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5/26/2025, 10:18:12 PM
>>6248733
One by one, more of the onlookers display their mangled faces, holes where there should not be, or multiple rows of teeth — one whose eye is growing inside of his mouth — another with a spiral pattern on the back of her head.
Your heart picks up pace. These are all freaks of nature, freaks of accident, freaks of birth, and they are adoring the baby, even as you feel the life inside its misshapen body starting to ebb and flow, waning like the dying flame of a candle.
You frown and pull your hood a little tighter over your silver hair.
Could this had been your destiny too?
Born with six fingers or with one more eye or some other deformity — would you be there with these people as well?
The un-words turn into an hymn, and images flash before your inner eye: images of a life spent in the shadow as the malformed flotsam of humanity’s dregs. The fruits of the Will of those who came before and were now lost, the Kiengiri of old, who had played with life and reason like a child does with sandcastles.
The Elves, you remember, trying to take back the reins of your own mind, were Kiengir creations… and among the cruelest. But like Soralisa taught you, far from the only ones.
The Ubaiidi you slaughtered just hours ago were another.
Amidst these people, you realise maybe for the first time in your life the true age of your world. Others trod these paths before you, and left behind a legacy that still marks the earth and the seas and the heavens… and all the creatures that live in it.
And one by one, the hands, may they be five or six-fingered, raise to the ceiling in a garbled prayer for them to come back — that’s what the images flashing before your closed eyes say — a prayer for the age of Kiengir to come back.
You pull back and away, taking advantage of the crowd’s amazement.
[cont.]
One by one, more of the onlookers display their mangled faces, holes where there should not be, or multiple rows of teeth — one whose eye is growing inside of his mouth — another with a spiral pattern on the back of her head.
Your heart picks up pace. These are all freaks of nature, freaks of accident, freaks of birth, and they are adoring the baby, even as you feel the life inside its misshapen body starting to ebb and flow, waning like the dying flame of a candle.
You frown and pull your hood a little tighter over your silver hair.
Could this had been your destiny too?
Born with six fingers or with one more eye or some other deformity — would you be there with these people as well?
The un-words turn into an hymn, and images flash before your inner eye: images of a life spent in the shadow as the malformed flotsam of humanity’s dregs. The fruits of the Will of those who came before and were now lost, the Kiengiri of old, who had played with life and reason like a child does with sandcastles.
The Elves, you remember, trying to take back the reins of your own mind, were Kiengir creations… and among the cruelest. But like Soralisa taught you, far from the only ones.
The Ubaiidi you slaughtered just hours ago were another.
Amidst these people, you realise maybe for the first time in your life the true age of your world. Others trod these paths before you, and left behind a legacy that still marks the earth and the seas and the heavens… and all the creatures that live in it.
And one by one, the hands, may they be five or six-fingered, raise to the ceiling in a garbled prayer for them to come back — that’s what the images flashing before your closed eyes say — a prayer for the age of Kiengir to come back.
You pull back and away, taking advantage of the crowd’s amazement.
[cont.]
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