End of Chapter 1:

This time I was not fast enough, and I felt one hand wrap around my throat, and
squeeze. Instead of snapping my neck, as it easily could have, it began to drag
my body across the floor...towards the machine. As sparks began to cloud my
vision and air escaped my lungs, I could hear the moan of the gears beckoning
to my soul.

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Chapter 2: Reversal

Everything is seeping light, pure, brilliant white light. The walls surrounding
me are grey and cold, but just beneath their surface I can see a thousand tiny
motes of ethereal light, each burning with the intensity of Father Sun. Yet,
among all this brilliance, I feel a cold that chills me down to my very
existence, which at the time is a great subject of question for me. I can
distinctly recall not being "here" a few moments ago. Behind me I can hear the
gentle spinning of metal, which sounds to me like a chorus of divine angels. I
remember the violet man with horns pacing over me, whispering. I remember his
blood suddenly being injected into me from the Singing Angels.

Without first knowing why, I toss my head back and roar with a passion that can
only be found in a newborn. Then I notice something in front of me. A creature
disrupting the radiance, his aura wavering between a dark green and black. I
launch at it, thirsty to quench the darkness. It manages to slide by my first
slice, and from behind it comes a green tendril. I shred it with a flick of my
wrist, and in the same movement step forward, wrapping my other hand around its
neck.

I squeeze until his eyelids stop flickering. I squeeze until his face turns as
purple as the other dead man, and then fling his corpse onto the Singing
Angels. Slender metal spikes rise out of the gears, and embed into its skin.

Satisfied, I walk slowly down the hall, toward daylight. As I do I begin to
feel change swelling up from within. The soil and clay currently composing my
body begins to stir like liquid, and I feel a heat rising in my...soul? My
"flesh" begins to crack like lips in winter's chill, and orange lacerations
race across my body, buckets of black steam pouring from them. The lacerations
unfold like old paper, and crackle the same way, and beneath the heat of the
smoke, I change, like a hot sword finally bending under the hammer.

I drop to my knees, such is the weight of the pain I feel. "Am I to die?" I
think, "after such a short time to live?" Then the pain subsides, slightly at
first, then the smoke begins to rise away from my body, and with it my agony.

Standing up I notice that the light lurking beneath everything is gone, and
that the world finally stands still. Everything has become more solid, more
real, and quieter. A few birds dash across the sky, hurrying to somewhere I
know not. I roll my shoulders, and suddenly realize how small I feel. Looking
down at my hands, I see that they are now covered in flesh. I touch my face,
and note that it is as well.

Confused, and with no other options in sight, I begin walking north. Soon I
can hear the faint noise of gurgling water, which grows into a dull roar.
Slipping down the mountain side, I toss myself onto the rocky beach of a forked
river. To my right I notice a twisting path through the stones, and overgrown
ruins beyond it, but this doesn't interest me nearly as much as my reflection.

Had one of the two men who had just died in my presence been a woman, I could
have easily passed for their child. My face is a near duplicate of the Elfen I
had slain, but my skin is tinged a slight shade of purple, and two very short
horns are protruding from my head, barely visible under my hair.

"This...is interesting," I whisper under my breath.

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Chapter 3: Homecoming

I stand up slowly from the river, calculating my next move. Born from the very
mortar of the earth, I had been given a chance at life. What I was before now
no longer matter. The light I once saw beneath everything was no longer a
concern for me, nor was the question of my existence. The Singing Angels were
the root of my beginnings, and the blood of the two dead men were the catalyst
which yielded my new form. I had killed the Elfen, for no apparent reason, but
surely what happens in the past can be left behind, for it is done, and can
never be changed. But what to do with my life? I could sense the old thoughts
and feelings of the two men rumbling in the back of my mind, like a storm
gathering behind a mountain peak.

Tapping into that reservoir of memory, I find that I can unfold the lives of
the two men, like a book, seeing everything they had ever done, or wished to
do. The Viscanti had seeked to create life...and yet for the Elfen that seemed
to be a simple matter of raising some trees.

Walking back up the mountain side, I slip back down the corridors of the
Presidio, looking for the hallway with the Singing Angels. I find them just as
I had left them, the viscanti sprawled across the floor, his blood thickening
into red paint, and the Elfen still slung across the gears, a hundred metal
needles still sucking blood from his flesh.

I struggle to remove the body from the machine, a task that would have been
much easier in my more earthen form. The needles cling to his skin like so many
thorns, and by the time I pull his corpse free of them, a hundred long lacerates
are etched across his form. I undress him completely, and slip into his clothes,
one at a time. As a final touch I run my hand through my hair, concealing the
horns, and raise the hood of the robe to further conceal my identity.

"If I have their bodies, and I have their memories," I think to myself, "Then
perhaps I have other things as well." I reach back through my thoughts and
into the Elfen's, memories spiralling through my head like beautiful moonlit
fractals, and finally I'm there. "My name is Shain." I hear his voice, a ragged
whisper slipping through my mind. I push further through the memories, and the
flickering image of a woman's face floats by. "I was in love with her." A
strange feeling develops in the pit of my stomach, but I ignore it.

I finally find what I'm searching for, a reservoir of memory that holds the
information concerning is talents and abilities. Plowing through them, I learn
everything that once was his. I take everything for my own.

Snapping my head up, I begin searching through the air, looking for a string of
aether that connects to the Elfen's homeland, the Serenwilde forest and its
nexus, the Moonhart Mothertree. I'm not sure what any of these words look like,
but it's a place to start.

Grabbing onto what I now know to be the correct thread of aether, I pull on it
viciously, slinging myself through the aetherstreams. Vibrant colors spin past
my head, clouding my vision with a dizzying maelstrom of sight, and just when I
feel my senses about to be overwhelmed, I am careening through the normal air,
and landing face first onto a bed of antler shaped leaves.

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Chapter 4: Like Love

I can hear a muffled giggling from somewhere nearby, and I lift my head from
the forest floor, bits of dead leaves clinging to my hair, and I cast a
suspicious glance around the area. "Forget how to drive your teleport?" The
question is dripping in playful sarcasm, but I still can't see the person.

Then I notice that a nearby try is moving, its bark shifting like waves of heat
are passing through the air around it, and the woman from the Elfen's memory
steps out of the haze, unblending from the nature around her. Upon seeing her,
a blast of emotional pain sears through my brain, but it's gone in a second,
leaving me confused as to why I would feel such a way. "Come on," she says to
me, "It's getting late, and you've been gone all day."

She takes my hand in hers, and for the first time I notice how deceptively
beautiful she is. It's as though all the light I saw before my transformation
had been harnessed within this single being. Her skin is alabaster and clean,
her hair a smooth pale blonde. She's nearly as tall as I am, with glossy green
leaves braided through her hair and over her clothes.

As she leads me through the forest, her eyes turn to mine and narrow into thin
slits, "There's something odd about."

Quickly, I scan through the Elfen's memory, trying to grind his personality
into my own, to become as lucid a copy of him as possible. "I didn't shave this
morning!" I say, my voice filled with a cheeriness I could not have managed on
my own, "Which means no kissing me, either, I'm trying to maintain its
elegance."

One of her eye brows rises quickly, as though trying to escape her forehead and
enter the sky beyond, and she slaps me on the shoulder. "Actually, I meant that
you look a little off color today. Literally. What did you do today?" Thinking
quickly, I conjure up a story from the Elfen's memories.

"Eh, I was trying to figure out what that Geomancer kept visiting the Presidio
for, and ended up getting chased halfway around the Basin before I got to
Shanthmark and was able to use the enchanted painting there to hop back to
Estelbar, before teleporting back here. Got covered in that magic purple paint
in the process, and only had enough charges on my cleansing brooch to clean up
my clothes."

What a wickedly creative lie.

"More than likely you were gambling all day."

I fake an expression of fake disbelief, and pray that she bought the entire
story. She says nothing more about it, and begins leading me up a hallow tree
trunk into the forest's canopy. "Home at last," she exclaims, just before
wrapping one arm around my waist and pulling me through a portal filled with
aetheric air.

We emerge into another forest, not unlike the one we just left, and with a
quick search of the Elfen's memories, I understand that this is my manse, and
my family's estate. In the center of the tiny forest is a tremendous tree,
which seems to consume half the forest on its own. Embedded within the gnarled
roots of the tree is a small door, with an Elfen hand etched onto the front.
This, I know, is my family's crest.

Opening the door with her slender hands, she guides me inside. As we move
through the natural passageways created by the massive rings and veins of the
tree, I wonder how anyone could not stand in awe when pondering life and
creation. "This is my home," I say to myself, "I have earned it, and I deserve
to live. I can be everything this man used to be to this woman, to his friends
and to his forest, plus more. I can be a great man."

Lost in my thoughts and in the sappy smell of the tree, I forget about where I
am and what I'm doing. I'm only brought back to the moment when I realize that
my companion has stopped moving. Glancing around, I see we are now in a
circular chamber within the tree. Rooted to the floor in the center is a bed,
overflowing with pillows and blankets. Changing quickly into some silk and
gossamer garments next to the bed, we crawl in together, and she puts her back
against my chest. "Not very warm tonight," she says, and I flicker with guilt,
because I want to be, for her.

We fall asleep that way, me dreaming my very first dreams, each one filled with
visions of antler shaped leaves, and of this woman's face. Her dreams are filled
with questions, wondering what it is I haven't told her. Wondering why the
person she spends every night with isn't warm this night, for the first time.
Wondering why he's not snoring, of all things.

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Chapter 5: Paying the Upkeep

I wake up suddenly in the middle of the night. My dreams of the beautiful woman
next to me shattered by a vision of a tall megalith, spouting black fumes into a
smoggy night sky. With the fumes comes the sound of a thousand singing angels,
like a mother calling her son back home. I feel like the gears spinning my
head, just beneath my temples, and I rub them, trying to push them away.

That's when I notice that my hand, my left hand, is covered in dirt. I slide
quietly from beneath the covers, muttering something about needing a drink of
water, and move as quickly as possible to the front of the tree, and the tiny
door to the outside. In the perpetual moonlight of the estate, I can see that
my entire body is bleeding soil, bits of clay and dirt oozing out from every
pore in my skin. My fingers are elongated slightly, the skin hardening like
rocky daggers at the end, and I can see the dull moan of the lights beneath
every object around me.

I fling myself through the portal and across the aetherways, back into the
Serenwilde forest. An Elfen woman is standing there, carrying a woven basket
filled with commodities. "Hello, Shain! Wonderful night for a stroll." I move
forward into the light, and she realizes that something is horribly wrong with
me. "What..." she begins to say, as she drops her basket of commodities, which
roll across the floor of the commune.

I do not hesitate with my next move, as hesitation would mean the end of my new
life. It would mean the end of holding the beautiful woman every night. It would
mean the end of so many things. I lash out with my hand, dragging my hardened
fingers across her face, crushing her jaw and shocking her senses. Unable to
scream, she just looks up into my eyes as I drive my other hand into her chest,
killing her.

My body is beginning to expand rapidly, my bones feeling more like boulders by
the second, and I easily raise her onto my shoulder. I leap off through the
forest, taking tremendous strides, racing like an enraged juggernaught. Any
trees in my way get blown apart by my girth, long splinters of Moonhart wood
sailing away into the night. I use whatever essence of the Elfen left in me to
bond with the forest as I run, allowing me to sail through the flora of the
land like water.

I explode onto the road at top speed, the woman on my back shaking unnaturally
from my crazed momentum, and my legs, now the size of small tree trunks, pound
the stones of the highway, begging for more speed, and the world around me
turns into a blur of color and light.

I'm inside the Presidio of the Damned within minutes, careening down the
hallways, praying that my salvation is at the end. The Singing Angels, the
gears of my birth, are there, spinning, but more slowly now. The Elfen and the
Viscanti are still heaped in a gory pile in the corner, just where I left them.
I toss the Elfen woman on the machine, and watch in macabre curiosity as the
hundred tiny needles rise out of the gears, and plunge into her skin.

Instead of walking out like last time, I focus every ounce my thoughts onto the
image of Shain, the Elfen whose life was now mine, and would be forever. I
search back through my mind, looking for the reservoir of memories that were
his. In their place I find a single vein of his thought among my own, like a
lightning bolt of cyan against midnight. I focus on expanding that reservoir,
on holding it still as long as possible.

The gears in the machine on the floor begin to pick up speed, and the singing
of the angels rises to an eerie and unnatural crescendo, and I feel life, real
life, begin to surge back into my body. The vein of Shain's thoughts suddenly
blooms into my own memory, and orange lacerations begin tracing across my
torso.

Like a hot sword finally bending under the hammer, I change.

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