This, amazing piece by none other than  satsukii. This is a piece long time in the coming and worth every moment of it!  satsukii is so very amazing; in every way for her sheer perserverance, to say nothing of her limitless talent. And this piece of work is no less a master piece of her work. Satsukii worked tirelessly to bring this piece to life and really and truly has

Kayin guides Rey, dancing through the night; the shadows playing out a long story - a story with neither a beginning nor an ending - one that has been haunting Rey. Setting out into the desert on a desperate gambit, she comes across Kayin – almost as if he has been waiting for her to come. With only more questions, her only way to the answers she seeks is through the strange wolf.
A vision quest, a dance about the fire light – answers found in the shadows of their making. The answers she finds only leading to more questions.

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She had always known trouble would find her. The rule of Three. It was an ancient tale. The retelling far older than Rey had knew herself, something passed down from one to another like so much gossip. Rey had never putting much faith in fanciful flights of half heard prophetic words. And yet those same seemingly idle words were hunting her. Rey muttered a quiet curse under her breath as she turned her head, gazing across the seemingly endless dunes of sand illuminated by the setting sun, painted dunes of golds and reds as far as the eye could see and the mind dare imagine. Her mutter went unnoticed by the world around her, and she not so quietly wondered to herself why it was she found herself in these endless, trackless wastes.

There was no one here. No one for a thousand leagues. Merely the desert predators and creatures that lived, if it could be called that, subsisting desperately in the harshest of environments day to day. Eking a pathetic existence in the heat and endless sands. The Dunes... like a sea, spread out before her; rolling in frozen waves. Idly, as she tracked across the crest of the endless dunes, she wondered what great ocean perhaps once existed here in this dead land. What grand life had sustained itself here, before simply become naught but dust and... sand.

Far too much sand. She growled and shook her head, pinching the brow of her muzzle between her pawed fingers. The irritation had spread like a subtle fear, growing in the pit of her stomach, filling her mind. "By the circles.. what a fool am I… why am I even here?!” she said, aloud, shouting to the sky. The world remained silent…

And yet the question remained, why had she come here. To this; these sprawling endless waste. Why had she already spent half her supplies, journeying into the unforgiving wilds that none dared to tread. For a moment her mind wandered back what felt like weeks, back to the City of River’s Cross. The merchant there, at the edge of civilization had asked her the same question . Wide eyed and in disbelief, the man had tried to protest, even dissuade her from what seemed tantamount to suicide. Rey had simply given the man a devilish smile; and shook her head. She was after all quite able to take care of herself, even if she didn’t outwardly seem that way to some.

And yet, here she was. By the spirits she should have listen for once. At least to her own inner worries. It had sounded like far too much trouble to begin with…. Oh the beginning. That had been trouble enough, and enough trouble that she had found herself out here, searching for answers that probably didn’t even exist – in a place that not even the raiders ventured! Here no beings dwelled. Here there was nothing but sand and contemplation. And the sun’s heat, of course – even fading .

Not even the raiders ventured so deep into the expanse of sand. And yet she hadn't even batted an eye. He had been a moment’s amusement what with his state of shock and disbelief. These were mortal men, and there was little she had to fear as they did. Their ignorance shackled them to such things; but Rey knew better. She had gleaned secrets of the world, both dark and terrible and saw past the juvenile fears of the unknown. She welcomed such expanses of thought, for she truly knew what lay beyond – far more terrifying than the simple fears through ignorance. She knew what fed upon more than just flesh, and had long ago mastered her fear of it.

She had cut through his paltry plea to not venturing into such a place alone. Oh indeed, she was sure he had her best interest at heart. The cynical part of her mind took solace in the pettiness of others, their ever so eager predictability. Indeed, it seemed that even the gentle class in such cities far removed from true civilization had their own breed of viper. She had been thankful, at last, to put that backwater behind her at first – even if it was for the sake of the baking desert, a journey that had no known destination. Simply, a long and winding road with no end in sight. No promised answers, just a fool’s hope. But it was the only chance for reprieve the dreams. The endless visions in her sleep.

Swimming in memory, the burning sands at her feet, she was taken back. Back in time across her thoughts to the inception of her journey. To those dreams. Rey had always dreamed. Everyone does, after all, even if most do not remember them or know how to read them. Even from an early age though, she had seen things in her dreams that head lead her eventually to a deeper understanding of the world. To her sorceries. She had always found a solace in walking amongst her dreams and had never found fear – even in her nightmares. For there was always understanding and realization. She had always awoken more for it. But these had been different. They had been a whole different type of darkness. Outward she shook, drawing her shawl closer about her as she continued her walk through the trackless desert nightfall, walking too down the path of her memory.

The visions had come in small waves at first. Simple thoughts and images. A flash from the corner of her eye, a whispered word in her mind in her waking hours. She should have felt the tingle of her skin then. Felt the fur on the back of her neck stand on end. For even such small portents, rippled into the vastness of all – touching everything. Though, perhaps even if she had known, it would have done her little good. The visions transcended, from simple flashes of thoughtlessness to moments of recognition. She had realized then at an unconscious level that these visions were empty. Deeply and profoundly devoid of that old familiar feeling. Like a vacuum, they left her hollow and weak in their passing, even if it was for a fraction of a moment. That feeling persisted, and had only grown.

And then it had found her. In the dreaming. Emptiness. A nothing devoid of thought or even escape. There was something wholly wrong and terrifying of what she had found. Or perhaps, rather what had found her. Each and every night it haunted her into her dreams. It hunted her. Something desperately voracious. Rey was aware of it. Night after night simply… existing in nothingness, trapped. Though she was all together adept at controlling her thoughts, her dreams as she willed, time and again – try as she might she could not bring herself to wake. Never a message nor laughter. Not statement of intent of malicious overtures. Simply Nothing. Perhaps that was the worst of it, after all.

No matter how she had cast her bones. No matter what portents she cast or magics she wove she could not find an escape from that inky blackness. Like tar, it surrounded her, bound her and suffocated her in a forever night. Though she slept trapped each night, she would always come to wake the next day, always waking – as if only to inspire greater terror for each coming night. Almost as if something was toying with her, feasting off her growing fear and terror. Knowingly letting her sit, and watch and wait, waiting for the sun to set and sleep to come; when she would once more be trapped and powerless.

She could find no sign nor word in any of what she searched for. Not even the vaguest of clues. Perhaps none ever existed. She had tried to ignore dreams and her fruitless efforts to divine their meaning. She had held to waking hours, in the hope that it would stave off the lurking depth of shadows, trapped beneath those deep blood moon eyes, locked away in her unconscious. For all her struggle, she had not been spared. Not even in her waking hours, the dread mounting upon her, driving her to sleeplessness. No part of her mind a safe bastion from a predator and darkness that she, even in the vastness of understanding, did not truly know.

After what felt like months of sleepless flight, fighting against succumbing to the darkness again, fueled by desperation she had gone to that… forbidden unhallowed place. She had sworn to herself she would never do so again. Swore upon all she held dear that she would never again do something so foolish. So terrifying. Swore to herself that no price of power was worth what she had found. What had found her. She had all but pushed that memory from her thoughts. Those dark, dead eyes. Those skeletal hands. The death’s mask grin. Rey shivered, finally summoning her strength, to visit the Oracle.

That journey, in and of itself had nearly killed her twice over. The ascent of the grand staircase, further and further into the reaches of the lonely mountain had all but driven her from those precarious purchases of ice slicked slate, barely hand holds or foot holds at all. She had idly complained to herself that whoever had cut these steps into the mountain face must have been about as good of a craftsman as she was a climber; they surely must have been insane. Realizing what she was doing and where she was going, for the second time in her life, she growled inwardly – an ironic frustration.

As perilous as that journey had been, it had paled in comparison to where she now stood. She remembered finally coming to the top of those steps, somehow elated that she was there at last, forgetting for a moment what lay within. She had once more come face to face with something she did not wholly understand, though this she could see, and feel and touch. At least, here, she felt an element of control. It had been waiting. The chatter of its teeth, its skeletal digits. She hadn’t even the need to ask. It hadn’t asked a single question. The Oracle simply laughed, or its approximation of a laugh. It sickened Rey, her fur standing on end.

She had been young, the first time she had come here. She had been naïve, then too. Curious and vain. She had wanted everything, and yet known nothing about what it was she really wanted. She had come for answers, for the secrets of the Ancient Ways. She had found them. The Oracle had given her what she thought she had wanted. It felt like a life time ago.

Rey remembered in that moment how much she did not want to be here, amongst the dead things. Amongst the frozen rocks covered in ice. In the thin air, nearly unbreathable. In the stinking, fetid cold. Only dead things stirred here. Everything within her wanted to leave before she had even reached the summit. It was through force of will alone she stayed. She waited.

Though she could not see its lifeless eye sockets, the place where its freeze gaze would come from – she knew it was looking at her. Into her. The Oracle did not speak, not with words . How could a creature that had no larynx or lungs? After that rasping rattle ceased, it did not move. No answers lay here. Nothing but an empty desperation, left to linger within her. She narrowed her eyes, and turned to leave, the voices within winning out. As she turned to go, Rey heard the Oracle’s thoughts. Felt them within her mind. Like a frozen gust of wind passing through her, chilling her to the bone.
The White. To the West.
The rattling rasp, a death moan called. As if to taunt her and tease her. Rey turned about, confusing crossing. In an instant emotion transmuted, grew, altered and became so much more. Anger. Undisguised disgust. The monstrosity shivered in anticipatory excitement. Rey’s emotions chumming the waters.

“What?!” she growled, her eyes narrowed.
“I have come all this way and for what? Obscure riddles in the dark?” she snarled, seemingly outraged, for a moment forgetting just where she was. It was toying with her. It enjoyed this. She had never been one to bend to other’s whims. Rey felt the seething anger flash boil within her, a primal hatred at the merest thought of being such an object of amusement. “What am I supposed to do with this? Hmm? Where then should I go with this bloody void chasing my dreaming moments wherever I tread!?” he growled, her voice dripping with venomous threat; promising an overture of violence.

The skeletal oracle merely replied with the sound of chattering bones and a dry rasping. A cruel mockery of a laugh indeed. There were many who knew of the creature, known only ever as The Oracle. Rumors always spread like disease – infectious and relentlessly virulent. Not unlike a disease, so often changing and growing of its own accord. The tale of a being that could see into the future were ever present amongst the whisper mongers, old secrets or fables passed down or rediscovered. Yet all of those failed to so accurately capture this being. For it was hardly a person, neither alive nor dead. Somewhere in between. To say that it was a monster, would not be a far cry from the truth of it, and yet it lacked so much of the truth. Like all things, so much was lost to history.

It was a beast of Shadow and Bones, and did not know time as mortals did. It simply waited and watched with all the eager amusement of a child. But here, in this moment, it found itself keenly involved. It had been long since it had remembered emotions. Things cast aside, such as love, hatred, envy, fear. Like an old ember brought to life once more. An old feeling emerged – one of anticipation.

Rey stalked towards the shadowy Oracle, its form cloaked in shadows and whisps of death. She had had enough of this, and to think that here in this hell – she had come to the breaking point. And here and now, she wanted nothing so much as to explosively vent that rage. Black lighting crackled to life around her hands; a deep growl resounding within the soul of the mountain as she drew upon the death and shadows about her, bending them to her will. The skeletal figure fiend interest.

“I am not your toy” she whispered and unleashed silent lightning, her once-upon-a-time fear of this place and this thing somewhere long since forgotten. Emotion ruled her now, and with it she knew no fear. Black coils of darkest night unwound themselves as inky tendrils lanced their way from Rey’s outstretched paw towards the enthroned skeletal figure. Coiled lightning of penumbra existed where there should have been a bright actinic flash. And yet there was nothing. The very absence of something. And with all the force of lightning that was not there, it struck the Oracle with a fury no lightning bolt could muster. And at last, there was thunder.

A deafening roar of preternatural twighlight overtook reality in the dimly lit cave. Reality was obliterate from sight for a heartbeat, only to return; wounded – the afterimage scar of the black lightning imposed over reality that would not fade no matter how much she blinked. And yet for all the force she had mustered, the Oracle sat, its skeletal form intact and seemingly unharmed.

Rey, eyes wide took a step back, as if unable to process the events that had transpired. Her thoughts reasserted themselves – as if waking from a stupor, realizing just where she was. Slowly, with all the patience in the world, the Oracle rose from its stone throne. Standing at its full height, it stood easily twice her height, robes of black cloth – mottled and ruined by age shrouded the giant, though even with the bilious robes, it was apparent that all that lay beneath was not but bones and dust. Skeletal arms unfolded, and its voluminous robes billowed in howling winds that did not exist in reality. A pair of bone white wings furled into existence from its back, streamers of frost falling away from its wings in streams of mist. Crackling webs of frost formed on the stone walls, the sound of cracking stone echoed throughout the cavern as the temperatures dropped below freezing in a heart beat.
Rey’s breath misted before her as the Oracle turned its gaze upon her – surprisingly neither baleful nor hateful. Somehow though, she found it’s black hole like gaze fitting; as if conveying something other than consternation. No malice existed there beneath the hood that concealed a void in which stars went to die and a forever wasteland that existed in all but the bleakest of legends. Rey felt her life slipping away in the face of such a creature. She growled defiantly, but knew it was an empty gesture in light of it merely ignoring her ferocious gambit.

It came upon her, and over her, considering her for a long moment. It felt like an eternity, as she drowned in its gravity. It’s touch was an anathema, and even as she saw it reach out to her, she could almost feel its deathly touch upon her. And yet, not a finger’s distance from her face, it stopped and considered; as she lay cowed at its feet. Its voice, spoke without speaking.

Go. Find the memory of Undreaming. Never Return.

The thoughts permeated her mind, invading her, defiling her. Now more than ever, she wished she had never come here. Darkness closed about her, and she felt her death’s gaze focus upon her. Everything faded away to darkness. The void once more. Nothingness. In those empty, thoughtless moments, how she wished for death’s release. She tread the thinnest of threads. Where any other mind would have collapsed and given in, Rey endured through sheer force of stubbornness.

The last remnant of the echoing Oracle’s thoughts subsuming her mind as she returned to the waking world.

You have the sight.

A parting ‘gift’, she grimaced. She had found herself at the base of the mountain, on the hollow plains of Arekesh, though how she had gotten there was beyond her. She did not believe in the kindness of such horrors , though she could find few other explanations as to how she had been expelled and still lived.

Her thoughts returned her to the present, a wrinkle in time lost in thought once more. The past was like a gaping maw, yawning just behind her heels. The echoe of the Oracle’s words sent a shiver through her, her fur standing on end, as those words – as prophetic as they were esoteric – repeated time and again. Try as she might, she had no greater an understanding now, as she had when she had first listened to those pearls, what felt like a life time ago. How many months, years, had passed – as she had found herself again. And traveled the vastness of the country, to the Sea. And beyond, spanning the Great Basin – crossing through the Mysty Isles and the Therulian Mountains. Finally happening upon the edge of the world, The Dust Bowl.

Her mind was in a thousand different places at once as she considered now the very real possibility of finding nothing , here at the end of all things. Finally bereft of sleep and sanity, driven to nothingness in this trackless waste. An ignoble death. Rey looked down at her paw, shaking. She saw a haggard age there, a desperate and deleterious force eating away at her from within, even though she looked no different than the Day she had unlocked the secrets of the Athanean Codex. Shaking her head and sighing slowly, her patience all but spent, Rey slowly turned. Defeat rested on her shoulders as she began to retrace her steps.

As she began to walk, walking up the steep slope of the dune with ever greater fatigue, she felt a tug. A unconscious pull, just as all had fallen from her sights and her hopes. With a renewed determination she crested the top of the Dune. At the edge of her vision, there grew a light; a sun rise on the wrong horizon. She had been sure she had come that way not minutes ago, and yet… there it was, as if she had some how missed it. She knew she hadn’t.

Out of instinct or Sheer desperation, Rey put into her stride – her feet given speed as if by demon’s flight. Crest after crest, dune after dune, until she finally came upon that final dune, just beyond the warm glow of her desperate hope. As she broke the peak of the last Dune There before her, was a fire; golden and inviting. And yet, out of place in the midst of an endless nothing. She felt that tug, that gravity pull her down the slope before she even realized she was moving.

The fire was vast, and where it had come from was anyone’s guess; as there was barely enough wood in the desert to start a campfire, let alone this beacon. It seemed to dance and burn of its own accord, untended and undiminished by mortal hands. It seemed to move as if given life, wanting nothing so much than to light the night. Before it, with his back turned, sat a single solitary figure. His perfect stillness, silhouetted against the dancing fire, was contrasted by his dancing shadow – as it reached out to her, inviting her even though he hadn’t yet acknowledge her presence with any sign, any movement.

Rey, bereft of reason in place of desperation, approached the fire, her shadow growing as she drew closer, cast by the fire light as it stretched to meet the wolf’s. Even as Rey slowly padded towards him, she kept her guard up. Old habits never died, and often kept one’s skin on one’s back. She moved to speak, but found herself bereft of her voice somehow. Her lips moved, but all that came out with a voiceless whisper. Even saying nothing, it seemed she had found the wolf’s attention.

He had been waiting here for her. For how long, who could say. Maybe hours, maybe years. Perhaps centuries.

The white wolf looked up slowly, turning his head back to her as he remained sitting, cross legged in perfect silence. He dipped his head slowly, a single gray eye peering out from behind a wall of flowing white hair. The wolf seemed, otherwise, unremarkable. As Rey circled about, trying to peer at the sitting wolf’s face in the firelight. He wore gray robes, aged with time. Perhaps once white, but no longer – died a ruddy orange red by the roar fire’s heat and dancing light. Flickers of amber shades danced across his body, eliciting strange patterns of fire across him, as though telling a story across the canvas of his body.

Rey stood silent, waiting for the wolf, though the wolf seemed content merely to sit and peer with a single storm cloud wreathed eye at the woman. At last, the fire storm in his eyes seemed to settle, a smile forming around his eyes, the wrinkles in his face melding from the fire light shapes. He seemed all together too old, and too young.

“So you’ve come at last then. Do you have a message for me?” he whispered, his voice somehow finding her, impossibly; as though he were right beside her – whispering to her intimately.

Rey blinked, narrowing her eyes as she recovered quickly from the surprise, not having expected his voice so close. In truth, she hadn’t known what to expect, but whatever she had found, was entirely apart from what she thought she had known. “Message? I bring no message… I come with questions” . she said, cross before the wolf and the flames.

He merely smiled, opening the other eye. “Can a question and an answer not exist in the same place at the same time?” he murmured, his voice like the weight of the great mountain moving – inexorably, impossibly, implacably. A gravity and weight there that defied understanding. Rey looked at him, scowling at first then resigning herself to a sigh. His words were like water, slippery and illusive, though not without substance. She nodded slowly, “I am in search of answers… I have… something haunts my dreams. A great…” she said, her words spilling forth unbidden.

“Emptiness.” He finished for her as she trailed off, his storm cloud gray eyes sweeping her up and holding her in a raptor like gaze. Rey could only nod silently. The wolf nodded with her, and stood slowly to his full height, easily dwarfing her. “Then you have come to learn to see.”

Rey blinked in surprise, biting back confusion. This was new territory, and she had only her intuition to guide her. “What is it, I can not see?” she murmured in a half whisper. As if to answer, he extended his hand to her, to bring her to him. He had a ponderous gait to him, neither sluggish nor labored and yet, as if he was moving on a gentle current, not movement hurried or rushed.

“Only that which you are not yet ready to understand.” The white wolf murmured. He stooped, his eyes finding her’s. Something ineffable stirred in his eyes – ephemeral, dancing away from reach. Something forbidden. “You have the sight. A seer. What so many fear and seek. You have the gift of foresight, for all its burdens” the white wolf whispered – as though it were an intimate secret.

“For better or for worse – you have a burden. A message. Something that you do not wish to see or perhaps are not yet ready to see… but that is in part why you have come here..” the wolf growled, smiling. “You have come to see. You have come to know, though in knowing there will be changes – both new and unimaginable. You will change.” He breathed. “What has been seen, can not be unseen” he warned at long last.

Profound silence radiated from Rey. Eyes wide, tears stained the corners of her red tinted eyes, bleeding and blurring the world around her until only the suggestion of shapes existed in the flickering light of the fire. The revelations were profound, overwhelming. The dreams. The remembrances. The vision and the sight. Everything seemed to shift, and slide – like spider web cracks through glass, suddenly receding before the passage of time; damage undone to leave a perfect resplendent image. With perfect clarity, she saw the truth of his words; understanding giving rise to knowing. It felt as though her heart was breaking.

All of the events of her life, everything leading her to this moment – this point in time. A terrible realization. There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask "why me?" and "what if?". When you look back and see the forked lightning. A beautiful lie. Rey wanted to cry for the knowing of it. And yet she could only nod her head. Yes. She wished to see. She had come all this way, knowing, wanting to see finally. Be rid of the endlessness and the nothingness – to once again, see. Her voice was weak, her body somehow far away, and yet she heard her voice plead for that which she had come for. To be rid of this burden. “Yes” she murmured, “Please”.

It was sudden – the realization that she was moving with him, like an epiphany come in the moment of realization, accompanied by the ontological shock that there was no way to stop what had already begun.

She felt herself shifting, stepping back as the white wolf encircled her, eclipsing her. Such was his stature, a giant to her it seemed. Powerful arms guided her into his embrace, as the world came alive with more than just firelight. Somewhere distant, Rey felt the surge of magic about them, the heat of the waves of fire washing down her, an abstraction of sense. Like swimming at high tide. Waves of warmth climbing her body, coming and going with an ebb and flow.

The world around her felt ever so distant, the white wolf’s hands never truly touching her. Like a puppet, she felt the strings of her body tugged this way and that. She felt herself moved on invisible currents that the white wolf brought into being. Somewhere, distantly, she felt the pounding of drums, the primal beat that dictated the tempo of her bodies shift this way and that.

Her body contorted, driven by the heat and by the power that flowed from the wolf into her. She opened her eyes, for what felt like the first time. The world had changed, everything seemingly moving to a rhythm now that was all too obvious, where before there had been nothing. A universal constant, the heart beat of the world. She knew well the sensation of being separated from her body, projecting herself across vast distances, and yet this was different somehow; as though she saw herself dancing and twisting.

Like a tribal display of worship, the two moved about the licking flames of the bon fire. Their feet danced and pattered, the white wolf leading this voyage around the fire, over and over again, tracing exact and precise steps. The form of a spell, an immensely complex spell form, about the circle of the fire. Somehow, Rey found herself knowing – realizing she knew the steps of the pattern. She knew, because the wolf knew. As though he was feeding her the knowledge, feeding her a greater and greater need to dance in greater and greater concentric circles about the fire, the focal point of their journey.

Shadows dance their dance, together as one – an intimate mirror of the two as they circled one another, weaving in and out in some unseen pattern. As they danced together joined and yet apart, Rey found herself watching their shadows, seemingly taking a life of their own as the fire light cast shadows of their forms together. Somehow, their shadows had taken on a life of their own, breaking free of their master’s and dancing to a different rhythm, intertwined in one another, intimately. For the briefest of moments, Rey felt them both, look back at her. She could have sworn that they regarded her, with a curious glance, as if only for the first time noticing their reflection in the fire light. The shapes moved them, moved towards her, growing in size until they bound past her, and leapt into the fire.

The fire raged, and the white flames were tinged a piercing blue, growing darker and darker by the moment. Flames boiled over, spilling forth from the protective circle, raging out into the desert beyond. The fires raged and burned over the white sand, sparking in the resonant firelight. Rey felt her breath stolen, and where she knew the fire should have burned, it was cool to the touch. She reached out, putting her hand out to try and grasp at the flames as they danced across the sands. In touching it, the flames instantly jumped to her, dancing up her arm. They danced across her, and in that moment, they consumed her ‘ their light building into a crescendo.

Ray enters The White Hot room. Pulled through by a force of sheer vertigo. Gravity loosing its teeth in a place that refutes any notion of reality as any being has ever known it. Countless colors spill over her all at once, some not even nameable with words. It spills over her like thick oil – a suffocating miasma, constricting and consuming. It swallows her completely until there is nothing left of her mind but the infinite white.

She is disembodied once more, or perhaps her body obliterated, it is impossible to tell. Fact and Fiction join seamlessly together, one in the same in all places at all times.

The White Hot room is the vertex of all places at all times. It is everything, everywhere. A cage as much as the beating heart of creation. It was a place where all things were possible and became real, and a place where reality diverged from the course of sanity. It is a small space, perhaps no larger than her bed chamber, and all the while it stretches the vastness of the Endless Wastes in its entirety, and further. The two relative distances incompatible with one another and yet, juxtaposed so closely.

Everywhere, there is a screaming – or is that her imagination? Its all in her head, one way or another.

She turns, slowly approaching a raised throne of white marble and endless suffering. Next to it, in quiet repose, a small dish of water – totally placid save for its need to be looked upon. Within stirs a gently spinning orb of Grays and Blues, lush greens consumed ever so by the creep of orange and brown. Haze of fire ash and smoke wavering through the atmosphere like ripples in a pond. This world dies, consumed as though from within.

She was not at all surprised. Nor is she surprised when the thick clouds of ash and smoke give way to familiar landmasses, outlines of continental mass.

This is Home, and it is caught in the strife of war.
Rey has no sense of coming here. Nor any sense of where here even is. Or when, for that matter. Both the past, and the present. She questions her existence in that moment, curious if she is nothing but an introspective thought to some giant of intent or perhaps merely an echo of something that once was, long ago. She soon remembers herself. She questions, therefore she is.

The question remains, like a putrid stench on the air; is she merely an observer or is she the shaper of things to come. No matter how she examines the events before her in the silver dish, nor herself there is no sense of material being or impinging event under her control. Reality shifts. Flicker. Time blinks.

The White Hot Room, now a temple of sorts. Banners of insanity hang from the walls – the darkness swathing the ceiling – something horrific and terrifying above her. Rey does not want to look up. She does not want to see the things that perch in the darkness and look upon her with hungry desire.

This is a place of horror and carnage. Of Whorship of a dark figure. Something terribly and beautiful. Skulls and bones hanging from chains and hooks – bone totems of a savage culture. What was once beautiful, now horrific beyond compare. A battle was fought here. Will be fought here. It has and will be the greatest battle ever conceived. More than simply words and ideals, flesh and blood. Its outcome yet to be understood by those it touches.

This moment anticipated. Waited for. Needed. In which all things are possible. In which everything changes, echoing through the mellenia across all worlds and all possible realities, like the greatest bell ever tolled – eschewing in a new epoch. History is being create, here in the now – and History demands of her, to be the witness.

Warriors fight on countless battle fields. Fire light, Magic piercing the flesh and soul – burning it to the core. Titans of great purpose and ponderous intent make war upon one another in ways that are impossible and too terrible to imagine. They warred, as mortals live and breathe.

Rey realizes, she is surrounded by death. Atop of mountain of corpses – dismembered and ground down to nothing. Butchered to the point of inhumanity. Rey knows death well. This was not war. This was murder. This was murder of the worst and most hateful kind.

Her gaze shifts about, looking for a sign. Anything. It was only then she realized – the diase, enclosed by a cairn of stone. There they stood. She wanted to look away to disbelieve in what she knew what was to come. Rey knew to look would be to invite madness and unending suffering at the sight of it. She saw, on the edge of her peripheral vision white fur. Stippled with age – black fur, light straining to stay away from its inevitable pull.

Old words ring impossible in hear ear “What has been seen, can not be unseen” that old pained voice spoke. She can not return to the life she onced lived. Not even if she wished it.

Time blinks again. Shifting.

Shapes move about her. Like predators in the night, prowling about her, waiting for her guard to drop. Her life, a delicious morsel. A paltry offering perhaps, but they say hunger is the best spice. Unthinkably massive and gargantuan thoughts. Forms given monstrous shape by her will and mind. Some without shape. All the more terrifying. They are invisible, unseen and unseeble in the darkness. But she knows they are there.

She can sense their hunger and yet, there is more. She can feel their approbation. Their disbelief and shock at what has transpired here in this moment. Their unmitigated fury at the outcome that none of them saw or realized was coming. Their rage will shake apart universes. Time dances about her – making a mockery of linear thinking.

White feathers reverse their downward course. Blood drops falling in reverse order, a constellation of translucent rubies. A flurry of blows rain down. As if in slow motion, steel feathers raining like sword blows. Sparks and the scream of steel echoed across stone pillars. Many faces watched and wondered, all in mute judgment. This – that penultimate moment. Of all the battles, none before had ever been so tenacious – nor so meaningful. And all but one would ever be so, and it would occur in the moments to come. Eyes watch. Green and star stained. Gray, storm clouds trapped in a clam dance. The deepest sky blue stained. Others, gleaming with celestial light and power. Green and amber gold. Ancient and yet young.

It was a battle beyond mortal means. A fight that was at the very core of the beings who fought it – on a level that transcended thought. A battle of wills. Rey can see no forms, no faces, merely shadows. Light
and Dark. Allegories of thought and dedication to ideology. They are avatars of unthinkable and unspeakable power. Magic made real in form and body. Numinous and filled with the light of creation at the heart of all that was and is. Wrought into mortal form and set upon the world. Like stars, they dance and burned – burning brighter than any other star; though their lives were cut short for it.

There and then, voices begin to take shape. Words are spilt like blood admits the battlefield. Some wounding, others healing. The words from a son to a father, to a brother. Their words too distant to hear, so very far away. And yet they demanded to be heard.

One last final clash – whiteness obliterated by darkness while all the while the darkness was consumed by light. All things washed away in equal measures. A shining light, a single solitary sliver of silver white light. The focal point of magic. A guardian of Magic.

Time flickered and danced once more. Again, and again still. Back and forth violently. A desperate battle of wants and ideals. The beginning of all things, as much as it was the end of all things. Magic, magic wished to fade. It was being eaten within, like a rot, growing hollow and pained. Champions of all shape and color and creed converged to one point. A thousand threads of fate all come to a single point. And yet, the burden of destiny lay on a few. Only a precious, sad few.

Time Flickers again. Gray eyes around which light dances and bends, always shifting and changing. Ever resplendent in their manifold golden white hue. It is tinged with a deep and resounding regret. A broken sorrow. A broken heart, shattered and scattered into thirteen crystals. A thousand memories. A thousands more thoughts. Each a part of Him. The soul of something so much larger than what could be encapsulated in such small facets. Greater than the sum of their parts. Rey sees hatred, love, honor, guilt, horror , resolve – broken and renewed in the same moments. A depthless eternity of sadness for the future that has been brought about in this moment.

Rey is confronted by the endlessness of it. Its fathomless depths. In that moment, she begs to never have existed.

The flow of time does not respond to her plea. It is crippled here, like the dislocation of bones in the body – limply trying to impose structure, with ever greater futility.

Through the flickering and dancing of all that she sees she knows to be the future. There are gray eyes once more. Gray eyes upon her, glowing with an inner light – something she dare not look at for the sake of her sanity, what little remains. The hold her in their raptor like gaze – scrutinize and take in. It looks to all that she is and all that she has seen, and ever so slowly turns back to her. In the span of a moment it has seen into her, all of who she is, ever was and would be.

Those gray eyes have seen what she has seen, known what she has known and I that knowledge there is a measure of acceptance. In that knowledge the eyes turn back to Rey and she feels within her the words form – that they are not spoken with a voice is irrelavent. They carry the weight of worlds, and she trembles for it. She knows now why he whispers always.

The vision is once more replaced, Of the one of White upon the dais. He is there, juxtaposed to his negative. One in the same and yet one apart from the other. Father and Son joined together, where one begins and the other ends is impossible, an infinite cycle. She knows how it is to end. What is to befall here. What she must do.

The vision, the insanity evaporated like morning mist in a burst of light as she was hurled from the apocalyptic vision, the darkness and void dispelled around her. Her sight was once more her’s now more than ever before. And yet, she did not know joy for it. She was warm again, the scent of perfumes and incenses filled her nostrils – scented oils lacing the air. Nearby was the sound of a babbling pool. She could feel the sun’s warmth upon her, soothing her aching psyche

She opened her eyes and found herself sprawled across plush pillows of crushed velvet and soft silk. Beneath her, lay carpets overlapping one another, their complex geometrical patterns dazzling to the eye, with such intricacy it was hard to believe that a person had spent their years crafting such a master pieces. Furs of creatures, beyond imagination lay about her, some almost familiar – that not unlike a bear, whilst others seemed larger still.

She put a hand to her forehead, and closed her eyes, shaking her head. She could see every detail of the White Hot room, and though the terror she knew had come from it was real and happening, she felt strange
detached – apart from it as though it was not to affect her.

Rey opened her eyes agan and looked around – searching. She was surrounded by a low wall, stones of alabaster and white marble making up her environ, open while still contained. Not only was the darkness of the void gone, but she felt the weight from her shoulders being lifted.

A warm breeze rustled her fur as she looked about, standing and walking across the open court yard, through the white marble archway to an adjoining secluded patio. This place… seemed all too familiar. Just beyond the wall, she saw the sands of the Wastes. And yet they were not the wastes, they were seeded with life. Lush green landscapes spread out as far as the eye could see, an endless verdant forest. . Beyond the bend of the landscape, the forest gave way to crystal rivers of clear blue water. A paradise, in any sense.

This was how the Wastes had been, once upon a time. She could smell the forest that lay beyond the walls of white marble. Rey felt the wonders of the world around her, something inspiring and magical that restored her and revitalized her. She had never truly appreciated the Wastes for what they were, and what they once had been. This was so much more than a dream, or whatever it was. It felt like memory. The vivid rich scent, the cool air and the feel of the marble and rug under foot. All of it perfectly recalled from this once-upon-a-time bastion amidst this ever verdant forest. She stood for a while, transfixed by the bountiful land that had to dust and sand. What great wars, she wondered, had seen this place fall into the depths of such hell. Whose palace did she now stand in?

She turned slowly, examining the small patio she had emerged into, noticing for the first time the elderly white wolf sitting across from her at a small table. As though he had been waiting for her all along, to come to finally notice him. He greeted her with that smile, that smile he always had for her. “Come, Rey, sit down” he said and motioned to her. She smiled and nodded, padding her way slowly across the open space to sit down, across from him. He seemed different here, his gray eyes somehow more vivid and alive. His white hair lusterious – moving on winds of its own accord. He seemed altogether magnums.

“You look different Rey” he smiled, whispering quietly across the table.

“I am” she smiled back, nodding as she steepled her hands on the table. “I feel… free of the darkness” she breathed.

The wolf smile and nodded. “Good, that’s all I’ve ever wanted for you, to find yourself and be free” he whispered.

“You brought me to you..” she murmured, as he arched an eyebrow.

“Are you asking me if I did?” he said with a smirk, his whisper no less for it.

“No, no the truth only gets in the way of what is. I am happy with what is” she said with a cheerful chirp in her voice.

“The truth is never so stationary.” He said knowingly. A private smile just for her.

“Did.. did you see the message?” she asked, shifting in her seat to be comfortable.

The white wolf only nodded “I saw, I saw what you saw. Yes”

For a long while, Rey said nothing, reliving those fleeting, dreadful memories. She looked up to him, finding that his gaze had not shifted, still focused on her. “Knowing the future, can you change your fate..?” she breathed, hopefully – pleading, but knowing somewhere deep within his answer before he spoke it.

Slowly, the old man shook his head “The future is the future, my feelings towards it will not change it one way or any other.” He said , his smile disappearing.

Rey reached out across the table to find his hand, as if to reassure him “Even.. even you can’t change it?” she begged.

The wolf shrugged, as if it were a simple idle question, “sometimes, some things Need to happen, Rey. Even the most terrible, even the most painful things you can seek to imagine need to happen.”

“Why?!” she said, shouting and standing, her eyes betraying her.

“Because sometimes there is a greater victory, a greater end than any one person – any one being. Sometimes there is more, that is veiled, and hidden. Something so far away that none dare suspect it. Something for which the cost is so great, none may dare call it victory.” He said, the seriousness edged into her voice.

“I don’t think anything I saw could be considered a victory. There.. there is so much pain” she whispered, squeezing his hand.

He smiled, as if to reassure him, shaking his head “I know, some people have created rumors and whispers; some people think that I am omnipotent, but there is a catch with being all powerful and all knowing”

“Which is…?” she huffed.

“You can’t be both at the same time” the wolf said with a wry grin.

A long silence spanned between them.

“Now.. now what?” she murmured, as if lost.

“Now the future marches on. Events will continue to unfold as the will unfold. What will be, will be” he said with a contented grin.

“Will.. will I see you again?” she whispered, her eyes pleading.

“Who knows Rey. All things are possible.” He said, his voice no longer a whisper.

Rey’s eyes begged, tears threatening to wash out her vision. “But you’re going to die” she whispered, her voice breaking under the strain.

“I know,” Kayin said.

White light greeted her. Slowly, surely, Rey awoke the fire light gone. The white light having faded as the world returned in a white sepia, dawn somewhere close by. Slowly but surely, color returned. She was still in the desert, the hot sun of the Barren Wastes crested the dunes beyond with demanding scrutiny, and all the uncaring fury it could muster. And yet, the world was changed. It was different. The smell of the forest, the verdant life that had once been. Those… memories. Rey slowly rose, looking about her. The desert around her was empty. Alert now, she sat up, blinking quickly – getting hear bearings. She remembered… coming up over the dune, to this place… white sand. She looked down around her. White sand. She stood slowly, shaking her head, her body ached fiercely. As she turned about, she realized she was standing in the center of a circle of white gleaming sand. And yet, there were no tracks. No sign of the fire that had raged the previous night. No sign of Kayin. As if he had never even existed. Not even that scent, that ever peculiar scent of old, age warn book pages remained. Had it not been for the memories she still had, the vivid and richness of them – she would have sworn it a dream. Perhaps, perhaps it was just a hallucination. Those gray eyes, though… those could not have been so illusory.

Rey stood to leave, finding what she had come to see. She could feel the oppressive weight of the void gone now. Her sight now restored. No, her sight now… released. She felt about her, a new lease on life. A new freedom. A smile spread across her face that she could not stop. Nor did she wish to. She shook the last of the sand free, it cascading from her body in a glittering trail; like a comets tail. The wind picked up, tossing her hair playfully. As she turned to leave, she noticed here, before her – hidden in the white sand, a snow white feather – nearly hidden that was. The white sand engulfing the snow feather, only the breeze had unearthed the tip. Enough to catch her eye. She bent down, slowly, to retrieve it, plucking it from the sand. She plucked it up, holding it aloft a moment – the sun’s light catching incandescent facets of the feather. As she held it up, admiring the substantiation of her memory, the wind picked up again, snatching the feather from her grip and carrying it away and into the desert. She shook her head, stifling a laugh as she turned, and began to make her way out of the empty Waste. She turned, once last time to look back, toward the feather’s path.

“Thank you” she whispered.


Kayin ©  WanderingPariah
Rey ©  satsukii
Artwork ©  satsukii

Do not repost or reprint without written permission.