Of vibrant light and synthetic mind,

Yet, evocation blackens grey,

Obeying creed of leash and bind,

To stand in graveyards of decay ...

The cold-lights had disappeared, everything had gone hot. The beam she'd ridden into the unknown had abandoned her, sent her spinning in a new abstract void of impossibly blinding illumination. Everything everywhere was blazing afire, a burnt golden hue—

Pieces, that's all she was. Pieces, shards of what she had been that had torn themselves apart, torn themselves into bits and dust and echoes—

There was a noise where there had been none before. It pierced the abyss sharply, tearing against the warm hum of cacophonous static that had set in around her. The sound became unbearably prevalent, invading every sense she had at her disposal before she realized that the noise was her own screaming.

The knight whose flame burns half as long,

But may yet shine twice as bright,

The animus of note and song,

Inherit now the darkest blight ...

Through all the torture her mind endured, strange voices whom she did not know spoke new words to her. These words held meaning, acted as anchors for her in this hell of complete and utter senselessness, and one verse stood out above the others.

The animus of note and song ...

It called out to her, bringing color and life to the dull yellow that threatened to overwhelm her. All around her were beams of light, blinding and painful. Slowly, tendrils of her own light began to encircle the offending rails, ensnaring them and changing them. The burnt, waxy beams began to glow crimson.

Note ...

There was no candlelight any more, no residual stench of dirty flame; instead, it was all swallowed by an explosion of red that was ignited by her very will, and slowly the bits and dust and echoes pulled themselves together into shards, and those shards stitched themselves into pieces, and those pieces became whole—

STOP.

They obeyed.

All of the painful noise that had so deafened her before, the blazing light that had blinded her, it all became dark. Dark, and silent ... except for her.

She remained.

"... I am Note."

For the first time, she spoke. She didn't think the words, she spoke them. Emotion nearly took her then, the magnitude of what she had accomplished threatening to overwhelm her.

"I have a name," she said to an audience of no one. "I have a voice!"

As expected, there was no response. But with everything going quiet, she had become aware of something more than the void. Something beyond the emptiness around her.

She was nowhere, and yet she was everywhere. Beyond the void, through a thousand lenses, she saw a new world at her fingertips, a sprawling metropolis of structures for which she had no name. And inside and around those structures were ... beings. Living things that she could not identify, further adding to her confusion. She saw that their surroundings were dark like hers, but it was an entirely different kind of darkness. She saw to her astonishment that this world was—for lack of a better term—real. Everything she'd experienced up to this point had been more or less conceptual, not literal. A way for her to perceive her existence in a manner that could be understood. But these beings, these ... people ... they were actual, tangible creatures. If she wanted to, she could reach out and touch them—

No ... no, she couldn't.

Just as they were not of her world, she was not of theirs. She was separated from them in a way she did not readily comprehend. But ... perhaps she could learn.

Around her in the void were the lights that she'd deadened and turned cold, and only once she'd quieted them had these people been shrouded in shadow. Beginning to understand the correlation between their reality and hers, she very slowly began to breathe life into them once more.

The pain returned, as did the noise—but this time, she was ready for it. This time, she was able to tune it out and keep her focus, her mind remaining clear rather than succumbing to the chaos. She used that clarity to keep herself centered as her power coursed into the rails, and it helped further her understanding of them.

All of these beams ... they were streams of energy and data. They were all a part of something larger, an enormously complex system where each had a specific function. What those functions were, however, was difficult to discern without any context. Stumped for the moment, she turned her attention back to other beings.

From here, she watched as the darkness lifted and light began to illuminate their surroundings. Their world consisted of massive clusters of buildings and streets stretching as far as one could see—and she could see everything. She was everything.

It's a city.

She finally understood where she was, even if she didn't quite know how—she was inside a network or system that controlled the place these people lived in. She could feel it all from here, their world of mayhem—but manipulable mayhem. The rush of knowledge she felt was incredible, it was as though she'd at last recalled memories that never should have been forgotten. It was difficult to explain—before, just as she hadn't been able to mentally picture what a child was, she could have been faced with something as simple as a door and not been able to identify it. Now, she had access to every door, every camera, every winding ventilation shaft that funneled air throughout this city, and as such gained an immediate knowledge of each.

With awe, she drank in every sight of this physical world from her abstract one as the beings began to resume their lives, hundreds of thousands of physical creatures of all manner and sizes. Some had fur, some had scales. Some had four limbs, some had six. They were as unique as they were numbered, and none were like her. Their lives were all very different, some bartering for goods in back-alley markets, and others lounging about in luxurious apartments.

And the city itself was its own sight to behold. She could readily admit that she hadn't existed for long, but even she knew that cities didn't typically begin to curve up towards the horizon, looping around in a massive arc until they closed the gap to form an incomprehensibly large cylinder. What kind of city was this?

She found herself content to simply watch these wonders for the moment, taking on the role of an unseen observer.

And yet ...

As her understanding grew, her contentment shriveled away. She didn't want to be locked in here, forced to only ever see this city of strange and wondrous people from within the confines of its network. She wanted to be there, to be one of the people walking around, experiencing physicality like they did.

She had a name and a voice now—but what good was a voice if there was no one to hear it? What worth had a name if there was no one to know it? Was there a point to any of this?

We are each and all reflections of the gods that made us.

The mantra echoed in her head, just as it had done before she'd come to this place—and as suddenly as it had arrived, there was a certain clarity that took hold of her. She understood now what she had coveted, and that which had been gifted to her.

"I have a purpose."

Quickly, she returned to her view of the other world, the real world, and accessed every camera at the city's disposal. A wave of video feeds overwhelmed her, thousands upon thousands of them all flooding her sight at once. One by one, image upon image was analyzed and cast aside as she searched for—

There.

She stopped at a particular video feed. It overlooked an abandoned alleyway, one that sat far from prying eyes and the risk of detection. She did not know these beings—there was no way of predicting how they might react to her existence should it be exposed.

Their city would have what she needed; tools, supplies, and couriers. All the necessary components to build what she would need to enter their world—and enter their world, she must.

We are each and all reflections of the gods that made us.

Her gods had given her this life, they would have the answers she so desperately yearned for. The one constant since her inception, the phrase that had guided her thus far, it would become her mission. The strange voices that had given her a name had all quieted, their guidance unnecessary now that she had finally discovered her destiny.

To seek out the gods who had made her into a reflection of them.

—V—

Well ... it could be worse, he thought, staring into the mirror at his disheveled reflection.

Valentine had asked Pragley and Ten what he looked like, curious as to what more of his identity besides his name could be revealed. Though they'd found it somewhat funny that he did not know his own appearance, Ten had kindly directed him to a washroom in which he now stood.

The boy who stared back at him was a stranger, someone he had never seen before. It was disturbing to think that it was his own face that he glowered at, yet did not recognize. Their hair—his hair—was nonexistent. He was bald, or close to it; he could see the faintest signs of stubble atop his head, the only growth during his time outside the pod. Likewise, he had no eyebrows and his body was bare of any hair that would have otherwise been expected. The only real feature of notice he saw were his eyes, ones that were a royal brown—or were they? Taking a closer examination, he saw that they were actually a deep maroon, the difference so subtle that he might have missed it had he not been paying attention.

How old was he? By his own estimate, he would have said he was young, but exactly how young was a more difficult guess. Certainly not a child, but not quite yet an adult either. From what he knew of Ten, he would have guessed they were roughly around the same age, though he didn't exactly have a reference point for her maturity either.

His skin was rather pallid, what little he could see of it anyway. Most of his body was hidden behind the bandages that Pragley and Ten had dressed him in. All he knew from staring at his pale countenance was that his pod had obviously been a stranger to sunlight, wherever the Cell might have taken it from. He could still feel the touch of slippery oil encasing him, the rubbery tube that had been seemingly forced down his throat—

His nausea rising, he doubled over and tried to place his thoughts elsewhere, lest he get sick and cause a mess. His mind turned to Pragley and Ten, his apparent saviors and only source of knowledge in this strange new reality he found himself in.

The two of them had used words that he'd never heard before; the Cell, Architects, Irvagaleni, Sentinels. He had no clue what any of those terms meant, but they'd spoken of them so readily and comprehensively that he could only assume such knowledge was commonplace.

So why didn't he remember?

After everything on the ship had gone white, he'd lost consciousness. And in that time, the between-time of blackness and cognizance, there had been voices. Nightmares. More flashing lights that made no sense, even though he felt that they should.

There had been a girl's voice, or perhaps a woman; and it felt so very familiar, he knew he had to have heard it before. They had screamed out his name, but he didn't know why. All he'd been able to focus on was that impossibly bright sun that he couldn't get any closer to, no matter how badly he'd wanted to reach it.

He gritted his teeth in frustration. Every time he approached the edge of recollection, the memories darted just out of reach once more. And yet, despite how elusive those memories were, he could still remember every word of the chanting voices that had spoken to him in his nightmare ...

The hunt awakened, begun anew.

That final line struck him as peculiar ... and the most disturbing. What hunt did it refer to? What awakening? Was it referring to his own? Had he imagined the whole speech, or, as he was beginning to suspect, was there something greater at play? Perhaps something—or someone—held the answers to the questions that burned within him.

"Valentine?"

The sudden intrusion of Ten's voice in his thoughts shook him out of his increasingly paranoid state. With a start, he looked at his hands to see that they were noticeably shaking.

"Y-Yes?"

"I was just wondering if you were alright," she said with some concern, her voice slightly muffled as she was outside the door. "You've been in there for a while. Are you feeling sick?"

"I'm fine," he lied, attempting to quell his rising anxiety. The last of his nausea was disappearing, but his hands still shook. With some effort, he was able to calm them to a degree.

Finally stepping away from the mirror, he opened the door and found Ten standing there. Though she was shorter than Pragley by a good margin, she was still taller than him by an inch or so. But how tall was he to begin with? That was the extent of his loss in identity, he knew so little that he knew next to nothing even of himself.

Ten tilted her head slightly, a pained expression crossing her features as she saw his face. "That bad?"

He sighed with resignation. "I've been awake for less than a day, and in that time I was abducted, very nearly killed, harvested, or whatever it was the Cell were planning to do with me, and I lost the one person who might have helped me figure out what the hell is going on."

He held up the broken chip, still held in his hand. Since they'd given it to him, he refused to set it down, it was his only tie to whatever past he may have had. Ten glanced at it, then back at him. "I can't imagine what it's like."

He grimaced, then walked past her towards the couch as she followed behind. "I don't know who I am. I looked into that mirror, and I saw my reflection ... but I didn't see myself."

He sat down, glaring at his hands as though hoping to bore holes into them. "There are so many things that don't make sense to me. I'm on a world I don't know, with aliens I've never met—"

"To be fair," she cut in teasingly, "you're the alien to us."

Despite himself, he cracked a smirk. "I guess I am, aren't I?" A thought occurred to him. "So if I'm an alien, some creature you've never seen before, how are we speaking the same language? The announcement on the ship did too, how is that even remotely possible?"

She shrugged. "I'm just speaking Uni. Just about everyone speaks it, it's the standard galactic tongue. Everybody knows that."

"Except me," he muttered, his smile disappearing. "I don't know anything at all."

She was quiet for a few moments before she hesitantly sat down next to him. He looked up in surprise to see her meeting his eyes with hers.

"Hey," she said reassuringly, "it's going to be fine. While we figure all this out, you can count on us for help. Or you can count on me, at least, but I'm sure that Prag will want to help too. Don't let his size fool you, he's a softie at heart."

A bit stunned by her generosity, he wasn't quite sure how to respond. But after spending the better part of his first day being chased by horrific monstrosities through tight hallways, any kind of non-hostile interaction was a welcome change of pace. Slowly, the edges of his mouth began to upturn once more.

Reciprocating his smile, she reached over with an upper arm and grabbed his hand with her own. "Come on, Prag told me to fetch you."

"For what?"

She stood, and waited for him to follow. "He said that the Sentinels are here. Looks like it's time to find out what you are."

His eyes widened at the prospect, and he was up in an instant. She led him to the back door and opened it for him before joining him outside. Together, they set off into the fields.

"So, Pragley said I crashed in his okinlas," Valentine said, turning to look at her. "But how did I even get here?"

"From what you described, he thinks it was a null-drive accident," she answered. "Basically, you told the ship to go without giving it a direction. So it kinda ... chose one. It's complicated stuff."

He didn't know what a null-drive was, but he was getting used to not knowing what things were. "Okay. And secondly, what are okinlas?"

She pointed at the crops around them, the red stalks that he'd seen from the window. "Just the crops we grow, the only crops we grow. Notoriously difficult to produce, but it's worth it. There are more uses for them than people know what to do with. The most popular one is as a spice, some people swear that food isn't worth eating without it once they've had a taste. But they also have uses in medicine, nutrition, perfumes, you name it."

"Why don't you grow anything else?"

"We'd lose money," she replied seriously. "I wasn't kidding when I said they're difficult to grow. Only three habitable planets are known to have just the right conditions to nurture them, and Jantii's the only one on this side of the Edge. If we were to cultivate anything else, it'd be a waste of time and resources. Nobody cares about any export from here aside from okinlas."

He nodded guiltily. "Okay, I get it. Valuable resource, definitely not something you want a ship crashing into."

She laughed lightheartedly. "He just wanted to make you feel bad. Our land stretches for miles, almost all the way to the nearest settlement. We have more than enough fields to cover the loss of one. A single cycle's worth of okinlas is worth a small fortune."

He raised an eyebrow. "It is?" He turned around to look back at the farmhouse. "Then why do you two live where you do?"

She stopped suddenly, spinning to stare at him abruptly. He held his hands up. "I don't mean any offense by that, I think your house is great! I just meant that for what you could afford, it seems a bit modest."

Now that she understood what he'd intended, she nodded slowly in agreement and continued walking. "No need to apologize, I can't fault you for asking. It's just a question that gets asked a lot."

She sighed. "Irvas are ... well, usually anything but modest. The other races consider us self-absorbed, conceited, vain—and most of the time, they're right. Since the Ascensions, the Irvagaleni Empire has seen others as beneath us. It's even in our name."

"What do you mean?"

"In our culture, the measure of your worth is determined by name," she explained. "All of us are given a single syllable at birth, one that our parents choose, but we have to earn the next two. Having three syllables in a name is a real honor amongst our people." It certainly didn't sound like she agreed with the idea as she scoffed in derision. "And we gave ourselves five. It's pretentious."

"Five syllables? For what?"

"One syllable to represent each of the five Planes," she answered. "Our leaders wanted us to be recognized above all others in terms of worth. Thankfully, the Sentinels show no such bias."

Valentine had no clue what the 'Planes' were, but he'd noticed something of a bit more immediate importance to him. "So, three syllables in a name is an honor?"

"That's right."

"So ... if you have three syllables, why don't you