Heart of Twilight

Chapters 1-3

Prologue

A Bittersweet Union

(occurring in the Age previous to the events chronicled in Heart of Twilight, circa 3200-3285 ED)

The night was as dark as ebonite: acrid smoke mingled with a sense of destruction made all quiet.  No living thing here stirred, not even the rocks nor flora.  The air stifled and seemed to wrap its cold dead hands around him, constricting his very thoughts.  The ground delayed his flight with every step, taking bits of his energy from his limited reserves as he fled.  Many aromas and tastes whiffed up his nostrils, overwhelming him as he tried to differentiate each incoming source.  His only solace was that their creatures of pursuit would tire before finding him, knowledge that his brethren in the nearby glade had offered before turning him away out of fear.  

Nivo squatted near a great tree that had its growth manipulated into the rock it grew nearby, forming a doorway into the unknown: these were their signs.  The manipulative burning touch of his enemies was evident all around him.  As he walked, he remembered the buildings and animals encountered in the last few days.  It had not been long when he was the same as his family and friends, the Psiche. Living amongst the shadows, darting about within the cracks of light, he and the rest of the Psiche inhabited the world between that what is.  The planet was full of interest and wonder, and now it seemed a place of finality and death.  But hope filled his newly formed heart as his thoughts came to the only other Psiche who was experiencing life as he was, his beloved N'hanya.  The love and union of their souls was the cause of their sudden embodiment into flesh, which made the nearby doorway into something unlike anything he had ever experienced before.  Advancing through the doorway, surrounded by slimy walls sweating with sickness, Nivo pondered on the path that lead him here. 

He thought of the suns that encircled the current planet, Earea.  The coming and goings of the twin suns was an occurrence that was unnoticed by Nivo when he had drifted about the world in his shadow-body.  He thought of the day he first looked at the suns, the day he first stared into the eyes of N'hanya.  He had before spent his time observing and studying those things that called themselves the E'Nietti.  Long ago, the E'Nietti were like him; but they were touched by unseen hands. Taking physical bodies that could be divided into six distinct groups, each race of E'Nietti carried their own elemental skill.  

His spirit was darting about the shadows, where dwelt the Lietwai, when he first encountered N'hanya.  Her spirit relayed the sights and experiences she sensed in her journeys.  Their communion became visible for a few E’Nietti named the Lietwai, and they gathered about the two.  Murmurs like small waves rippling through a sea cave swept the crowd as they looked and pondered.  Six of the Lietwai eventually circled Nivo and N'hanya, and sound issued forth from their lips.  The notes were a marvel, and the way the sound moved up and down the waves of air mesmerized them both.  After an age, or a moment, the waves of sound in the air began to be noticeable in a different way: he began to feel them.  Apprehension, a feeling new to him, overcame them both, causing them to flee the strangeness of the E'Nietti and find an in-between place of solitude where they could reflect.

Such a place was not easy to be found, however.  Ten times already had the twin suns Erol and Slen crossed paths during the struggles of the E'Nietti.  They quarreled and battled amongst each other for an age: some using treachery and disguise, others wielding their self-righteous weapons of justice.  Strife and civil wars took a stranglehold on most Earean lands before even Nivo, N'hanya, and their peoples took their spirit forms to appear on Earea.

All that was beginning to change, as the two Psiche encircled each other and settled onto an open plain on the largest continent.  The sound, with its Lietwai source, had touched something in them that had gone unnoticed before.  They became sensitive and blatantly aware of the elements surrounding them, the same elements used in the molding and creation of the E'Nietti by their unseen Fathers and Mothers.  Something in them began to grab a hold of the elements, taking minute parts of them and making it their own.  Their spirit forms had begun to take physical bodies, and the thought both terrified and enthralled them.