NPC Sheet's Story

[Null]

Aizen awoke with a start beside the bed of his friend, the gorgeous rabbit eared woman still unconscious after the battle and draped in only a blanket that pressed tightly to her perfect form. However he did not notice these things, not the fake sun reflecting off of her cheeks, its warm glow caressing her lithe and attractive form, not the slight rosiness of her soft face or the messy morning after hair she'd gifted herself in her restless turning. All of this was lost on him as his hand stay entwined with hers, grabbing hold of her tightly as if letting go for even a second would mean she slipped away. He was startled when a woman came and tapped his shoulder, calling him to turn to her, it was Launa, one of the officers within his guild with raven black hair down to the back of her knee's and a Victorian style dress that fell loosely around her frame, apparently it was time to review the new recruits. He grunted but once and stood, giving himself a moment and allowing his lips to softly grace the rabbits fragile form upon the cheek, before turning away and walking from the room and out through another exit in the wall, his hand slowly losing its grip on the womans and leaving it to lay upon the bed gracefully as he appeared in a long hall-way lined by doors.

Aizen walked clapped his hands together and then gradually pulled them apart, straining from the action as if they were magnetized to one another as electricity danced between them, with a growl he slammed them together and then pressed his hands to his chest. An uncomfortable jolt dancing through his chest and into his heart as the magic spread through his system, he took a halting step forward, followed by another before he reached a nearby door, he took a deep breath as the hallway behind him was caked in illusion and knocked. A knock that was similar on every door across the hall as a dozen similar Aizens awoke the recruits, ready to lead them across the fake halls and into a similarly fake interview room in pairs or whatever grouping lay within the lodgings. All would be trailed at once and in the same place, they just wouldn't know it.

He sighed once more and after leading each group into the rooms sat down and asked his first question "Why did you stay?". The room was small but well decorated, a coffee table sitting between Aizen and the recruits, a comfortable and plush chair awaiting each person including Aizen himself and various paintings, counters, ornaments and other such things adorning the room, the room was as you would expect from your average well cared for mansion, decadent and perfect to a point. Upon the table was a hearty breakfast tailored to each person and a favored drink to match. To one with training to recognize patterns such as this and the manner Aizen presented himself to each particular pairing, it could be gleaned that he had either amazing analytical skills, or a mind reader at his disposal.

Her eyes were wide shut. She did not sleep, rather she stared at the darkness that trickled down the backs of eyelids like a blanket of liquid obsidian marred with flashes of fire. The red seared her vision as it often did in the night. When the world ebbed away and the people stilled, her mind and body roared. Left alone to the whims of her existence, she found herself trapped.

The blood that spun beneath her skin that others found so beautiful, she found excruciating. They burned with a fury, as if trying to devour her whole with their acidic touch. She felt like a ghost trapped in its corpse. Keres was unable to move a finger in her body as the ancient Elvish Magicks took over her. Normally she would not bother sleeping, she would live so the pain dulled into an annoying hum. Unfortunately, she'd exerted herself too much lately, entwining countless like a siren's song so that she would be steps ahead of the Nameless recruits. She wanted nothing more than to scream and turn, but she was held as still and serene as if she were the marble manifestation of a Goddess. Cold sweat trickled from her forehead as her eyes jerked beneath her eyelids, the only part of her anatomy that was able to tremble from the torture.

It was an agony no medicine in the air could cure and it was a relief when the knock broke the spell in the morning. She'd read one of the human stories once, Sleeping Beauty, she believed it was called. The cursed princess slept for a hundred years before her true love's kiss awoke her. She wondered if the princess slept through a hundred years of molten lava and nailed floors. There would be no true love's kiss for Keres. She did not need a prince on a horse. She only required the horse. Just the horse. Keres would make her own way.

---

Keres had the curious thought that Tiotio and her were being led to their executions. She wondered if decapitation would sever her spirit from her body. She hoped so. If she had to die horrendously and hideously, she did not want to spend eternity watching her ruined body lie a few feet away.

"Why did you stay?" the Nameless leader asked the moment they descended to their chairs. An array of exquisite foods lined the table before them. She gave the food near her a melancholy smile, all of which were her favourites, many of which were native to the Elvish realms. It seemed hiding her identity was not an option after all. She kept her mind trained on the first sixteen years of her life in case Aizen had a reader in his employ. She lifted a round lavender fruit that had the rough shape of an apple, her eyelids fluttering shut as she bit through its skin and into its transparent flesh. Laiees. Her favourite fruit from the the temples. They seemed to know that she was vegetarian, as the monks in the temple were.

She brought her ruby eyes to Aizen's, and decided she would speak the truth. There would be no lying to the man. He would know as well as the High King of the Elves if she were dishonest.

"On my 18th," she began, glancing at Tiotio, and deciding, yes, let them know. The recruits suspected her already anyway, her honesty was the only way to win their trust. "I was meant to be placed in eternal slumber. The Magick that protects Mithrandír and makes it impenetrable runs in the blood of Elvish royals, passed from mother to daughter, Queen to Princess." She glanced down at the food, brushing her fingertips over a golden edible flower that was popular during palace celebrations. "The late Queen Calandra passed away without child and her Magick was lost." She plucked a luminescent petal from the flower and glanced at Aizen. "It wandered through the realms and found a host, a human babe abandoned for her ugliness." She said this monotonously, as if reciting a passage from a textbook, without a bat of an eyelash. "No mortal can hold such power. Hence, these." She lifted her arm and allowed her sleeves to fall away from the tattoos on her body. "They want me alive but passive, trapped in their world in a glass box for eternity. A fate worse than death, I can assure you. They believe an eternity of torture in an unmoving shell is a noble life, I do not believe it is a life at all." FInally, she showed a flicker of emotion, her jaw tight and clenched as she spoke. "I have given them two millenniums of my existence and more." Keres opened her clenched fist, allowing the crumbled petals to flutter from her grasp. She seemed to exhale her tension as a familiar grin spread across her startling features.

"You ask me why I stay. I stay because it is an act of rebellion, because for the first time in my existence, I am choosing myself. But, I am hoping that here, amongst the Nameless, I will find a way to return this Magick to my home," she paused, almost as if she'd uttered the last word accidentally. "So Mithrandír might survive without me. The Elves are my family, but I will not be a puppet. I will not throw away my life before I have had a chance to live it. I want to be free, but not at the expense of a realm."

Morning finally came after a long night of being half asleep. Aware of every passing second, every inhalation and exhalation, yet unable to wake up fully or fall into a dream. Ivan's mind, unlike his body, hadn't been able to fully come to rest. Perhaps it was because of the battle, maybe due to Keres, or perhaps it was simply because he was sharing his room with a demon whom might attack him. He stood up and looked over to the demon in the other bed. As far as he could tell the healing magic had done it's job, as the demon seemed to be in a better shape than the evening before. He then looked over to the corner of the room, seeing the mace just like how he left it yesterday, it's corrupted green glow radiating through the room.

The knock on the door surprised him at first, causing his blurry eyes to shift into their sharp stare as normal. To his surprise the man didn't interview them right on the spot, as he had previously assumed. Instead they walked through the hallway to an interview room of sorts. The room was unlike the rest of the mansion he had seen before, as if they suddenly were in a whole other mansion. The room was well decorated, it felt rather warm and cozy, especially when compared to what he had seen of the building. The breakfast on the table didn't seem put together at random, there were some peculiar dishes on the table he had never seen outside of the college cafetaria. This would mean that at least part of this meal was tailored to him, and that in turn meant they had some knowledge about him he wasn't aware of or the ability to dig through his mind. Neither would bother him too much, more an annoyance than a problem, he wasn't particularly fond of others digging through his mind, even when he has nothing to hide.

Ivan sat down in one of the chairs as the man did the same and asked his first question: "Why did you stay?" Straight to the point, not wasting breath by beating around the bush. An attitude Ivan liked, especially when the subject become somewhat political. He glanced to the demon, and then back to the man. "The most prominent reason I stayed is because of an oath I took when I joined my college. 'In life and in death, a mage should never abandon those who need his help.' It is an oath you take knowing it will take your life sooner or later, just like everyone who took the oath before you." He said with calmness and determination radiating from his words.

"However I would lie if I said I didn't have any selfish reasons to stay. Currently in my homeland things are rather depressing. I live next to a city we had to flee from and seal with magic due to hordes of undead murdering everyone inside and threatening the whole land to fall into the hand of the liches. All of our efforts to combat the undead within the seal have only resulted in more dead, and even after three decades we haven't made any progress at all. The place feels hopeless and depressing. Here I feel some form of hope and I feel like I actually can help someone, for the first time in decades." He spoke with a similar calm as he picked up a stem with black union shaped flower buds the size of large grapes along the stem. He tore the flower buds off and ate them while he listened.

Music

"I do apologize but i will not be eating the food. It would get in the way of my morning training."

Upon seeing food that her Master once cooked for her from spices only he knew how to make, she became quite suspicious of just how real the food was. Even if she did not notice this, it would be rather impolite to eat during an interview. She laid her swords down next to her as she sat in Seiza position on the floor. Myon floated right above her. The floor, at least, feels real.

"I'll answer the question! We stayed because, when we took up training with out late Master we swore that no matter where we are, what has happened, who has died or betrayed, or even if we have been killed, that we will use our skills to assist in betterment of those around us. Sure, we have made friends here and would love to stay with them but ultimately... It is not they who are the reason why we stay. The reason we stay is because, whatever caused those monsters to attack, maiming the lucky and killing the unlucky, such things cannot go unpunished! The cause must be eliminated before we are allowed to let ourselves leave"

Speaking simultaneously, they finished their little speech with determination in their voice and a steely look in their eyes. Restating their decision as if etching it into stone.

"We swore to help those who needed it and we shall uphold that vow. We will stay as long as needed until the darkness which affects this place has been dealt with. We failed in the past but we will not do so again. For as long as there are things we must protect behind us.... We will stand firm again, and hundreds of times more! That we swear. Ask what questions you like, but the answer stays the same. We won't leave here until we are no longer needed"

The pair waited for the next question if it was asked.

Vanara sleep perched in trees, and as such, must remain partially alert even in the deepest stages of sleep. In an instant they must be able to react to a branch tossed in the wind, or a predator that has found its way into their collective. The passage from sleep to wakefulness is an instant, a single fluid motion.

It was in this way that Tiotio became aware, even in the clutches of a sound, dreamless sleep, that Keres was in pain.

The monkey opened her eyes slowly, allowing them to adjust to the darkness of the room. The alabaster woman was still, too still. Sleep brought calm, rhythmic breathing, occasional fits and stirs; Keres was almost rigid, her muscles tense. Only her eyes moved, darting back and forth as if watching some horrific scene unfold inside their lids.

Tiotio jumped down from the shelf, landing soundlessly on the floor next to Keres’ head and shoulders. Huge beads of sweat blossomed on Keres’ forehead. They ran down her face, leaving thick lines and the smell of fear.

Tiotio wished to help the kind, funny woman, but her eyes were drawn to the red markings - magic, far beyond her understand. This was not a sleep of nightmares, or of a battle worn soldier whose mind and body could not find rest, even in sleep. This was a magic sleep, a thing Tiotio could understand only in theory. To wake Keres now might do more harm than good.

Instead she stood over the woman, leaning on her staff, dozing occasionally. When the knock came in the morning Tiotio sprang instantly back from the bed, so as not to startle Keres with her nearness.

---

The room they were lead to was so different in kind from the one they had spent the night in, that Tiotio spent an over long time pondering the cause. Could it be this was the leader’s personal quarters, kept pristine while the rest of the mansion fell to ruin? That seemed unlikely given the behavior of the Nameless thus far.

The food on the table drew her attention. Much of it was foreign to her, looking rather more elegant than tasty. But there were simple dried fruits, and three platters full of thick, squirming insects. She scooped up a few small handfuls of the fruit and placed them directly into her bag. Her nomadic life had left her always mindful of the need to keep a good supply of preserved food on hand.

She popped a beatle in her mouth, enjoying the crunch, followed by the warm spread of its meat throughout her mouth. As she chewed she realized that, like most of the creatures she encountered outside the jungle, those gathered here might not enjoy such food. It might be this was placed out specifically for her sake.

Before she could follow the thought further, she noticed the man and Keres looking at her. She realized she was expected to sit in one of the waiting chairs.

She climbed first into the seat, but found it hard to relax in its soft folds. Just after the man spoke, ”Why did you stay?” she climbed up the chair’s back, and crouched on her toes. She rested one end of her bow in the seat of the chair, and leaned the other against her knees.

Keres story held her attention so fully, that when it was over, she’d forgotten for a moment that the question had also been asked of her. As a widening silence hung over the room, Tiotio recalled what little she knew about elves - that they wouldn’t stay in any inn with a dirty floor (which were, in her opinion, always the best ones) and hated it immensely when you told them they looked like cats without any fur (which they did).

Tiotio added to this the information that elves seemed to be enslaved by their own magics, and were comfortable inflicting great pain to maintain their power. She wondered if this might not explain Keres’ painful sleep.

When no one spoke, she replayed the short conversation over in her mind, trying to find the moment it had gone astray, and realized that it was she that needed to answer now.

“I was on my way here to begin with,” she addressed the man, “I was at a competition, something called a boxing match. I won third place. Everyone there was talking about The Games and The Nameless. Oh weren’t The Games better before the fall of The Nameless. Haven’t you heard, The Nameless are rising again. Things like that. I didn’t know what they were talking about.”

She looked to Keres, then back to the man, “So I asked where these Nameless were, and started out. But then that letter fell from the sky and saved me quite a bit of walking.”

He simply sat at the table in the middle of the bedroom. As the two entered their rest he simply sat in his chair watching the door to their room, his mind in a semi meditation. Through the whole night his vigilance never faltered, his eyes watching for intruders while he dwelled upon the happenings of yesterday. As the night passed onto morning Pravus was ready as he'd ever be. Strangely enough there were no footsteps but a knocking suddenly made itself heard just outside their door. Out the door first he followed the leader of his strange abductors through some halls he was unfamiliar with until him, the enigmatic leader and Myon/Aera were all lead into an irregular room.

This room did not look par for the course given the treatment the rest of the mansion had endured throughout these years. It seemed to him that many of these fanciful decorations he cared little for appeared to be pretty expensive, something which did not synchronize with this place. It appears Aera, Myon and myself will all be interviewed together He realized as they were all lead into the same room with little indicating they would be separated for the interview.

On half of the table eastern styled dishes seasoned with unknown spices were set out, likely for Aera and Myon as it befitted their esthetic. On the half of the table in front of where Pravus stood was nothing. He had no need to eat nor even the ability to taste.

It was a setup which clearly had a lot of thought put into it. Between the way each dish or lack thereof was tailored to the fact that they just so happened to be arranged where they would be standing even though it was not even previously acknowledged it all seemed too perfectly arranged. Pravus had seen back in his days serving in the military the tents and personal quarters of his legion's mages. It was not unusual for them to use enchantments and illusions to better tailor their chambers to their particular liking. The more he saw the more he suspected that may be the case with this room.

"Why did you stay?"

Myon and Aera gave their reason as to why they fought alongside the nameless at the battle they fought. Their speech definitely showed much of their character to him. Both of them upheld a noble yet slightly unrealistic cause which was admirable to some extent. His only concern was that they pledged themselves to protect people who they hardly knew. He had yet to learn of who he was even trying to join, let alone whether they deserve their aid or not.

To Pravus however it mattered not that these people be either innocents in need of a savior, villains receiving retribution or anything in between. He was a soldier for the Tiathan army, trained to obey and kill without question. Good and evil, light and darkness, right and wrong had nothing to do with this. His word was his bond and once given he would carry out his orders to the letter of their agreement. While he had given his word to serve and obey the military with honest and good intentions the first time he would not make that same mistake again.

He stood firm and tall, his main hand holding his shovel upright and planted to the floor, the other firmly by his side just like he would stand amongst the ranks of his men at attention back in the legion, a spear in place of the shovel. Despite his injuries he maintained proper posture, at least for the moment. He spoke loud and clear, his words solid and well organized like stone bricks. after the other two were finished their little speech he gave his reasons.

Why did he stay? "There is nothing to leave to."

"Sleep without nightmares. That's new.' Grumbled Wayland tiredly as he drug himself out of bed, shoving an unlit cigarette in his mouth out of habit and flapping his clothes about for a moment to get them to settle properly after having slept in them.

He checked himself over, noting the frayed nature of his once fine suit, and the feeling of fatigue in his body. The room's magic definitely rested him, but it could not shore up the stock of metal in his body, it made him feel almost anemic.

At least I don't need to worry about smell. He thought with a grin, his scent never changed from fire ash, and smoke. Though, he had drowned those in the scent of blood a number of times. The unbidden thoughts made him frown unhappily, as he stretched out his joints. Each popping with a satisfying metallic twang!

"Where'd you come from?' He muttered, voice somewhere between awe and disbelief. As he gently picked up the beautiful, no exquisite. Almost bewitching, crystal bracelet. Set with gems of red, purple and blue. It practically glowed in the pale light of his room. Like its owner, he thought. Remembering the encounter with the woman from the night before. Her name still a mystery to him. He mentally reminded himself to ask her it when he returned her bracelet to her, and promptly slid it into his jacket pocket, and finished making his bed as a knock sounded at his door.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Something's not quite right, he thought as he followed the old man down the halls, an odd buzzing in his head making his vision swim, it wasn't something he'd felt before, and he didn't know why but it felt like there was more and less around him than there should be, like he was in a crowd, but he was alone with the leader.

He followed him into an oddly extravagant room that was at odds with the disrepair of the rest of the manor. Many works of arts on the walls, and shiny trinkets on the shelves. Some with history some without. Typical, he thought. That the leadership would have, and everyone else should have not.

He was pleased to see the woman from the night before there as he took his seat at the table, a place somehow set for him perfectly, taking into account his love for food, and need for metals. He loaded up a plate with a little of everything on the table, listening to everything with half an ear, as he poured the entire bowl of dense metal shavings over his selection of food. Opting to wait and eat it after he'd spoken, idly he chewed on a wafer thin bar of iron as he listened to tales of tragedy in one case, and convenience in another. Feeling some of his lightheaded feeling fade as the metal worked into his body.

He was glad he wouldn't need to seek her out to return her bracelet. Again looking at her made his head buzz, and he wanted little more than to stand up and ravage her on that very table, but he tamped down on those thoughts viciously, a slight tempo of hammer to anvil starting in his head, the thoughts were so unlike him, she was beautiful beyond measure, true, but he was not an animal. regardless of how he fought, and he would control himself, or he would destroy himself.

He tried to take his mind off it by turning his eyes, to the other being in the room, yesterday had thankfully dissensitized him to seeing new races, or he might have freaked out at the sight of an ape woman, he vaguely remembered seeing her in the battle, and after last night, before he'd passed out. He felt as if he'd missed something, he wouldn't be surprised if he had. He was still feeling lightheaded.

He saw the others in the room turn to him, as if he'd always been there, waiting for his answer, but he had thought he'd gotten there after them. This place was doing funny things to his head.

"Why did I stay?' He wondered out loud, everyone surely had a reason. What was his? He thought, letting a hand play through his hair as he sipped at the vodka that had come with his breakfast, odd that, but he wasn't complaining.

You've got nowhere else to go his mind whispered back to him. No one left to go back to, you need to fight but the world you come from frowns upon violence, even though something inside you calls for blood and battle. The more you get, the more you want. He replayed his life up until this point, seeing the lethargy he'd felt in his own world the lack of purpose, and an answer formed.

“I want to feel alive.' He said, his voice resonating through the room, unknowingly to him power seeped into him as the thoughts of what he could do in this place came to him, causing smoke to spill around his cigarette, and his eyes to pulse in time with his heartbeat. Voices rose unbidden in his mind, as the hammer struck the anvil he spoke again.

“I wanted to help the people here, protect them, but more than anything I want to chase that feeling, and find it again.' Until I find out just who I am, or die trying. Sometimes blades don't survive the tempering.

“I was on my way here to begin with,” Tiotio began. “I was at a competition, something called a boxing match. I won third place." Keres smiled at the image of the monkey warring against a six foot monstrosity. Somehow, it did not seem too bizarre, imagining the latter being pummelled by Tiotio. "Everyone there was talking about The Games and The Nameless. Oh weren’t The Games better before the fall of The Nameless. Haven’t you heard, The Nameless are rising again. Things like that. I didn’t know what they were talking about.” Tiotio's eyes met Keres' before darting away just as quickly. “So I asked where these Nameless were, and started out. But then that letter fell from the sky and saved me quite a bit of walking.” Keres grinned. So far, Tiotio certainly won the award for most unusual and humorous person Keres had ever met.

She noticed then the familiar, heated presence of "Brimstone." She shifted her attention to him and felt like she was staring into the depths of a fiery tunnel, or Hell. Despite herself, she found the edges of curiosity probing the space between them. Keres wondered indeed what he was doing here. The Nameless seemed rather... Tame for the "metallic, fear-inducing dragon" - one of the more subdued descriptions Keres had eased from the people she'd "interviewed."

"Why did I stay?" he muttered, his voice rumbling from his chest. He had an unusual resonance, a mixture of low huskiness - from smoke, drink and cries, she imagined - and fearsome roar. He seemed to retreat to some realm within his mind before saying, “I want to feel alive." It was so simple, yet she did not think she would ever forget the shadow that crossed his amber gaze and the drift of smoke that wafted from his slightly parted lips. She found her fingers itching for a brush to capture the moment. Art, perhaps, was one of the few things she enjoyed in the Elves' teachings. A wry smile crossed her lips, they had vastly different, yet largely similar reasons for joining, she supposed. He wanted to feel alive, she wanted to live. Keres had more than enough life, millenniums upon millenniums of it, but she had not lived. She had not done anything worthy of looking herself with pride in the mirror. Others saw beauty beyond imagination, she saw a figurine: lovely, decorative, pleasant, useless.

“I wanted to help the people here, protect them, but more than anything I want to chase that feeling, and find it again.' She smiled. What a noble reason. She was not noble, and before the questions began to creep into her thoughts - did she want to be noble? Did she desire a different life? To be different? - her attention was directed elsewhere.

Her hand suddenly jerked to grasp her wrist as her eyes widened on the incandescent object Wayland held. Crimson orbs widened as she looked down a her bare wrist. Her hands darted to her head, feeling for the diadem or crown and finding only silken strands. She gasped something in Elvish before standing up so quickly, her chair scraped loudly and threatened to topple over. Keres, clearly, did not move like a simple human, or even one who'd been raised by Elves. She had the reflexes of something... Other. Keres took a step but froze as if she were water that had been abruptly turned to ice. She dropped the arm that had been outstretched toward Wayland and instead, brushed her hand over her dress. She lowered herself onto the seat and fixed her face into one more demure, a light blush colouring her cheeks as if she were embarrassed. Keres kept her mind still, focusing on the threads of Wayland's shirt and the curl of smoke. The bracelet had a remarkable resemblance to the crown of High King Elrond of Mithrandír, and the diadem of the late Elvish Queen. She gave Wayland a shy smile, glancing at him through the curl of her thick lashes.

"I apologise," she whispered. "I do not know what overcame me." A small, self-depricating laugh escaped her lips. "Where did you find it?" she asked carefully.

Then it was the man-furnace’s turn, the one that smelled like a smithery filled with nicotine. His voice was like his smell, textured.

He, like Keres, seemed to have a rather more personal reason for --

Wait. When did he join them in the room?

The monkey stiffened a little, focuses her eyes on him fully, and tried to remember. He had not been in their room that night? Had he? Had he been in the hall? Already waiting in the room?

Her mind, the part that observed the world with a disconnected gaze, slipped into meditative memory, comparing what it recalled to the details of the now. She searched for the sequence of moments - the one first where the room lacked his presence, then the man-furnace walking across the threshold, then when he was fully in the room.

There was something wrong with her perception, something hazy at the edges, not unlike the healing magics in their room last night. Tiotio was all too aware of the limitations of the senses, of the fallibility of eyes, nose, ears - all made of flesh. But this was not a failing of the body, but a distortion of the truth.

Once, she had spent several weeks in a mountain cave with a former something-or-other from an important college of... somewhere (formal titles always confused Tiotio). That learned woman had sustained herself mostly on melted snow and a mushroom that grew at the back of her cave.

She had told Tiotio of the illusion of continuity. Cause and effect were only in the mind, created by the false belief that one event follows another. All moments happened in their exact time, due to the shape of the universe, rather than some pearl-chain of events.

The theory had seemed perfectly sound to Tiotio when she shared the woman’s diet, and had become a foundation of Tiotio’s life philosophy thereafter. Yet it too was lacking to explain how this moment had formed, how this man was in the room with them now, but also, in some real way, not.

The character of the room changed to her then, and its falsehood was revealed. She knew not enough to see its true shape, but only that she was being deceived.

[Null]

River had followed behind the Nameless leader and plopped himself in the chair beside the mage. Whom he shot an angry glare, he growled low and picked up the platter before him, studying it and feeling the air of falsity about it and the rest of the room, he couldn't put his finger on it but things weren't...right. On the plate in his hand was a blob of purple-ish ectoplasm, an impossibility, something that broke the character of the Nameless to procure. It was a human soul....not simply one gained through a device or safe process, if such a thing existed in this backward plane. It was the soul of a tortured victim, the soul of one whom had lived a life of horror and sorrow abruptly ended...a soul only procurable by a despicable Incubus.

Yet it sat on a plate before River, he would not identify it to others nor would he even begin to explain to himself why they thought such a dish appropriate. He simply, ate. The leader asked him a question as he reclined in the chair, feeling the buzz of energy as the soul swam through his own, entwining with the many others that weighed upon his heart and spun around his body. The soul was not false, it was real, no false soul could give such a buzz, revitalize and engorge as this did. Most of his wounds had healed from the room, but what remained was immediately sealed shut and he was given a further boost in vitality, the boost was temporary but the buzz was like a drug to an Incubus. He resisted purring in pleasure as he replayed the last few moments in his mind, in his ecstasy he had missed the question.

"Why did you stay?" The leader had asked, the incubus leaned forward in his chair and gave a wide smile, turning on the charm as he placed his elbows on his knees and templed his fingers carefully. "It's simple...before your beam of light hit me, I was dead. A blade in my gut and a final curtain fallen over my body as a bled out on the sands of my world. I've been running for the past god knows how long from the criminal organization that controls my torn planet. What little remained of it after the incident that is." He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath and looking Aizen in the eye.

"Hunters followed my every move, and I was running through wastelands filled with deadly creatures, renegades and constant storms...I killed people, a lot of innocent people. I needed them to stay alive..if you spilled out my soul, you'd find dozens more entwined in it's ethereal path, I'm an Incubus so to survive I feed on other peoples very spirits. I didn't just kill people, I cut off their afterlife...you ask why I stayed? I stayed because if there's any chance that their souls can be saved, any chance that I can keep going and not waste lives, I'll take it. I stayed because I refused to let someone I knew die again, because you have children here....children who remind me of those that were ruined by my hand." He said softly, eventually finishing with his eyes to the floor. All of it was true, but the full reality was more hidden than that, more disturbing still.

Aizen's eyes scanned each recruit, listened to their stories all with a stoic face and tense body. It was time to test their mettle, he was going to exert more pressure upon them. He would catalog and address each of their stories later, it would decide their ranking, their positions, what games they participated in. Background and choice, reason and thought, these things were more important than strength or skill in a guild game. However, the interview wasn't about answers or truths, it wasn't about reality or the games. It was about deciding who he could trust with his guild, whom could survive under pressure and uncontrollable situations, which ones would be able to handle a sudden change with more than just instinct...which ones were truly strong.

He stood up after each had spoken respectively, after each had reacted and crossed his arms behind his back. He evened his eyes at each member respectively and clicked his tongue, a word from one of them had clicked in his mind and he found himself focused upon it. The girl Aera and her spirit Myon spoke of the darkness in this place, he would smile at the notion had he no intent to break their spirit. However this was not the case, and so he simply took the word and warped it for his own speech.

"The darkness will claim this place, and the rest of the Garden. We barely make it by as it is and soon the demon lords will stop bickering and mass together. It's a matter of time before the Garden is overwhelmed and used as stepping stone for the rest of existence...what we need are capable fighters, those strong of mind and body, those with good morals. We need to be able to rise from the bottom, gain allies and defeat corrupted guilds until the Garden can stand on her own two feet and push back the demon lords." He states, taking a step towards the recruits, phasing into the middle of the table separating them "I know all about you, everything you know, I know. Keep this in mind for the rest of the interview and pay attention....this is the only advice I will give you aside from to remember, this is not a fight, you are not simply weapons." He says softly, stepping back to his chair and taking a seat once more, his eyes flitting to meet Keres' for a moment.

"Live." He says once, the room folding away to reveal a large abyss. Aizen sits in his chair a great distance away, and the recruits are now standing upon a stone platform. Around them is utter darkness and nothingness, beyond the large stone platform and Aizen's far off platform there is nothing. From the shadows below several figures emerge, clambering up to the platform and standing around each pair. The interview would indeed discover their intentions and whether they were worthy.

Could they think for themselves, would they ask questions, would they simply give up? If none of them could figure out the mental component of such a basic challenge then he would be quite dissapointed. However there was no better way to expose a cannon than to put a foe between them and supposed victory.

Each shadow was configured to act, react and even speak according to the pairs, not only that but he'd been tinkering with their minds during their speeches, just a tad, a seed for emotion planted and the feeling of illusion slowly removed, until his guild deemed otherwise, everything would be very very real. The process was expensive beyond measure and had a long with the recruitment game set back The Nameless to almost bankruptcy, they had been lucky to have one of the three psychics capable of such a feat amongst their number.

Each shadow was a prominent figure or figures in the persons life, a group of people that could be used to drive them to the edge of tears, or perhaps the edge of sanity. All designed to be negative, hateful, disapproving and eventually, violent. He smiled from his chair and spoke softly, his voice passing as a whisper into each recruits ear "Are you willing to forsake what you care about, for the life of another?" He spoke cryptically.

Aera jumped to her feet and unsheathed her blade, only to nearly drop it upon seeing a certain figure in front of her.

"M-Master....."

She knew it was an illusion, she knew it wasn't true but she also wished it weren't an illusion. She lowered her sword and eventually returned it to its sheathe. Resisting the urge to cry, she looked at the figure standing before her with a mix of fear and hate in her lifeless eyes. Myon began to argue with Aera in their head.

[ "It's Master! W-Why do you want to attack him!? H-He can't be a fake! There can't be more than one of him!"
"I..I too want to believe it is him but I cannot. This has to be an illusion... j-just like the room!" ]

As the argument got heated, Aera drew the sword that her Master gave to her once more. If she wasn't the half phantom freak she was, her emotions would have gotten the better of her like her other half. She advanced toward the figure...but with her eyes closed. She would not open her eyes and therefore could not see her Master. She began to slowly advance forwards.

"Master Youki, do you have any idea what it was like when you left us? All alone in that forest? To fend for ourselves against the harsh elements and against nature itself? Do you have any idea...the pain and suffering you have caused us!? Why... Why did you leave us? Why couldn't you have just stayed?"

She swung her sword at the figure. She missed but she noticed something... She couldn't hear the clatter of her Master's geta when he dodged her attack. She smiled and continued her slow advance.

"You taught us everything we know. You raised us as your own. You cared for us when nobody else did... You gave us the one thing that was ripped from our grasp as a child. You were the only family we had left and you just...just abandoned us? You said to never run away and never back down. Yet, you ran from us... Did it finally get you? Did the fact you were raising a freak finally break your will? We trusted you and you betrayed that trust... And you try to stand in our way? Then you leave me with no other choice other than to cut you down! You are nothing more than a fake! EVERYTHING YOU TAUGHT US WAS A LIE!"

Despite sounding angry, Aera was quite calm. Her anger was true but she wouldn't let it overtake her. She opened her eyes and swung the sword once more at her Master. This time however...her sword passed cleanly through his neck...

"Forgive me....Master..."

"The darkness will claim this place, and the rest of the Garden. We barely make it by as it is and soon the demon lords will stop bickering and mass together. It's a matter of time before the Garden is overwhelmed and used as stepping stone for the rest of existence...what we need are capable fighters, those strong of mind and body, those with good morals. We need to be able to rise from the bottom, gain allies and defeat corrupted guilds until the Garden can stand on her own two feet and push back the demon lords." The nameless leader had expanded upon his deception by passing through the table as though he were immaterial.

"I know all about you, everything you know, I know. Keep this in mind for the rest of the interview and pay attention....this is the only advice I will give you aside from to remember, this is not a fight, you are not simply weapons."

Pravus waited, taking the man's warnings to mind as he awaited what this man had planned for them.

"Live."

At that moment magic took it's course, shifting the world around them. The floor became a large stone dais suspended over a seemingly infinite void which separated them from the rest of the world they were previously in and their interviewer who looked on past his desk with no discernible change in facial expression. A pair of dark hands grasped the ledge of their current platform, pulling the rest of itself from the black abyss. Up upon their disc a darkened shadow of his father climbed aboard, standing up in a bit of a swaying shamble.

The man looked quite similar to Pravus. Both of them were wearing the same hat and cloak, tools could be heard rattling from underneath the concealment of his father's cloak. His father's facial structure appeared stronger than his although Pravus's features were currently obscured by his unique mask, making a facial comparison between the two of them impossible for any onlookers. His father did possess a rather long yet straight and thin black beard, making him appear wiser. The man appeared to Pravus as he remembered him the very last time he saw him before he left home to join the military.

There was a sense of realism to this encounter but there was one factor which he didn't even know was playing into this scenario. His speech was short which gave his secret manipulators little time to work with. Even though the scenario definitely seemed real he still remembered that this was probably the efforts and product of magic, illusionary or otherwise. He looked from the leader sitting so close yet so far away in his seat to the very spitting image of his father wrought from the shadows pulled up from below.

"What shame have you brought upon our family name this time?" Were the first words to come from his illusionary father's mouth. Pravus saw what this leader was trying to do to him, to push him using his own memories against him and see if he breaks or not. Still, even with that knowledge in mind it's words still stung deep inside his still heart. He could feel no pain but what this feeling was for him was the closest thing he could come to that.

Still, pain was temporary and he had endured plenty of physical pain in life. As for emotional pain he had known and carried on through suffering which held no comparison. Driven by guilt spurred by his father's death to carry on the family name only to watch as each one of his family, his friends and anyone else he knew all succumbed to the black spirit's touch until only he remained for just long enough to watch the entire world end with him. Even after all that and being resurrected with the memories of it all still intact he carries on. He knew this phantom was not his father. He did not know how they conjured forth such a construct to take on such a familiar form but he still suspected deception even with the tampering of his mind from other entities involved.

"You wish to test me again?" He spoke, still looking towards the facsimile of his father but clearly addressing the leader of the Nameless. "You will listen here son." His father attempted to draw his focus back onto the hateful duplicate designed to degrade his willpower. Instead of listening to it's demands he turned his back to it, now facing their host.

"Are you willing to forsake what you care about, for the life of another?"

He heard the whisper in his ear, the source from no discernible location even though the speaker was clear. His eye's gaze pierced through the black holes of his mask, staring directly at the leader now. He could still hear his father behind him but he made a conscious effort to ignore it while he spoke to his intended audience.

"Must we forsake what defines us to defend another person's moralities instead of the ones we all have struggled so hard to forge?" He responded to his question with a question of his own. The leader wanted to see them all act as more than just weapons so unlike a sword or a cannon he questioned the hand which controlled him. A weapon does not ask why it needs to kill who it kills, a person does. Unlike the path Aera had chosen, he would see beyond the puzzle set before him. To question reality rather than simply accept it as what it is.

"I honor my word, I fight for my comrades as well as those who I owe my word to. Magic and other means may be able to twist my mind and cloud my judgement but I still remain the culmination of every experience, every trial, every hardship and every memory I still hold. Even still, I shall succeed if I need to. If that means proving my fortitude mentally as well then so be it but I will ask you this: I have buried my past once, I ask you to not force me to do so once again." He asked of the man nestled at his desk, his voice still polite and calm despite that calm being challenged by the words of his father, the salt in his wounds.

As he was done speaking the phantom of his father stepped up behind Pravus, standing directly behind him with almost no space separating them. He brought his lips up near his ear, whispering directly into it.
"Go ahead. Go become another lackey for some warmongering warlord and abandon your family to sicken and die.
You make me sick."

Still, Pravus stood tall and firm before the Nameless's leader and weathered the burning pain of his guilt eat away at him from within, waiting for a response while his father's phantom wounded him deeper and deeper.

“....this is the only advice I will give you aside from to remember, this is not a fight, you are not simply weapons."

As the room faded away Tiotio’s first thought was of the food in her bag. If the whole thing had been some illusion, was the food real too? She stuck her hand in and felt the dried edge of a plantain. It seemed quite real. She lifted it out and nibbled at it. Like the bugs it, it had real taste and texture.

“Live”

A figure pulled itself out of the darkness, shadows peeling off it like flaking skin. The body the light revealed was misshapen, hunched over skeletal legs, its arms and hands pulled by painfully short tendons into twisted claws that rested against its chest.

No flesh clung to its jaw, and huge grey teeth dominated the lower half of its face. Everything above its nose, which was pockmarked with rot, was covered in filthy cloth wrappings. There were thin gaps in the cloth, enough for the creature to see out, but too small to reveal the features hidden within.

Its voice was like a murder of crows, all calling over each other in a mad cacophony of sound - “Hello friend.”

“Eitr!” Tiotio called, “You’ve come here too?”

The illusion of the room was forgotten in her delight at seeing her old friend. She imagined a doorway, like those she’d see the rabbit woman summon, opening before Eitr, allowing the man through to this place. And of course he would go through - Eitr was as curious and as eager to learn as Tiotio. She rushed toward him, ready to embrace him, her mind already full of a dozen questions.

Another figure emerged, and Tiotio stopped a few paces from Eitr. It did not crawl forward, as Eitr had, but took huge, lumbering steps. First a leg entered the light - wide, thick, made of mud and clay and sticks. As the golem entered the light, Tiotio brandished her bo. In an instant her memories returned, overwhelmed her mind, and she was not on the stone platform, but in alley were Eitr had died.

She hissed and screeched, threatening the golem. It had come for her that night, to rectify the crimes of a disgraced master. The man had taken Tiotio as a student, in direct violation of the rules of his order. The golem had punished him first, then come to erase his errors by destroying his student.

Eitr was innocent of this, his only crime was being friends with Tiotio, traveling with her and wanting to protect her. He was no fighter; his skills and powers were useful only for piece, for understanding nature. His skills with animals and plants were equal in proportion to his hideous form. Each rotten tooth, each atrophied muscle, representing a power to bring life and light to the world.

That fight had been the hardest in Tiotio’s life. She stood no real chance against the golem, which overpowered her with strength, and could not be harmed in any lasting way.

On the stone platform Tiotio’s hand shot to her chest, where one of the things sharp branches had pierced her, puncturing her lung. She’d lay on the alley floor, dieing. Then Eitr threw his shriveled body between Tiotio and the golem, clawed uselessly at the holes in the golem’s face that were not truly eyes.

“Go!” Eitr called, in a voice that sounded like the night itself, the darkness and the stars, were ordering her to run.

The golem took Eitr’s small head in its hand, mud and filth coating the cloth, grinding into the teeth. There was a snap, small and sicking, and Eitr’s head came loose.

Tiotio ran then, as fast and as far as her body would go. Blood erupted from her mouth, but she did not stop. She ran all night and into the morning, worried at each step that the golem was just behind.

On the stone platform Eitr came up beside her, tilted his head up to look at her. “We can defeat it,” he said.

“No, we run, it’s too strong to fight.”

And then she remembered the Nameless, their leader, the interview, Keres - all of it. This horrid thing, this reliving of that painful night, was all happening in the middle of the Nameless stronghold. Would they let her run, would they help her protect Eitr?

The water devoured her lungs, crushing the strands that intertwined to create her being. She choked on another gulp of liquid, her eyes burning, her lungs burning, her heart burning, everything burning, burning, burning, and she prayed that she was on fire, so that the flames would devour her and release her from the torment. The water she swallowed streamed from her eyes but there were not enough oceans for her to cry and not enough of herself to encase the agony. So it flowed from her eyes like blood from a wound.

She heard the hiss of her father, asking her why she would not cease her breaths and cease her existence and turn back time. Give me back all that you have stolen, he screams and the water does not deafen her ears to his voice. Or maybe he's a bird, nesting in her brain.

The tear of his hands against her scalp, pushing her beneath the surface, is as foreign as the thumbs on her fingers and the shattering ricochet of her heart. It holds her beneath the surface and pulls from her what can never be returned. She is a bullet at the mercy of the trigger, a pup at the mercy of its owner, a child in the mercy of her father.

The water engulfs her and she is sinking into the blue oblivion. His hands have vanished and she is a lone leaf abandoned by her tree, floating down into the unknown. The light runs further away until the darkness is complete and she should wonder where is up or down but she does not wonder, she does not worry. She does not think at all.

Until, finally, she returns to her mother's arms. Her name has never been spoken with such love before. She does not even struggle when the hands encircle her neck, instead she sighs and thinks, yes, she was entered the world with a cord around her neck, and it was fitting that she leave it the same way too.

But the flesh bleeds from the hands until nothing is left but bones and that, too, becomes dust, and it is devoured by the ocean.

Death does not come, rest does not come, relief does not come. Instead she hears a familiar voice calling her to tea. "You must eat. The servants made lithacakes, your favourite," and all she can think is, no, they are not my favourite. They are yours. Her body is ripped from the drowning world and she swallows the dry air. She is momentarily blind before crimson lights burst through the shadows and she is met with the world before her. Immediately, she wishes that she truly were blind. Was their unseeing world lonely or beautiful in its obliviousness?

Bodies were scattered around her like pieces of a broken dollhouse, their eyes the glassiness of a hollow, porcelain doll. They rested in their own lost life, their bodies long dry of blood and soul. She stumbles through the wreckage and finds her King, his body twisted, his flesh flaking from its bones, as his crown, ever glistening and ever gold, burrowed a dent into his skull. She fell to her knees and she fell to the ground, fell and fell and fell until she was sure she must have been in the lowest depths of hell.

"You are back," the King called. Even in death, it seemed, his voice held every star in the universe and every beat of the sun. She clutched his white boned hand, as if that might anchor him to existence. "Too late. Too late," he mumbles before even his voice leaves her delusions.

Guilt, you see, was not a quiet grey cloud. Guilt was a drowning man that clawed its way on top of you, scratching and tearing at your skin, pushing you under the surface. She saw the years of her life stretching out like an aurora that stretched on for light years and she saw it for what it was, agony and cowardice, cowardice and agony, and there selfishness thrived like a spider that spun its web from the skin of its victims. She saw the future and the paths that stretched before her, and she saw in all of them darkness, like a cliff or a song that stilled before its time.

Still she took a step, and she took another, and she crawled into her coffin. The world, the light, the paths and all disappeared as she returned to the blue oblivion. She was Sleeping Beauty trapped in an eternal slumber, she was a girl fighting to escape the body of a corpse and she was the flowers that sprouted where she lay. She was the wind that breathed life into the lungs of those above, the trees that stretched their arms in prayer, the birds that sang in praise of the selfless one beneath the earth and the sunrise that painted its colours on the fields of silver and gold.

Once upon a time, there was an Elvish Queen named Keressia; she was fierce, she was lost, and she was flawed, but my, was she beautiful.

The illusion ebbed away in weeps and tides, gentle and determined as they unraveled from the crying girl. Tears flowed from Keres' eyes like blood from a wound, but there were not enough oceans for her to weep. The markings on her body had not protected her from the illusion, sensing that no harm would come to her. Never had she felt more lost and devastated than at that moment, as she stood on the platform, suddenly realising all of it had been an illusion and a lie. She swore she still felt the dirt that buried her skin, and the ocean that devoured her body, but she was dry, clean, and back where she'd always been.

Keres wondered if perhaps this was an illusion too and eventually she would awaken to the cry of her own child whom she would love with all her heart. She imagined her own love beside her, brushing a kiss over her lips to awaken her from slumber. She closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment of dreams and when she opened them, she did not know to be devastated or furious. She felt too much and never enough, straddling two sinking boats as arrows searched for her heart.

"I am unfit for this task," she said finally. Her tears pooled at her chin and shattered on the wing of a butterfly engraved onto her dress. "I apologise for the inconvenience and I thank you for your time." She spoke without meeting Aizen's eyes, for fear she would strangle his head from his shoulder or worse, rest her head on his lap and weep until the end of time. Her voice was at odds with her eyes, formal and monotonous where she clearly was not. "Good luck," she added before spinning around. Her shoulders drooped slightly as she realised exiting would indeed require effort, effort she could not bother to exert. She did not care about Apocalys or the Nameless then, only wishing for a very, very long hibernation.

The golem did not speak, did not breath, only stood still as if awaiting orders. Tiotio saw it in detail as she had not before, as she could not on the night it had killed Eitr. The mud and filth that covered it flowed slowly, rippling across the surface of its body. Its face was a mockery of humanity. Uneven eyes hung above a bulbous nose, and sticks protruded out of its head like wild hair.

Tiotio kept Eitr behind her, pressing the creature to back away as her eyes searched for an exit. She saw only darkness and across the expanse, the Nameless leader. She did not know if there was floor in that darkness, or an open fall into nothingness.

Keres was near them, between Tiotio and the expanse that separated them from the leader. She seemed unaware of the figures before her. Her shoulders were low, her alabaster face puffy red and stained in tears. It struck Tiotio that if her own feelings could be given form, her own fears and regrets about that night in the alley when she’d lost Eitr, they would look as Keres did now.

There was something more, something that seemed to hover in the air around Keres. An after image, blurry and impossible to make out. Not a true illusion, as the room where they’d had breakfast had been, but something that surrounded Keres like a storm. Something Tiotio might not have been able to see, even if she’d been staring straight at it.

She thought then of the maze, of the tests. She thought of the surface of the lake, hiding the truth within. The room, the question, that had been the surface. Now the Nameless stirred it up, looking for what lay beneath.

Keres was limp, as if about to collapse to the floor at any moment. A puppet with string about to be cut.

“Keres,” Tiotio called, “I don’t know what’s real. Come, help me.”

The man spoke as he stood up and walked towards Ivan and the demon to his side, walking through the table as if it never had existed in the first place. "The darkness will claim this place, and the rest of the Garden. We barely make it by as it is and soon the demon lords will stop bickering and mass together. It's a matter of time before the Garden is overwhelmed and used as stepping stone for the rest of existence...what we need are capable fighters, those strong of mind and body, those with good morals. We need to be able to rise from the bottom, gain allies and defeat corrupted guilds until the Garden can stand on her own two feet and push back the demon lords." "It would seem that whatever I have found myself to fall into might have consequences for Ancaria if they fail to push back these demon lords. While there are great powers within the realm if at all possible I would rather not have them measure their power on one another. In the end, if this all is true, it would seem that I have to pass these tests. If not to help protect Anracia, then to help these people." Ivan followed up in his thoughts. Then as the man stepped back and seated himself once more he spoke words of advice. "I know all about you, everything you know, I know. Keep this in mind for the rest of the interview and pay attention....this is the only advice I will give you aside from to remember, this is not a fight, you are not simply weapons."

"Live." The man said as the room turned into an abyss, a pure void with Ivan and the demon on a stone platform and far in the distance the man. They however were not alone on the platform, Ivan realised as he spied out a human figure in the corner of his eye. "Ivan." The figure said with a sharp and bonechilling voice. He had only heard this voice call out his name like this once before, but he recognised the voice immediately. He turned to see the figure who had called his name. Before him stood a man who was nothing more than dried and rotten skin stretched over dry bones, it's empty eyesockets gazed back at Ivan. Rotten cloth robes covered the undead miscreation as it stood with long cresent bladed daggers in his hands. "Well, I suppose I should thank the gods for the chance to kill you, personally. Finally I can vent all this resentment I felt towards you all those years. I bet you never even realised how I dispised you in all those years that you called me your friend." The miscreation said with it's jaw hanging motionless, with only the direction of the sound indicating it was indeed him who spoke. "To be honest, I always knew. It's one of the few reasons I could call you my friend, you never hid anything for me. You were always like an open book to me, and you didn't even try to hide anything. Even now I think of you as my old friend." Ivan replied to the undead before him who trew out a disturbing laughter almost emmidiatly thereafter as he spoke. "Yes, that is the kind of foolishness I remember of my mortal existance. But that friend you remember is long gone. His memories may still remain within this vessel, but his mind has been corrupted to form me. The foolishness of the living, to believe in friendship and trust... Especially when minnions under your full controll are so much better at following your demands."

The undead lunged forwards as best it could, however it didn't even reach Ivan. "Are you willing to forsake what you care about, for the life of another?" It was a cryptic thing to say, especially to Ivan. For him the case was very much black and white, or at least it should have been. It was obvious that the undead before him wasn't the friend he remembered, what was before him was merely a lich who's formed from the corruption of a mages mind. However even as the creature lay on the platform in front of his feet, Ivan couldn't bring himself to give a killing blow. It had been so many years since they had last seen eachother, and back he had killed his friend turned lich to protect the lives of those around him. He had been a powerfull mage, and thus a prime target for the liches, however when he turned into a lich to his surprise he couldn't use his magic anymore. His magic relied on muscle memory to cast his magic in melee combat, however the form before Ivan didn't carry a single ounce of muscle, making him like a fish on land, unable to cast magic or even just to move his body properly. At this point he was as dangerous as a toddler with a fork, making it even more tempting to just talk to him and let the melancholy take him back to the good old days. Before all of this, before he was forced to kill his friend and before the slaughter at Thylysium.

"Are you crying? You are weak, like all the living! You have me unable to even get this trashpile of a body of the ground, and yet instead to killing me here and now, you cry? You are even weaker than the last time, you weren't even affected when you killed me." The undead spoke as he noted a drop fall to the ground. "Back then the full weight hadn't settled in yet. Even if it wasn't your intention I thank you for pulling me back to the present, now to return the favor to my old friend." Ivan said as he took one of the blades out of the loose grip of the hand. He raised the blade aiming for the undeads neck and as he swung down for the decappitation he whispered. "Farewell my friend, we will never meet again." The decappitation wasn't clean, and the head was still attached by a layer of skin, but it was clear that the lich was dead as the body stopped squirming.

Ivan trew the dagger as hard as he could over the edge of the platform before turning towards the man in the distance. He knew that he hadn't really killed his friend, afterall he was dead already, but it didn't make him less angry. "Now, will you explain why this was necessary? Afterall you knew all about me, and thus knew how this would end. I took an oath swearing to protect others, he became a lich who'd murder a city to gain power, there is no chance of that ending without one of both dead. So why? What knowledge did you gain? Does this make you feel like you know better whether I am trustworthy better than before?" His normal calm voice was now somewhat disturbed as a mixture of anger and grief stirred his heart and tears flowed over his cheeks.

"Live." The word echoed in his ears. The world fading away into the black, he found himself upon a stone platform, “That's not-' normal, he began to say. Turning his body half to Keres, and Tiotio but the words died in his throat, eyes going wide, as a lump formed in his throat.

A pair of figures approached him. Stopping just outside of arms reach. He could hear screaming, alongside the rapid beat of a hammer on an anvil, even as the buzzing from before became a keening wail in his head. His mind, screamed at him, his powers screamed at him. Impossible, fake, they're both dead.

His heart though, his heart clenched at the sight of the two of them together, of HIM, so close to her. The only person he'd ever cared about more than himself.

His talons extended from his fingers serrated and bleeding molten steel, with a sound like tortured steel, his teeth clenched so hard molten blood pressed out from the gums and spilled around the edges of his mouth.

“Impossible.' He growled, eyes literally alight with his rage, every heaving enraged breath shifting burning hot ash, and embers from his mouth. Every fiber of his being wanted to charge forward, and strike him down, but one thing stopped him, froze him in place unable to act his body locked in place. His Grandmother, standing so close the bastard could touch her.

“I told you I'd take away everything you cared for. Thirteen-thirty seven.' His voice was smooth as he remembered. He was just as Wayland remembered. A tall man wearing an immaculate suit. He had blond hair which was short everywhere but a strip just off the center. A curtain of it hung straight over one eye, rippling with each paced step of his Oxfords. His hands were clasped behind his back, gloved and firm. Smug bastard.

Why wouldn't he be smug? His mind asked, he has her. He has her! His thoughts raged at him, tore at the invading feelings, but the effort was ruined by him. He wanted this to be real, he would give anything for this to be real. If it was he could forget.

Everything around him burned, the world itself seemed to scream as power flared through him, a screaming roar of fire and death, the awakening of his power was violent, truly violent and everything around him turned to ash. Even his-

Banishing the thought he spoke through gritted teeth, hate evident in his voice as he looked at the blond man. “I killed you,' He stopped, twin beads of molten light appearing at the corners of his eyes as he looked at his grandmother, his voice softened. “I killed, both of you.'

“You did!' She screamed, her voice accused him, the man just smiled his condescending smile, nodding. “I loved you like my own child! Gave up everything for you, and you killed me!' She was practically howling at him then, every word like a physical blow, he stumbled back with each one, the rage at the man fleeing from him, replaced by liquid agony, that racked his body.

Retreating. His mind whispered to him, in a thousand different voices poised like a blade to his throat. He froze, an alien sensation running through him accompanied by the sound of a hammer striking and anvil. He could vaguely make out Tiotio, and Keres near him, as his tunnel vision began to clear.

“I did kill you. I'm sorry.' He said, voice weak, muffled, he couldn't bring his head up to look at them anymore. He was defeated, this was not a battle he could win. He'd faced these demons before, he would not do so again. Could not do so again. To kill her again, would be to kill himself, but he could not flee.

He did not know retreat. His essence rebelled against it. Everything that he was, could not flee, it was not in him.

“Keres,” Tiotio called, “I don’t know what’s real. Come, help me.” His mind latched onto the voice, a pleading lilt to it. He could not flee, but he could protect someone else. He turned and ran, and something inside him broke.

His backpedaling had taken him a ways away. It hadn't seemed like much at the time, but he was able to clear the distance in a few long strides. We are broken, he thought. As he saw them, Keres, and Tiotio. The two he had shared an interview with.

Tiotio, was pushing a person behind her, as she backed away from a great lumbering beast, made of mud, and sticks. Golem, his mind whispered. The thought, and the knowledge clicking into place, a nameless blade relinquishing the knowledge. Past them, Keres stood limp, as if broken, her usually proud posture bent as if by a great weight, face stained by tears, much as his was. He was a broken blade, but perhaps he wasn't the only one who had been broken by the ordeal.

He came to a halt, standing in front of them. His new allies, comrades even, after sharing something like this, Tiotio, the new person and Keres. He didn't know what he could do. Didn't know if he could fight something like this, but he would try. He set himself into a wide stance, talons at his sides. He had ran from one battle, had cast away a core belief because he could not stand the site of someone he loved.

He could not flee again. He didn't think he could be reforged from a break like that. He spoke then, scraping every last grain of his will together, picking up the pieces of his own broken self and hammering them into words, spoken with every last iota of conviction he had left.

“With you both as my witnesses, I will never run again.'

Azien's mind rested on each of them in turn, spending less than a second weighing each recruit before turning to another, then another. Each faced something that they both dreaded and longed for. They longed for love, for vengeance, for a chance to set things right, for kind words that would never come from the forms before them. Each confrontation happened simultaneously, they stood only inches from each other, but were blind to everything but their own trials.

As he watched, hands folded in front of him, many turned away from their trial, unimpressed with the subterfuge. He did not speak. He did not move. Their will was strong, but their resistance did not tell him what he needed to know. He knew he risked isolating them with is next choice, hardening them against him, but he must do it. If he did not test them, he would never know if they could be trusted to guard his chosen family.

He pushed his will out, a simple delicate thought, and it touched the mind of the one who formed the shadows, controlled the illusions of the trial.

Again, events happened in an instant, none of the recruits able to see the whole picture only the images the shadows formed in their eyes.

Aera Kirishima’s blade was still in the air, not even an inch past the now dissipated image of her master, when it clanged hard against metal. It was a shovel, in the hands of the gravedigger.

So sudden was this change, that she could not reacted before his arm was around her, wrenching her forward, throwing her to the ground.

“You would allow such a thing? This is how far my son has fallen?” The words were a harsh yell, shouted across the stone platform to where Pravus stood, his back turned, “A lifeless thing wanders the earth, stricken and in pain, and you do nothing to end her suffering? You abandon me, abandon your duty, fine! But I will not. I will put this creature to rest!”