Revenant

The first woke up in their forgotten tomb.

The second woke up under a tree which suffered too much.

The third woke up among the countless bodies of traitors.

And thus, the three revenants walked Axis' earth once more.

--

There was no impact when landing. She was lying there, unable to breathe, unable to move, her soul bound to a body that was ground down to nothing more than bone dust. There was no pain because there were no nerves. No brain. Not yet. But she knew that her body was starting to reform, the dust slowly gathering together and building a skeleton. Her nerves formed first, alongside tiny bits of muscle and sinew, and along with it, the first part to be recreated was her brain. The moment she had been waiting for, her consciousness was born and the first thing she felt was…

P̴̻͎̝̲̖̭͖̍̒̽̃́̕͝Ạ̶̢̮̠̾͊̑͒͛̃́̿͋͝I̷̧̡̢͍̞̥̪̐̽ͅN̴͓̠͕̒̿̒͆̓̋̄͒̆͠

Searing, agonising pain coursing through her entire body, gripping it with claws of lava and tearing into her flesh as Deiwo's power renewed it. Muscles and sinews grew and wrapped around her bones, soon followed by nerves as her entire body screamed in pain. It laid bare on the dust-covered ground and without skin protecting it, every fibre of her body was in agony. If she had a voice, she would have screamed, if she had eyes, she would have cried. But she didn't. Her brain was overloaded, thoughts crumbled in her hands and slipped through her fingers before she could comprehend their meaning.

Time was meaningless. Agony, endless.

How long did it last? One breath? One lifetime? Two? Three?

It didn't matter. Nothing did. Only the liquid fire coursing through her body. That was the here, the now. That was the only thing in the world that felt real.

There was something else. Far in the distance, so far away yet so intrinsically linked to her being. Twin specks of familiarity, of light, of consciousness, writhing in the same pain but there. Here. Close to her.

Not alone.

She didn't notice it at first, the ebb and flow of the pain was lessening.

What was her name? She knew she had one. It was hard to think. Hard to focus.

She must have had a name at one point. She knew the two distant but close lights had one. She needed to remember.

Nobody?

No, that wasn't right.

Ǹ̶̞i̸̠͝m̷͚̋ṷ̴̅ẹ̸͐? The name had a familiarity to it, not like the one the twin lights carried. It threatened to slip from her fingers like sand but she held onto it.

Nivin? It felt better. Still not quite her, but as she laid there on the cold hard floor, she felt it was a name her mind could hold onto better.

Nivin had to get up. Her awareness started to sharpen as the pain started to fade more and more.

Nivin opened her eyes.

Her sight was different. Details were much sharper than she ever remembered them being. She saw cracks running along an old withered stone wall up and along the ceiling of the room she was in. Plant-life grew all around her, pushing past the stone and into the big room. Rays of light filtered in through a stained glass window right above her, casting colourful lights across the floor. She looked up, and with a start, realised her body felt foreign to her.

Nivin lifted a hand and held it out, and what she saw wasn't what she expected. It could be a hand, maybe, but it more resembled the claws of a bird of prey. Yellow and scaled, the strange appendage flexed, closing and opening at her command. Her entire arm bent in a strange way and it took her a bit to be able to touch her face and trace her face while trying to avoid scratching out her eye with her claws. A long hooked beak, soft feathers and long ears, it all was strange. Nivin placed her hands down on the ground again and sat up before looking at her body. Snow-white feathers covered the upper half of her body, while the lower half seemed more feline, covered in short black fur. A giant pair of wings was hanging down her sides and past the edge of the table she was sitting on, touching the ground. The feathers were a soft white colour, turning more greyish in the area of her secondary feathers before they made way for pitch-black primary feathers. She also spotted a pattern of connected rings down her spine and the side of her front- and hindlegs, black against the white of her feathers, and white along the black fur. She also caught sight of a tail. It was long and elegant, white feathers forming almost a leaf shape at the tip, as well as at the base.

"A gryphon? That's unexpected."

Thank god, her voice sounded almost the same to her. It was a strange feeling, talking with a beak, but she would get used to it. It's not like she had any other choice though.

Nivin looked around more. She already noticed the size of the room, but now as her awareness returned to her, she began to notice much much more. She was sitting up on what looked almost like an altar. While everything looked old and worn down by time, she clearly recognized strange symbols carved into every surface of the room. Right behind the altar was a bit of a space and standing under the stained glass window, was a giant statue. The light that illuminated it showed intricate carvings of feathers and fur, a regal gryphon sitting on a platform, its gaze overlooking whoever entered the room. It wore a piece of jewellery on its head, a three-pronged tiara or crown, with an amethyst embedded into the middle. A pattern of connected rings starting on her head before disappearing behind the neck. The same pattern also ran up on the length of her feathered ears.

That was a statue of Nimue. Regal, confident, something she certainly never thought possible of herself.

Who the fuck was she here? This, Nivin was sure, was a tomb. A place dedicated to somebody who either was wealthy or… or important. She shook her head. She could break down later, she had to get out and find her frien- with a start she remembered and fell off the altar. Her friends! Mary and Daniel! Those were their names, how could she ever forget them? She had to find them, they must be nearby, she could almost feel their presence!

Nivin desperately tried to get up but she kept falling backwards, her wings flapping without her conscious control, her limbs bending in a way she wasn't used to.

"Mary? Daniel? Can you hear me?" She didn't get a verbal reply but something answered nonetheless. The two specks of familiarity in the back of her mind flared, weakly but still there, almost like a nonverbal confirmation. Nivin calmed, closed her eyes and concentrated on their presence. She could feel them, Mary was a raging thunderstorm, grief, uneasiness and freedom mixed together in a storm that was hard to fully understand. Daniel on the other hand felt like a calm river. Exhaustion, confusion, anger and curiosity combined but still flowing together in a calm manner.

Heh, he always was the one who could keep a cool head in weird situations.

She mentally nudged the lights, and she felt their acknowledgement. Their happiness that she was here. But when she tried more than to nudge them, when Nivin tried to reach for them fully, they slipped through her fingers. Like a bar of goddamn soap.

She opened her eyes. Took a deep breath. Stood. And took a step. It was slow, and clumsy, and admittedly, she almost fell over again but she pushed on, just concentrating on bending her limbs in the right way, shifting her body and keeping it balanced.

And so she took a step, and another, and another, and look, she could totally walk! She ignored her wings that were currently being dragged across the floor, because she had no idea how to deal with a set of limbs she didn't remember having. Nivin tired to remember. The very air here felt familiar. But it was no use. The memories turned to sand and slipped between her fingers before she could grasp them, the noise of rushing water filled her ears until it drowned out almost all sound around her.

So she stopped, and walked towards the entrance of the room. There had to be an exit, right? She turned and looked at the stained glass window. Now, from where she stood, she could make out a scene depicted in the mosaic, even when the image began to distort in her head, the longer she looked at it as she was trying and failing to remember. Her heart ached. She didn't know why.

There were three gryphons, chasing each other in an endless circle. One small and white, blue smoke around her as she reached for the tail of a black gryphon, surrounded by red fire, her beak open as she was flying towards a black and white gryphon, herself. Her image was cracked in places, blue smoke and red fire mixing into purple, and completing the circle. In the middle was a strange symbol. It looked almost like a yin and yang symbol she was familiar with from earth, or…what did Deiwo call it…Atlas? Yeah, it was a symbol she knew from Atlas. But instead of it being just two parts, this one was divided into three parts. The two dots were connected by a thick line, similar to the ring pattern all over her body. Maybe it was a symbol that represented the three beings? She was certainly picking up on the black and white colour-scheme going on, and if she wasn't walking proof, she would have said the artist exaggerated things a bit to dive into some symbolism. She turned and walked away. Beyond the doorway was a smaller room, stone, and decorated with stone pillars. The walls were covered in strange symbols. Runes.

Static was clinging to them like cobwebs, blurring the words and making them hard to read. Nivin stepped towards them, squinting her eyes as she stared at them. She sat down trying to see past the distortion of her mind. She could read them, Nivin realised. It took a bit, and her head hurt, but that didn't stop her. The words on the ancient wall seemed almost sad.

--

The world has forever been divided into three.

A̸̛̖x̸̙̀i̵̻̋s̵̱̈.

Atlas.

Aether.

All three in complete harmony, in pure balance, easily breakable. Deiwo, who looked upon his creation and feared that it may shatter apart with nothing to tie the balance to, created three beings, the first generation of His Children. Three beings, whose powers were tied to himself and to the world around them to help keep the balance.

Ṯ̸̃ȇ̸̺̆m̶͇̻̿p̸̫̂̚e̵̒́͜s̷̞̪̾t̶̢̮̐, the first and ultimately last Raijū, a creature of lightning incarnate, was the first to lead her people into prosperity and ultimately, their extinction.

S̶̖̑͝ẽ̶͇͚r̴̯̜̿a̵͉͑i̴̘͉͊̂à̴̧͉̔h̵̪͊͐ of the Shêdu, who tried to save his people and paid dearly for it, who was trapped in the mountain by his Parent along with his species.

D̵͙̎a̵̬̽m̵̝̈ȋ̸̼̑ä̴͚̤́n̸̪̈o̷̹͔̾̕ṣ̴̦́͌, whose purpose it was to be the keeper, whose mind was balance itself, whose sanity shattered along with what he was keeping and who died, trying to fix what was long broken.

Deiwo looked upon the chaos and suffering caused by the first rule and created the second generation of His children to be the same species, three gryphon sisters. They would lead their once feral people and build up a society from the ruins of the first rule, better, stronger, more stable.

Ĉ̸̡͍̋̈͘ḁ̸̜̬̠̼͛͛̍́̅h̵̭̘̓͗̽͑͘ą̴̞̺̓͑̓͌y̷̧̤̦̹̩͇͑a̵̭͇͕͉͛̎̌̅̕͠ͅ the leader of the Lightcatcher.

M̵̨̝̥̫͍͎̾̉̄ȍ̴͖̜͚̟͍ṙ̵̬͙̊͛͐ë̵̦́͠n̸̟͎͗́̚a̵̧̻̠̫̹̦̱͌̾͒̑̾́̚, the leader of the Darkhunter.

And Nimue, the leader of the Dawnbreaker.

The three sisters united the gryphons and lived in peace for a long time, yet a long time is not forever, and eventually, conflict arose. Small at first but steadily rising. Bit by bit, the factions split apart, finding their hunting grounds and establishing borders.

But the conflict never ceased, it only grew. The second rule echoed the mistakes of the first and the two sides went to war with each other, breaking the balance once again, and with it, the mind of its keeper.

--

Nivin flinched. The words distorted much more and she looked to the side. She knew she was Nimue. The name didn't fully feel like her but she knew that it was her. She was this…leader. And she was reading about her death. Her first death.

Nivin didn't like it.

--

The keeper met the same fate as the first, gone mad and driven by one thought and one thought alone. 'Restore the balance.' And so, the three sisters battled, the last bits of balance crumbling under their claws as they set Axis' future on a path to ruin. C̴a̷h̷a̶y̶a̴ was crippled, her wings broken. M̵o̸r̶e̵n̵a̶, scarred, her feathers torn and scorched. And Nimue, dead, killed by her own sisters. Battle ceased, calm returned and the balance, shattered, knit itself together as best as it could. Now a scale even more prone to tipping with its centrepiece missing.

--

The last part had been hard to read, the waves of sadness coming from the runes shaking her to her core, but the last line was harder. In shaky handwriting, packed with more emotion than magic, she could see those two she had called family before sitting in front of this wall with the same tears in their eyes as she had in hers.

"W̷e̵ ̶a̶r̸e̶ ̵s̵o̵r̵r̶y̵ ̷s̷i̴s̵t̴e̸r̸"