent of burning. They are being partitioned like a slab of beef in but a moment, the last to go the silent scream burning in their eyes.
The moment passes, and my finger pushes into the dirt as they are drawn within its depths. I know little of the Lanterns even now, but they are the one thing that can hold a Fey permanently, and for beings so used to freedom, true imprisonment is as close to death as they can ever get.
The prize returns to my mortal body, and I leave my Avaliun, kneeling within the cave, surrounded by burning forest and hardening viscera.
Heldite is elated. The praise she has heaped upon me sends whispers, grumbles, and cheers through her Court. It is a success, the first of many she promises for me. I will meet her expectations.
Yet, even then, I fight my wandering eyes.
Her name is Magdelene that I remember, even though mine is long lost.
This mysterious, Half-Edeni daughter of Heldite.
Her smile is all I can think of many nights as it graces my entrance into her mother's chambers.
Yet, my station is lesser. So, I do not dare to speak a word until she first chooses to talk to me.
"What is it like?" she asks, startling me from a moment of silent contemplation, resting on a balcony beneath the stars. I had not even heard her approach.
"What, my lady?" I return, trying not to meet her eyes.
"So you can talk," she remarks with a wry smile that startles me; I nod, unsure of what she desires of me, "Hmm… let us start with the Lands of the Fey."
I pause, mulling my answer for several moments.
"It is a senseless place. It is no wonder the Fey resist the control of the Primarch, for not even their lands know loyalty. The-" She raises a hand to stop me and moves so I am forced to look her in the eyes.
"I've heard this story before," she notes, and she had, for dozens of reports of a similar ilk had been given to the Primarchs and her advisors.
"I—” I mutter.
"Be honest with me," she prompts, and staring into her eyes, I can think of nothing else to do.
"It is senseless; one day from the next, things can change, mountains replacing rivers, honey raining from the sky, trees bearing burning fruit." I offer, "But there are places that one could consider… beautiful."
"More so than here?" she asks, gesturing down at the city below us, the rolling fields and glittering sea beyond.
"Yes," I say, compelled once more to speak the truth. Her presence is more comforting than any I have ever known.
"And the people?" she queries, perching on the balcony, staring intently at me.
"They… are wild things. Time, legacy, death- none of these matters to them, for the land itself rejects all such concepts. It is a place of unrestrained freedom." I state, "They have no Fear."
She leans close, a slight smile on her lips, "Not even of you?"
I am lost in her eyes as I answer, "Not yet, but my work has only just begun.”
Those conversations continue with discrete honesty and engagement. A pair of elevated outsiders in positions where those around us are forced to bury their hatred under an ever-shifting veil of respect. I can't recall if it the beginnings of a friendship, romance, or something in between, but we never had time to figure that all out.
War interrupted.
An enemy from another world, beyond the kingdoms of Eden or the Realms of Fey: Ruudashi.
They are towering beings with a tusked visage and skin in shades of stone and earth. Strange beasts ride with them, including tusked bears, meat-eating horses, skin-stitching giants, and multiheaded reptiles.
They do not die, not like the Fey, who return as if sprouting from the ground somewhere else in their land. No, the blade strikes home, yet they keep fighting, lifeblood soaking the earth as they rip limbs from sockets and part heads in twain, and their war beasts are much the same, some even regrowing limbs or heads.
They break chains; they scatter armies, and they call on the very earth and air of our home to betray us.
Some part of me is impressed; Magdalene is curious… I believe.
For a time, Heldite is keen to ignore it, letting the other Primarchs fight in place of her. I am repeatedly sent into the Fey, presenting her with more captured does.
She is elated.
I am becoming more anchored in the Avaliun. It is me, more than just a tool, and what started as hours become days spent far from my body, exploring and fighting my way across an alien world.
Until the Ruudashi appears on our Southern borders, that affront can not stand.
The carnage somehow outweighs anything I had seen in the North.
The Ruudashi do not fight like the Fey; their attacks have no carelessness. They rage, but it is directed. They overwhelm a point rapidly, scavenge it, and then push on. They took arms, rations, and… people. Any slaves had their bindings struck and were allowed to follow the horde.
The line had broken five times by the time I arrived.
I cleave through the skull of another of their vast boar-like beasts. It switches and finds its feet even as its head hangs at a jaunty angle, still snapping, but its teeth shatter against the Avaliun’s carapace.
I look up and find my next target, a colossus of fire and stone, rivaling me in height, currently pulling one of my Promeath kin in twain.
Their crystalline skin pulls and ripples before tearing like overripe fruit, glittering viscera draining to common ichor as it coats the front of the behemoth.
It turns, a maw of stony teeth greeting me, no eyes, yet it bellows a challenge all the same and charges, galloping towards me on all fours.
I charge to meet its blade rising, drawing from the energy I have stored from allies and stolen from enemies.
We crash together like an avalanche, and for but a moment, I am pushed backward. The elemental's feral strength is immense. Yet my blade finds purchase and sinks into the creature’s stomach.
Lava burbles like blood out of its wound, and it attempts to crush me, wrapping its limbs around me and squeezing, intent on shattering me.
Yet I have no bones to break, no air to breathe. My alloyed skin blunts its teeth.
My blade sinks deeper, and it coughs lava in my face. It’s warm but no different than all other ichors I have become painted in since joining the battle. With a final push, I pierce through its back, and it falls to pieces.
I look for my next target, where my skills would be best applied, and see that despite my actions, the line is flagging in numerous locations.
I move to intercept the closest falter, and a voice booms out, drawing my attention.
“Adesh!” a gravelly voice roars above the pitch of battle, and marching up a rise, warhammer raised above their head, is a Ruudashi warrior.
Tiny compared to me, but I know he stands a good two feet taller than my kin. His rough, blackened armor is cracked and pitted. A recent wound stitching closed above his eye as he glares at me.
He points his hammer at me and roars a challenge that I can not understand. Their language is guttural and snarling.
The head of the hammer begins to glow, silver slag dripping from it as it heats to horrendous temperatures.
Not that it will matter. Fire holds no fear for me.
The other Ruudashi looks at him and begins bellowing and cheering.
Marduun! Marduun! Marduun!
His name? A leader? A hero? A focal point. Meaning if I slay him, perhaps their line will falter.
I wrench my blade from the shattered corpse of the behemoth and surge towards him, heedless of the other opponents around us as they scatter or are mashed to paste beneath my steps.
I lunge as I have dozens of times now, a feint meant to draw his weapon to the side, and when he responds as I desire, I shift stance and instead bring my blade down towards his head, intent on slicing him in twain.
I miss. My blade crashes into the ground a foot from him, shattering stone into shrapnel.
The ground moves and roils beneath my feet, responding to magic I don’t understand, and my next strike misses as well, coming within inches of his throat, yet he stares at me undaunted.
His hammer strikes down on my wrist, and for the first time in years, I feel pain.
A searing, consumptive pain that causes my hand to seize the blade, clattering to the ground.
He swings again, and I am too stunned by the sensation to avoid it.
He cracks into my knee, and I buckle, a wordless scream on my lips as the heat of his weapon digs to the core of me.
His next strike collides with my chest, and despite dwarfing him by magnitudes, his blow sends me careening backward.
Too unused to pain, too used to being at the top of the food chain.
He leaps atop my chest, leaning down to look into my eyes, judgment, and curiosity burning within him in equal measure.
He shakes his head as if finding something lacking and places the hammer down atop my chest.
He twists it, and I feel my flesh pull and burn and warp as the metal and stone of the Avaliun becomes like clay. The pain is too much, and I awake screaming back within the capital, silver flames burning across my chest.
I do not recall much after that, just the presence of Magdelene at my bedside and the harsh appearance of the whirling scar that pulls my skin taunt across the right-hand side of my torso.
I do not know how they retrieved my Avaliun.
All I know is that after my failure, after revealing that I was not as invincible as she desired, Heldite had little patience for me.
I had shamed her, and I will make up for it.
I am sent on hunt after hunt, staying within the Avaliun for days on end, only stopping to catch scarce rest and small meals.
I see less and less of Magdelene, yet she speaks to me in my journeys, her voice a whisper in my ear as she recites the challenges and trials that seem to ever be increasing as the war with the Ruudashi goes on.
Yet, Heldite wants me within the Fey, fighting the war she believes she can win, taking her vengeance on them for crimes that most living have largely forgotten with the new enemy battering down their gates.
I think Heldite caught wind of Magdelene’s correspondence after a while because I was left in silent isolation for what could have been months… perhaps years. The only contact with home was cold meals in abandoned rooms and supplies sent through magical conveyance so my hunts could progress ever deeper.
Isolated in a place like this would have driven anyone mad, but I had a goal: to regain her favor. So I killed, I butchered, and maimed.
The Lanterns on my belt grow heavy and fat, ripened with the damned.
I become a specter on the horizon, a monster comparable to the whispered Fomorians, whose presence I thought a figment.
My name empties villages, and my presence births chaos. Tributes and wards that are meant to stay on my blade began to be commonplace. I had taught the Fey fear. Yet, it was never enough.
It is like a continuous dream, the land growing more and more warped, as my mission becomes more monotonous. .
Until one day, I woke up… for the last time.
Magdelene stands over me, panic in her eyes.
"What…" I begin, but she clamps a hand over my mouth.
"No time, follow," she states, drawing me from my bed and onto my feet.
She races through the palace, weaving and darting down stairways and halls I had never seen in my entire time living there.
"Have they breached the walls?" I demand.
"No, it-my mother, the Primarchs, they have committed to an action I worry will see us all dead," she states.
My heart drops into my stomach as the fear in her voice invades my mind.
"What do you intend to do?' I demand. Silence is her only answer, but still, she drags me onward. Still, I follow.
The sounds of war muffle as we descend deep into the belly of the palace, descending past rooms and alcoves filled with works of magic and collections of esoteric lore I can't even begin to understand.
One final staircase, and we reach a doorway, the palace's marble becoming tan rough stone. An older structure is long hidden beneath. Through the doorway, a vast cathedral-like chamber opens, and there stands Heldite, arms falling as some great work of arcana unravels and spirals, the cascading nearly catching us before I tug Magdelene back and throw us to the ground, shielding her.
"No…. no, no, no!" Heldite shouts, her face contorting in rage.
"Mother?!" Magdelene shouts, the shattered magic fading all around us, "What have you done?!"
Heldite looks up, her skin cracked and fraying, weaker than I ever thought she could appear.
"Ended the war. Called the heavens to our aid, but our united front has shattered.” she murmurs, her eyes flicking to me angrily, "Why are you not in your Avaliun?"
"I-" I begin, but a thunderous boom roars far above. The ground quakes an echo.
"Mother-" Magdelene whispers, seeing her mother fray further at the sound.
Another explosion, closer, and the ground buckles once more.
"What is that?!" Magdelene demands.
"The Stars beckoned forth." Heldite responds cryptically, "We meant to cut off the Ruudashi, show them our true might for all the world to witness! I had hoped…"
Another impact.
"Damn them." Heldite hisses, glancing up at her daughter, "There is no time."
She casts her hands up, and I am sent flying from the room and pinned to the stairs.
"And no room," she mutters. Magdelene screams as a shadowed figure drags her back from me. Heldite waves her hand, and a door falls, golden numbers spreading across its surface.
I fight to rise, only for falling rubble to shatter my legs. Though the blinding pain and my own bellow of pain, I hear Magdelene shriek once more.
I glance up, and she is reaching for me, magic the color of the dawn on the ocean reaching towards me, and then a pearlescent shimmer surrounds her head, and she falls to the ground, her mother’s lips steaming with the same light.
The door shuts, and I am alone. Pinned to the stairs, blinded by the dark, I feel the palace crumble and shatter above me as something immense crushes it into dust on top of me.
I awoke here by salvation or a fluke.
I am Cage.
And I have been for millennia.
I have forgotten what it is to taste or smell; touch is a numb remainder.
My flesh is stone and steel. My heart is gears and conduits.
My mind is a maze of metal that I feel rust with each passing year.
Yet I remember her, and I remember the Door.
That glowing sequence is ingrained in my memory.
My home still exists after a fashion, but here, things may change, but there is a rhythm to it. Chaos is dictated, the same faces playing different parts as they wish and whim.
Back in Materia, there is no familiarity.
It is nothing like it once was and will never be again.
New folk walk its roads and hunt its forests.
New Gods lurk in the shadows and guide from beyond the stars.
The magic of my age is long dead. There are no Promeath, and there will never be another Avaliun. I am an oddity—the Last of Eden.
And what is the battered legacy of my people?
The Hunt. This body is good for little else.
So I remain, a nightmare that the Fey now turn to when they view themselves slighted by another.
The coin I demand is a formality, far safer than bargains of promises or exchanges of names.
This realm was abandoned long ago, and the Fey, for all they fear me, look to me in odd Kinship.
But they are not alone.
They are not a remnant.
They thrive and grow and change.
Not a single consequence to be found.
Except me.