Neverstar

CH1 - Whereabout When I Was

Over the many centuries of human history, many have desired the potential to become a hero. Few dutiful men would deny a destiny that accomplished that objective, even knowing its inevitable outcome.

To those who experienced it however, all that lived within the memory was terror.

Humanity knew it very well. The very desire should cause guilt, as the association with heroism is automatically danger. Desiring others to be endangered for your opportunity is selfishness. The very opposite of what a hero should wish to be.

Though the reasons for the desire, those can be many-fold.

Ultimately desire and opportunity are unlinked, whether or not you want to be a hero is immaterial. The right person, and the right opportunity. The perfect circumstance. Those were the factors to the equation.

A hero was simply the answer to arrive from its existence. Something summoned in the situation where it was needed, where it would always come to be.

Or where it was thrust, whether purposefully or maliciously.

Choice had nothing to do with it.

This one was five foot nine, stocky and ginger. He looked alright, but appearances weren’t fixed in his future. Riding along at one eighty plus, he wasn’t acting the role model either. His name would soon cease to matter, everything he would covet was to change.

Save for what he couldn’t forget.

Fifteen kilometers back, he'd spotted the rising black smoke that announced a man made fire. He signaled his riding mates, but they were too far ahead to pay him any heed. He tried to play catch-up for a while, but eventually gave up on it.

His bike wasn’t meant to be pushed like theirs, being more of a maneuverable cruiser. There was no point killing himself for assistance a phone call would probably provide.

Resigning himself to dealing with the problem on his own, he peeled away from his riding group and detoured back to the site of an accident. He wasn’t surprised to be the first responder out here in these canyons.

The privacy was the whole reason they were riding out here, you could hardly breakneck through a city without calling attention to yourself.

His tires screamed across the asphalt as he came to a stop, and his heart hammered like thunder in his chest. Against the cliff face to his right, a broken flipped commercial trailer. Its tractor was separated a few feet away, burning brightly from the engine bay. He hit his emergency lights, and threw his helmet off.

Moments later, he found himself crawling through broken glass. Why? Well to pull a child from a wrecked vehicle, naturally. She was crying, but only weakly. She didn’t have any energy left.

“What a noble fucking cause!” He groaned as he pulled himself through the pool of blood that was the roof, now his floor. His body shuddered horribly in distaste, every hair on him stood to its end. He fought down the bile to focus on the task.

His arms and sleeves had been soaked with blood, and the wreckage looked no less grim. Being partially wedged under the trailer wasn't doing the situation any favors. He hadn't taken any injury himself, but the grim sight of the parents stood all his hair on end. A few moments more, and he might lose it.

The headroom was lacking, and so he had no choice but to drag himself through it all.

A truly heroic moment, to be sure. He chose to focus on something else. The smell invaded his senses despite him, and the gas was giving him a headache. He took short breaths.

The van wasn't doing a lot to prevent its own structural collapse at this point, but he couldn't leave the kid stuck in the bloody thing. Even if she did happen to be busier crying than helping herself. He was frustrated, but he forced himself to be calm.

She was a child after all. Even if she was currently risking his life.

He pushed himself further under the flipped vehicle, reaching for the trapped young girl within.

"Excuse me kitten, but could you unbuckle your seatbelt?" He asked gently, sniffling replied. He repeated his question, trying vainly to reach around the seat and disconnect the belt buckle himself. The van’s frame sank down another inch, his fingertip barely in contact with the buckle now.

His typical luck, the good only came followed by a gallon of bad.

He flipped over, and braced himself against the rear seats. His blood surged, heart pounded. Flooded with adrenaline and a false rage, he roared as he slowly lifted the frame back upwards.

"What about Mommy and Daddy?" She whined plaintively, as she finally managed to push the button. She screamed and thumped into the floor as it released. Rattled and upset, she turned to check on her parents. He couldn’t imagine that she hadn’t already seen, but maybe she was too young to understand…

“Get! OUT!” He screamed.

He was having other problems at the moment, however. He had just realized that the sinking frame of the wreckage had trapped him. To add to his problems, the smell of gas was getting stronger. He grabbed the frozen girl, “Out, now!” He yelled shortly. A moment later she found herself being shoved through the back hatch by a booted foot.

The van sank another two inches.

He'd already had a headache at the beginning of this little problem, and it was only getting worse now. He tried to lift himself free, but his strength was working against him. The van’s frame was sinking as he pushed against the seat, it was one of few things currently holding the inverted ceiling up.

He heard the distinctive sound of a door handle being tried. The little girl was trying to get to her parents through the hopelessly crushed door, he could've told her that wouldn't work but he couldn't exactly stop her from his current position.

He didn’t want to imagine what the trailer was loaded with, to be so heavy!

"Stop it!" He yelled from his awkward position, pinned between the seats and the roof. His body was wedged under the back seats of the bloody van!. "Don’t force-"

Somehow, the door was wrenched open.

SLAM: CRuNcheH

The van collapsed, the squeal of metal only partially concealing the wet pop of a human mind. Bone snapped and splintered. Meat burst under pressure, pliant and with little resistance. Moments later, the gasoline ignited. A fireball streaked into the sky.

He never knew how he died, the moment went too quickly. His ending was too swift. They never identified the ashy paste left behind, nor would it have mattered to him. In moments, nothing would ever matter again. His entire body was numb, and he couldn't feel the outside world anymore. Couldn't experience, or touch anything. The deepest and most conscious sleep he'd ever known fell upon him.

He didn't want to imagine what had happened to him, though it was probably something horrifying. That was generally his type of luck. That had always been his curse. Skill against the universe, luck on the clutch or not at all.

He remembered this type of fear, this hovering beyond the edge of death. Before now the encounter was filled with potential, it existed as a choice. Now there was no doubt upon which side of the knife he would fall. It was time for something new, and he knew nothing of what lay at the end of the fall.

If there was any luck in his death at all, it was in its speed. He left only regret behind.

But now in a new moment, beyond the edge of death. His soul brushed something familiar.

It was dark like a thought, it echoed with a boundless potential. It burned with a fleetful light, with a fading form less than it ever was. It touched a thousand frail hopes, and silhouetted itself in time.

He was being visited by something else, an altered perception. A foreign object.Whatever this was, it did not belong here. Not in this universe, not in this reality. Not in his afterlife, and not in his mind. And never had he known it as clearly as he knew it now.

Like darkness as light, the shadow projecting. Madness made sane. Insanity at its sharpest. Wild and gleeful, magical, maniacal, and mad. A dark mist had taken up a seat in the corner of his mind, weighing upon the foundation of his soul. A deep party had reached out to him, inviting his existence into its fold. Inviting him with wonder, in a state he could never fail to accept.

When the universe is fading, what choice is there to make? Light the fires again, or fade into the darkness. But then, mankind was always fitful and taken to the third option.

A dark and infinite corner of the unknown had taken up residence in his mind, a sensation he found familiar. He had sensed this once before, something lost beyond the edge of a fantasy. A whispered promise of dreams fulfilled and a threat of death inherent in its composition, an opportunity to suffer into glory or gutter into insanity.

He'd recoiled in fear from this once, and spent many years wondering what it was or if it was. But here again, a second opportunity. And now with apparently nothing to lose. With bold conviction and a casual air, some part of himself brushed against the odd feeling suffusing the corner of his mind.

A soul accepted its darkness, and so suddenly reality was insecure. To fear a dead man was a strange thing indeed, and his rejection was swift and complete. He was thrown from reality with a violence beyond measure, but in a manner which touched nothing else. As though reality were a rubber band, and he was a projectile snapped from its surface.

At that moment, something wild and magical happened in the solid and logical world of reality. His body vanished, whipped away at impossible speeds. Drawn to something unknown. Only an ominous, incredibly tiny marble of black mist remained. It drifted there a moment, seeming to be disconnected from the gravity of the planet on which it resided.

A moment later it was gone, tearing off at speeds impossible to support. Vanishing beyond the edge of everything in barely a thousand winks of an eye.

His existence itself was gone now, vanished like a candle's flame never sparked.

His motorcycle vanished, and his helmet disappeared.

His friends forgot him, his lovers never knew him.

His pets never found him, and no person ever learned from him. Neither his failures and faults, nor his triumphs and achievements. No one remembered who, or what he was.

And so his worst fear in life came to pass, and echoed with him.

“I am Nobody.”

Later on and despite the little girl's insistence, no one could find any savior. Or any evidence of anyone else at all. Aside from her two unfortunate parents inside of a vehicle that was thoroughly wrecked. The company responsible for loading the trailer escaped responsibility, procedure having been followed 'to the letter'. The paperwork was all filed away, “safety” had been observed. Everything was in order.

In the end, there was no happy ending for anyone involved. But then there rarely was.

* * *

He'd touched a black will, and now he'd have no input on where he might end up. It forced understanding in some ways, dragging him through the edges of foreign realities and showing him wonders. Burning them into his soul, deeper than the confines of his memory and beyond into something like instinct.

Alternate places and people, off-track timelines and instances. All at once but also stretched all throughout the slowest thought. Not being embodied, it wasn't an incredibly taxing experience.

“Sya! Chya!” Childish sounds for an intriguing scene, you’d rarely see a 4 year old waving around a sword like an adult. Troubled not at all by the weight, the little ginger whipped around the sharpened steel like it was second nature. The size should be awkward, but his little muscles powered it through clean arcs followed by huge grins.

This little guy was a train, every day. Swinging on and on without end, an obsession to fuel his reason to exist from that moment onward. Every single day, without purpose or peers and purely for pleasure.

But it was an overwhelmingly intense one! This was a journey that you could only endure, or find yourself destroyed by. This amount of experience should easily overwhelm any sense of self a normal person might have developed over a single lifetime.

Indeed perhaps that was the purpose. The strange autonomous will that had latched onto his mind and soul have no reprieve. He was forced relentlessly onward. He clung to his own memories with a desperation not known in life.

He clung to his sense of self like it was the only string in the world. He wrought his mind into a steel will that confined his sense of self above the flood that immersed him otherwise.

Within him formed a steel seed, a tiny metaphysical core to resist the passage of memory and hold stable through the flow of time and change. It was a fitful seed, something not entirely meant to be. The anchor to an alternative form of existence.

But it was also the fortress of his life, the core of who he was. The impossible stone in water that should dissolve it, dissipate and destroy it. But instead, as though in defiance to the tribulations. Instead it grew, it took root and sprouted.

The memories around him, flooding him. The memories that ingrained the instinctual core of his soul, they became fertilizer for the seed in his mind. Slow it grew into a fortress, a world. A place inside himself away from all reality where he was harbored against the totality of chaos.

“Bahahaha! Alright come on then!” He laughed, and casually taunted his wild friends. So they called themselves. Two attacked, and twice he defended. He turned them aside with easy confidence and not a little joy, playing a game with them purely for his own fun. This had been and likely always would be, part of his problem.

His friends were looking daggers at him, and they clearly wanted to kick the sense right out of his head. But even if he’d properly noticed, it wouldn’t have mattered. If they tried to kill him, he’d just find it even more fun. They’d call him a lunatic if he wasn’t so easygoing and calm, but when the bokuto came out so did this…

Berserker. The insanely happy Berserker who just wanted to fight!

Accompanied as it was by wild myriad colors and insane lights, it was difficult enough to pay attention to any one thing. But inevitably you couldn’t escape anything, and it was also difficult to describe the time it lasted or consumed with any accuracy.

Steel skittered over his armor, a sword deflected by an arm. The answering blow dented the offenders chest plate as he was repelled, taking a step back without relief. He was pressed hard as the armored pair grappled, arms and weapons working against each other stridently.

It was only when the defender abandoned grappling his opponent that the flow changed, however. An armored hand latched onto the offenders blade, and a moment later it was broken over the fulcrum of the defenders neck.

When it was finally over, he was of the strong opinion that it was more than long enough. Trapped in a tunnel of impossible colors and wild lights, stretching onward in every direction towards infinity.

A plain of grass stretches out endlessly in every direction, and I overlook it all knowing I am unmatched under the sun. Despite this, there is a new looming challenge in my life. Behind me, the screams of a young woman are piercing the air.

Simple brown tents are rowed behind me, and within one of them is my woman. This is a time before marriage or common law, so she is simply my woman. No person shall take her from me. But the screams. The screams.

I am called into the tents, and I turn towards them with a sense of foreboding dread.

And all of it, rammed through a single mind without mercy. For a moment he was the fulcrum aspect of infinity. But despite all of that, it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be crushed, or lose himself. He refused to be destroyed. He wanted to live, whatever that meant beyond the edge of his death. This death.

Refusing this feeling was a strong memory, it echoed within him for an unknown period of memory. He did not know how old he was, if that mattered to a mind or a soul.

“Resurrection it is.” He scoffed. This place, whatever it was. It was a very confused place, a chaotic wild-lands. It wasn’t even right to call it confusing, the place itself was confused. But as with a thousand other things he’d seen thus far, he was forced to understand.

His perspective was forced open to accommodation, despite his discomfort. But lacking a human body or a truly human mind, it didn’t torture him as it should have. With new eyes, he looked around with wonder.

Whether he looked ahead of himself, or twisted to peer towards his origin. He had already seen through every window, even though he hadn’t looked. Like a memory. He was flooded with experience as he'd never known it before.

In his best metaphor, it was as though the memory of the whole of creation had become his own. Unlimited by the passage or origin of time. He existed within an ocean of everything, as though infinity was made of of dust held together by the thread of his will.

He'd like to call himself a modest person, he wanted to be a modest person. But within this wild, insane ocean of colors and lights…

He found only excitement!

He peeked at everything he could, once he got over the strange sense of vertigo that the experience brought with it. This place was wild and foreign. Alien to the extreme, and unlike anything he’d ever encountered in his own world or life.

Far from being overwhelmed, this human mind found itself in the midst of a bender. Drinking in an ocean on the outside that had once only existed within, a thirst he had never expected to quench. The fantastic joy that came with his curiosity drove away every faltering thought or moment of pause that might have held him back.

He could fall in every direction the ocean stretched, the ocean connected everywhere and through out it all brightly glowed the souls and people of the world. He fell through them all, holding desperately to every experience as though it weren’t already welded to his core.

*

Through the eyes of a child, I watch a great man. His magic is mighty and his name is well known throughout the land, but today his attention is mine and mine alone. I shiver with pride and eager zeal as he lectures me, as he teaches me. As I am prepared.

He felt warmth and pride he'd never known before. As his family taught him, so his spirit grew.

"Remember everything can be broken down into a string, and strings can make anything at all. Time is made of up strings, stretching into the past and into the future. Fate is made up of strings, as it binds and connects us all together. Even your Mana is made out of stings, so turn your mind inwards and begin to seize them."

The Almighty Sage began.

The old man poured a cup of cold, icy water over his head.

Despite the oddness of the situation, I am a willing participant in this. This water is special, this process is special. Today I am to be reborn, today I would be the first. I would be born without Mist, a Magi without a name. My Grandfather and Grandmasters gift, one of limitless potential.

*

Memories like pile drivers, slammed into his mind and made their effects known. Through them all, he remained stable in his core. The character of the core personality remained unchanged, despite whatever intention this Black Will intended to forge upon him.

If he were flesh and blood, his face would be wearing a grim smile. Defiance was etched to the core of this one, these bones had chosen the hard path to forge themselves a thousand times. A thousand times a thousand times.

His eye’s stretched wide, for a moment remembered and very real in a place of unreality. How many times? He couldn’t count them now, he didn’t know them even though he remembered them all.

*

A thief crept carefully and slowly through the alley, approaching the side door of the property to which he'd been tasked. As he reached the door, skulking and sly, his attuned senses gave away nothing wrong. Suspicion seized his mind, however.

He looked back and forth, up and down. Though his eyes were acute and his sight excellent, he could detect nothing. And an alley smelled the same as any alley, a smooth bouquet of rats rearward rampart.

Frowning, he turned towards the lock. He carefully examined it for triggers or ques, and when he found nothing he moved onto the door. He spent a lot of time here, slowly becoming more and more certain. This door was entirely safe, there was no danger whatsoever. It was clearly trapped.

Why, you ask? Well naturally why wouldn’t you. To which the answer should be... Why not! Just because a door is trapped, doesn’t mean the door is the trap! But maybe that was obvious? Or perhaps he was eccentric.

He continued with regard nonetheless.

Using a complex series of weaves in utter silence, the Thief opened a little tiny doorway in reality. The destination, within the room before him. He smirked as the technique formed, a little secret more valuable than anything else he’d ever stolen.

Creating these weaves was something like yanking at the local fabric of space with your mind or will, or perhaps some other catalytic medium. While you could indeed punch a hole with raw power, it was also possible to create the same effect with more refined technique.

The higher level the technique, the greater the efficiency. The less the caster would be taxed. But also inversely, the greater the restriction would bear down on the highest level of techniques. Raw power, irritatingly, provided the most upright utility.

He grinned as the lock flipped open, the trap designed to trigger only from outside. The simple joys of Remote Fingers could so easily be forgotten. Weightless and simple, hardly more than the brush of a feather. Through any barrier these graceful gloves would slip with ease.

Which naturally included this, his little dimension door. Whatever limitations it might have, this was more than enough for him. So what if he couldn’t punch holes in reality with raw power? It didn’t stop him from opening any door he set his mind to breach.

It really had been worth the nigh endless years taken to master it.

*

More lives, more memories. But he contained more, his weight was heavier. He was unchanging because he had lived longer, experienced more. His suffering was endless, since the first moment of consciousness those many thousands of years ago.

He had fought and clawed and scraped, he had killed and eaten innumerable other beings. He had lived and died, and lived again. Only now, beyond the edge of death did he remember. Why did he remember?

*

Ingling summoned mighty magical forces in sequence, casting dozens of utility spells! Sparks and light flew, a hue of purple and blue filled the room intensely. He laughed wildly as he allowed the magic to flow from him. His personal brand of magic the Icarus Press keeping everything under smooth control. Somatic spells flowed with smoothly controlled gestures. Odd chants and intonations were expressed with articulation and care from drying lips.

Hundreds of ghostly hands moved about the room, some in unison and others independently. All with purpose, all under control and direction of a unified will. Strange machines and arcane symbols filled the room beyond, but all fading from view before the building storm of light welling up before the Mage.

He wet his lips as his work approached completion. This would be the best yet, this would be better than the best. Nothing could match this work! This would be the ultimate! But its purpose, that was ever better still! No man should be trapped, no woman locked up! This was a magical engine to bring about true freedom! Absolute freedom!

He went blind as the light poured forth, laughed wildly as the magics pulsed. He didn’t need to be remembered by history, or people. Nations, or planets. No, he would be remembered by the world forever afterwards. Written on the walls cloaked in fabrics beyond mortal minds.

*

He remembered. He remembered everything. The drive to evolve had been there, within him since the beginning. It wouldn’t end now, it would never end. Only he could end it, and that was not how he had been forged.

“Break the cycles, weary the chains. Snap and divide. Sever. Protect. Kill. In and out, living and dying without end.” For a moment in this empty space, this ocean that touched everything… His lips and voice were very real. “Be always ready, the cycle never ends. Change marches, to live is chaos. Existing with a desire to arrest change.”

Wisdom his and not of his mind mixed and conjoined, flowing in and out of his memory and perspective. Being human of perspective in his soul, it was still beyond him to encompass it all.

But he remembered, both who he was and who he had been. He remembered his world, its evolution. His people, from the beginning. He remembered the magic that forged the universe out of an infinity of chaos that lived beyond the reach of Gods and Demons, moving lives and worlds around like checkers on a board painted infinitely black.

Streaked with an infinity that no magic could encompass, an expanse of potential beyond the limitation that was its environment. Magic could only live close to the heart, and could only be fertilized by imagination.

He screamed, it was painful to know. “The cycle must continue!”

*

“No, the cycle must be broken.”

And so he learned to identify, he learned to choose. Instead of being wild and content with contacting what he did, he narrowed his focus to prevent over powering his will. He would remained unchained.

Being quite curious, he spent the most “time” with the child learning the basics of an Arch Magi's life's work. However he was also naturally drawn to the activities of the thief, he'd always been obsessed with getting into places he wasn't supposed to be when he was young.

Moreover he had a suspicion he’d been struck with certain pieces of information for a reason.

Flitting back and forth between them, it slowly became harder and harder to perform these actions. Like something of great weight lay upon his mind, body, or willpower. Though in reality, it was more a loss of velocity and potential.

He eventually realized that the Black Will was done with him, that he'd essentially been stuck to the wall of a new reality. All the strange new cultures, people, and languages made that apparent enough. But there was more to consider.

There were levels and dimensions to this place, and it wasn’t as simple as picking a door and walking through it. Picking a spot and existing in it. Everything needed a catalyst, and someone like him needed an awkward catalyst.

Especially when you have no body, and so no reference or perspective to exist with in that world. He needed a vessel in order to exist.

And worse, he was slowing down. Losing 'orbital' velocity. His current standing problem was that he hadn’t sunk in yet. This was a bit of a situation for him. Sinking into reality wouldn’t end well for him, as he’d rejoin the standard reincarnation cycle within it.

Or to be more blunt and direct about it, he would be killed by the experience. He was understandable desiring a method of avoiding this.

He needed to find a way into reality on his own, preferably without losing his memories or sense of self. He’d gained too much peeking through the edges of reality to give it all up.

He remembered too much to abandon the hope that complete memory offered someone like him, in a place like this.

Not to mention landing in the wrong place would be fantastically, fatally, supremely dangerous! The threats here were an order of magnitude worse than anything short of a star exploding in his universe.

Fuck this place was so layered with dimensions, he could only really aim at the ones on the edges. They were all fake, false, or manufactured. A small problem.

What access he had to the core reality was already rarefied by dozens of interfering dimensions. Like bubbles so large on the ocean floor, that you couldn’t set foot to sand without bursting one.

There were a few very large bubbles seemingly unconnected to the Core Reality that also occasionally threatened his path.

He’d observed the reincarnation cycle here, and it wasn’t a good process for him. Or anyone else so far as he was concerned. This place had Gods, Demigods, Monsters, Demons, Horrors, Beasts and mixtures aplenty. Everyone was also somehow related to one of those things, carrying some aspect of their bloodline and history.

If he tried to walk through the cycle, he’d probably be identified as a foreign element and destroyed. In fact it was certain that he would be. They would at the very least destroy his mind and memories, even if his soul could be make to serve their purpose.

He really did have problems, so he started to scheme. Considering the thoughts in his head, he was starting to feel very much like a body snatcher. But that wasn’t something he wanted, nor was it something he would condone.

He realized he'd been stuck in here long enough to puzzle out a language in this... oceaneality. A discomforting thought, his perspective of time must be incredibly skewed. He might have even puzzled out several languages, they all blended and meshed through eachother in his head.

That or the time with the Arch Magi and his grandson had done more for him than he'd considered. Possible.

Or maybe time simply didn’t mean anything in this place, between places and was un-tethered to time or progression.

Regardless, he wasn't evil. The idea of possessing someone didn't appeal to him, and he hadn't figured out how to do it anyway. Though a complete lack of effort has predictable results. Were it his only option, he might accept his doom.

Moreover, it would call attention to him. He wanted a place he could be low key, but also where he could go wild without drawing too much attention. He’d need to grow into this place, it wasn’t exactly scaled to the perspective of a logical mind.

He’d be screwed if he just dropped into the layers below, he had to grasp a softer start. This was similar to a game, but he wasn’t even level 1. This was starting out from level 0, so something more than simply coming to exist was a requirement.

He kept searching through memories for a long time seeking the perfect moment, before he finally learned how to zero in on the 'current day' in his new host reality. He couldn’t just choose any old moment apparently, finding the correct one was actually very difficult.

Choosing the wrong location had no anchorage in its current day perspective, so he needed to align himself strangely towards the feeling of reminiscence in a mind. Then move towards its elimination. Excessively strong moments in these memories matched up with the real world chronological experience of a given soul.

This place was a web of everything that happened or could happen. Looking at it from the outside like he was, he could see it all at once. But he could also see voids, spaces where the normal fabric has been disrupted. He needed one of those, and he needed it to be inert.

He needed to become something else. Being basically dead made the need starkly, stridently evident. Being unable to possess a person made taking any specific clot or string of memories nonviable.

If not distasteful and undesirable regardless.

It was like riding on the edge of a wave, that would only manifest itself as you ran into the empty spaces before it. Disconcerting and confusing, he persisted non-the-less.

Despite his eagerness to be physical again, he poured through the local versions of the dialect he'd picked up for a while. He was painting a growing picture of this new world every day, or moment, however you might measure time in this crazy acid trip.

He was tempted to make some references about Alicia in her Wonderful Lands at this point.

The myriad of fantastic races was enough to boggle the mind already. The Monsters were more disturbing besides, and the existence of Magic that accompanied and supported them. He started peering over as many shoulders as he could. But he was running out of the capital to be curious. His soul brushed the edge of the ocean, causing him to seize in shock.

He’d brushed up against reality, and he hadn’t been ready for that moment as a naked soul. It rejected him, its space wasn’t meant for what he now was.

It was quite painful. Quite. Painful. This went beyond a toothache or an injury and straight into, never again, for I shall embrace death first! The pain was so intense he hesitated to recoil for a moment.

Get Away.

Finally, his soul recoiled from the edge of the stream like an injured snake. It coiled away from the source of the damage. He tore his mind away from the sensation and focused, looking for a solution to his problem more fervently.

Directly entering the first layer was not viable, he would clearly be torn apart into whatever his base components actually were. He didn’t know if this was an artifact of his transport, or simply the nature of this new reality.

He was both moving, and not moving inside the ocean. Riding a strange state powered by the energy of his former form. And if that energy ran dry, so too would his vacation from reincarnation.

He'd learned an interesting spell called Doorway from watching a Thief in Nigim. Normally whatever incredible distance he'd be considering at this time should be beyond the simple and humble Doorway spell.

Normally he’d need to come up with his own method to replicate it as well, but learning a spell from the inside really was the best way.

So he'd done some brainstorming and a little lateral research, and had a little inspiration from Einstein.

E=mc2 right? Mass energy equivalence. Hinging off a physics based concept, a strong universal concept acted as an amazing fulcrum. So he started looking for a point of insertion, which would generally be a strong burst of life energy. Ideally. He grimaced when he finally found a decent insertion point.

It was strange, slightly grim, ancient, and awkwardly positioned. Technically it was still outside of the entire reality he was now subject to.

Hell it shouldn’t even be there at all. But his luck was terrible, so it'd have to serve. Anymore lingering and he might not be alive to linger. His situation was only growing more tenuous and less hospitable.

He cursed his luck, and lack of time. Making more of this situation would've been helpful, he wasn't certain he had the diplomatic talent required of this incarnation. But he didn't have time to learn anything else. He could only learn from looking over shoulders in this place, and he couldn’t practice everything at once.

As a soul, thinking was a particularly high level activity. It was staggering enough that he'd managed to pick up a language and figure out how to cast a spell as whatever interim existence he currently was. Technically sightless and without expression, he experienced what he came into contact with.

He also cheated by contacting everything at once, so there was that going for him. But somehow his impulse was still providing him some foundation in linear time, which was not working for him at all.

In order to leave this place, he had to suspend his state in that infinite ocean. He had to become somewhere, to become a point of progression. So he withdrew from the windows of experience through which he learned his environment, and resigned himself to a difficult birth.

He powered up his experimental magic, tapped into his former life essence.

“Open.”

A Doorway opened. It was only a very small, finger width dimensional doorway. This technique was extremely exotic, and used far far less energy to maintain than high-level dimension doors. However, it'd only accepted a certain amount of mass.

Thankfully, his soul weighed nothing!

At least in the physical sense. This Doorway was best suited to energy transmissions. But, his current state was something like pure energy. He was animate information, he was not barred from passage.

He passed through his doorway using the void in question as a catalyst, and touched a several million-year-old “dragon” egg. Though touched was a strong word for phasing inside of something that wasn't designed to stop you.

This part, was opposite the expectation he’d had going into the situation. The Egg embraced him violently, almost though it was a trap for something exactly like him!

Resting peacefully in the bottom of a subterranean lake, covered in a light layer of sand. Filled with the potential for life, filled with an overflowing amount of creation magic, but infertile. This egg and its spiritual energy would've haunted the area forever, never to be born. Never to leverage the creation of a new life.

Until he touched it, was pulled into it. Accepted by it. Taken by it. Reforged by it.

You dare?

As his soul and magic inhabited it, it became active again. With the smallest trace of his original life force following him, his body and mind were hastened to be reborn. His soul came to a fitful quiet, as his consciousness finally faded into the darkness the living call sleep. The blackness that the dead call rest.

To replace his mind and consciousness instead, a fierce sense of elation suddenly exploded within the perfectly spherical shell of this egg. It went to work with a fierce and determined purpose, and the emptiness in the pattern around it began to expand. Thunderclouds built over the eggs' restful nesting place as it continued its work.

I am not Wood to be burned.

I am not Air to be consumed.

I am not Stone to be buried.

I am not Metal to be forged.

Do you dare still to progress.

Do you dare still, to proceed.

Do you dare to inflict.

Over the next few days, he grew comfortably and unconsciously. Nurtured within his artificial womb. A far cry from his first birth, but certainly better than having his memory wiped. He might never feel so motivated if he didn't know what was possible here. Forgetting everything you’d lost might not seem so bad, if you had nothing to gain.

You dare.

You should not have dared.

Naturally, he lamented everything he lost. His soul ached for all the friends he'd left behind. His heart hurt for the family who'd raised him, broken or not, loving or not. But he was happy his time on Earth, though cut short, had led him somewhere with the possibility of more. Maybe he could even reach back and touch his home some day.

Very well.

Then I will show you the Dragon you seek.

He couldn't wait to awaken. Inside of this “dragon” egg, he couldn't help but dream the most vivid of dreams. His dreams lit up the inside of the egg with soft, illusory light, the El catching all of it up as it remade his body over the course of the night.

But its form, will not be what you expect.

* * *

He had no way of knowing how long he'd been asleep. No way to know how long he'd been cradled in the depths below, with no seasons to measure or shadows to shrink or grow. It could've been hours, or days. It could've been months.

Two months, eighteen days, twenty hours.

It could have been years...

Or ever more still. There was nothing to measure, and no gains to knowing. Not yet. Especially lacking consciousness as he was, in his dreamlike state. Not yet fully formed and with ever more conspiring to occur as he dreamed. Time marches on, and events progress without permission. Above the skies had begun to slowly thicken, clouds casting odd lights that influenced the powerful and the wicked.

Above him, the Yol and Katam of the lake began to thicken. Unbeknownst to its owners, their private “retreat” was quickly becoming a place of heavy Ma. Where-ever Yol and Katam conspired to mix thickly enough, Ma like a mist would form. Highly dense with energy, they attracted all kinds of Beasts, Monsters, and Vailour.

Playing host to any of these guests wouldn’t end well, so the locals would conspire to expel the Mists quickly. Spiritual Entities and Beasts weren’t good neighbors.

However, exposure to the Ma was also the quickest way to develop a Zhoto or Magical Affinity. Even the meanest beast started with nothing. Zip, zero, nothing. It took exposure to the correct environment to provoke a change of a magical nature. The appetite of the Mage would also reduce the atmosphere and calm the Ma, the pregnancy of their potential expunged.

Dragons, and a few other creatures, generated Mist as part of their gestation process. They couldn't fly or fight properly without magical support, or even grow to their full size. So it was incredibly important that they were exposed to and created their Zhoto early.

The resident of the egg was also benefiting from a hoard of knowledge that apparently wasn't genetic. A floor of memories came to him about the local environment and politics, a strange observation of a dystopian area. There was also an impressive store of magical knowledge that could help him out a little bit.

Dragon magic was potent and had generally high cost. The spells tended to focus on large, area of effect productions as well. Most of these he wouldn't really be able to put to use, unless he transformed into a dragon. Or acquired a truly staggering reserve of El to power them.

Or managed to modify the area effect and magnitude of the spell towards something resembling reason. El was an even thicker, and more powerful form of magic than Ma was. The bubble he’d landed in simply had no El, as contact with it would likely result in his utter and complete destruction.

He had no idea if that was even possible, modifying dragon magic or transforming into a dragon both. Building up enough El, that was a raw method of potential that would depend greatly on resource and experience. Maybe a little favor as well.

He was visited by an inhuman urge, to rise and crush and level the world. To rise above and call to fight, to bring shadow against the light. To take on wings and a spirit of kings, and become more robust than a fortress of gods and become a killer of demons and consumer of all things.

He dismissed the urge almost casually, he had no desire to be dragon-kind. His perspective wasn’t one of caves, mountains, and treasures.

A rumbling silence greeted his thoughts, pregnant with potential that continued to influence his form. Resistance will not last forever. Defiance can only be overcome.

Unlike the Sageson, he had no other experience to operate from. He’d need time to really absorb all the potential and possibilities in this world. He would need time to figure out how to escape it as well. Everything really relied on his ability to survive, in the end.

There was a range of enhancement spells and perception spells he had no choice but to try out as well. Apparently dragons were vastly similar to humans, in that their minds were their real primary weapons. Even their supposed dragon breath was a magical ability, a sort of knack. He was actually repeatedly forced within his own mind, to practice these things.

Even the dragon breathing knack.

Generally, the first thing they learned how to develop was that knack. Normally as soon as the rituals were complete. Having the appropriate knack allowed the hatchling to filter the correct element for their synergistic progression.

The Dragon Breath was both their most basic defense as well as their most essential personal enlightenment.

Here though, something else was occurring. The mind and soul of this human from another world was finding a balance with the ancient will left within this shell. It took time, but he progressively forced it into a dormant state.

There would be no dragon’s breath from this man, he would not allow the cycle to continue. Every moment was a frozen shard throughout time, throughout many lives. Always his desire had been the same, and he had not wavered through all of those many years.

Even when there was no need for it. Whether times were peaceful, or warlike without an end. At his core he had always been this same person, defying his lack of memory. Defying the demands around him. Defying the will of people or planet, without end. Without reprieve, without regret.

It was around twelve days until he was awake and fully conscious again. Or fully developed, depending on how you wanted to think about it. Due to his intimate knowledge of dragons, and due to the matriarchal knowledge package left inside of the shell of the egg itself. Despite his best efforts, he’d still inherited a few draconic characteristics.

It wasn't extreme, as the conscious knowledge came from the tail end of his gestation. Thus instead of having any overbearing aspects of the dragonic form, he'd merely inherited a few dozen magical reinforcements to his various organs, tissues, and bones. The byproducts of the previously mentioned rituals, after the shell’s ancient will forced their development.

A normal person in this world would potentially refer to this situation as being Dragon Blessed, or perhaps Cursed. It didn't matter, it had no effect on his physical structure. Nearly seven heads tall, a few inches shy of a six foot height.

Boom boom Boom boom Boom boom

He twitched as his hearts blazed to life, kicking his body into a shiver. He hadn't realized he had been sustained purely upon magic up to this point. He started to feel restrained instead of comfortable, and the Mists over the lake above began to draw towards its surface.

He was surprised also by the nature of his heartbeat, which was much different than he’d expected. He’d never heard of a dragon that had two hearts before. In the lore he knew of, one was normal. And in the more extreme he’d known, there had been dozens or hundreds.

A simple pair was a certain surprise. But he had no more time to pay attention to that detail, or explore any others he might have attained. Something was calling to him.

The core of the world called out to him, demanding with ever greater fervor and ferocity. It carved a question into him, an emptiness that could only be filled with a name. More than the core of the world, the soul of the void oppressed him. The mind of the sky assaulted him. The witness of heaven demanded of him.

They were all leveraging willpower against him, leveraging potential towards him. Every second the Mist continued to press into him his magical potential would grow, but so too would the compulsion to name himself. Though he didn't yet know what consequence that might have, what naming himself would represent.

He’d skipped that bit of the process while following the Almighty Sages path. He hadn’t wanted to have his nature shaped by proxy.

All he knew at this moment, was that his presence continued to grow.

How much power can you take, before you succumb? How much potential does it take to find satisfaction? How much power can you accept before you feel threatened, even by your own capacity? How long before you are overcome?

Before you submit.

Before you are overwhelmed.

How much before you lose yourself?

How much before you wonder at the limits of your humanity?

How was one to know, save through testing that limit?

Would humility restrain you?

Would fear?

Would you?

He knew his answer, and it could not change.

That was not his nature.

* * *

Above the Subterranean lake, there was a large and imposing Grand Royal Estate. As any of the nobility had a potential claim to rule, and the noble estate was naturally royal. How could it be any less?

Imposing and magnificent, the jeweled center of the city in which it stood. Mists were gathering towards it like a flood, arcing over the city and slamming into the magical barriers, wards, and shields protecting the Estate. This Jewel today attracted the attention of fireworks.

The Estate Master eventually ordered the defenses to be lowered, and the course of the Mists flowed to the source of the effect. Thickening into something like a flow of water as they progressed.

There would’ve been no stopping the flood, so here he showed wisdom.

Considering the wards would shortly be overloaded. The shields overcharged, and the barriers destroyed, it was a natural reaction to strange times.

This was an unprecedented level of Mist, almost like every Lair, Dungeon, Keep, Arcanum, and Library had been sucked dry and transported to this one place. It was a terrifying amount of Mist, despite current events it became clear that it was more than should’ve ever arrived.

The Estate Master eventually paled, as one of his subordinates informed him that all the Mist was pouring down the central shaft of the bathhouse into the Noble sector. Furthermore, it was draining even deeper through a previously unknown illusory wall.

Unlike his associates, he both knew about the wall and what was down there. As well as who was currently down there. He wasn't normally the type to curse, but he still bit off a few choice Fionen words as he stormed out of the room.

“Dyoke! Dyoke! Fraak!”

Guards quickly heeled to position, flanking the Estate Master through his holdings as he headed for its depths. He was shocked to realize that the flow into the bathhouse was so great and so dense.

At this point, even he wouldn't be able to penetrate it without suffering potentially lethal damage.

There was no Fionen this time, “FUCK!! Are you serious?” The wall of Mist was basically Water now, and he had no words of reference or sanity to counter this.

Back underground, the few people in the area were starting to panic. They gathered together and started casting a complex water barrier spell, gathering their sacred waters from the pools to protect themselves.

The incredibly dense Mists poured through the area like a flood.

The water churned like madness as the Mists penetrated deep below. A low roar could now be heard beneath the water and the Mist. It sounded like the suffering and howling of madness, of a man pushed beyond his limits. But at its core, there was also a broken and wild joy.

He really was going beyond his limits, the Mists slamming into him in endless waves. They didn't give him power, but carved out more and more innate potential. Any gain from this process was up to endurance, so he could only hang on to the limit of his capacity.

But he had no measure by which to compare. Nor did he have a need for comparison, he would only reach for the best foothold and dig in. He’d always enjoyed being tested, especially with zero expectations.

It was always a bit of a grim joy to crush expectation.

Boom boom Boom boom Boom boom; CrYahCuH

Spiritual Presence flooded the room like an ancient wyrm disturbed from its slumber, its horde of children a deathly and desiccated mess. Several backs in the room turned cold as the cracks widened. The air throughout the room shimmered, hidden Knights revealed to have been hiding throughout the room.

Their Shimmercloaks distorted the air around the Knights, casually bending the light in their vicinity.

A total of ten additional protectors that had been hidden throughout the room, watchful of those taking advantage of the influx of Mist.

The egg burst, the shattered pieces whipping through the room and embedding themselves into the walls, a few pieces stopped dead by the water barrier created by the Mages in the area.

Laughter filled the room, originating from within the lake. A human form now being held aloft by the Mist and directly assaulted. The redhead floating in the air was rapidly developing skin to match his shining crown, his eyes glowing green as the Mist continued to infuse his body.

The last of the waters evaporated, leaving nothing behind but Mist to pour into the Man held in the crater below.

This was the direct, traditional, and normal baptism of the Mist. You just let in as much as you could, and named yourself for the first time. The Egg was a filter and a gift to Dragonkind, and he'd harvested much from it. Now he meant to harvest more. Now he was tested directly.

He wouldn’t stand second to the potential of the dragon race, he wasn’t satisfied with it. It was the first bar now, so he would grasp yet more.

He would need every hint and advantage he could claw. He needed every scarp of power he could harvest, a seed of potential was growing within his mind that he would not let go.

A Universe had been inflicted upon him, and he would inflict himself upon it in turn.

The Mist continued to suffuse his body, filling up his every corner and expanding them farther and farther. He needed to go to the limit for the type of magic he planned to make his own. He shuddered and screamed, and ground and growled and howled his way through the pain.

He screamed his pain at the world, until it flinched against the grim ferocity of his determination. Yet the waves only continued to assault him with every greater force.

He kept howling and shouting, until the group below him started shouting helpful advice. It broke his attention from the overwhelming sensation of the hollowing reaming his soul empty.

"Just name yourself already! Do you want to die?" A low male voice yelled. One of the Mages.

Another more moderately pitched voice followed up with, "Don't try to be tough! Too much Mist can end up corrupting your nature! You can gain much, and lose everything, you won't even be you!" Another Mage, he could see them staring now. “We have limits for a reason!”

That was a good point though, he didn't know what the potential limits of this process were. But they might, and they might be looking at the limit right now. Begging him not to overstep that limit. He coughed as he tried to speak for the first time, cleared his throat and tried again.

"Does it matter what I name myself?" He choked out of his sore, irritated throat.

"Be short and to the point, longer names influence your nature more heavily, shorter ones are easy to defy. Flexibility is good." The First Mage said quickly.

"Don't be too intimidated about choosing a long name though!" The second added.

"Choose something that suits you, don't worry about what anyone else thinks!" This was a woman.

"Just go with your Guts and everything will work out fine!" The last Mage said, a larger brash sounding man.

Taken aback at the unusual deluge of information, he suddenly realized it was moot. The Mist forced you to speak your name, if you went beyond its limits. It wasn't his will or his voice, but it was spoken with him as the origin and clear designation.

"Pr-"

“No!”

He spat, he clamped down totally and completely. “I’m calling your bluff.” His mind growled, his body groaned, his muscles vibrated, his bones creaked. Despite all of that, he’d just been through a hell of sensation much worse.

In this moment, his wish was Defiance. He did not want to be compelled anymore! He would not be locked in again, he refused to be pathed or compelled. This world was attempting to define him in its webwork of lives and karma.

But this time he would not spend a lifetime attempting to fulfill duty or expectation. He would not be confused, he would not be diverted.

The Mists continued, compressed. They went beyond the limit, and he knew he could practice the magic he wanted to practice. He knew he could achieve what he desired, if only he could live long enough to accomplish it.

But he could still take it, he could still take more! More! More!

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” He screamed joyfully, “What’s a little insanity now?”

He’d always been a tough little bastard, some traits carried well.

“Are you INSANE?!” A sourceless voice and force screamed at him, blasting aside the Mists for a moment.

“Yes, absolutely!” He continued laughing, “We just covered that!”

The Mists compressed into Waters, and continued flooding into his body at an ever more violent pace. As they penetrated his body, they swept through him to the core of his soul. Moments ago they’d been gouging out the root of something like an anchor, but now the anchor remained unfilled.

The hollow was empty, Mana would not fall into it. Couldn’t touch it. Instead the deluge continued to be forced into his body, and as it did his stature was compressed. Now just short of six feet, now five ten. He lost another inch, his body compressed farther.

His stature and state had now changed twice since his death, but grim though the pressure and pain might be. And it was considerable. Still, he felt more at home as a stocky devil than a lanky one. He smirked through the painful rictus his face had become.

“What now?!” He howled at the sky.

With a peal of thunder, the roof of the subterranean lake evaporated. All the waters vanished in an instant, the bolt of lightning falling upon him sought to annihilate him to his very core. And yet, he continued to stand under it still!

The lightning blazed brighter, the stone under his feet turning molten. He could feel the heat lifting the atmosphere around him. The force of the lightning pushed him deeper and deeper into the ground, like a hammer from the heavens trying to send him into his grave.

He endured, he welcomed the pain. The change, the chance. The fight. The challenge. He wanted to test, redefine and rediscover his limits again. Here he discovered that he could resist, that he could refuse. That made him something new and dangerous to those now witness to the spectacle.

“Thank you!” He screamed into the beam of lightning, “What else you got?”

The beam suddenly cut off.

A light began to brighten the sky, and the Mists cleared from the whole of the city. Forget the grounds, suddenly there was no Mist for thousands of miles. If this had been Earth, Magic would’ve momentarily vanished from the world.

“Oh my Goddess, please save us. Please protect and deliver us from the insanity and chaos that has taken our lives. Please, protect us from the light of evil.” A timid voice prayed. He looked over at the voice, spotting a young Elven man.

“Hey,” He said to the elf, “Give me your sword.”

Above them, the light grew brighter still. A Mist like light gathered in the sky, becoming a watery orb of intense light. The young elf just looked at him, “What are you going to do with a sword?” He shook his head. “We’re all going to die. Why didn’t you just bow out?”

“Hey,” He thumped his chest. “Listen. I didn’t come here to die, so give me your sword.”

The elf shook his head. “You should already be a monster. What would you do with a sword?” The elf said brokenly.

“Don’t you want to live?” He asked wryly.

The elf barked a short laugh, and practically ripped his belt off. “Take it!” The Elf said, throwing it sheath and all.

He caught it easily by the center, and swiftly flipped it to the hilt. “Thanks buddy. As payment for this favor, I will tell you two things.” He drew the sword, and raised it high. Looking oh so small before the giant orb of light that continued to gather above them.

“The nature of magic boils down to communication, comprehension, and compensation. The only problem you have, is what you communicate with.” The elf shook his head pitifully.

The orb began to fall. The brightness around it was a rainbow of scintillating lights, dazzling the world as it descended on an engine powered by a rain of chromatic light.

They were all about to die. He wanted to shut his eyes, but he couldn’t turn away from this baboon's ass and that twig facing down an astral being he couldn’t even understand.

“You’re going to die you know,” The elf said, “There’s no saving any of us from this. I’ve never even heard of this!”

“Ah well you’ll like the second thing then.”

“Break the cycles, weary the chains. Snap and Divide. Sever. Protect. Kill. In and out, living and dying. Flow. It cycles, unending. Endless. Defiance ends it, but nature diverts again. Ever ready, Limitless. Change marches, living is chaos. Exist. Arrest change. Protest. Nothing lasts forever.”

“First Saber Prime, Severence!”

The immense bomb of spiritual energy and Mana fell towards him, and the light of a sword strike flashed out. It streaked across the sky, driven upwards from the city's foundation and slammed into the bomb bearing down on them like a stone slapping into the surface of water.

“My name is Prime.” He said, “And I will not die again.”

The shattered chromatic orb of water mists slammed into the superheated bowl he was standing in at that moment, and everything exploded in a wall of white force that slammed everyone into the nearest wall.

Prime slammed into a blue ward, several curses trailing him through the air. He got it the worst, every iota of watermist slammed his body into a barrier and subjected him to intense pressure.

The wards bent like a bow, and then broke like glass. They shattered everywhere, though strangely without noise. Only a subtle pulse in the air announced his arrival to its resident.

With reduced violence, Prime flew through the room. A moment later he slammed into the surface of water, tumbling end over end without ceremony to a graceless halt.

He floated idly, naked and relaxed in the center of a sizable pool. Quietly pondering what to do, and why the room was warded when he’d slammed into its entrance.

He'd barely finished the thought when an impudent finger touched his forehead.

"And just what do you think you're doing, interrupting my bath? You've got insane courage trying to peep on me of all people." A very amused, very feminine, and very teasing voice said.

His eyes followed the finger up to the finer, pert, young and proud breasts of the Elf above him. They would've ceased there, were her face not a more beautiful visage than her breasts. Emerald eye's regarded him, holding a violet ember in their center replacing the pupil. She had a generous and proud nose and a slightly undersized mouth with beautiful, perfectly shaped lips.

She was so personally perfect to Prime, that he was immediately annoyed. His hostility combined with an unusual charm and each returned the other to neutrality, leaving him with an odd feeling. His frown combined with a thoughtful expression.

"If I was peeping then clearly I'd be peeping, but I was flying so clearly I was flying. And then I was crashing, so then I crashed. Now here I am." He muttered darkly, taking in her less than pleased yet clearly curious expression.

Clearly she wasn’t as amused as she sounded. She probably practiced.

"Now here you are," She said, "In the middle of my Estate, underground. In a secret area that only a select few know about. Would you care to explain how you got down here?"

Prime coughed, "Um, I was born here?" He tried experimentally. “Did you not hear or see anything that just happened?”

She returned a wry, exasperated look to him.

"I really was," Prime objected, "Just ask all those fine folks in the next room. They'll tell you I was born here!" He insisted brightly, then stopped. “Assuming they’re still alive.”

She frowned. "Being born here would make you a Monster. Or, something like one." She said, "So I should probably kill you. But I don't like killing if I don't have to, so how about this."

“Rude!” Prime injected. “How would being born here make me a monster? What the hell!”

She tapped her finger on his forehead, and a contract appeared in his mind. It wasn't some grand, convoluted or over-complicated thing. It essentially just said that he'd serve her, as personal compensation for violating her sanctity as a woman.

“S’cuse me?” He stood up, awash with clear water that was no guardian for his privacy. “I have not violated a damn thing, and I have no plans to.” He pretended to consider the situation for a few moments. He couldn’t really see a way out of this situation, so he promptly bolted for the exit. To hell with this, he wasn't getting tied down as someone's slave the moment he stepped into a new world.

Points for diplomacy!

What a stupid piece of magic!

"Wait a second you!" She shouted,

“Don’t want it, don’t need it! Didn’t ask for it! Goodbye!” Prime quipped over his shoulder.

"Sister, what's going-" Another voice began.

Unprepared, Prime bumped into another nude girl who'd apparently been resting next to the entrance. "No!" The voice behind him shouted as he fell on top of her, barely stopping himself from doing any damage. She reached up reflexively and palmed his chest to try to arrest his movement, and her mind slammed into his like a freight train.

She was so kind. She was kinder than anyone he could've ever known, anyone he would know, so gentle and charming and careful. Fierce when defending her friends but just so curious and loving at heart. Through the lens of her heart, she showered the world with insufferable affection.

Prime shook his head, snapping himself out of the connection. This girl, the little sister of the vision of beauty, was another little vision of beauty. This one is more on the cute side than the vivacious one. She’d withdrawn her hand, and was wearing a flushed expression.

“Hello Artoria.” He said flatly. “Did you know that’s rude?”

She was even closer to perfect. He shook his head again, trying to clear it. This many beautiful women, more beautiful than anything he'd even seen or imagined. This was just unfair, it was difficult to maintain steady nerves in this situation.

He felt as though he’d walked across the veil, and lived now in the Land of the Fair Folk. Despite all the things he’d been shown, these were still the most beautiful. They had a natural charisma that made the soul want for a desire to weep, and flood the world with appreciation and ardor.

Though in reality it was more like a land of the fool, this was a magical place. You could not take anything at face value here, this he’d learned to his immense shock many times over already. This was even more wild and unrestrained than those places with Great El.

He clamped down on both his shy impulse and his libido, giving both ladies a curt nod.

“It’s been a pleasure to meet both of you, I wish you an excellent evening.” Prime said. Without even climbing to his feet, he launched into a run.

A moment later he was flying through the exit.

“What’s an evening?” The taller beauty asked absently, as his red ass vanished from sight.

But by this point all the Knights were blocking the only earthly path to the exit. Naturally.

"Being born in the Mana, Monster. Demon. Submit now and be destroyed, or suffer pain untold before your end!"

“Oh come on!” Prime complained, “You saw me come out of the fucking egg! Cop some chill goddammit!”

Next to the group of Knights, a group of what Prime assumed to be mages were gathered. Younger mages by the looks, and all Elves. He wondered where in the Universe, and in which Elven Kingdom he'd found himself in. The elf he’d technically disarmed was with them.

Bugger.

Elves were more secretive than Mankind or Beatkin or Monstermen, or most other sentient races really. They were quite long-lived, so they tended to value their privacy more. They had so much more time to amass knowledge, art, history, and fortune.

It naturally made them targets of other jealous people. They did an excellent job of maintaining a national level of peace, most of the time. But individuals were unpredictable elements of chaos to them. Treating him like a monster in this situation wasn’t actually that surprising.

Still hurt his feelings though.

Swords and spells both were leveled at him. Looked like the sympathy from the mages was all used up, and they were on board with the whole 'slaughter him and maybe worry later' idea. Prime himself wasn't feeling on board with that line of thought.

"Not going to start feeling very cooperative if you're calling me things like that," Prime muttered, shifting his position slightly. He kept the whole group to his right, and used a gesture to cast nothing with his left hand behind his back.

Nothing should've been a speed buff. Naturally, it did nothing. Having just had his natural potential filled, or emptied? Confusing subject. Regardless, he was completely tapped out. He had Mana, but it was so little compared to his potential reserves now, that he just didn't have the finesse to grab the 'tiny amount' he had left over.

"We recommend you surrender, you cannot defeat the Royal Eldras of Raenine!" Another knight shouted.

"Certainly not bare-arsed and arm-less, I'll give you that." Prime pointed out baldly.

“Where did my sword go?” The first Elven mage asked.

"Silence demon beast! None of those who feed on the Ma need weapons made by man!"

“Why did you make that assumption?” Prime stressed.

"When did you make that assumption?" A young voice asked.

Everyone paused.

That most recent entry was the youngest sister. Her voice was light and low, like a song, he'd just noticed. The purple embers looking out of her emerald eyes were quite striking as well, combined with her stark silver hair she seemed so pure and fragile, but also intense and inquisitive. He broke eye contact with difficulty, feeling a fairly intense urge to leave again.

The male Elves spread throughout the room were also quite beautiful, and he was indeed having some trouble manifesting a sense of hostility even whilst under threat. But the two girls were something else entirely. They instilled a strange sense of desire for powerlessness. They made Prime uncomfortable, his skin practically crawled. The state was foreign to everything he was.

"I'm sorry my Lady?"

"Why do you assume he feeds on Mana?" She asked, "As far as I've seen this is a standard attunement process, though aided with tools I've never heard of before. I was sure Sister could confirm it, so I wanted to ask her. He made it there before I did though." She said with apparent amusement.

Unlike Prime, she was now clothed, so much more capable of keeping her bearing.

It seemed her sister was much less inhibited. Regardless she was definitely lying, though Prime could imagine why. He’d taken a little dip inside of her mind after all.

He imagined that the reverse was also true. He pursed his lips thinly, wondering exactly how much she might comprehend about someone like him.

Prime could barely comprehend himself.

"Anyways," She said, waving her hand dismissively, "Let us keep this discussion civil instead of tense. What with sister wanting to enslave him and you wanting to kill him, it’s no wonder he's tense and ready to fight or flee."

"Submit!" Another one of the Knights injected harshly. Prime just cast the guard an enraged look. The back of his mind manufactured an image of booting him in the chest, and he mastered a very real urge to follow through on the idea.

Well perhaps hostility might be hard, but impulse certainly wasn’t that difficult.

The guard plopped onto the ground like he'd just seen the most terrifying vision in his life. He was suddenly covered in sweat and breathing heavily.

The other Knights looked over their fellow curiously, then eyed Prime suspiciously again. They closed ranks on him. The Little Sister Artoria again decided to get in the way, placing herself between him and the Knights.

"Again," She said, "Let us go inside and discuss this civilly." She insisted.

"He's neither dragon nor demon, nor denizen of the deep. Let us go discuss this over tea and with time instead of steel and naked threat.." She adopted folded hand posture, and mock submissively added, "Please."

This was apparently more than enough to make the Knights feel discomforted, and they lowered their weapons. Which was nice as he didn't have any. The sword he’d previously been using had evaporated with his strike against the chromatic bomb.

Would've appreciated some. Shame he didn't get talons or something. Wasn’t sure he was onboard with the red motif. Definitely wasn’t actually, he didn’t feel much like himself at the moment. Though maybe it was just something like a sunburn.

Little Sister then glued herself to his arm, heavily distracting and impairing his thinking organ. "Let us go!" She said, in her determined, cute little song voice.

He sighed.

Good cheer was harder to resist than iron and fire.

“I really admire your resolve,” Prime stated blithely, “But I am still naked.”