Separian - Book 1

Chapter 16

How much of my past did I remember? How much of what I remembered could I tell him? Would me telling him lead to more of his curiosity or satisfy his hunger until conflicting factors were no longer a factor in the equation altogether? That would take too long. At least I thought it would...

From the instant I gained consciousness within Noah's mind there was a timer in my own, and it was counting down. From now, there remained just under twenty months on the clock. What was I counting down to? I don't know. Who put the timer in my head? I assumed my original; my Armanai counterpart from whom I was fractured. Male or female? No clue. Old or young? No clue. In fact, of my origins, I knew very little. I could not help but wonder if that had been deliberate or if I was in fact broken. As we had come in contact with no other Separian since I had awakened, there was no point of reference. We were the only example we had. Surely I was left with a means of contacting my brethren. Would the Armanai be so ignorant as to create so many of us and not give us a means of connecting to one another?

Noah's questions burned. He wanted to know what he was supposed to do. That was simple enough to answer. His purpose was to fight. To stand in defense of humanity against Baul and his many Deseparian. To survive. But there were a great many things I could not tell him about who he was, even though one day he would need to know them. It was all I knew, so the sensation was not 'strange', per se, but I still knew it was not my place to share what would only lead to more questions I could not answer.

So maybe what he really needed to know was the history behind why he was here. Would that satisfy him?

For days he continued to bombard me in Samuel's absence. For days I was forced to ignore most of what he asked. I assumed Amy would occupy at least some of his time but the more time he spent with her, the more questions he seemed to have when their time was finished. She sought to understand him as much as he did himself. Their every moment together in John's study seemed to bring them closer to the true understanding of the seal branded on his ribs.

The root language of Latin and Greek were both Armanain; the language of the Armanai. No, I did not misspeak. Before their were Romans before there was such a thing as the gods living on mount Olympus or even Norse mythology, there was the Armanai. Although, back then, they were known as Anchantai: the ancient ones. All of this knowledge, a plethora of rice stores, and all I could give Noah was a single grain. I might as well have kept my existence a mystery to him until it became absolutely necessary.

Still, there was no going back. So I went on, the only way I knew how.

"Baul used to be a man. Like you, he possessed a great many qualities that the Armanai look for when choosing a worthy Separian. At the time, however, there was no talk of a great war between the two powers. There was no talk of armies or Deseparian or even Separian for that matter. There were only humans and Armanai.

"Of course, the humans were kept ignorant of the power that seemed to pass right through them, ordaining and maintaining what they understood as 'natural law', or in layman's terms, physics. Laws for why the Earth had gravity and why that gravity was important to the Earth's orbit around the sun and the changing of the seasons. Every law from where the sun rose all year round to the constant climate changes over the centuries -that seemed to shake the tewnty-first--century-man's resolve that the Earth was very much capable of taking care of itself- the Armanai governed all of it.

"But with governing came limitation or a balance of power, if you will. The Armanai are not gods. They are born, they live, and they die. Much like those here on this earth. Though the average lifespan of the typical Armanai is roughly fifty times longer than that of a human. They are fragile and just as susceptible to death as the Separian. Powerful as they may be and enlightened as their way of thinking has evolved, they hold no more power over death than they do the conditions that led to their own conceiving. Still, the ancient civilizations of Earth worshipped the Armanai's predecessors as the gods they wished to be known as. Which led to the worship of not just one deity but many. Deities with self-proclaimed names like Thor: god of thunder or Ares: god of war. The Anchantai revealed themselves to more than just one group of people at a time. The reason for that is not one the Armanai are fond of.