Kapitel 4: Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1: Born
'I open my eyes to see a world of chaos. The light is loud and the sounds of machines burn at my skin. There are memories of a past life swirling inside my mind. I did not die, yet I am born again.'
-Unknown
A tall and slender man awoke from the closest thing he could consider sleep. When sitting up from his bed, he realised it was only a stone platform, shaped to his height and width with no room to spare. The space around him was hardly worthy of being called a closet, closer to an alcove in a wall. It was cold and grey, made entirely of solid stone.
A crystal no larger than his palm was set into the ceiling, casting an almost neon-white glow that lit the entire space. It revealed strange writing across the walls, markings and symbols that almost seemed to shimmer in the light. Some of the markings seemed to be randomly scrawled along the surfaces, but a few were organised to form large circles or other simple shapes.
The man looked around briefly at the walls before standing up. His bare feet made little noise as he stood from the pedestal, as though he had been accustomed to moving silently all his life. When stepping toward the only exit of the room, a large hole leading to a dark opening, he was suddenly stopped.
"Hold it! Stay right there." A yawny female voice commanded from beyond the entryway.
He froze in an instant, his body seemed locked of all free-will. His face gave no reaction either, his movements and face were as expressive as the stone walls.
"Good, last time you just looked around like an idiot and screamed." The voice commented before emerging from the shadow outside the room.
Entering the small room was a six-foot-tall brunette woman, wearing a dark blue robe of silk with a puffed collar of white fur. Her hair braided into a single tress that fell slightly passed her waist, swinging with her steps and tapping quietly against the large brown belt that tied the robe shut.
In her slender hand, appeared a long, smoking pipe made of a wood so red in colour, it glistened like a ruby as it faintly released a string of smoke. In the other, she was casually wielding a thin baton made of a dull metal, tracing it aimlessly in the air as though she was tracing invisible letters.
"Let's see how well your little brain developed beyond basic commands. After that, I am finally going to bed. Tell me, what's your name?" She asked after a quick puff of the pipe.
"I do not know." The man said bluntly.
"What is your purpose?"
"I do not know."
"Do you know who I am?"
"I do not know."
"I suppose that is good enough, finally got rid of that nasty little issue at least. Now tell me, what do you know?"
"I know that I do not know my name, purpose, or who you are."
"Ooh, quite the cheeky one." She lightly chuckled before giving another puff on her pipe. "You better come up with better jokes if you plan on surviving here."
The man gave no reaction, as he did not understand what she was referring to, he only stood silently. The tall woman gave him a short eye roll before spinning around and exiting the room.
"Follow me, I'm gonna show you around before going to bed."
Without hesitation, he followed. His newborn brain had no grasp on humour or sarcasm, all he could do was listen. He took two steps out of the exit before stepping onto a walkway that looked over the massive underground space.
Dozens of floors below and above had identical walkways carved of the same stone as the walls and ceiling. Each floor had countless little alcoves like the room he had awoken from. Some were humming lightly with the sounds and beats of machines.
While walking past some of the rooms, he saw oddly shaped contraptions, each one uniquely different in appearance.
One was simply a box with wheels and a spinning dial fixed atop a brass plate. Another had the shape of a human's upper torso, but it had no head on its shoulders and at the waist, it was attached to an arachnid-like set of legs. They went on, each machine was more strange looking than the last.
The man looked out over the edge of the platform as they walked, attempting to see the true size of the . . . . .
'Cells. Prison. Trapped.'
Suddenly a jolt of heat flashed across the man's head when the words and scenes of another place came to him. His steps faltered as his face twitched a few times before the picking back up like nothing happened.
The woman gave no indication of whether or not she saw him change pace, but they kept walking until they reached the end of the open walkway. At the end was a hallway dug straight through the stone, appearing to be a different section of the underground structure, somewhere that radiated a lot more light.
She stopped and turned to face him, "Anyway, your name is -or rather was- Arkyn; preordained by a past life or probably some now very long dead parents."
She held the end of her baton against the wall next to the exit. A sheet of ice formed beside them, becoming a layer of frost at first but then smoothing over to a flat surface. She gestured at him to look once the ice became reflective enough to act as a mirror.
Arkyn studied his appearance, seeing a young, scarless, naked adult male staring back at him. He was the same height as the woman beside him, though his hair was a much darker brown that waved lightly at the ends and barely rested on his shoulders.
His face didn't widen as far as her's did along the cheekbones, and while her eyes almost shined with a yellowish-green, his were an icy-sharp blue.
Nothing in his narrow face or bare body showed any emotion, even when attempting to mimic her smile or her chuckle from mere moments ago. This made him start to wonder about several things. "You said you made me, but are you not my mother if I was named by other parents?"
"Oh good gods no, I am not your mother. The last thing I'd ever bring into this world is a child. You are more accurately a recycled head in a body of metal and some high class, magic batteries."
She took a draw off the pipe and at the same time, poked him in several spots along his chest using the baton, each one glowing as a different symbol started to shine just beneath the skin. Some he noticed were identical to the ones inside the alcove.
After the sixth point of contact, the surface of his body shimmered and rippled.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein