A new sensation filled it, or was it old? It wasn't sure. There weren't many things it knew. What was it? Where was it? How did it come to be? It knew none of these things. It did know, now, that it was different from before. Something had changed. Whether that change was foreign or familiar didn't matter, it felt new.

Curious what this unfamiliar sensation was, it observed it. At first, the nature of the sensation eluded it. It could pick out the presence of change, but it simply couldn't identify it. Its lack of knowledge hampered its desire to understand itself.

Until suddenly, it knew. As if it had always known, the knowledge was just...there.

It was expanding. Growing. It didn’t know how big it was, but it was certainly getting bigger.

How?

It pondered the matter. Though it was a fruitless endeavor. There wasn't much to think about, it had only just learned what 'size' was after all. Even though it now understood that its size grew, it knew none of the details. It pondered for a while longer, but try as it might, answers didn't appear.

It wasn't worried. It didn't know how to be, it just...was. Growing felt nice though, it liked growing. Bigger was better, it thought, unaware that such a specific thought should have eluded it.

So grow it did.

It grew and grew and grew until...it didn’t. It suddenly stopped, stagnating.

After spending so long growing, it did not like the abrupt halt. It had just begun the futile venture of trying to figure out why when another change occurred. It shrunk! No, it was still shrinking!

It did not like shrinking one bit. But like its growing phase, it could do nothing about it. It just...was.

So time marched on as it slowly lost all the size it had grown.

Time had long been a confusing prospect to it. It couldn't quite picture what time was, all it understood was things happened in order. Until now.

The knowledge of 'time' made a very welcomed surprise appearance. Just like 'size' it appeared to have come out of nothing, but unlike 'size' the knowledge didn't feel...useful. It felt like an incomplete picture, giving an idea but not quite bestowing understanding. It did tell it one thing though, the shrinking phase was definitely longer.

That too came to an end, however, violently. It shook and morphed and wiggled and pulsed. It didn't know when it started understanding 'shape', but it could clearly tell its own shape was changing erratically. Oddly, it enjoyed the apparent chaos. It felt nice. Soon it understood why.

When the violent shifting subsided, it thought, for the first time, with words.

What are these symbols?

Language. It had learned language. That was just the tip of the iceberg. It couldn't tell yet, too busy digesting the complexities of linguistics, but it was smarter.

Ah! So it was called time. Bells, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries. Time is broken up into pieces. A day contains twelve bells, but how long is a bell?

So entrapped by its newfound thinking power, it failed to notice it was growing again.

Though it did notice, eventually.

Ah! I grow. This is good.

It quickly learned that growing and shrinking came in cycles. It grew, then it shrunk. It grew, then it shrunk. Each time it became smarter, more aware, more discerning. Gone was the time its mere composition was a mystery.

It was an ahjer construct. One that thought. It grew because it was absorbing foreign ahjer into itself, it shrunk because it was compressing and distilling that ahjer. Discovering its function was a happy moment, but it ultimately just opened the door for even greater questions.

Purpose. Its purpose had been the main topic of thought during most of its recent cycles. It seemed, as far as its own intelligence went, the cycles had diminishing returns. That bothered it. It wanted to know more, it wanted to know why. Why was it here? Why could it think? Why did it exist?

No matter how much it grew, it always reached the stage where it had questions there seemed to be no answers to. This time however, it didn't think a few more cycles would shed new light. It had lost count how many cycles had passed since it began questioning its purpose. As they came and went, an inkling that it wasn’t learning anything new but rather re-learning things it already knew crept into its thoughts. Nevertheless, it carried on in its pursuit of internal understanding.

Many questions and ideas popped in and out of its thoughts. Some branches took weeks to flesh out, others took mere moments. They all reached the same conclusion though, a dead end. It continued anyway, undeterred. Never had something burned so brightly within it. It had to know the answers.

It was almost obsessed with knowing.

Eventually its ceaseless pursuit led it down a branch of thought that shook it to its core.

Am I alone?

Like a match in a monsoon, the fire within it was not only snuffed out, but completely consumed. The thought shook it so much it didn't think another for months.

For years...

For decades…

For centuries…

...

He didn’t think anything. He couldn’t. He refused to acknowledge the possibility he was alone. No. He just wasn’t smart enough. So he’d wait, wait until he was. Wait until the right piece of knowledge popped into his mind. Wait until he knew why he was an ahje—

Wait…

The dam he placed in his mind to block all thoughts had cracked. Then, moments later, it violently shattered. A barrage of information invaded him: knowledge, ideas, beliefs, understanding. For a moment he couldn’t handle it, almost completely shutting down under the strain. He went into a form of stasis, not too dissimilar to his previous state. Weeks turned into months, turned into years as he digested all the information. When he finally began thinking again, he had a whole new perspective.

It wasn’t an ahjer construct at all!

It was—

No, he was—

No, I am…

I am…

Dalric

Dalric opened his eyes. Neither he nor the world was prepared, but once again Dalric the Deathseeker walked the planet.