1 Prologue

Mountain, The Capital Shire of the Ruling Sphere of Phelia.

Twenty years ago

The room was big. Mostly Wall apart from that huge window, an entire wall of glass that overlooked the valley below and the lake that sparkled in the late morning sun. Blue lake they called it, a lava dammed lake that had withstood years of weathering and flooding, even as glacial snow melted and moved down from the white mountains deep in the heartland of Crinia sweeping through Lemala before making its way down to the Capital Shire of Phelia, the Ruling sphere of this realm.

The Great Channel they called it, the outlet, the outlet of the crystal clear blue lava lake dug out through the hands of men to relieve the overfed lake and hence the valley from its periodic floodings. It was the water way that linked those in the capital to the Harua sea, to Halelia and to the spheres beyond. This mountain, the rock from whence the room had been hewed was the realms seat of power.

Now boats could be seen, steamers only that steam was not what powered them. Had it been that, it would have meant wood and the heartless hacking of the very trees that strived to create a balance within that realm. It would have meant have degeneration, a slow death to this  realm, much like the one that they had once inhabited. But they had learnt, they were now better educated, equipped to fight the growing darkness that had once consumed them, or that was what he hoped. The discovery of this fourth dimension had been their saving. When they had wandered in darkness, a people lost and without hope or at least that was what the Knowledge he had gleaned over the years now suggested. But then they had seen the light, they ancestors had found this place and with it a better way of life, such power such hope for those who had once been hopeless, a thing that he now hoped would never need to happen again.

Now pulling his thoughts back to the room, a disgruntled Birit looked down. It was on this very room that it had happened eleven years ago when he had received his ward, a beautiful boy with startling blue eyes and a mop of blue curly hair to match. His skin, his complexion distinguished him yet making him one with his people the people that he would one day serve.

With that last thought, Birit heaved out a heavy tired sigh and turned to walk back the way he had initially come, only that he didn't go all the way. Instead he branched to the right and entered his Tamakyi's study. The panel was open so it needed no activating. All the same, he knew that his ward was not reckless, they was always the fail safe. The barrier that kept all others out apart from those he approved.

As he came to a stop before the desk, the old man sighed, a thing that he had been doing a lot lately ever since the Gathering decided on that matter and left him with the heavy responsibility of preparing his ward for the ceremony. As if he was not going through hell already, the old man shook his head and his white mane with it, but he knew that there was no other way it, they had no option. It was either that all they would all end up where it all began, doomed by the coming darkness.