IN·ICTV·OCVLI

Chapters

Unfortunate Development
EGO·SVM·QVI·SVM
CONDEMNANT·QVOD·NON·INTELLEGVNT
EX·DVRIS·GLORIA
LVCE·ABSENTE·TENEBRÆ·VINCVNT

Unfortunate Development

I pulled the lever back and heard a clack as gears readjusted and the loud hiss of steam released into the pressurised cabin. It would have burnt me had I not worn my porcelain-armoured gauntlet. The ceramic protected my scarred hand from the searing vapour for the quintillionth time this month. Sadly, it didn't have those lasers or plasma things the construction and mining engineers got. If only.

I took the throttle and pulled it back slightly after releasing the hydraulic brake, the vehicle lurching forward as the plasma thrusters fired up slowly. For the first time in forty-five minutes, the train was moving.

My body shook lightly in the shifting of the locomotive as it aligned correctly with the launching tunnel, bringing us to speed to send us as fast as a bullet into the void, to meet with the cargo train. It was lesser-known that trains were not sent at once, where the wagons were aligned for transport in the Empyrean before the arrival of the legendary Stellar Engines.

I exhaled, and out came the wispy cloud of condensation from the cooled atmospheric chamber. With this, I lay back into the synthetic leather of the operator's seat before giving a thumb's up to my cabin partner, who didn't even bother to look at me as I did the most satisfying work in the Empyrean. I lean further into the seat, which groans as it flexes under my lighter weight, stretching out and letting me relax.

'Space, if only I could show Chance back home,' I looked out the window panes, filled with holograms and data and all the nonsense of a technician. All I care about is the little circle in the middle of the glass---a cursor or a target, if you will---which highlights in an array of colour when I'm on target. It was the most satisfying blue, which told me my trajectory was satisfactory.

To reaffirm this, I look out the side windows, watching the launch tunnel begin to slip by faster and faster, me leaning forward and pulling the throttle lever closer to myself, smoothly riding out of the Tube and towards the upper atmosphere. A good and calming few minutes, imagining the kilometres of train wagon and carriage dragging behind like a snake, slithering from a hole inside the newly colonised world, full of all it has mined and grown to go on a direct route to the Centre of All Things---Sagittarius Sector. The heart of all manufacturing, close to the core of the galaxy.

Though it didn't matter to me---I cared not about the military-industrial complex nor any single thing in the galactic centre. It wasn't my business, as ecstatic as I was to research about it in my off-time. My job was so much more fun---driving some of the most complex vehicles in the known universe across all of space and time, flying through portals in alternate realms and willing the fabric of reality to the whim of all Mankind. To say humans have done nothing important is to say we haven't realised the impossible. It was so beautiful.

By now, I forgot we already left the colonised Rimworld, sitting up from my dreamy stupor to see it one last time, leaning in my chair and craning my neck to look out the back of the cab---the hologram in the window shown a clear view of the train, every wagon and carriage for kilometres. And at the very end of that train was a massive world coated in glistening ocean, reflecting the crimson rays of a dwarf star. Scattered across it were patches of archipelago and continents coated in black and violet plant life, outlined by beaches of silver and white. Even from here, you can just imagine how beautiful a world must be in eternal dawn. The blue and silver wagons streaking like a meteor's tail with clouds of cooled plasma and dust surrounding it.

I loved my job. It's all I've ever wanted to do. To see the universe by being in the most important aspect of the logistics network. My dreams realised in minimalism, and living paycheque-to-paycheque was no more, lost to the fringes of abandoned memory inside my distant subconscious and lost Ego---a time I've moved on from long ago.

I returned to the command dash, pushing forward that lever again, slowing our engine to a cruising speed. There was no rush---we were so ahead of schedule, I am afraid if we go faster we may be penalised.

"Imminent collision with debris field. Please attach seatbelts and initiate Fourth Protocol. Please Stand-by," the automated Emergency Alert System initiated klaxons, the cabin filled with bright red like from a rotating filament in the ceiling, all other lights deactivated and the holographic panes of glass lit up with concisely stated instructions.

My instincts kicked in---this is protocol. I need to be aware and I need to be precise.

I breathed hard and fast, my heart from my chest leaping into my skull and my ears ring with the erratic sounds only equated to distorted and enraged screaming.

I slammed the throttle forward, killing the thrust and putting it in reverse, pulling the hydraulic brake slowly backwards as my companion engineer moved with mechanical accuracy.

That was, of course, until his head slammed into the metal panels in front of him and he collapsed onto the floor.

The cabin lurched, I pushed the throttle harder, hoping I could slow down faster as I heard the screeching and explosive slamming of the debris in space against the stellar engine.

I would have been like my partner had I not supported myself against the throttle and the emergency hydraulic brake.

But it wasn't enough.

The hollow screens surrounding me glared in flashing crimson and yellow, blinking pale blue text and screaming alerts of a 'loss of trajectory' and 'target lost'.

I tried to pull on the manual control, getting the large pad from the wall of levers and buttons and screens, trying to regain control, pulling back and to the left gently as the nose of the locomotive dipped below the necessary goal.

It was so fast, and I was so confused.

Another impact, the engine lurches forward, the world goes white as I make acquaintance with the steel piping in the wall of controls.

I was awake again in what felt like a second later.

I push the throttle, looking over at my partner operator as I look through holographic interfaces, the expanse about the engine was empty and without a target, klaxons screaming in the dead air of the whole situation.

I readjust and focus our course, picking up static through the vox speaker. I thought I heard a voice in it, but I can't understand it.

I need to get to the Leap station, I can't go back.

My partner was on the floor, my feet coated in the blood that was thrown about the textured gravity plates that made up the bottom of the cabin. His skull drooled of the ichor, and I hitched my breathing.

He's okay, I'll make it.

The throttle felt harder to move than before, and even in my aching bones could I feel its resistance.

But I looked through the command windows and saw the Station a few metres ahead, something sounding akin to screaming through the speakers echoing through the cabin, but it was too close to the klaxon to even comprehend it. Or maybe I had a concussion.

Interceptors screaming with chaff beside the station's docking bay, my trajectory was off just a millimetre, a single molecule. A Planck length.

And I was a fraction of a second too slow.

The air was still, and all I could feel was searing pain, my body being torn apart. The klaxon finally stopped.

"Emergency, Emergency. Protocol of The Ninth, initiate The Ninth, immediately. Prepare for impact, Singularity detected. Space have mercy on your souls."

For a moment I thought I was being reborn, my body screaming as it came into the world. But then I opened my eyes as something warm crossed my face. I blinked fast, trying to get it out of my eyes. I put my hands down into the gore, coagulated and like slime on the floor---a thin layer of blood that was now coating one side of my body and the clothes associated. I also felt sand.

My hand slipped, I fall into the puddle again, smearing it across my face and clothes again as I hit the floor once more, this time with a disgusting slick sound. I panic, hiring out, scrambling to the hatch and gripping the mechanical wheel, pulling and twisting with all the force as the sound of hissing fills my ears. Quickly, the chamber repressurises, emptying it of all air into a vacuum for a split second before the door opens outside, sucking in the outdoors with an intensity to throw any man.

I need to get this blood off of me.

I climb out and hie to the sea, the distant ocean-scape at the edge of this expansive desert welcoming me as I dive into it, slamming into the soaked sand. I let waves lap at my bloodstained flesh, at my hardened, ruined uniform. My body turned over, I look into the clear sky, the burning midday sun glinting all around me and stinging my retinas. Soon enough, the burning in my eyes is the least of my worries.

My breathing hitches and my vision fades, coughing hard and long, lifting my free right hand and spewing more blood.

"It never ends, does it ?" and it ended, and out I went; off like a light.

EGO·SVM·QVI·SVM

I never quite understood the fascination of archaic Human Gods and their billions-large pantheon, but I imagine Reality as a gorgeous creature; An angelic creature beyond comprehension, sitting on a throne of galaxies and emplaced before all life of the universe, upon which rested the soul of her Kingdom.

I like to imagine that the Universe is more akin to the Empyrean Heaven, especially in comparison to the richer folk and their palladium squabbles, the elitist functions across the international border. It is interesting to find that while Humanity begs for Heaven-on-Earth, they forget they are emplaced in one such Empyrean spanning the entirety of known Reality. Archaic terms like 'Space', 'Void', or 'The Expanse' are still often resurfacing in ecclesiastic dialect, which is what drew me to think that heaven is the Universe itself---it just makes you see how expansive such ideas are among the Proletariat when every single Human understands what you mean by 'Empyrean'.

Besides that, what else but Heaven can one call the most gorgeous things in all of Creation? No man can merely make a world so beautiful as Agarran the Solar Jungle with its pale plant life under a blinding bright sun, or the ocean worlds we all so beg and envy to enjoy, such as the Rimworld I left this day prior.

I also like to hope that I won't be stranded for so long in this alien world.

I sit here beside the Stellar Engine, having dug a hole in the sand and placed a sheet of aluminium debris as a roof to prevent myself from being so directly hit by wind and sun. I had been roughly and vaguely 'enjoying' my time here. Wasn't so much to keep track of anymore and all I can hope is that where I landed was on some colony of a kind, and I was hopefully spotted and rescued. That's how it should be, though---most places in the galaxy were conquered and inhabited, minus the Final Frontier on the southern sector, which was supposedly where mankind originated from.

It was irrelevant now, and as I've been praying to whatever mother of Reality there was, I've only recently concluded that I should not sit idly beside the crash site.

I lift myself and crawl from the foxhole I dug, returning to the inside of my Stellar Engine's cabin. The blood on the floor from my late companion brought to mind some disturbing urges, and I almost bent down to taste the dried ichor that paints the floor in morbidly beautiful red. But I turned away from the mess out of respect, as one should. Though I'm not sure what to do with the body---I never seemed to feel interested in death. At least, I never pondered on it.

I quickly returned to my mind and thought for a second to recall my presence: Ah yes, a map.

Moving to the dashboard, I found the heavily damaged slab of silicon and ceramic, looking sideways at my porcelain gauntlet. Perhaps it may be useful to me here in this desert---the thing is supposed to have extra features, which I forgot about long ago. I'll figure out what it does when the time comes. But, for now, the sound of metal and ceramic clanging and clicking as it formed to the shape of my hand and locked around my wrist struck through the eerily silent air. It was the loudest thing to occur since I pushed the slat of debris against the train to make for cover.

But now with my left hand fully encased in porcelain and metal, I felt just slightly safer. I reach into an extra compartment beneath the main control dash, which reminded me much of going under my desk back in grade school, and pulled a self-assembling firearm and put it under the wrist of my gauntlet. It was an interesting bit, I knew that it was compatible with most small firearms such as this self-assembling pistol. It was favoured for such versatility in what I could remember of the ancient intelligence sectors.

I felt almost complete, now, minus my one henchman which I knew so little about. It wasn't so much painful to lose the stranger, I tried being nice before launch from the ocean Rimworld, but he seemed to have a disdain for me. I walked around the poor soul's body---quite gorgeous might I add, he was a prime-condition Canine Colonist---and I jumped from the hatchway, landing in the soft sand that was stretching for kilometres out, besides the ocean that was a few hundred feet from the head of the Stellar Engine.

I stumbled in the ocean of white and looked down into the data-slate in my right hand with squinted eyes---the glint of the sun burning my retinas as I resumed my shade against the Engine. Looking at it, it presented a simple compass, because that was all it could do at best, and now it was up to me to determine the space between myself and wherever I was going.

There was a smaller arrow in the top right of the screen and several others in a column that were each labelled with points of interest. Of course, the one at the top was the highest priority---It was labelled 'Wagon 1512'. It was a technical haul, some stuff being returned to society because the colonists no longer required it---a method in which Colonies made a few more bucks by selling off colonisation equipment at prices totalling the cost of the trip itself. Of course, those costs were low, and the people colonising made major profits from this method.

It was interesting to know the data slate was pointing that specific wagon out---the exact distance was unknown, however. As far as I knew, the most important thing I could need was on the other side of the world. The distance across a sphere is much farther than direct routes, which was obvious and common. However, the experience of doing so on foot was long lost; Even the cheapest colonies possessed flight.

But much to my dismay, I did not possess such an aircraft. I possessed a gauntlet, a partially functional Stellar Engine, a dead body and maybe some food.

Oh, right. I still needed to eat.

My mind moved on, my legs dragging me to the booster coach and finding myself digging through the emergency compartment built into the side of the engine---the booster coach was a spare engine in case the primary Stellar Engine ran into issues, which effectively made it a modular articulating locomotive. Such an exciting device, so sad that neither thing fared well enough in the crash. I couldn't even recall the last time I had to ignite the booster engine. It's just an aesthetic at this point.

I pulled stuff out of the side of the compartment built into the engine, taking out survival kits with physical text so old and untouched that they were all illegible. The only thing I could even consider was the small fabrication device held at the back of the chamber---one of the first of its kind, but then again all of these Stellar Engines were old as the human race could remember.

Pulling out this fabricator, I gripped it tightly with my gauntlet and initiating another click, locking it somehow to my porcelain hand, before the lighter-sized device morphed into the rest of my mechanical glove. I had to admit, it was pretty cool. The only time I ever really used the storage feature was back on a delivery to an Ecumenopolis; It was really useful in hiding a modular firearm, especially rifles or scatterguns when you used the extended form of the gauntlet.

It took me a moment of thought and made me wish I had one of those full-arm devices, much like the one on my wrist. I might need them here, to protect myself in this world. Who knew what creature resided in the very earth under my feet?

I looked in the reflective metal that coated the side of the booster engine, the paint scraped away by sheer heat and friction with sand, creating a weirdly smooth mirror. I saw myself for the first time in a long time, shutting the compartment door for the survival compartment. I left all the rotting pamphlets on the sand as I registered what must be me.

I saw plain white. Skin so smooth and pure one could think nothing but the future we so dangerously lived in. Flesh so pale it made the sands dark, an empty face with mandibles and a maw of teeth with large incisors---I opened my mouth and watched as the three members split into a hollow abyss, pulling the clawed flesh to check my lips. My featureless face, my hairless body.

I looked at my legs and was reminded of avians.

What am I?

"First-degree sapient entity, iteration nought-nought-prime. Progenitor subject, human transplant in Bioengineered Wetware Interfacing Platform. Commission Program, link with database non-functioning, please reconnect with primary Mainframe," my voice was not my own, cast out in a way that seemed programmed into my mind. I looked at the reflection again to find I had stood at attention.

I stepped back in shock. It was but sunrise a moment ago, and now upon me was the setting of it, that celestial flame. How long have I been standing here? My joints popping and crackling, like I had been without motion for hours, as I moved them and flexed my clawed hand and glanced at the peculiar porcelain gauntlet that stretched up to my elbow.

Space, what happened? What have I to stand here for hours unknowing without a pang of hunger in my stomach nor the dry of thirst from dehydration? I stumbled again, turning, grabbing quickly the data slate which was the compass, and I ran away from my stellar engine. That craft that had so seemingly entrapped me for the entire daylight cycle.

As the sand billowed from my sprint, I glanced towards the wreckage behind me, derelict in my duty to protect it and to return my freight to society as a whole. I darted through it all and it felt almost instant, as the sands turn to earth and the earth turns to life and the life turns to the forest---or jungle, perhaps, was its name?

Unsure of the difference between a forest and a jungle, I entered it with haste, hie to its depths as I were to train my sights on finding that debris having gone some few kilometres from the primary crash site. Though, that changed as I came to and blinked, recollecting myself in my horror at what I had seen in that reflection.

This entire time, I was even less than human. How could I have never seen it? Who am I? What am I? It was a mirror made of steel and metal, but yet that reflection was not my own, where my only memory was of plain blue eyes staring me down.

Skidding to a stop, my talons skidding into the earth and digging their pits as the peter and roots help me catch myself from my sprint. I did not breathe heavily as one would expect. I was complete with my breath, and I had seemingly lost no energy in my run so far away. It scared me so much more that I was a perfect machine.

At that moment, I fell to my knees and cried.

Looking upon those claws I put on my face, of which I saw were flesh, were not flesh. They were fake, they were made of porcelain plates so slightly out of place to be unnoticeably different from the flesh across my body. I felt them, cold as Sin, and realised I was less alive than before. My porcelain gauntlet on my left hand shifted slightly, and I only then could not feel what they touched, but instead felt a tingling sensation that became more intense as they pressed into things.

My face was cold with my weeping, my claws reaching again to the earth below me and burying themselves in it, dragging my fingers up and down in the dirt of leaf, twig, and unknown ground. I looked and lifted my palms, with which they let slip the silty filth between their slick joints. I turned my palm over, putting it back onto the ground and standing to my feet.

I was a man. I am a man. I am Human. I must be, I have to be. Why can't I remember? My pale flesh is soft of skin, my hands in their kindred, my eyes have whites and a blue I solely recognise as mine own. My voice.

"My name is Franziskus Amadeus Ivanova. Franziskus Amadeus Ivanova. I am Franzis. Franz. My name..."

I understood it, a foreign accent made me confused as I came to. What was it? What is that sound? I remember... Polski. I remember the facility in which I entered and found myself bearing witness to experimental technologies. Things of imaginative quality, things from storybooks in my time.

My time? I am ahead of myself.

"The site. I must reach my target. Wagon fifteen-twelve," I came to once again, pushing myself on a tree, watching my legs flex and complex muscles move beneath my vulnerable, naked flesh. My mortal form.

It was cold, here.

I walked forward, lifting one foot and placing it in the earth once more, my digits flexing as it moved. I could not control them so much as my legs controlled them. They flexed shut when I lifted my legs and they opened across the ground as I watched them move. How had I never noticed this?

I looked forwards, walking, moving finally with caution and wary to keep my wit. I had but a moment's notice if any predator caught me alone. I needed my firearm.

I lifted my gauntlet, the whir of servos and actuators the only sound from it, then clicking as I turned over my wrist and flexed to cycle my compact pistol. It reconstructed the object to its full unfolded form. A simple tool, utilising solid projectiles and a chemical cartridge to propel it. A fatal tool, albeit, though used rarely by the likes of me.

And yet, I could not confirm what exactly the likes of myself were.

It resting, then, in my grasp, pulling back piece on the action to show a cartridge in the chamber. It was reflexive, even if I knew not the extent of its use.

"I pray," spoke me unto the silence around me, "my words do not fall upon deaf ears, and to those whom I cross pale not before myself and rest then into the earth. May this weapon not be used in malice, but in survival, and may those who stand before it bow to the progeny of the Universe."

I put the weapon with my other hand, aiming it down and just in front of my footstep. I was taught this, I am sure. But that was not the forefront of my thoughts.

Stepping again forward I felt a breeze of air, a shadow glance over me, and realise I had not gone unheard after all.

I lift my weapon and hunker into a crouch, walking long strides and aiming up at where the shadow emanated form. As I glance about, I see distant metal debris, with which to cause my glance upon my data slate and see my indicator sway when I move.

'I am close,' my thought floating there as I watch a winged thing come to the ground but some metres fore. It was with feathers and with an upright posture. As alien as I was to myself, it covered in feathery plumes of snow-white and earthy brown. It had yellow across its face, a jutting object. A beak, if I recall it, and which were notable on avians. It was unlike myself to draw such conclusions, but I couldn't help spotting intellect in it, as it then spake to another one of its kind.

I studied it closely, watched as they seemed to convey something to the other and moved on. Oddly enough, they possessed only melee weapons at first sight, though they passed off as civilised with armour. Leather skirts with studs and plate-mail, helmets that opened clearly to their faces and those gold beaks. They were very decorative, and I could align a sense of hierarchy between them due to slight alterations in their armour. One wore a crest of sorts along the spine of their helm, yet the other did not.

I lowered my firearm, their plate and mail were ancient in their pattern, and I could not label it accurately. It was, however, not clearly in any re-enactment.

After they made off, I lifted my data-slate to check where I was going, and then buried it into the tree I hid behind and covered it in brush and foliage from my feet. I turned towards where my target was and immediately made my way. I had no concept of what to expect here, but I knew there had to be something of some value, as indicated by my data slate. There was no real reason not to have followed it, after all.

Moving through the brush and keeping my eyes open to all of the surrounding, I felt no more comfort. As though all things were not right.

I saw nothing amongst the wreckage, there was but the sixteen-metre long wagon split in two on its side with technology strewn about the site. I thought nothing of it since it was expected it wouldn't have survived so well, but all the debris everywhere gave some clue to how well anything valuable could fare. Shrapnel was dug deep into the earth, remnants of large and heavy machinery were skewered into trees. Black splashes of ashes and coals all around spoke a story of a short burn gone a good time ago.

I got closer, standing up and hurrying off to gather resources---I immediately hunted for the security kits that were originally being transported with the colony surplus. If I could find one, I may be able to reassemble a rifle and get a small ammunition fabricator. Then, maybe, I could expect to survive on a much more secure note. Or maybe have a higher chance of shooting myself in the foot. Even then, I would be safer with a hole in my foot and a gun in my hand than I would be running away from flying indigenous species.

Of course, I found no such ammunition fabricator, but I did find a semi-automatic ballistic rifle. Whatever it was called, it was now going to be called my best friend.

Picking it up, shouldering it and it adjusting to my shoulder and my grip to be perfectly ergonomic, I grabbed ammunitions from around me and stuck them along my gauntlet, where it stuck via magnets beneath the porcelain. I loaded one of the magazines into the rifle, pulling the lever on the side and ripping it back, echoing into the surprisingly silent forest with a gloriously resounding clack. Space, mercy me, I have found an angel.

I threw the lever for the weapon's safety to make sure it worked, leaving it on safety, and lowered the barrel. It was an intimidating tool of protection, advertised as so much more than the ever-versatile hand weapon I always used. Now, I could guarantee my protection with solid titanium and a flash of light. Compared to the industrial-appearing object I now possessed, I turned to view the surrounding tree line, of fallen wood and lifted earth.

I grabbed one of the only unburnt uniforms, putting it on quickly. As once I was pale, I was now hidden in a smoky blue digital camouflage. I entertained myself with body armour, having a second to try and find plating to fit my legs with no luck, and only a polymer breastplate.

This will do.

However, it appears my presence was not as welcome here, as I was to these new tools.

I heard squawking from behind myself, turning to find myself at the faces of the avian-things from prior. They were looking directly at me this time, pointing spears made of wood and tipped with metal. I stood up fully, from a crouched position I had taken, and made myself known entirely. They reached closer with the spears coming nearer to my form before I made a lightning-fast swipe and disarmed them of their sole weapons. It was not as exciting as some may think or show in film, with me merely swinging my arm up and catching both their spears in hand, ripping them behind me. They stepped back, a glimpse of surprise in their human-like eyes, before coming to and doing what I could only assume as 'making demands'.

Still could not understand a single word they said. But, that was no matter.

This was my stuff now, and their throwing squawks and claws around as if to say for me to disarm myself and surrender. I've seen enough alien sci-fi movies and shows to know what they were doing. It was the same for every legion across the Empyrean.

"No," I simply stated, my entire maw split as I shared with them my thoughts, "my things," I pointed at my self with my thumb, and then swung my arm out to encompass the materiel behind me. I returned to attention and maintained my rifle to the ground. I would not point at them with my tool, as that was not how things were done. Instead, I turned my back to them for a moment, which was met immediately with a rejection of my declaration.

The avians were attempting to take me on, I could tell as they tried to dig their claws into my uniform. It didn't work, but they were also met with more resistance by my rocking forward, pulling them into the mass of slick metal and debris, which would hurt their fleshy feet, unlike my scaled talons. I turned around, them releasing me as they avoided stepping in the dangerous material, and I lifted my rifle to them directly. I quickly swung my arm out, slamming the one who looked more learned in the face with the metal stock of my rifle. This was met with a loud clang on their helmet.

It was a bit abrupt on my end because I failed to recognise that very important detail.

He was unaffected (I thought it was a he, his voice was masculine) and he returned to me with a swinging claw to my face. I was not trained in advanced combat, but I was trained in self-defence. I returned to him with a block, lifting my armoured left fist to catch his swing, locking his arm into a grip and throwing him into the ground. I would not fire my weapon.

The other one was also on me, trying to throw a kick at my legs and possible break my ankles, or at least trip me. It was not successful, because he was very ill-educated in combat. I dismissed him with an elbow into the face, and he stumbled back with a crack along his beak, bleeding and passing out. I did not linger on it so much, returning to the one who was more of a threat.

He was on the ground, so I put a weapon towards him and spake unto him, "Fear not, man or beast, I shall mercy you. Your kind will suffer no loss today but suffer only injury. Smite me and---" I was quickly interrupted by his attempt to disarm me.

A loud crack filled the air. A bang; an explosion. My rifle flashed, and so did the life in the perpetrator's eyes.

I grimaced in frustration, screaming angrily as I turned to the other avian. I fired a crack again, ripping a shot in the dirt and the once-unconscious foe stood and flew away, blood splattering me gently in his escape. I felt nothing in this alien's death but anger in that was what I had to resort to. Why would he not just stop? He luckily passed in what appears to be a peaceful manner.

But now, a life was lost, and the aliens were going to put it on me. Perhaps they will tell the truth? That was ignored, then, as I heard distant calling alike to the alien's speech patterns, and an alert of many more such noises.

' I must leave' and I then left with haste.

I knew they would now look for me, as I detonated the wagon, which suddenly blasted into chunks and shrapnel through a chain-linked ammunition detonation. I'm surprised It all didn't burn off already. I will have to count how much ammunition I currently had, as there were now only eight magazines at my disposal, including the one in the rifle. This would perhaps not be so bad, as I can perhaps find another fabricator?

I would have to consider that at another time, seeing shadows cross above me and avians like before a crash to the sands in their armour, effectively surrounding me. Stopping and looking around myself, I estimated about fourteen.

They screeched at me again, their voices shrill and piercing.

"What are you saying?" I beg them, lowering my weapon and looking them past their spears and into their angry eyes. They felt so human, their eyes. Those eyes with whites and colourful rings about an emotional centre. Their brows furrowed, like my father and my mother and those among them. I felt anger surge through me.

I swept my rifle up, their screeching taught and hoarse, before they rushed me. Their spears cut me and sliced me, almost shredding me, but five suffered a fate worse than death as cracks of thunder echoed into the sunset. I felt steel and wood and flesh bash into my form, slamming their fists into my skull and their talons trying to rip my flesh. I am lucky the porcelain on my mechanical gauntlet would suffer no damage here.

Your Majesty of the Empyrean Kingdom, I welcome you.

For a moment, there was screaming, and once again I was met by the depths of my unconscious.

CONDEMNANT·QVOD·NON·INTELLEGVNT

What was of immediate notice, to me, was how these folk held themselves.

They seemed to stand with some great confidence and some sense of superiority to even their most equal, which I saw by Avians in exact armour and exact medallion as the other giving them low but angry-sounding tones.

I also deduced that their squawking was not their language, that was their calling. It appeared that they spoke in similar tongues as we did long ago, similar to what we would now call 'English', or something of that temperament. It was, by no means, similar to whatever language I spoke. I was never given a name for my own tongue, so I considered making one when I realised these peoples must also have a name for theirs.

Their language, also, had some similarities to known, living languages, which I was taught to me long ago in the ways of inferior Linguistics. It was not long before I learned the names of the Benefactors of my Captors. Perhaps their titles, as well, it seems some of them have similar parts of their names.

Though, while I spent my time sitting in my rather unfurnished cell, I felt somewhat dehumanised. Compared to modern standards, whatever may this prison be was rudimentary and rather confining. It was clearly not of Man's construction, being in no more similarity to a crate in which you put animals. But even the vilest beasts had more comforts than I.

It beheld nothing but a slab of stone with some drying plant matter laid across it; Some crude form of a bed, I think. And beside that was a small pot and some washing basin that constantly flowed with water. The cell was crudely maintained, the stone brick surrounding me and the earth beneath me shown me how little they do care for prisoners. This was, by no means, the worst cell, but I am glad to not have been passed behind what solid-grey door which sits at the far end of the Cell Block.

I was brought here in my unconsciousness, I knew, as I had set up from my 'bed' and first read my room.

They seemed to try and speak to me, and one seemed to be angry at me---perhaps he was the one who I shot at to let escape before my imprisonment? Whatever. They all were birds to me.

Sometimes they brought me food, while one or two birds with white long-coats followed and wrote down. I thought I saw them use paper, and their written language was some kind of rune or hieroglyph, which I found difficult to discern whichever it may be. I could not figure at all who these were, but I can only think with how they stalked every muscle-twitch I made in my luncheon and supper.

Oh, and of course. I saw how time passed, I counted the meals twice a day and watched the guards change for shifts. It appears I have been here at least a week, but I could not recall the difference between my collection and my awakening.

I attempted escape exactly once in this period when they shifted their roles and fed me supper. I recall exactly that they had swords and daggers, and they possessed gauntlets lesser than the one I wore upon my left hand. I could feel pity in them, their sad lives in such repetition in a world so primitive. They looked used to it and grown to it, with which I could not argue our differences. If I could understand and discern their culture, may I have been able to compare their level of intelligence to mine own.

I knew they tried to break into my gauntlet, as well. Though, they failed twice. Twice? I know, I was awake in one instance.

All they managed was to remove my ammunition for my rifle, but they never got my food fabricator nor my pistol. I would not use my pistol, because even as I had murdered their kind, they kept me alive and I had only to accept such hospitality in the face of such evil. I wish he had not so attacked me, trying to get me when I put him down and wished he concede. Regardless, what was done is done, and in memory, he lives eternally.

They had only just fed me supper for my fifth day awake, and I had returned to the slab of stone and grass which was my bed. I lay and pondered here, as the guards stood formidably beyond my pet cage with their back to me. I thought about when I had seen myself, and in it, I wished I had not seen me, yet I couldn't halt myself to wonder heinous things, such as: Why am I not a Man? Why has Reality so punished me? What in all of the Empyrean Heaven has created me?

I was a beast, and I myself an alien mind in an alien body with thoughts of mine that was wondered in a cage of flesh beyond comprehension. I stopped thinking and swore to it I would never think about them again, but the thoughts even haunted me to my dreams.

In the night, I dreamt.

In this dream, I felt cold, a surreal cosmic realm in which I flown through and created and destroyed with a sheer will. I felt cruel, as machines and creatures alike were built up and run-down again and again for infinity, as was the time in my head relative to Reality ten-fold.

In this dream, I crossed a being that I could not control, one I could not create nor destroy nor influence in my realm of death and rebirth, and in a cosmos of my purest creation, I sat with this alien, which I could not formulate with even the vaguest concepts in its anatomy.

The appearance it dawned was not one of any threat, but one of Regal stature. It stood with a posture that said it was learnt and with an aura of intellect that was not possessed by even the most sincerely dedicated of those in my living history, for as far as that went.

It was not tall, but it made up for it in the prompt seriousness stuck on a sombre face. A face equine-Esque, a muzzle upon a skull that was attached on a frail frame, laden with an attire akin to Lords and Ladies. It wore Pearls and gold and silver like those in the planetary governments and it held a tongue much like those diplomats and representatives shown on Holo-Screens and data slates across the galaxy.

It had a single white glove on its right hand, a dress of the midnight sky and a great length of hair that whispered in the winds and moulded into the constellations surrounding them and me. I remind you that such sights are magical, and they must be of creation beyond myself because such waving hair moved like it were upon gusts of breeze while we sat in my poor mimicry of the Empyrean Heaven.

It was beautiful, I will admit in incredulity. I understood, then, such a thing must be from a more ultra-cosmic realm. Nothing can permeate my dreams and remain untouched, it was impossible unless I believed it to be, which I did not. I believed I could destroy it, and feel the gratification of corrupting the purest in a realm that had no real consequence following it.

With this regal thing, I floated in the vacuum, basking in the radiation of a quintillion-trillion stars, when it suddenly passed to me in thoughts that I recognised not of my own.

"Thy mind ist incredulously vast, and with it, We spy intellect most greater than our comprehension," an ancient voice yet so impeccably youthful, "Consider, they who imprison thee art weaker than thy left arm---dost ye hearken our word? Thou, midst thy captors, could most easily hath an freedom so greater than whenst thee arrove, yet... thee hadst yet runneth? Thou hav'st yet flew and eschewn justice to the heretic-pandering Griffons?"

I understood them clearly, yet they sounded unlike any I have heard in the universe. Their voice was even less distinguishable than their form, their words foreign yet home-like; Neutral-like, as of a young man or young woman.

I was inclined to reply, in my utmost curiosity and in an urgency passed on with their tone of confusion.

"Only one has wronged me, and they spare my life for, what I must assume, is knowledge. These are Griffons, you say? As of the creatures long ago, in books as old as the stones of the universe themselves? Griffons, those half-bird half-cat things that were invented by the creators of democracy?" I looked at the creature, floating to the front, probing them mentally, analysing them as they analysed me, "Ah, I cannot read you. Why cannot I know the name of the thing I created in my own mind? Are you of my mind, or are they, those Griffons, probing my skull and you are their diplomat? Tell me, or I shall kill my self in this cosmic aether and we will not speak, and I will find for myself that of what you are,"

The thing did not respond for a moment, looking away from where I now hung. The stars about us were beautiful, in this dream.

Then without my consent, the very realm I controlled bent against my will as if I was no longer in a dream of mine, and we stood in a room in some distant land.

It was walled and floored of stone, roofed in oak and furnished much like they are in Arthurian legends and archaic texts of olden Mankind. Great bed of silk and the invading Thing stood in a balcony beyond a window. Below which was a kingdom, basking in their life. They looked much like this creature; Of equestrian anatomy, on two legs alike in appearance to deer, with a colour to their flesh or fur that was unique to each one. Some possessed wings and some possessed features like horns on their skulls. Some wore attire that shows marks upon their thighs that were also as unique as every star in the night sky.

"We bringst thee to our Chateau, of which we rule a land beneath scrutinising eyen, not unlike thy captors and their pandering benefactors. We are the Mistress of The Night, with which we rulest all of every nycthemeron and control the stars and satellites within all of Heaven," she transformed slightly, unfolding six great wings, two of which were small and hid her face, and another pair were great and large and covered her form, and another pair covered her hooves, "Our little Ponies call us their Majesty, The Hallowed One, Luna, Empress of all the Great Republic,"

Then she splayed her wings out to her sides, taking up the entirety of vision beyond the balcony we stood upon, and I was hidden in darkness, not unlike that of all of the Empyrean. As if I fell upon the Event Horizon of the infinite Singularities, and with it, I disappeared into a peacefulness akin to dying.

"Our dearest, I beg. Come to us. Come, so that thou willst not suffer forevermore, and thy soul may rest within our arms. Be'st warm with us, like thee are now, and thee may bow to our infinite and Eternal Throne," and those wings lifted from me to reveal the Eternal Night, her laying me upon the earth to see up at the Galaxy, it's swathes of stars and stardust painting like abstract pictures and drawings created before the earliest time I could recall.

In all its beauty I forgot this was a dream, and returned my eyes upon her, training in to her own eyes as I stayed on the ground and her standing high above me in regal confidence.

"Awaken, my Child, o' ye kindest One. Come, show us thyself in the Awoken Realm, and I will show you Greatness unlike you ever known before," to which my eyes shut and opened again to reveal my dank cell.

"Awaken! It is the day in which we rid you of misery, wicked Thing," the voice screeching, bringing me to see that it was one of these so-called Griffons who speaks to me. I banged on the bars with it's metal gauntlets, and I turned and sat up, awakening in full by the torchlight that emanated from the avian's claw.

EX·DVRIS·GLORIA

Author's Note

Everything you see means something. Everything you hear becomes something. Every action will have a reaction.

EX·DVRIS·GLORIA

My exact features were not particularly human to any standard eye. In fact, the concept of humanoid was so far away, that calling myself that would seem to disgrace the namesake.

I don't fondly recall my appearance from the reflection in the metal plates at the side of my train's booster engine, as it is vague. It is not what I pictured of myself at all, and that is what has caused me so much disgust and utmost confusion. The fact I have lived countless years without a single manner of recollection to my physical features is a feat that no living thing has possibly achieved any better than I.

As of last night, before the Creature ruminated in me the thoughts of inexcusable escape by brute force, I thought about myself. I tried to picture myself in myself and all I could picture was a young boy who was irregularly feminine. Big, greedy blue eyes had looked me back and saw to it that my very soul turned to mere information, and I realised those were my eyes. My eyes so hungry and abyssal in their cobalt that the power in a thousand stars could not feed it for all it was worth; Eyes that sought with an astounding curiosity so as that the question of Gods would turn into ones and zeroes and the concept of time and space became mathematical logic and electronic gateways.

I looked at this mirror of what I thought I was, and now that I am awake, I see myself in the reflection of my Washbasin. My face, at least.

It is the utmost bizarre thing---one living entity does not subsume another's consciousness, lest the information of the mind is transferred via flesh into flesh. That concept dawned on me that I may have been built from the ground up and that my being as a living thing may be man-made entirely. What else to explain my previously odd behaviour than that of a machine? It is highly unlikely. No living entity in my conscious memory spoke as of a computer and caused time to change so quickly one might assume a fast-forward in a recording.

But I digress. I am not human in my body, for in that reflection was indescribable horror. So much so it was as if it was out of the bottomless pits of mankind and torn from the front of an ancient script, pulled from the black pages of the Aged Necronomicon and out of the Oblivion in which wormholes break through the fabric of reality and build their tunnels.

I saw something great and pale, like an upright dragon, but my head was most long and a neck arching out of my spine, my head at the end of this trunk of hardened pale flesh, with which mandibles and a jaw sat, filled with numerous serrated teeth and tusk. My hands, I raised to look at, were counted eighteen digits, with nine on each hand. It felt like I had never seen it before but also as if it was the most familiar thing in existence. I knew the reflection in the washbasin was me, but the concept of me was as vague as consciousness and the state of biology itself. I could not find those computational logic gates worth of eyes in the reflection, but I could see it was me nonetheless.

With this, I quickly dismissed it as a moment of dissociation, seeing it as nothing but me being confused about my identity. This is me. I am this beast. This beast will escape and find answers from the Empress who calls herself Luna. I am this beast. My name is Franziskus Amadeus Ivanova.

As quickly as this, my captors returned and they ushered me to the gates of my cell, motioning me to come to them so that they may send me to my aforementioned doom. They had given me time to think about something, but I was unsure what of, for I have had no crimes. They had at once mentioned my sin of murdering their superiors. I was not finding it of any recollection in sin or evil but as a good for my self-defence in the preservation of my own life.

They stood at the entrance of my cell, awaiting my presence there almost forebodingly. I immediately schemed to destroy them. I began to approach them, and in turn preparing myself for their utmost destruction of at least removal from my path. I decided these guards will not let me by with ease, as they held clubs and batons in which they could bash me unconscious again. I must dispose of them swiftly.

My gauntlet shifted as I turned over my wrist, my left arm swinging back with my footsteps; but when I made it face-to-face with the guard at my cell's entrance, I swung my hand and its claws up into his face. He suffered terribly, the bird lost the entire top of his beak when I smashed it shut with the pale pseudo-fist. At that moment, the fine china that made up said piece of armour seemed more like titanium and steel, as no piece broke. Instead, fractals of cracks stretched across the plates on my fist, making what appeared to be a gorgeous floral pattern. I found that I will request custom plates from the Goddess who spoke to me prior.

The other guards assuming duty immediately made a move as blood came from the flesh at the beak of this now-unconscious avian. They met a similar fate, albeit more gruesome. Their faces had been broken in, and their skulls and been hatched like the very eggs they came from, split and terribly mangled with one singular, swift motion. One of which may never see the light of day again, if facial reconstruction surgery had yet to exist in this world, as I so assumed.

When I put down the last of these foes, there were four bodies on the ground. I turned my wrist over again, flicking my hand back and revealing my pistol, which I held in my palm before myself. I aimed it down as I went down this corridor, shifting into another hallway where there were no guards, but only a row of doors to other rooms or sections. Whatever it was, I hoped only that it was small.

Then they came.

Five down the hall, Most of them wielded spears, but some wielded swords instead. They came at me swiftly. The first was a swordsman, who was dismissed with a loud crack from a shot. A mist of pink flew from the back of his head. The next was a spearman who was dismissed by three shots: two in the chest and one in the leg. He fell in agony, holding himself on the ground and tripping the others. Two of the three tripped over the dying, while the last one jumped over them all. They were adamant; I will give them that.

The one that still stood met me with a jab at the pelvis before I could process the damage I had already caused.

He roared as he tried to jab me again, catching my body and almost running me through in one side of my abdomen, before I swiped my hand and grasped his spear in another of his lunges, quickly pulling it behind me and sending him into my open hand. When my hand reached him, my claws dug into his stomach, and my armoured hand grasped his back, bringing him into a hug.

I pulled him against me, whispering to him as I continued to shove my great, spindly claws deep into his abdomen, gripping onto his innards, pulling them out slowly like a loose string from the hem of a shirt.

"May our Goddess in her might bring thee peacefully into the Empyrean Heaven again. Blessed be the journey in nature's afterlife as it should have been in thine living hour," and he fell to his knees as if to bow to a throne before the ground slowly took in his ichor, "Space have mercy on your soul,"

I let him go and saw my bloodied hand. I flicked it to shake away the paint of war and continued my march to the Kingdom of Heaven which so powerfully called me in my dream-realm.

The ones who were lying on the ground in what appeared to be still fear, or an awaiting ambush, was turned into a carpet, for I was walking on them. Their bodies made the sounds of cracking and popping as my heels pressed into their necks and spines, their hellish screeching filling the hallway in what I could assume to be a call for help.

No such help came for them, and no such help would be able to fix them, to my knowledge.

The hall ended, and I found myself exposed to the open whispers of breeze; the light of evening burned brightly. It was beautiful, shadowing the world in long darkness but also shades of fiery orange and red. There was no-one outside, not for as far as I saw, minus flicks of shadow across the grounds.

I looked around myself to land my sights on a building just out of sight, the structure not being to any degree as gorgeous as the rest of the property.

The building, if I could call it so much, was pale and set up much like a triangular prism. It was apparently made of cloth, as I had come to touch it, before going inside. The cloth pavilion, if I could call it that, was filled with weird instruments not unlike old tools used on frontier worlds: simply constructed microscopes, manual tools, pieces of examination equipment I had no name for. Slats of glass magnified images in a way not much unlike a microscope, but it did it without the extra pieces. There were weird hieroglyphs on the slate, which reminded me of my data slate. Underneath it was a dissected round from my magazines, which I threw off the table and spilt into the dirt that made up the floor.

I could not and would not let these primitives know the functions of my weapons, nor their method of creation. These were unique to the peoples of the galaxy---I will not let primitives learn tools of war so more advanced than their flooring ability. They still walked on stone and dirt like in that of a low-phase colony, paths of worn earth the only identification of civilisation beyond the bizarre structures.

I quickly found the rest of my tools, which were dissected almost completely. I, of course, reassembled them and made sure the pieces of my tool were fast together. I shouldered it and found the analogue sight on the tool was slightly damaged, and I will have to hope precision is not in my foresight. I, as well, recollected my magazines from the research tent and put them to my arm. I took a small tool that appeared like a looking-glass into my grip and peered unto my own face. I was unable to recognise it, peering into my own face without comprehending what at all was peering back.

My claws grew shaken and the looking-glass trembled, I throwing it through the air and into the ground where it cracked and became embedded in the filth.

I heard a sound from outside, or rather the absence of such sound, and moved close to the flaps that made the entrance of the pavilion. Whatever it may be, I could not feel but unwelcome in this chamber. Rather, unwelcoming to whosoever stood beyond the thin cloth. I met the silence and listened deeply, my skin freezing in the cold air between the weird white plates across my body.

A screech resounded through the air and I opened the flap of the tent, prepared to pull the trigger, but was met by empty air.

I lowered my weapon before I felt a brush of wind, and then something struck me hard in the back. I fell into the dirt, a puff of dust as I landed and with it something on my back. It screamed out and wrapped hands about my neck, trying to pull me backwards without letting weight off me. As my back inverted, I attempted to resist, feeling the warmth on the side of my skull as if something were trying to tell me something.

"Wretched, pale Thing, have you no mercy for my soldiery? Have you no sparing hand when we show you kindness?" the voice was a hoarse whisper, I struggling against its grip and trying to writhe from out under it. I slowly caught hold of the ground with my feet, the talons on the digits catching some kind of root or hard surface beneath the dirt. I prepared to push.

I returned in my own tongue, but with a tone that it may understand.

A low, guttural voice, scratching at the back of the throat in growling and hissing, every noise sharp to the ears of all who listened. The language, as I have heard it described, was much like that of now-archaic German, just a lot more intense and a lot harder to understand and parse. The language was called 'Rhetoric of Mind' in the common tongue, but it was my mother tongue.

"Jklʒ-lʒ lʒj-hwʒk, Zʒ hw-mwʒ! Lʒ hwjʒ-Zʒ mwʒk-kʒwhlʒm-hʒkʒ!" my voice was not

Before my foe could even comprehend I actually spoke in a language, I shoved my feet. In doing so, I threw myself from under his weight, and him being confused in the mix of loud, guttural noise and quick motion. I used my feet to grip his shoulders in my talons, much like he had originally done with his significantly--weaker claws to my shoulders.

I did not sentence him to death, but I fired the rifle obnoxiously close to the side of his head. My body was twisting in ways it never had before to achieve this, but I can guarantee his ear will ring for aeons. And from this, he became immensely confused, which I used to sprint away into the depths of the forest, out of this bizarre place. I followed a path that, after a few weird turns, led me to some gate.

It was a rather tall one, being three times my height, along with the fencing made of stone and metal and wood that extended into the treelines at my left and right.

The reason I had not killed him was that I seemed to have awakened within that moment. I am not sure exactly why, but things seem suddenly clearer now than merely moments before.

This did not stop me from completely scaling the gate and sprinting off into the darkening forest, however. It was also, at this moment, that I realised exactly how fucked I was when it came to navigating through it. I ended up deciding that the forest was pretty much endless and at some point, I would find myself back in the desert or dead, though I hoped for the former.

After a few more moments, I almost forgot I was running, and through this forest, I had been going for what seems like no time at all; The daylight fell as my legs moved swiftly and I tore into the ground with talon and claw on all four like some rabid animal chasing after prey. I awoke from my stupor, again, and crashed as I became aware of it all, rolling on my side and stumbling back to my hands and feet.

I was unable to stand, it seems, as I had collapsed against one of these giant trees, and fell into a divet that sunk beneath the expanding root systems around me---much akin to a small, natural hut. I snuck into this pit, sealing off what I could by putting dirt around the holes and patches, just to create absolute darkness for myself.

And I stayed there.

I remained in this pit and within it, I tried to retain normality. I recessed into the abyss of my mind, to think and to dream.

LVCE·ABSENTE·TENEBRÆ·VINCVNT

They upon those shores were sat in their fearful zealotry, expelling from their forms the love for whom they made litany to. They in their winged-ness and their unfaltering behemoth forms, grotesquely beautiful as though like the destruction of civilised worlds into Singularities. They meandered and with their infinite eyes and casting glares, the dichotomous pair of things made me their entertainment. And I upon mine pedestal of stone, a pillar of ancient wooden debris from a time long prior of my life in this universe within my created Will. The embodiment of myself morphed as of the clays under the soil and their distant bodies towered above the eternal beaches with heights simultaneously outdoing galaxies but no more than a man.

I was forever and a minute from those ancient beings, whose form bent light and space and time around them in the dreamscape I so willingly inhabited. Their walking and staring at me were from the beach across the neck of this river. I have yet to make a motion for I merely am observing these untouchables in my mind.

I could not ponder why such beasts wink into my mind and bask in its abyss against my greatest efforts to deter them from such. I take it that I am more interesting than previously assumed---perhaps I know the running-down of some ancient temple, but they do not? Perhaps a code in my memories brings these Seekers here? Once more, I tell myself, there is no thought to bring that gives me any sense of reason to their presence.

Yet, like the Empress from my dreams last night, they are invincible to my thought and wish. Untouchables. These invaders of my mind break the rules of free thought.

I take shape, standing stiff at the height of a man.

The ocean melted and I took a step forward into the molten glass that made up the world beyond the sand, walking upon its burning mirror surface. The glass turns to ice---The cold felt better than the heat and I prefer frozen to molten. I did not feel cold, however.

The frozen ocean turned to a sea, the sea into a gulf, the gulf into a bay, the bay into an estuary, the estuary into a lake and the lake into a pond. Before another moment passed, the thousands of miles between me and the lumbering aliens became but a few metres. I was before them at the will of my mind.

"What are you? You beasts, in kindred with the thing who penetrated my mind. Are you phantasms likened to the previous visitor? To the untouchable of my own dreamscape?" the energy of my every word filled the air, causing it to rain. It felt like I was pelted by stones, my vision reduced to merely the distance between me and my Guests.

They looked at me in silence, their queer forms confusing and painful for the eyes. They hurt from bright light, but no light existed to see, like staring at them was equivalent to looking directly into the beam of a quasar. I looked at them regardless; No creature invades my Home.

It took me a second.

I stopped and looked around me, seeing the one thing I had so forgotten long ago. How many years has it been?

The skies painted in fiery shades of gold and molten iron, a black abyss screaming in glittering shades of matte and indigo. The galaxy spanned My sky, the ring of the universe echoed in my ears. The disc from a singularity consuming my star turned the Rosey sphere into a tailing comet thousand-times larger than my home. I looked down to the quartz sand, the silvery and pale dust beneath my talons was so fine and lined a forest of pure, ink-dark shadow and plum violets. I looked out to the sea and in it was the same darkness as the sky, highlighted a shallow colour of rust and glimmers of silver, reflecting the death of my world's star far above.

Off in the distance, I saw another creature like myself; a raptor of some kind, but slender and more upright. A long, thin, heavy tail dragged behind like a loose power cable, many-fingered claws with one covered in a silvery gauntlet, and the other with a data-slate. I watched from afar with these two beasts as the distant creature fell over, collapsing onto its side upon the crest of the foreshore. The hellish ocean lapped wantingly at the limp, alien body.

It was of no help that the skies were crying glassy, oily rain like shots from a rifle.

The rain became hot and the skies filled with flashes of magma and oblivion, fogging and steaming against the ground. The ocean became angry, slamming harder into the foreshore and threatening to take away the body that lay at the crest of the beach.

The water pulled on the sand, dragging it out from around and under the body, creating a trench around its curling form. The thing curled tightly, its tail coiling on itself as it readjusted into a foetal position.

I felt some overwhelming grief in seeing this sight; Accustomed to the pain and misery of my ancient home it lay, and I understood the very blight befallen this Far-Away and deeply imagined kin. I felt the existential loneliness in which bestowed an aura greater than my lucid powers, the seemingly infallible signs of defeatism, begging for mercy from a world so cruel as to rain hellfire and artillery in set clockwork.

I couldn't move myself, stuck like as in rockcrete.

The creatures which had brought to me this feverish vision stood to either side of me, the harrowing sound of whistling meteorite and the screams of retreating Aliens indigenous of the forest so near to this beach I stood on. The pitch foliage turned grey with the Fires descended of the Heavens. They commanded wordlessly I watch, my eyes stuck open as though my eyelids were torn out.

The kin ahead of me stayed lain, and in it's death of ashes lapped by water, it re-arose alike to phoenixes. And the soul of a Human Man shot to the empyrean.

A great thunder filled the air, lightning showering as Zeus bore unto the beach and forest the Flames of anger and retribution for the sins of the world.

"What does this mean ? What are you to me ? Messengers ? Tell me your message and I will carry on with my duties. I've a world of hell to survive in, and you will not behold me forever in this realm of sleep," and with a hollow sound, the dichotomous entities of painful, invisible light, their obtuse forms distorting into conglomerations of the most inexplicable appearance. So rife with emotions was their transformation as to be indescribable likewise to describing the pantheon of colours in the universe to the deaf and blind.

Quickly, the roar of what sounded like great engines filled my mind, and unbearably so, their weight bore onto me as the great lights from the beings and the hellfire turned dark, and all I saw was the void of my own consciousness.