Chapter 13: Further dreams

Inside of the town, a heavily worn dirt street had turned to a muddy sludge in the recent rains mixing in with all sorts of sewage and waste thrown from the high residential windows of the houses lining it. Continuing on their way towards the town centre, they spotted a somewhat reputable looking establishment and went inside. Fortunately, it seemed that they had made quite a lucky find because the interior was almost devoid of other people to stare at them being manipulators but was still warm and felt quite cosy with the bright colours painted onto the walls. With Sadis and Thea walking ahead to the bar, Kira was once again left alone.

He didn't feel much like going and talking with the bartender himself and had already eaten recently enough to not worry about getting hungry overnight. To avoid boredom, he walked around the bar and ducked under the entrance to another room. This area was less well-lit with the only real light coming from a smouldering fire at its far end, and it was filled with several tables with painted green benches drawn up alongside them. Around the fire, seats had been placed to form a semi-circle with a demi-human bard standing in the centre beside the blaze.

The bard was a tall brown-haired man whose tail and ears seemed to gently shift in time to the music he played from a strange stringed instrument he held before him. Not really sure if backing out the way he had come would be an insult to the player, and having little else to do, Kira went and joined several other people sat on the benches to listen to the bard. At that time, he had finished his song and stopped for a moment lowering his instrument slightly before him.

This was when Kira noticed several different things about the people around him on the benches. The most important of which being that they were sat staring blankly forwards at the fire as though in a trance but, before he could turn to the bard and ask him why that might be the case, the bard had already raised his instrument and begun to strum it playing another song.

It began quite slowly with the man's fingers gently working across the strings and, for whatever reason, this motion made Kira forget about his early concerns and simply sit, waiting to see what might come next. The bard then added to the piece with his voice, "There once was a hero called…" and the lyrics began to fill Kira's ears like a warm blanket, "He once…" and then, by the second verse, Kira's eyes were drawn towards the fire. "As strong as an…" and at these words, the fire reared up to show several figures dancing in a circle "…and the enemy proved too strong…" and for Kira, the whole world seemed to fall away, leaving just the isolated glow held before him in an infinite sea of darkness stretching far from his eyes. As he watched the fire ever closer, the only constant became the bard's voice which, whilst he could not make out the lyrics, seemed to resonate loud and clearly deep within his mind.

The fire moved before his eyes making the people ever more distinct, swirling with colour, that for whatever reason he recognized from his previous dream in Neuverie as though his last dream had been from the perspective of one of them. It eventually condensed into seven beings who stood tall and proud, around in a circle, whilst aura moved around them in ever greater concentrations and patterns that flew far into the distance.

Their manipulations then became so powerful that the very fabric of the universe twisted around them and contorted in response to it. The universe, itself containing the aura of all living things, the mother of all living things, seemed to respond to their call. The mother looked towards them, heeded their cries, so mighty in scope they were, and not only responded but bowed! For the first time since creation, it seemed that the mother had bent her knee to her children and recognized their strength!

However, looking deeper, Kira could feel a different purpose than a simple display of power emanating from them. The seven's aura was filled with hope and love and seemed to want to do nothing but heal and aid the ageing mother who, worn down by the millennia since creation, had sensed her own life racing towards a conclusion.

This conclusion, realized Kira, must have been what the seven were fighting against at the moment that he was seeing. They were not working to destroy but instead to create new life, gently bending and warping what was to develop a system that would last far into a future made uncertain with age.

The mother recognized them; she recognized their desire to save her children and all that she contained, and she moved with the Seven, finally seeing these seven of her children as her equals. Those seven! Kira could hardly imagine how mighty they must have been to not just call to the universe but have the universe respond and accept their authority as being as mighty and as divine as its own. But he knew that their existence was not a lie; he knew that what he was seeing was not fiction but a long lost history.

By now, his mind was wholly engulfed by images encasing him within their warmth and showing the seven's true power as it filtered throughout all of existence whilst hardly seeming to disperse at all because of how mighty it was. Then he heard the only clear lyrics from the bard that he had since the start of the vision, "Oh how they cried, we will rule the universe!" and he felt that the warmth surrounding him was a simple manifestation of their strength and not some filtration of aura at all.

These, he realized, were the gods. These were the seven who would rule all; these were the seven who would do whatever it would take to use their strength to save the ignorant inhabitants of the universe from its ending!

He sensed the end fast approaching now with everything swirling and collapsing around him, leaving the Seven as the only constants. He felt that this rhythm of creation, as chaotic and seraphic as it had been, had been a success. He then heard as the universe sang out in a single angelic, all-filling voice, Progenitors, honouring the seven with the title that they held to this day. The universe itself had given them their name as thanks for their revival of it as thanks for the saving of its children, and as thanks on behalf of the future generations that Kira was now a part of, that could only have existed as a result of the Progenitor's actions.

With the rapture's ending, Kira had time for one last vision which made clear the collapsing swirls of colour that he had previously seen. It seemed that the seven were busy folding the universe and that they were not simply content with saving it.

The mother then had to watch in utter horror as her children, the only children she had named, the Progenitors warped the fabric of existence. They took the unbroken plane of the universe and cut it into smaller realms with gates between them, and this was done by making two locations in space and time became one, hence allowing instant travel between the two and these became the holes that became the gates that Kira had heard so much about.

These gates that had allowed so many species to live together and caused so much tension and competition between these species had been created by the seven Progenitors as a grand experiment. By forcing so many species to interact, they had forced competition and development between them. They could watch the results, gradually becoming the overseers of the newly formed nexus of worlds.

This was to be all for their own amusement, and Kira knew it all to be true. He had shared in the mother's disgust as this had occurred and now grew conflicted as to whether the seven's actions could be adequately justified. But, before he could see much more to give him an answer, either way, the fire around him turned to dust. It fell away with the figures of the seven disappearing last of, all giving way to the scattered embers of the fire still smouldering in the fireplace where this had all begun.

At the same time, but far to the west, the nameless child was making his way down a steep incline and following the direction of the blue-cloaked figure who, ever vigilant, was directing him towards a track leading north of Ostermark, as they planned to bypass the city. Up ahead, one of the other captives slipped and skidded away down the path sending a small landslide of stones and dirt flying off before him. This caused the boy's watcher to briefly speak, muttering under his breath, to curse yokai kind.

To the boy, the concept of a yokai was a new one. Still, he supposed that he fitted its description quite nicely and he almost laughed at the idea internally, thinking how odd it was that the humans would supply him with a term by which he could classify himself as superior to them.

The humans travelling with them that lacked the cloaks marking them out as manipulators soon demanded that the pace be slowed, and the group took a break sheltering under cover of a rise. Nearby a tiny stream that gurgled down from above formed a waterfall that barely reached up to the boy's head. To him, it seemed to be quite pitiful in its naive innocence and apparent serenity as back home he had known waterfalls that could stand proud and tall almost a full node in height, but this one seemed to hardly care about competing with its peers.

With the watchers occupied elsewhere, and his abilities still locked off, he had no choice but to wait beside it and watch, ever silently, as the normal humans grew anxious around him and threw strange glances and glares towards him as they clustered together to eat. That was so typical, thought the boy, they had requested that they stop to rest, but now they seemed more restless than ever. He made a silent bet with himself that if they had started moving again, at that moment, they certainly would have started fresh complaints about the lack of a proper break. However, he was then taken from his thoughts as one of the men got to his feet and marched over, carrying a slice of bread with him.

"Aren't you hungry?" the man asked, looking the nameless child over, "I haven't seen you eat for this whole trip." The boy didn't respond, ignoring him, and instead looked past him to see if a manipulator would come over to help diffuse the situation. Unfortunately, it seemed that they had not noticed. The man continued, now with several comrades standing by his side, "I bet that you don't eat at all or that, if you do, you only eat people!" eliciting snickers from his friends, "Judging by the size of ya, I would bet that you only eat children too – babies perhaps." At that moment, he had to cut himself off at the sudden appearance of a hand placed firmly on his shoulder.

Looking back, one of the manipulators had finally come forwards to tell him, "They sustain themselves off their own aura, the yokai kind is strange; it's best not to talk with them. Our job is simply to take them safely to Krinestadt." And, knowing better than to pick a fight that he could not possibly win, the man backed off, and he and his friends went back to sitting in their own little group.

Having seen them off, the blue-robed man looked over the child surveying him as one might a valuable product for damage. He stated, "You better start speaking soon before we arrive back if you know what's good for you." whilst gripping the top of the yokai's head, enjoying his own sense of power over what would typically be the source of many childhood nightmares for a human.

This did not bother the boy because he knew that he would answer when the time came and that right now, they had no way to force him to speak, particularly if he did not want to give away certain secrets. Throughout the trip, the manipulators had asked him many questions about the other worlds and the nature of the various yokai societies. The problem had been that they had never asked him the right questions and so answering to tell them this had seemed like a waste of breath.

Simply put, it seemed that they believed that all yokai societies would function the same, and they had asked him about all the wrong ones. The only time that he had ever spoken to them had been to tell them that they were asking inappropriate questions, but that hadn't seemed to please them either.

Perhaps, if they were intent on taking him to see their king, then that being would be wiser, much like an alpha would be, but from the impression that he had so far gained of humanity, he doubted that this would be the case. This was an impression that he knew he would harbour for a long time, never forgetting and always remembering had certainly led to yokai taking time to change their views, and he had had time to come to the view that they were irritating if nothing else.

At this time, his abilities may have been sealed away, something that he was certain was the doing of one of the blue-robes, but his senses were not. These were senses that had been honed over a lifetime of living in dark lands, populated by monsters, and where only those who could quickly perceive and react to danger would survive.

And now these senses were telling him one thing, danger was coming, and it was close by probably being up above them on the ridge that they were sheltering below.

Noting this, he did not tell the humans as if the manipulators fell, he would be free, so warning them would be against his own interests. Instead, he went and leant against the steep rise, besides the waterfall, ensuring that any enemy looking down from above would see him the last. A few moments later, his suspicions were confirmed and, as the wind changed direction, he picked up the scent of a group of humans above him. Trying to act as naturally as he could with a racing heartbeat, he simply waited to see what would come next.

The following conflict was swift, or rather what the boy saw of it was. First, he heard the heavy step of boots above him and several of the men supposed to be guarding him looked up at the source of the sound in alarm. Then, as the manipulators got to their feet, a strange bolt of lightning shot out with blinding brightness and hit one squarely in the chest. He went flying, landing twenty feet back, having had no time to brace himself for the impact, let alone dodge. The attacker had known exactly who to hit as this had been the manipulator with the suppressing ability and, now that he was out of their radius of effect, the boy felt his own powers return.

Knowing what was about to happen, one of the other manipulators looked back at the nameless child, feeling entirely helpless who stared back and spoke, "Bye." he said, quite cheerfully, and he transformed himself into a crow. He then took flight straight into the sky, racing past the figure that had unleashed the attack.

This person must have recognized him as more than a bird, and when he rushed past, a second bolt was sent racing after him. Amateur, the boy thought as he turned upside down, flapped once, and transformed back into a humanoid form, falling rapidly towards the treetops to avoid the blast. With the branches rushing past him and the ground coming up to meet him, he held up a short and muscular arm, covered in black fur, to grab a passing branch confidently ending his fall. With no sign of hesitation, he transformed himself again into a bird and flew quickly towards the south where he could see a settlement looming before him, and its name was Ostermark.

Behind him, a battle was raging with several more of the blinding flashes of light leaping into the sky, ancient trees being uprooted with the force of various impacts and the bank that he had been sheltering below collapsing as it was hit by some manipulator's ability.

This display did not frighten him because back home, he was certain that he had seen beings capable of smashing mountains and leaving a great landscape of broken rock and uprooted trees as far as the eye could see after their battles. Instead, he was more concerned about where he was heading. For now, he was moving towards a strange settlement, and he was aware that it would be full of humans, but that might have just made it into the perfect place to hide, at least until he had discovered a way back across the sea and he knew that he could wait. Whether it be after a month or a century, eventually an opportunity would come to leave this continent.