I have seen her.
Even in my waking nightmares, she is the only light in my life.
---
"Congratulations, you have two healthy baby boys. There is something that concerns me, however. Young Jaden has yet to open his eyes."
Even from birth, the stars mocked him. His brother, Saemhan, possessed the sixth sight, ascending past all boundaries of magic the Twilight Elves had and adapted his own reservoir of ethereal energy. He became Stormlord, the highest attainable level of shaman the world would ever see, and his power over the elements made even the Molten Tyrant Infernus shudder in fear. Jaden, however, could not see that far; he was stricken blind from the womb. Admittedly jealous of his brother, he tried to bottle these feelings inside and became a warrior instead. Gaining prominence on the battlefield for the use of his twin sickle blades, Jaden started to understand his purpose. It would be here, after all, that he would meet Silverstar. He knew her approach before she even opened her mouth.
In the darkness of his stripped sight, he could see a shape dancing in the distance - getting closer as she did.
---
The ravage of war against the Dark Horde took its toll on the Twilight Elves. Saemhan lost an arm and an eye, fully halving his effectiveness as a shaman. He remained undeterred, and continued to fight the demonic legions of Fargate as Stormlord. Jaden did not remain as mentally strong as his brother. As a blind man, he did not shrivel away from visual atrocities. His torture remained in the pit of his soul, and the whispers attacked his sensitive ears every second he spent on the hell-blasted surface of Skellbrieg.
One day, a scout clad in black reported to Jaden, and left him in tears.
---
Even her gravestone shimmered with a faint glitter. He stood over it, ignoring the boiling thunderheads at his heels. The heavenly city of the Twilight Elves always hid away its dead in tombs and vast cemeteries in the deepest, darkest dungeons obscured by clouds. Each time a new occupant arrived, a storm began to brew and the sky wept.
She should not be hidden. She should not be dead.
The voices in his head sometimes coincided with his own thoughts. Now, of all times, he could not tell them apart - or hardly even cared. He merely stood by his beloved's tomb, sweeping aside the errant dust particle as it drifted into his hearing range. He wanted to die here, with her, and spend eternity daring the unknown of the afterlife rather than staying alive for one more moment.
Investigate the site where she fell. Perhaps you will find clues there.
"Yes," echoed through the catacombs, but he could barely understand from where.
---
Back down on Skellbrieg, where the Twilight Elves and their great enemy had waged so many bloody battles, Jaden uncovered evidence of many wars, not just his own. Locating the exact place Silverstar fought and died would take weeks, or months. The young Windspeaker had no concept of this. He continued digging until his fingertips bled, and then rent the earth apart even further. A year passed, and still nothing.
Jaden had spent too much time on the surface, away from the healing mists of his people. The voices were strong now, and influenced his every action. His healthy purple skin faded into a dim, lavender tone. He resembled what the Twilight Elves often buried and mourned over.
"Enough,"
"I do not need you, Saemhan. Away from me,"
"I said enough, brother!"
Strong fingers clasped his shoulder, and ripped him away from the latest of his archaeological sites.
"Get away!"
"You are driven mad with grief over that woman, come back and rest or you'll die,"
"I would sooner die than spend another second without her, don't you understand?"
"I have never mistaken you for a fool before, Jaden, but today you make a mockery of everything you once were,"
Force became applied to Jaden's torso in the form of a hard rising knee. It left him winded, and reminded him of how weak he had grown. Flimsily, he crumpled under his brother's arm. A week later, and his condition somewhat improved. The voices had quieted, and for the first time in a long while he knew a shred of peace. Saemhan considered his brother stable one night, and let him sleep without watch.
The dreams came back, but in a resonance that Jaden had not heard in a long while.
"Jaden,"
Silverstar.
"Avenge me, Jaden,"
I have tried, but how my beloved?
"It was your brother Jaden. It was always your brother."
---
The downfall of the Twilight Elves came swiftly. With the death of Saemhan, the shamanistic cult crumbled and the elemental powers could not keep the Dark Horde in check. Demons swarmed the streets, slaughtering hundreds and burning the heavenly cities to ash. The Twilight Elves started falling to Earth, where they would begin a new history, but a few remained to see why Saemhan had forsaken them by accepting the afterlife.
Jaden held the body of his brother, his blades cast away into the far corner of the room drenched red. He had become unrecognizable, mutated by the Dark Gods for finally accepting their "gifts" and slaying his own flesh and blood. He pleaded for Saemhan to come back, but to no avail. The sentinels surrounded him and would have killed him if not for his immediate escape. He plucked his swords from the hall and departed on two leathery wings, the voices of those who found him chasing his heels now and for all eternity.
"Betrayer! Jaden Windspeaker is a traitor! Hound him! Find him! Make him suffer for what he has done!"
Through the screaming and all the hatred, none could see Jaden's tears or hear his whimpers. He had finally gained full control of his own body, but at the cost of watching himself slay the Stormlord. He thought it a nightmare until the agonizing transformation happened and snapped him out of his dreaming world. By then, it was too late.
---
Betrayer.
Hellspawn.
You never deserved to live.
Your brother should have been an only child.
"SHUT UP!"
Silverstar never loved you like you loved her.
She just wanted to get to Saemhan through you.
"Shut up!"
She died knowing you would grieve.
"Shut up..."
She never loved you.
Ten thousand years. Modern man could barely grasp the idea of living one hundred years, and even then those elderly few are surrounded by friends and family. Perhaps they die alone, but they all die. Immortality is by no stretch of the imagination a "gift," especially if one lives in solitude. Exiled from his people and imprisoned by the shackles of demonic restraint, Jaden underwent tortures of many kinds spanning many lifetimes over. The lords of the hellpits often resorted to taunting him with images of his people destroyed and his brother mutilated.
But he could never stomach seeing Silverstar among that number. The light of his life, swimming up and down, while the demons laughed and hollered.
---
Reprieve did not come at regular intervals. Binding his wings and limbs together, the demons would throw him into a lightless dungeon so that he may wallow in the memory of his latest regime of pain. He did not move during this time. Hardly breathing, waiting to rot, he just remained motionless. These times were the most difficult of all, as the blind elf's mind wandered through the atrocities. They were more potent than the salt in his reopened wounds.
The only sound keeping him awake remained in the irregular dripping of what he assumed was water in the distance. Of course, he would never be able to reach it. That is how the torturers of Fargate operated.
"Hey,"
Go away.
"Hey, you awake?"
"I said go away,"
"You didn't say anything, bud. Look, I'm here on business so I'll make it quick,"
Was this another apparition come to haunt him? The demons loved dangling false escape plans over his head. But the ground opened into a portal, and he could see a world separated from Fargate by both space and time. A glimpse of the future? Or the modern world, perhaps?
"A temporal gate..." he muttered thirstily, staring at the glistening rivers and streams gazing back at him.
"C'mon big guy, just a little further. In retrospect, I should have opened this underneath you, but I didn't want to scare you too much,"
"I understand how portals work," Jaden snapped back at his unseen visitor. "And I thank you, from the bottom of my heart."
Sarcasm dripped from his voice as he crawled headfirst into the interdimensional gateway, which he plummeted through for about thirty feet before landing in the icy currents. The chains binding his arms, legs, and wings together vanished entirely as he swam, their molecular structure fading without the proper presence of a pit lord nearby. Finally - freedom! He powered his way to shore and would have started flying, but felt a hammerhead placed on the back of his skull.
"You fell from clouds," a harsh voice commanded. "You take us to battle, and you make us win,"
These were humans? Such barbaric creatures. Jaden swept the hammer aside with a wrist, finding the resistance laughable through his demonic strength. Archers raised their bows in his face, intent on skewering him on the spot. Standing at his full height now, he towered over the lesser beings of this new world. He flashed a razor-toothed grin.
"Fair enough. I suppose that this is the task my liberator appointed me, some tweaking of the timestream in exchange for my freedom. I will oblige your pitiable request,"
---
Meanwhile...
"Oh sh!t, I didn't tell him what he needed to do! He's out in the middle of ancient history without a frame of reference for what's going on!"
"What are you talking about, Steve?"
"Jaden Windspeaker is now in Norway, circa 999, on the morning of the Battle of Svolder!"
"Pft, so?"
"So, King Olaf Tryggvason's men have just found him!"
"Still not following you, Steve,"
"The history of Norway is going to change forever if King Tryggvason wins because of Jaden, and it's all my fault!"
"It's Norway Steve, I'm sure the boss doesn't really care about freaking Norway."
"Shut up, Steve, we have to fix this - somehow."
---
The sun peeked over the horizon, casting an uneasy light through the mists. Their approach had been slow all morning because of the ice. King Tryggvason rowed out of his hold with forty ships, while history only remembered eleven. He knew of the monsters under the surface, and hoped that his foes would attract them more than his own fleet. Jaden sat in the middle of the armada, cocooned in his wings. His blades were concealed by magic runes, transformed into small rocks he kept pinned on his belt. The men around him were already uneasy because of his appearance. They feared something call Surtur, but others dispelled that claim because of Jaden's lack of a fiery mane.
Such nonsense.
"Keep quiet. Kraken underneath. Swimming, and hungry,"
The Betrayer casually dangled his ear over the edge of the boat and, sure enough, the water had grown dull with the immense shape of a moving behemoth. He could smell its breath, and settled back into a reclining position with a snarl. The surface of the ocean slowly rose, pushing ships out of the way like toys. Men started shouting orders. The time of the hunt had begun.
"Then let's give it something to chew on."
A tentacle shot out of the water, sending a cascade of salty brine across several decks at once. Jaden finally snapped out of his bored stasis and burst into action, slicing the offending limb apart with one swing of his enchanted swords. His cloven hooves met the fleshy innards of the kraken's forsaken whip-like appendage, while the tip of the monstrous thing soared through the air and crashed into a nearby mountain to rot.
Sensing his bloodlust coming to fold, Jaden bellowed a sadistic cackle as he broke into the water itself, eyes glowing under the bandages with a demonic fury. After so long in chains, it felt amazing to finally fight and fly on his own terms. The ocean tides churned red, and Jaden ascended from the depths, a perfectly dissected kraken tooth being King Tryggvason's prize as he dropped it before the viking lord's feet.
Soaked in brine and blood, Jaden became known as the Sea Conqueror while the humans around him cheered and sang.
He admittedly enjoyed their antics, but an all-too-familiar sound graced his sensitive ears. War drums. The enemy had assembled, and now battle was about to be joined. Something remained out of place, however. He could smell a foreign metal, both to this land and to what he already knew. The frigid sub-arctic winds did little to hide this scent. Perhaps this would be the one responsible for this timeline's faults?
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