Date: 13/11/29

Entry: 8

As I write this, I am in a hut in a village in the East region of the North Continent. This village is relatively minute and quiet. In the time that I have spent here, the residents have been polite, yet shaky. The most plausible reason for this is because the Imperial fleet attacked their previous village when they refused to house soldiers. I am grateful that they were kind enough to permit us to stay here, and I can only hope that the Empire does not discover that we spent time in this place.

What to write first? Perhaps it would be best to begin where I left off in my last entry. As I was telling you, while exploring the Tower on the South Continent, we encountered yet another Dragon. The Dragon was massive, as unique a gem as Roc. It attacked, as I had strangely anticipated. To my surprise, Roc did not fight back, even with our assailant firing its own arrows of light, merely sluggishly dodging them in the cramped space, taking several hits, each slowing my companion down. I raised my gun and aimed at the white and black dragon, now airborne. The bright pink and purple aura surrounding the rays it fired clouded my vision, and I couldn’t see to properly aim. I didn’t want to hit Roc by mistake, but I couldn’t just sit back and watch him suffer.

Before I knew what had happened, Azrael was already yards in front of me, and emitted a dull screeching whistle (my only guess is that it was telepathic, because his lips did not move.) The dragons stopped, almost frozen, and then slowly glided to the Tower floor. Azrael caressed the dragon’s snout and then turned to me. He carefully and slowly explained to me what had happened. He told me that this dragon was his own defender, who his creators named ‘Xavier’. They built him as Azrael’s aid must he need any assistance. I probably should of determined that earlier, as they both were similar in appearance.

Actually, Xavier was much like Roc in appearance. Xavier did not have a long horn as Roc did, but he did have the massive wingspan, his own uniquely shaped and rapidly changing in colors randomly. He was white and black, like Azrael, and had protective plates of armor on his underbelly, bearing many twisted wires and cords under the shell. He obviously was incomplete, and I could understand how he malfunctioned so easily.

As I compared the two dragons, Roc’s body once again became a rainbow of translucent light, and he changed before my eyes. He now had red tints in his flesh, a second horn beginning to sprout above the first one. The stone upon the epidermis would indulge and constrict the animal if they grew any stronger and thicker than they were now! Roc had just undergone his second transformation.

Back on topic, after Azrael was reunited with his companion-to-be, we gained one more member in our crusade, and we decided our next destination. The sole reason that I was brought to this place was to collect our new cohorts and gain a better understanding of the situation. Still, I hadn’t a clue what they expected of me. And who was to say that I was the ‘Chosen One’? After all, until not long ago, I was just an obeying lackey in the Imperial Army. Why should I, instead of the hundreds of other qualified candidates in the world, just happened to be the one selected to save the world? Surely it cannot be random?

I was cold, tired, and lonely. The adventure had already begun, and I held little belief to have faith in. Just as I began to lose hope, a familiar voice entered my mind, marking our next setting of intention…

“It is time for you to be acquainted with the one who made the Prophecy. The one who dubbed you the Chosen One………………………”

Soundless. The wild zephyrs of a thousand years drag the black ash ever deeper in the frigid plane that is the sea. Dust and organic debris shuffle in and out of the eyes of a defeated figure, overshadowed by his own misery. It was completely silent now. Everyone he fought alongside with was dead. Maybe, he thought, it was better to continue to fall to the abyss than to face the nails of reality that punctured his spine. He was created as a lifeless slave anyway. But did this really have to be the way it was meant to end?

Somehow, he manages to grasp enough energy to tilt his head to the right, fighting against the pain in his neck, almost paralyzed with emotion of grief. He spotted a school of yellow fish swimming by. Suddenly he saw the beauty in life. His eyes grew wide with realization. Anagos, another drone thought to be soulless by man had seen exactly what Azrael had seen all along. Through all the war and loss, he had learned nothing until this point. Life is a wild card of joy. He had to persevere. He had to continue to fight for his freedom. Still wallowing inside a circle of artificial corpses, he flexed his wiry muscles, and used every ounce of energy his body had left to swim towards the surface, ignoring the lifeless faces of his fallen friends. He veered quickly to evade a crumbling drone warship that was submerging at manic speeds and kept a positive image in his mind of the wonders that the surface held. He was going to make it. The war was not over yet for Anagos…