The Archon
My earliest memory is of myself as a child. I was young and I had the almost unique gift of awareness. It would be many millennium before I would remember this. … My breath is the wind that stirs the life in the little ones and I am the one who watches over. They wake slowly, unsteadily, reaching towards a horizon beyond themselves. They worship, dream, touch the vault of their own creation. Long eras of building and renewal have brought us here, the age of the mortal man, the human. My presence is swayed by them, they carry souls of strength. Emotions boil over into the air around them. Envy, hatred, greed, jealousy, desire, lust, gluttony, love, sadness, fear, and hope all simmer from their bodies, adding to the great aura. It is a new breed of life, one which compiles itself naturally, daring to press the flanks of my presence. They surge forward, sieging me with torrents of frustration and terror. But I am not weak. I am presence, I am eternal. Time passes, life divides, and I exist. The humans have begun to mutate, their passion controlled by my very will. A new breed emerged, more powerful and pure than the last. I was intrigued. They took me upon themselves, claiming to be the creators of this land. Ridiculous, I have been and will be. They take it upon themselves to raise their fury to the sky, to shout my name across the skies of space and time? They are a fiercer, more aware brand than I have ever known. They have become adversaries. Not in their individual right, of course, but together. Their life, protected and raised by my breath, the life that once bound them to me no longer flows. They have stagnated it with their designs, their constructs of stone, steel, fire and lightning. They play with fire, revel in ice and I feel pure delight streamline across the course of their existence. They are but a stone in the path of humanity. I begin to fear. They grow still, grasping at the rails to the one they call heaven. Sanctuary. I know none, this world is my domain, and I shall be its soul. Time passes and many eras of revolt occur, each stronger than the last. Their efforts are pale and they require the strength of their wits. Creatures of stone, rock, metal, heat, lightning and terror blight me as they press forward, their passions raising and receding like the waves. Their emotions surge against me, unrelenting throughout many ages. Their manner builds upon that of their fallen. They remember, plan, devise and struggle with their fate. I begin to pity them, turning on the one who guides their power. Their tricks become craftier, at one time they beset upon me a creature made entirely of lightning, fierce as the storms I call down. I smite it down, careful to make them aware of the fruitlessness of their direction. I am their guardian, why do they combat me? My puzzled conscience warps and sizzles. But why? They grow in power and cunning, soon I am caught in a treacherous struggle for our survival. Their constructs have grown more detestable, although more potent. What was once steel and desire is now flesh, bone, and hate. Regret and rage churns within the victims of their sacrifice as their war machine clamors into the sky, impractical beyond all their imagination, yet it fuels itself eternally on the aura of their souls. They harness their power collectively and come to seal our fate. I will not smite them down; their victory reminds me of my purpose. I begin to collapse upon the very world I nurtured. Tides of emotion fill my essence as I am bound within their relics, and as a monstrous new beast leaps from within the flames of their hearts and takes to the skies, breaking the vault of heaven. Without me, they are lost. They must find their own way now. … We are the Archon. We were chosen by the Templar of old, the voice of the ultimate. Spiritbound, we left our bodies to unite in the Trial of the Coming of Evos. At the moment of our sacrifice we would attain ascendance and gain the collective conscience of the Fudukai people, the descendants of the world. --- As we diminish, tied to physical beings, everything begins to take hold. Memories of times long forgotten seep into our hearts of steel, melting away at the planar entity that devoured us for so long. It comes back slowly or quickly, we cannot tell, although at once we become aware of something unique. Something never quite fully imagined as we split forms into two different souls. Two presences lurch from the dust of the collapsing archon. Two souls, set out from the dawn of time, when intellect and emotion were as raw as our bodies, connected so long through the sacrifice at Evos. As we felt the other’s presence split from our own, I felt the greatest sense of loss imaginable as I lose a part of myself. A hole rips into my heart, and then nothing. …And then the other. I felt the other curling around me as soon as it felt me. This person, once entirely separate, spent the width of space of time among my heart, and as I felt her eyes upon me, I knew what she was thinking. And she, I. Eternity would not be long enough. And once again our forms mingled, touching deeply the very essence of the other, trying desperately to find a way back in. Heaven, as the humans call it, is not a gift from above, but a gift from within and among. I have found mine.