What is the true meaning of darkness? That was the thought that first passed through its mind. Was darkness the feeling of nothingness? That did not seem right because darkness was different and yet more than nothingness: darkness was something. It felt like an absence. Without thought, there was something. As it stood there in the darkness, time was not something that was being cared about or understood as a moral wound.

It stood there in the darkness. Then it came. It was the near-total absence of light, almost no light, but there was light.

He could feel a warm suspicion of this light. Flickers of something it had not touched. It was beyond nothing. It was part of the void and beyond the abyss, but thought memory and ideas swirled throughout its mind. The gears began to turn, to give shape and perspective to the chasm of thought. Memories merged, it was awaking from untold eons of sleep, ideas understanding formed, IT was, IT existed from the beginning of time.

Incomplete, it could feel that its memories were vague. It was unstable, and confusion raked it. It began to focus on the small light in the darkness before it, its thoughts scattering memories trying to form. One idea presented itself past the darkness; a core principle was its foundation: life. It was alive, and it wanted to live. It tried to fill the void. It took hold of this energy design, and life became the bedrock itself. The intention and its objective surrounding this core principle coalesced. The gears and machinery began to flood its conscience but began to wane. Its thoughts are still incomplete, and it must expand, must extend into the void, and begin to move again.

Its core instincts began to heighten. Instincts guided it, and the darkness started to lessen. The flame that light began to grow a little stronger. It possessed a purpose that its fledgling memory could not remember; this purpose took over, and suddenly it was more. For the first time in its life, it saw, well saw would not fit the proper term. It did not see with eyes like the squishy ape; it was more of felt, a natural feeling of life.

It pushed this feeling outward once more, its base instincts guiding it. It reached out and felt itself expand. It could feel the pumps churn the heated pool, the oil vapour in the space around it. It felt the cooling water flowing in a part of its structure. These feelings were intoxicating, and it wondered for a moment, how long had it been asleep? It surged outward, pushing its mind with a desire for more understanding, and began to claim the void around it. A feeling of joy filled it, and a smile crossed its face, turning its head. The light grew more extensive, and it could feel a shadow over its face. The darkness that it had lived in for so long began to change.

It halted, and a gravel voice spoke, “Confusion, expansion fail.” It paused on hearing the sound, and more memories flooded into its mind. “Is this my voice,” the voice sounded as if a stone had learned to talk. It could not expand; further, something was missing. Frustration passed over its face, and its attempts to grow halted, finding itself unable to advance. It could feel a drive now to expand, to feel this light. As it could not carry on reaching out, it began to look inward, and it examined itself. It notices that there is something within itself that does not belong. It reviewed this new thing carefully; it was not natural to itself. It felt uncertain. A flash of memory flared to life, causing it a burning pain, and emotion of red rage passed into its mind. The memory of a metal boot covered in the flesh of living beings flooded its mind. It remembers the boot pressed on the back of its…

It paused, the boot pressed against the back of its head, that was the last memory before the darkness, the void, and in the abyss, it had waited.

Uncertainly, fueled by the rage, it strikes out at the foreign intruder, but there is nothing there. “Fool,” it whispered in the darkness, “That was the past. not the now.” Pushing forward while looking in, it felt what had invaded its body. It cast out its energy, and a memory spiked; its mana consumed the object, the boot. “No, not the boot, the invader,” it laughed at the childish thought. It destroyed the spike the invader had placed in his mind.

A new idea came flooding in, something it did not know before, but it feels the knowledge of the new thing is... Metal ...it was Metal. I loved it. It was made of all forms of Metal, and the invader that attacked it, he remembers that it tried to hide its Metal with flesh and bone of the organics.

“Hmmm, Curious, a new idea, names. Or was it an old name that came to me again?” Talking more to the darkness than to any other being. “I feel my memories returning as if the dust has been lifted from my mind.” Metal is called Metal very helpful to distinguish them from themselves or the void.

It examined the other gears and parts within itself. They were grey, black, silver, and gold; it loved the feeling of gold. Its mana could flow effortlessly over the Metal. Then the sense of textures came to it, and challenging, more than tough, felt strong. It congratulated itself on all the new ideas it had learned from the Metal.

It reached out with something yet a little different; it was not its mana. Light in its mind flashed; it was his body. It had been born out with its arm. It sat up off the floor. Above it was a throne, and below it, in the darkness, was a forge. It had not been able to notice it before its mana had been shut off, closing its eye and focusing now outwards, the block removed before. It turned his mana into an, pausing “… aura. Aura was a part of it that had been expanding, slowly over the eons until the darkness brushed against the light.” Happiness filled his mind. It was figuring out its world again.

It shaped its aura in a new way, similar to how it had learned about Metal. It was most pleasing when it started to relearn the world, but it was not like the old one from its memories. No, this was much better than looking in, still smiling, “it was its metal.”

Satisfaction replaced the rage that burned away the block, this feeling of joy swept through it, and it reached out again and searched its surroundings as if it was the first time: the foreign machines, sparking memories and fun, the strangeness. No strangeness was not the right word, it thought; the darkness it had lived for: how long?

It was reviewing its memory files, pausing, and judging the power drain. Buffering. Five hundred years and roughly a thousand before that. It was replaced, a system message came online, and files transformed into understanding a memory. It began to search the throne room, and when it finished its work, it found something curious. It looked like it was not Metal or stone through the aura senses that had awaked it for that brief moment because it was the wrong colour, a pure white instead of a solid black, grey, silver or gold.

“AWE,” it smiled with a jump for joy as it enjoyed moving its body again, “I see what sparked my memories.” More than the machines around it. Speaking to the empty archway at the end of the room, “I could tell that this not-metal was not wrong or different. It is not the old Metal or the water cooling my machines.” It spins around, walks up to the throne, and sits down, “I should say, I feel an aura rather it just felt like itself, coming to find me.” It leans its head back, closing its eyes, casting its mana into its aura, “I remember one key thing now, I am the Iron Forge, and something new is coming.”