Gretel & Rust
5 minutes
I watch her as she lifts her eyes to the rusted, grime-caked suit of armor displayed at the center of the window. She pays no attention at all to the jumble of strange objects of every size and kind. Some are crooked and comical; others are painful, even disturbing to behold, so unnatural are they. For they were shaped by the Tumult in its purest form... How many times had she come to take a look? Four-perhaps even five? She kept returning, again and again, as if driven by obsession.
The previous time, the Reka shopkeeper had even stepped out of his stall, likely torn between irritation and amusement at the sight of the young foreigner passing by repeatedly without ever making up her mind. He had set about recounting, in exhaustive detail, how the armor had been found and hauled up from the Sea of Clouds. I listened, leaning against the wall, before she gathered her things and slipped away, flushed with embarrassment-never knowing that the armor was meant for her, never knowing that a Chimera had taken up residence within it, like a hermit crab in an empty shell, never knowing that she would name it Rust, and that it would become her Alter Ego.
In truth, we did much the same. We took up residence in a host. But to do so, we crushed its identity to turn it into our shell-only to abandon it when we found one more suited to our needs...
There was so much she did not yet know. She had not met Gray, had not yet understood her true nature, had not even heard the word "Paragon."
By all logic, I should have killed her before she awakened. But unlike the others, I am unable to intervene. The Ananke forbids it. In this moment, I am bound hand and foot. It was not remorse that stayed my hand-remorse had vanished lifetimes ago. There was only necessity, and I was bound to obey it, bound to assist her.
Was I, truly?
Paragons will always, by their very nature, be a threat to humanity. Whatever their intentions, whatever they embody, they remain incarnate concepts. Gradually, their humanity is supplanted by the Oneiros within them. And the Oneiroi carry within themselves a fragment of eternity-an unchanging core. Kalu claimed otherwise the last time we met, as he languished in his cell. He argued that if we allowed them to exist alongside us, it might be possible to change them, to shape them-to ensure that their legend, the one by which they would come to be known, would be defined by what they accomplish in their new incarnations, rather than remain prisoners of the fables, tales, and stories inherited from the past. Perhaps he was right. But I could not take that risk.
If an Oneiros were to seize power, it would reshape society according to the ideas and fundamental principles that define it. Ares would likely turn the world into a perpetual battlefield-and I dare not imagine a world in which Tiamat were made manifest once more... Each has its domain, and that domain would come to overshadow all else: Ikapati would cultivate the earth until the world became an endless field; Anbay and Gao Yao would turn it into an unceasing trial... Worse still, the nature of the Oneiroi would render such a state immutable, unalterable-a tyranny of the idea.
The one awakening within Sunniva was unmistakably Gretel. She would have a role to play in the wandering that awaited part of the Expeditionary Corps, scattering her stones along the road to guide them safely, to help them find their way back. During her journey, she would come to know love-and from that love, I would be reborn.
Was it truly the Ananke I was following? Or the selfish desire to exist, as I stood on the brink of the end of my journey?