Azela awoke in silent darkness. Gradually she rolled out of bed, massaged a headache, and tried to make sense of what scraps of dream she could recall. The stifling air made focus impossible, so after a minute of wandering around in the dark, she felt a door and pulled it open, wincing at the burst of sunlight that flooded the room.
Outside shined a beautiful new day, and Azela felt instantly reenergized as she stepped out and took a deep breath. Birds sang contentedly in the trees behind her. The grass tickled her bare feet. Smiling, she couldn't stop herself from giving in to a burst of energy and ran out to the field under the shadow of the tower.
A giggle escaped her. Noticing some flowers uphill, she leapt and twirled to them, landing on her hands and knees to enjoy their scent. These plants were strange, unfamiliar things, but enjoyable nonetheless. As she tenderly stroked their silky petals, she felt glad to have suggested staying here instead of within the haven, so that she could enjoy tranquil moments like this.
For the next few minutes, Azela continued to dance and play in the field, confident that no one could see her make a fool of herself, eventually spinning her way to the side of the tower. Leaning dizzily against its rough surface, she glanced upward. Her smile widened and she began to skillfully climb, scaling the building with the confidence of a spider, sometimes having nothing except a small crack to hold on to. Soon she reached the spire's peak, and as she stood at its highest point, gazed astounded at the world around her.
"Having fun?" Shi-Yon's voice asked from behind her.
Without turning around, she replied, "I knew the view would be amazing! I can see everything from up here... the treetops, the huts and the fields, other mountains..." She paused and pointed to a gigantic black sphere, higher and wider than the mountains that surrounded it. "What's that?"
Shi-Yon didn't bother to look where she was pointing. He said, "That's what we call the Void Reizu. It's an orb created by the entity that became Ayan. Long ago, by accident. It may look serene, but it's actually a prison, the only cage capable enough for the dregs."
"The what?" she asked.
"Dregs. Horrible monstrosities that were spawned from lost passions and cravings." The knight spoke with a slight tone of uneasiness. Azela still thought of him as a knight, no matter what his real title or occupation might have been.
"Reizu..." she said, pulling at the memory of the name, though it didn't lead as far back as she hoped. "Isn't that one of the two dragons you mentioned last night?"
"Possibly. There are only four that matter," he answered, "Anyway, Ayan loved God-Dragon Reizu so much that it nearly destroyed him, as the legends claim, so he tried to use the powers of Nauspheare's disembodied heart to end his love forever, with devastating results."
"So he tried to kill his love with a heart," Azela said.
Shi-Yon continued, "One quote I can remember is, 'Ever hath His soul remained a black abyss from whence His craven hunger reaches, never to be sated. His love, in truth, was naught but ravenous desire for possession. Thus His endeavors to purge this infinite hollowness served only to transmogrify the heart of His enemy into a reflection of His avarice, the actuality of His being, holding not the memories that grant contentment, instead seizing all regret, never to escape. Never to be forgotten.'"
His words were nonsensical to Azela, but seemed to hang in the air. She shivered, but not from the cold. She asked, “That orb is… a prison?"
Shi-Yon nodded. "The Void Reizu is the only thing that can contain manifestations of the darkest desires, fears, and anxieties that a sentient mind can possess. Every sin we wish we could forget."
Azela reached out in the direction of the Void. The darkness of it was so complete that her hand seemed unnaturally bright in front of it. "So this cat-faced lizard-bird that my people worship, Ayan, he loved a dragon so much that it nearly destroyed him."
Shi-Yon said, "Not as the Ayan we know, but basically. I'm not sure how to explain it well." He shifted his position. "The God-Dragon Reizu was said to be the most beautiful of the four. Her scales were like polished mirror shards. According to the story, our creator's love for her consumed his sanity."
Azela stared at the Void Reizu despite her unease. It was quite literally like staring into the abyss.
"That passage doesn't paint Ayan's predecessor in a positive light. Is it true?" she asked.
Shi-Yon scoffed, his voice carrying a note of cynicism. "As I said, they're legends. Stories change over time, distorting the truth. I'll let you in on a secret very few are aware of. History and legend record the creator of the glitchen as a being known as Exitherra, but what we know of as Exitherra was actually several entities sharing the same body. One entity tried to expel the others, and shattered a delicate balance. Few of these separate consciousnesses emerged whole. The things he created were incomplete beings born of thoughts and memories of broken minds. The dangerous ones, formed out of things like rage, envy, despair, and various other troublesome concepts, became the dregs. The Void is a hole in the universe where reality itself was torn from their making. That is the truth. But the various peoples of the Forsaken Mountains would rather believe in a story of unrequited love."
Shi-Yon's voice became quieter as he said, "I wonder, did he love her, though? There is often some truth to be found in legends, after all." He sighed and returned his attention to Azela. "I suggest you visit the library. You'll learn more from the books there than from me, and it's much safer than being way up here."
Turning towards him, Azela asked, "How'd you get up here so fast?"
"I jumped."
Azela couldn't tell if he was joking or not. His voice was made deeper by something in his helmet, but even so it was reminiscent of a teenager; he sounded both sarcastic and serious at the same time. That thought suddenly made Azela curious. "Um... How old are you, anyway?"
"That's a secret."
"Then how old am I?"
"If you need an age, we'll start counting now. You're one day old."
A playful grin adorned her face. "Oh good, I can spend my days crying loudly and wetting your bed, then."
"Oh," Shi-Yon thought for a moment, "Can't have that, but I don't believe there's any real way of knowing for certain."
"Could MegaGlitch's scan tell us anything?" she wondered.
Shi-Yon shook his head. "Glitchen do not age as most species do."
"Isn't there a record of my birth date or something I could look up?" Azela asked.
Shi-Yon replied, "We have no records of eggs laid beyond the borders of Mt. Kaila."
Azela sensed that he was hiding something. "I'm not from here?"
He said, "One can become weary of staying in one place for hundreds of years. The wanderlust grows until they inevitably leave. Few return. The reason these glitchen appear more sapien than most encountered elsewhere is simply due to less of them having wings. Those lucky enough to have flight are uniquely suited for travel across the mountains."
He stepped back and took a breath before continuing, "You are an anomaly. Your body was hatched somewhere far from here, and once a glitchen body decides to stop growing, it becomes impossible to guess the age." His voice lightened. "So you can be as old as you want to be. You'd like to at least be old enough to drink, wouldn't you? The tavern won't serve you if you're too young."
Azela nodded. "Fine, I'll only wet your bed when I'm drunk, then."
There was only the sound of wind for a time. When Shi-Yon broke the silence, his voice was solemn. "Do you trust me?"
"Y... yes, I told you already... You're the only one."
He laid his icy, gauntlet-covered hand on her shoulder. "Then I'm going to trust you not to tell anyone that I said this." He looked around the area, though no one could possibly hear from far below. "We do know a few things about who you are that I'm not supposed to tell you, but if you want, I'll bend the rules a little. But you must promise not to look into it. Don't go looking for your past."
"I..." Azela felt cornered. "I promise," she said. "Why are you..." she began, but Shi-Yon turned and leapt from the tower.
* * *
Azela spent the rest of the day and half of the night in the haven's colossal library, delving into the history and customs of the glitchen. After climbing down from his tower, she found Shi-Yon waiting for her, unharmed by the fall that would have been fatal to most. He provided her with directions to the library and assured her that she could stay out as late as she wanted. Then he said he had work to do, and left in a hurry before Azela could say anything back, except goodbye. It was as if he was anxious to get away from her, and Azela was mildly distraught as she followed his directions through downtown Jastria.
After the few she had met the previous night, the glitchen she saw as she walked through the village were almost shocking in their normalcy. Before she reached the library, no one spoke to her or even looked her way, even though her outfit alone should have made her stand out. Most of them wore clothes more simply made and less brightly colored than her own. Her shyness prevented her from getting too close to anyone that passed her by, though nothing made them seem unfriendly other than their indifference.
She knew she wasn't invisible when she met the librarians, who were polite in a way that echoed long practice of catering to visitors, and the old stone building was surprisingly cozy inside. Seeing the symbol on her belt, they recognized her as an apostle and asked no questions beyond if she would need assistance finding anything. Her problems were easily forgotten as she lost herself amongst the thousands of books and scrolls she was granted full access to.
When she was too tired and hungry to continue her research, she retraced her steps to Shi-Yon's tower. The aroma of a prepared meal greeted her before she entered. The bed was the only furniture on the first floor, and as a result, the meal was served on a blanket on the floor. He stood against the wall, and Azela sat across from him.
While savoring the curry in her bowl, she realized something. Not even once had she seen him sit down, sleep, eat, or do anything besides answer her questions and prepare her food.
Curious, Azela asked, "Where did you go today? What kind of work do you do?"
"I am considered a guardian of Jastria and its glitchen," was his answer, "And so are you. In times of peace like this, we just keep watch in case anything dangerous escapes from the myst. They call this village a haven, but as far as glitchen are concerned, it's our nation as well." He looked up. "Hell, it's practically our entire world; I know of no other glitchen settlement in the mountains or beyond. If an enemy were to attack, our whole species could be wiped out. That's one of the reasons why the apostles of Jastria exist: to defend our people."
"Well, what about Ayan? If he's a god, isn't that enough?" she asked.
"He obviously isn't omnipotent, and he spends most of his time outside of the haven. He could be right outside, the next village over, or on another planet. We hardly ever know. In theory, he makes up most of our governmental system, kind of like a king with the apostles acting in his name. In practice, we hardly need a government at all, isolated as we are," he said.
Azela looked aside. "This seems an odd question to ask as I apparently am one, but who are the apostles? I assume there are at least seven including me, but I've only met you."
"The apostle numbered One-Ten concerns himself mostly with the needs of running the haven. You could consider him a mayor in all but name. Two-Zero is more secretive and handles issues that require invisible hands. It's said that our scout, Three-Four, wandered too close to the myst, but I have suspicions about his disappearance. Five is a drunkard and a waste of space."
"Wait," Azela interrupted, "What do you mean by wandering too close to the mist? What is this mist I keep hearing about?"
He was quiet for a second, then asked, "Do you mean you don't remember anything at all about the myst?" Azela nodded, so he explained, "It is the low, fog-like clouds you've seen between the mountains. Avoid them at all costs. Those that venture into them rarely return, and those that do are often… changed. Turned to stone, infected by otherworldly diseases, deformed by countless tumors, driven mad, aged a hundred years, transformed into a mass of shifting nightmares, the list is endless. From those that could still communicate in one form or another we've gained a little knowledge of what lies within, or I should say, beyond them.
"The myst connects to other worlds. Some are instant death, with features like a sea of mercury, fire raining from the sky or so little pressure in the air that it may as well be a vacuum. These seem rare, though. For reasons we have yet to understand, most worlds resemble our own, with at least a breathable atmosphere and survivable gravitation. Various methods have been employed to record what can be found, and though they tend to mostly share common traits, anything from the stars in the sky to the very laws of physics could be wildly different. MegaGlitch has made devices that could venture into them and send a limited amount of information back before they inevitably became lost forever. He was under the belief that these collections of myst led to other planets in this universe, but was recently proven wrong. The worlds of the myst are part of entire universes separate from this one. The myst clouds are seas of infinite infinities."
Intrigued, Azela asked, "What proved him wrong?"
Shi-Yon began to speak, then hesitated. He seemed to consider his words before answering, "Another Aon was found. Or I should say, it found this one."
"An Aon?" asked Azela.
"You don't even..." Shi-Yon paused a moment before continuing. "I'm sorry, I was just reminded of how hard this all must be for you. The problems with your memory, I mean."
Azela shook her head while waving dismissively. "Don't worry about me. Just continue."
"Alright," he said. "Aon is the name of this planet. The world we live on. A woman from a world almost exactly the same as this emerged from the myst one day. Her world of the same name had the same history as well, until a few years ago, when subtle differences separate the timelines. She has a past that never happened here, and another version of her was born here as well. They are like twins who have experienced entirely separate lives."
Azela stretched to hide a shiver. The nearby fog was so close, and apparently deadly in ways she couldn't even imagine. It was something she would rather not think about. "Back to the others... What about MegaGlitch? What does he do?"
That was the first time she heard Shi-Yon laugh. "That old tin can? He's just our local bartender. Tens of thousands of years older than all of us, and with all his wisdom and experience, all he does is serve drinks."
Azela smiled as well. Shi-Yon's laugh was warm and friendly, a trait that she hadn't seen from him before. When she had asked about him at the library, she was told that he never spoke to anyone. He was known by the glitchen to be silent and emotionless. Some even feared him. Yet he had answered nearly every question she asked him, gave her a home, and took care of her without wanting anything in return.
He just needed someone he could trust, Azela thought, someone to open up to. In time, I'll get him out of his shell.