Chapter Text
A long long time ago, when the space was bare and devoid of any features, six beings emerged and started to create the universe. The first land they ever created was this land of ours. Midayle, the goddess of creation, created the air and earth from which Atela, the goddess of life, grew the plants and populated the land with the animals that were the ancestors of the species currently living. With her vast knowledge, Alexandra the morning star, with the help from the dark lord, had created the law that bound the land’s denizens and the deities together. They became the light that guided people and darkness that kept them safe. The last two of gods, known simply as the king of the end and the knight of demise, governed over the sinned and the dead. The king and knight of the underworld welcomed all who had arrived at his castle to a feast where they could talked about their story and punished those fallen from grace.
After they were done with the establishments, the gods and goddess all took a break. They lived happily with the land’s denizens. Sometimes later, the gods and goddesses decided to grant minor wishes for the denizens to keep them close and they started to come to the gods more. To balance the wishes, the wishes came with a price. At first, the wishes were simple like a farmer asked for a successful harvest or a rain to stop the drought. After a while, they became more demanding and disregarded the prices and the wellbeing of their family and others of their kinds for personal wealth and power.
So to solve the problem, the knight of demise with his trusty steed was tasked to take people who had made high price wishes down to the underworld to punish. Blinded by rage, the king of the underworld overlooked people who made those high price wishes for the good of others. They, the innocent, gotten mixed into the sinned and all were subjected to the horrible and inhumane torture for eternity. The word of the gods’ doing spread throughout the land, streaking fear in the heart of the people. They slowly stopped coming to the gods and goddesses for wishes but not completely. Fueled by the determination and love for their loved ones, many had tried to use the wishes to aid them as they came to the king to bring them back but once they had gone on that journey, none had come back.
Until a young man from a poor family, in a small town in the valleys. Driven by the love for his families and people and the want for justice, he decided to make it his life’s mission to free those who were unjustly taken. Although he was not the first to question the gods’ will nor he was the first to embrace on the trip, he was the only one to succeed in freeing them. Knowing that it wouldn’t be easy, he went and asked for blessings from Alexandra and Aoi, a being created from the dark lord’s shadow. Thanks to his charisma and cleverness, they had given him blessings of luck, which helped him get the best outcomes and the mantle of the night that hid his presence from the unwanted eye. Then they showed him the way to the mystic forest where the goddesses of creation and life resided. After hearing his story, the goddesses bestowed upon him a magical shield with great durability and strong healing spells that healed the worst of injuries but could only be used once.
Along the way, he helped many people, making him famous across the land. He met all kinds of people, some helped him and some discouraged and mocked him but he persevered. Among those that attacked him, a man of the bird’s descent, became his ally and the two of them supported each other as they went to the castle of the king. On the way, they defeated the giants of the mystic kingdom, harpies and mythics that lived at the border of the land. After traveling through the snowy desert filled with blizzards, they reached a wall of fog and a puzzle cube. They solved the puzzles that made the fog disappear, opening the gate to the underworld.
At the end of their treacherous journey, they met the knight at the gate of the castle of the king and as he drew his long rusty sword, his voice came out booming: ‘Stand where you are, travelers! I have heard of your adventures from others. You have come far, I applaud you for your efforts but this is the end of the road. Consider this as your final chance to turn around if you want to live.’ However, the heroes did not back down and they challenged the knight.
The battle was full of ruthless attacks of the knight and cautious and well-coordinated moves of the heroes but even with the most powerful spells and weapons, they couldn’t land a hit on the swordsman. The knight’s sword, though rusty at a glance, was sharp and covered in a thick black layer of poison and it almost impaled his heart had it not been for his friend pushing him out of its way and being hit in his side. The poison spread quickly through the avian as he slowly succumbed to death. At his partner’s side, he thought that they had truly reached the end when the knight stopped his attacks and looked at the scene in front of him. Moved by their comradery, the knight spared them. ‘Travelers, as you know, you were only a drop in the sea of people who had faced me and even though you failed like them, they did not drop their weapon at the fall of their comrades and for that I will postpone the poison and let you through.’
Once he passed through the threshold, the hero encountered the king with snow-white hair and ruby red eyes, dressed in black royal gown, sitting in his throne in a room with blue and purple crystals growing along the wall. In the middle of the room were a long table on which was food and a few chairs. He welcomed the young man and his friend to his table, saying he had been expecting them. The king treated him like a guest and gave him a cup of tea to honor his arrival. Weary of the god’s nature, the hero thanked for the tea but didn’t accept it. He got straight to the point:
‘Why did you do it? Did you not hear their pleads for freedom? For forgiveness? Why would you harm the beings you helped to create?’
The king silently sipped his tea when suddenly, he laughed. He laughed loud and hard as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard.
’You people are so fun to talk to. Well I did love them you know. But could you stay unmoved by the constant demands and when people blame you for every bad thing that happened in their life , could you stay unnerved?’ he stopped and looked straight at the hero with his piercing red eyes. In it were ruby red circular gears, replacing his pupil, turning in harmony as a part of a large machine that was the god.
‘The punishment has always been hard, young hero, but humanity has become more and more deceitful. That is why the innocent people are down here. Even though they plead, wouldn’t the sinner plead as well? To tell you the truth, with how much sinners are here, it is hard to distinguish them apart. And well, with all the attitudes they gave after I granted them their wishes, I did not care for it anymore’ his mouth stressed out into a sick smile.
‘I came here to wish, to demand freedom, freedom for those who were sent here unfairly, freedom for everyone to live free of fear. Not to hear your excuses’ the hero said, standing up from his seat. His friend passed out, radiating heat next to him.
Sipping his tea, the god glared at the hero through the rim of his cup.
‘What a strong tongue you have, it would be a shame if it were cut now, wouldn’t it or would you like me to take you friend over there?’ His voice changed into a sickly sweet feminine tone before turning back to masculine ‘keep that in line now if you want me to cooperate.’ thinking for a bit, he presented the hero with a choice. Either he became his servant and all would be free or he fought for it. His friend who had been listening urged him to fight but knowing that he and his friend were too injured from their previous battle, he chose the former option. They shook hands to seal the deal and the king let him bring his friend back home but before they left, in a low voice, he let the hero know that when the time came, he would have to return to the castle.
After he came back home, everyone over the land traveled to his hometown to thank him and his companion. For the rest of his life, he was treated with the utmost respect and fortune. With his fame, he called for all of the most powerful of medics to heal his avian friend but while they were successful in taking out most of the poison, there was still some of it in his system. With all the wealth and fame, he never once forgot about the curse to help take his mind off it; his winged friend took him to the places they used to travel to. His friend died from the remaining poison in him and with his final breath, he said praises to the hero and that their relationship was the greatest adventure of them all. From that day on, without his companion by his side, he waited anxiously for a signal, a sign that the time had come for him to go but nothing ever occurred.
On his deathbed, he opened up about the price he had paid to everyone and retold the story of his journey. To immortalize him and his companion's sacrifices, they wrote down their story and built statues of them all over the land, which was believed to bring luck and security. When he died, he left behind a long lineage of people with what is now called ‘the touch of luck’.
After his death, slowly, the gods began to detach from the denizens and after five tales of five other heroes and heroines rising up and helping the denizens achieve independence, they finally moved away, leaving them to live without the guidance of the divine. The land was split, some built shrines and places to worship the gods and goddesses, thinking it would please them and they would come back; others moved away further to uncharted territory to establish their new life, far from the higher beings’ influence.
After the downfall of the first era, the six goddesses and gods all agreed on taking in the ones with the best potential of every part of the land to study under their wing and become their council to create a connection with them and denizens once again. And so after a long time of setting up and preparing, the tests were distributed.
Time flew by and the council was now an organization with the most powerful people of all over the land. There were six main sectors and in the POIESIS sector, Fenton was the youngest in the only three who study and work under her highness Miladie. Together, they had created numerous things from weapons of mass destruction, various ideas of greatness to the equipment and clothes that the other sectors use. They were inventors, scientists, architects and fashion designers, the best of the best in the creation department.
However, one day, Fenton went to the lab to find none of his coworkers. Thinking they were late, he went on to work on his own for a week. But with no signal from his coworkers, he went to her highness’ greenhouse to ask about it, worrying that something might have happened between them that made them quit work. Upon being informed, her highness Miladie was beyond worried because she didn’t know that they were off work for a week. Both of them went back to the lab to find them but nothing came up. So to be more efficient, they went to the other sectors for help and together, they turned the entire facility upside down looking for them.
After a while, no traces of them showed up. No notes, not a single hair was found. By then, they had all given up, except for Miladie and Fenton. Going back to the lab one more time to see if they would find anything, the lab was laid in ruined and everything was askew from being ransacked. However, different from the other times they searched the lab; they heard muffled sounds coming from one of the darkened halls of the lab. Going down the dark hall, her highness’s eyes and freckles lighted up just enough for both of them to see. When they reached the end of the hall, it was clear that the muffled sounds from before were screams, the kind that were ear splitting, the kind that you would only hear when someone feared for their life.
‘Where does that door lead to, Fenton?’
‘I couldn’t recall your highness…..’ Fenton stepped back to stand a bit behind Miladie.
Miladie moved toward the door to open it but was stopped by Fenton’s hand on hers. ‘What are you doing?’ Fenton worryingly whispered.
‘Open the door, obviously’ Miladie calmly stated despite the anger underlying in her tone and through the slight shaking of her hand. ‘Nothing can hurt me but you, doctor, are mortal so for your safety, stand here’.
She tried to open the door again but the hand on her wrist strengthened. ‘I think I remember where that door led to….’
Fenton removed his hand as Miladie lowered her hand, away from the handle.
‘The others and I were commissioned by His highness to create a labyrinth that once you go in there won’t be any ways out. It doubles as a gate way to the void, inviting its beings to the labyrinth to torture the ones inside it…… this is the prototype that we are working on, it’s nearly done too…’
‘So you think they are in there?’
‘… yes, this information hasn’t been disclosed to anyone outside of the lab yet so…’
‘It’s only a prototype so there has to be a way to get them out of it, right?’
Fenton began to choke up. ‘Unfortunately no, we didn’t think to make one because of its connection to the void. We were counting on his highness the dark lord to help anyone that need to get out of it through his connection to the void but since the void is vast…’ silent tears began to ran down his face ‘ by the time he found them, they wouldn’t be the same anymore….. That is if they were still alive by then… they are as good as dead....’
Fenton fell to his knees, with his face in his hand. Miladie crouched down and gently placed her hand on his back. In front of the door, she comforted him as Fenton cried his heart out for the loss of his coworkers. Later that day, the news of the disappearance and death of both inventors were announced to the people in the facility and the public.
Many years went by, and there weren't any newcomers to POIESIS. Fenton had put all of his energy and time into working in the lab. As time went on, he began to slowly stop communicating with the others in the facility until one day he stopped it all together. People who were close to him try to come by the lab to talk to him, to help him socialize but he would pay them no mind and spare them none of his time. Not even her highness Miladie, who had come to the lab more frequently after the incident, could make him speak up.
On one fateful day, Miladie had come to the lab to ask him for a commission. A version of the portal she normally used but for the use of the public. He wordlessly complied and before he could get to work, she gave him a kiss on his forehead and whispered something but all that came to his mind were nonsensical sounds. Later that day, while he was at his desk, thinking of how to approach the project. Head in his hands when a sudden headache arrived. Through that splitting headache, an idea popped into his mind.
‘How about I made myself a companion.. ?’