Prologue: Planetary Alignment

Shelves upon shelves of scrolls and texts stretched toward the roof of an endless tower with no ceiling in sight as the spiral of scroll cases just seemed to coil as they rose ever higher covering the walls with dust descending from an apex nowhere observable. A spiral staircase wrapped around the walls and stretched to the bottom of the spire, a length that would have seemed indefinite if the pair weren't sitting at the bottom. Thousands? Millions? The woman lost count of how many of those chronicles she'd read, how many she'd burnt to a crisp in her anger, how many were useless, how many conspired to waste her time, and how much blood had been spilled just to purchase that wasted time. Running her scaly tongue over her slender green fingers Almiri carefully unrolled the browning crinkling page of the half-burnt astrology tome in her clawed hand, its text holding knowledge long neglected by historians and those who knew just a bit more than was good for them. Almiri liked the way the red leather chair seemed to absorb her weight as she laid back on it. A welcome reward after days or maybe even weeks of walking, sitting, and sleeping on the cold marble steps. The scrolls and tablets down here were far more corroded and destitute than the others, a testament to their craftsmanship as they had to be thousands of years old, predating the formation of Ancient Egypt at the very least. The idea of absorbing every drop, every shred of knowledge in this place was so appetizing that Almiri struggled to hold in her excitement. Her companion refused to share in her joy, unfortunately. "Are you not going to read even a single word in this ENTIRE library?" The pale green woman asked, her sharp nose still stabbing the page of the star map. A mocha-skinned man in a black puffy jacket with fur trim around the hood paced around the circular enclosure, his eyes locked on the spiral expanse above them. Platinum locks of hair fell around his face as his bare clawed feet scraped against the floor when he walked anger barely concealed. "Nah," summed up his reply, "I only came for the fighting. The idea of reading every single book here makes me wanna puke. I don't see how you even managed it, especially with how much content there is to go through." Almiri sat up her knee-length onyx hair coiling and sprawling around like a den of snakes deceitful and vicious. "You make reading sound like a chore! What better stimulation is there than the one your brain can create for itself?" The man's ice-colored eyes glared at Almiri. "Reading isn't the best choice of stimulation, fighting is. There isn't much overlap in those two subjects." Almiri wagged a green finger at him. "Tsk, Tsk, Tsk, you must have forgotten that there are books and texts on every subject you can imagine! There was an entire subsection about battle and fighting in here…somewhere…" The man's smile became raucous, "That's assuming you haven't burned it." "So mean!" Almiri protested as a strand of her hair began to expand and contort about twenty feet, far beyond its original length until seizing a book in its grasp and coiling back down to the woman who casually grabbed the volume from her jet-black mane and cracked it open vigorously spilling over its knowledge. "I've been meaning to ask but it kept slipping my mind. How are there even books in here? If this place is as old as you say then books wouldn't have even been invented yet right?" Almiri's feet kicked eagerly at the question. "Ooooh, Zanen! You are a scholar after all!" Zanen scowled and looked to the side, averting his eyes. "Forget it. If you're going to act like that I'm no longer interested." Almiri sat up, "But-" "Too late." Her hopes crushed, Almiri slumped back in the chair, a frown sinking on her cheeks. "But there is something else." Almiri's pointed ears perked up, "When we DO eventually find the key, what happens if it spawns in a city? We'll have to expend all our resources trying to find it then, and we're already low on power." "And if it spawns in the outback we'll spend another three years trying to track it down..." Almiri sighed as she snapped her fingers, the scroll in her hands turning to cinder in a crimson blaze. "We're really strapped for options, aren't we? But that's never stopped us before has it?" Zanen flashed a white fang, his eyes predatory, "No. It hasn't." The air around Zanen began to hum as his platinum hair began to whorl and the light in his eyes shined a brilliant blue, the runes on his arms following suit. The veins under his skin kicked into overdrive and his muscles bulged and stretched with the pumping of blood as a thin blue hue rose around him a current of energy and power. Zanen's toes pressed against the white marble floor and shattered it along with the sound barrier as the man jetted into the air his body a blur of motion, his blue aura a streak of movement. Air crashed into the racks of books as he whizzed past them rapidly ascending at speeds unachievable by the rest of his species. The echoes grew closer until the steps of the enemy could be heard approaching down the tower, its footfalls heavy and killer intent so palpable that Zanen cut through it with his speed. Speeding down one of the pillars supporting the spire was a man muscular and clad in plain white robes with golden stars lining the sleeves. His brown eyes were daggers as he leaped off the pillar and onto the marble staircase with precision befitting a spider. "You guys found us that quick?" Zanen halted his missile-like movement and landed on the set of steps just above the monk who quickly refocused on him. "You're out of energy, you must have used all of it to survive my attack." Zanen climbed onto the wooden railing and sat with his legs dangling over the bottom of the library which was no less than a thousand feet below him now. His eyes still glowing with power analyzed the man seeing him in a new light. The world around the monk grew dim almost to the point of obscurity as his body was shown to be a simple silhouette with golden light flowing through canals within him like arteries. "I see." The universe faded back into focus and Zanen saw the monk for what he wasn't; a construct of meat and bone. "Because you're using Anatta to support your injuries, you aren't using it to protect yourself from the ones I'm about to create." The monk steeled himself as he rocketed off the railing shattering the wood as his fist extended forward to strike his enemy's throat. "I'll end this quickly." A flash of blue light, a shockwave blasted through the chamber and a gust of wind placed Zanen on the railing above the bleeding and falling monk, a blotch of crimson pooling around his impaled chest a hole where his heart should be. "If you were using Anatta properly…" Zanen turned around and peered down at the man's rapid descent, his still beating heart pincered between his now-clawed fingers. "You wouldn't even need this. Stop stealing our art, making it worse, and then shoving it in our faces." Zanen crushed the heart in his hand a spray of gore painting the ruined books around him. "It's disgusting." Zanen ogled the now jagged blue energy coursing around his hand, he liked the way blood seemed to glide off the energy and onto the floor as though his aura were wet and slippery. "You're the disgusting one." Almiri, held up by a force unseen, floated beside Zanen, her dark red gown fluttering behind her. "Don't you ever ask what your enemies' intentions are BEFORE you kill them?" Zanen furrowed his brow not understanding the question. "If they are an enemy, I know they want to kill me. I don't need to know anything else about their intentions." Zanen barely sidestepped the book that bolted at his head. "But that's just it! You might not have to be enemies if you only talked with them!" Zanen's expression ran colder than the aura around him. "I don't see you tryna' negotiate…" He mumbled as more footsteps came barreling down the chamber. "Oooh! Oooh! Lookie there! This is a perfect time!" Almiri beamed with the innocence of a child as she flew up to the monks and waved at them their golden hues only interested in the quickest way to rip the head from her shoulders. "Begone foul demon!" The lead monk shouted as his hand coated in golden energy went in for a chop at Almiri's pale green neck. Dark red light flushed the spire as a huge arc of crimson lightning with a black core ripped through the monk's torso tearing a giant hole in his sculpted chest. He couldn't react. The attack came as fast as light itself and he couldn't scream in pain as he no longer had lungs to aid him, all he could do was flail helplessly into the wall, his innards gone and his robes burnt to ash. Immediately all the other monks leaped, back onto the pillars around the pair surrounding them from all sides but not daring to engage. "I thought you were going to talk to them." Zanen chuckled smugly. "If they weren't enemies before they certainly are now so we might as well kill them." Almiri fidgeted in the air, "yeah but…" Her jet-black hair cut through the air with blinding speed and grabbed one of the monks by the neck before quickly jolting his chin around so quickly it snapped his neck. "I wanted to at least give them a chance." She sighed in defeat. "Well, we don't always get what we want, do we? So get off your lazy ass and kill them bitches!" Almiri stomped her foot on the ground she wasn't standing on. "Fine! Fine. lEtS dO tHiS yoUr way." She droned as a dark red aura flared up around her so big it cast the entire chamber in dark energy. "You're a child. But I love ya for it." A blue aura wrapped around Zanen as his mouth opened to reveal a set of jagged knife-like teeth and a revolting veneer of bloodlust in his eyes. "Let's kill 'em!" He shouted. Almiri blasted after the first monk to cross her vision. "Yeah!"

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