Dear Journal,

I’m drafting this one in my head just so I don’t forget to remind you that I still hate you. I haven’t written in a bit. Mostly due to your inept fellow God, Boba. The dude is an absolute idiot. I bet that little slight will pass the censors because I’m talking about someone other than you. Anyways, I’m laid up in some strange place. I still haven’t figured out where the hell I am. All I know is that I’m saving all my choicest curse words for the next time I get to see you. I’m gonna resurrect you and then I’m gonna karate chop you in the throat. I’ll probably have a kick or two saved up for Boba, but he doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you know that I’m coming for you. I don’t care if you’re dead. I don’t care if you’re resurrected into the form of a baby. I’m gonna chop the hell out of your throat, whether you have one or not.

I really hate you,

Sepeti.

Days that felt like weeks passed as Sepeti slowly but surely recovered from his injuries. He endured the poetic waxings of his caretakers, mostly by writing, rewriting, and editing his latest Journal entry in his head. After the first few days, he grew used to the lyricism they displayed. It didn’t make him cringe every time they would narrate their actions. The annoyance still remained but it was tolerable. He let it slide but stubbornly refused to admit that a small part of him enjoyed the odd speech pattern.

Much of his time was spent meditating. Slowly moving his mana through his frail body. It was painstaking, to say the least. The malleability of his fulcrum was exciting but it brought challenges. He could only refine it in spurts, seeing as his body was woefully underdeveloped. His ability to hold his breath while circulating was gradually increasing. Not as fast as he would like but an increase was better than nothing.

When he wasn’t meditating, he was eavesdropping on his doting caretakers. They flitted in and out of his room as they pleased. He found no set schedule to their movements so he figured that this was either a very small medical practice or a household with a pair of healers employed full time. Personally, he was leaning toward the former but he had no concrete evidence to prove his hypothesis.

“Zen-La’ihe rages today/ Wouldn’t you say?/ Forcefully with his fearful gaze/ The sands are coated in a wondrous haze.” The woman, he was pretty sure she was a woman, murmured as she changed his bandages. He still had yet to muster up the will to attempt some pseudo-communication. Faking unconsciousness was mentally and emotionally taxing.

“Let us see, let us see,” the woman hummed as she tugged on the bandage that was still tightly bound to his right eye. “Coming along just fine/ This one needs changing/ To get that healthy shine.”

Sepeti wanted to blink while the bandage was being changed as an itch intensified in his right eye. Something about the eye felt off. The itch grew and grew, slowly intensifying as the injured eye lay exposed.

A cool sensation doused the itch. It felt like a gentle breeze of freshness was blowing on his itching eye. He let out a groan of satisfaction. His caretaker chuckled as she deftly replaced the bandage. A soothing pressure returned to his injured eye and the niggling thought that something was really wrong with it dissipated.

“Gel of the Loe/ Soothes and heals/ Brings cool and seals/ Greases even wheels.”

Sepeti sighed, settling in as he enjoyed the cooling effect of the ointment. Tiny shivers rippled through him and he rode the wave of contentment. As he began to drift off, the sliding door into the room rumbled aside as the other caretaker entered. They bustled in, sputtering and rhyming as they stumbled about the room.

“Ciel-Ko, Ciel-Ko, I have found it/ The answers we seek, guidance for the meek/ I have found it, yes I have/ Hidden within an old epitaph!”

“Calm down, Be cool/ We are in the presence of a patient/ Mo-Ka’ilo, take a deep breath/ Let your thoughts not be divergent.”

The caretaker huffed. Sepeti could tell they were waving the woman’s suggestion away as they loudly clapped their hands. “Nonsense, nonsense, much is to be learned/ There is no time to delay, this knowledge I earned/ Waits for none, do you not see how it bleeds?/ Quickly now, quickly, time continues its stampede!”

Curiosity got the better of him. He turned his head and spied on the pair. The woman’s back was turned to him so he couldn’t see what her cohort was anxiously holding out to her. But he still wanted to at least bear witness to whatever was causing such a fuss. He was tired of having to force his eyes to stay shut. They were aching from all the faking he’d been doing. Tacitly, he decided that he wouldn’t play dead for much longer. He’d play dumb but he was completely over having to fake sleep.

To no one’s surprise, least of all Sepeti’s, the woman busily narrated everything she read. Line for line. He was beginning to suspect that they were doing it on purpose. Did they seem themselves as some kind of plot-convenient expositionaries?

Despite asking the question, Sepeti wasn’t too eager to find an answer. It was convenient but a bit trite. Trite and annoying.

“For those who are blessed/ Beyond redress/ Are sent to far corners/ And put to the test.” The woman gasped, looking up at her partner. Sepeti couldn’t tell what the other caretaker was doing, but he figured it was something along the lines of assuring the woman to continue reading.

“They come with the winds/ That create, that adjudicate, that eliminate/ One by one, they are destined/ To rule, to free, to conquer/ Each one is marked, each one is blessed/ Unearthly strength, inhuman growth/ Some bound by honor, others an oath/ They come, with signs foreign/ Beware of when the Fall is in season.”

The woman sniffled as she pushed her cohort away and stepped off to the side, just out of Sepeti’s tilted line of sight. The other caretaker stood around dumbly. His cheeks were sallow and mottled. His dark skin, which Sepeti had admired for the way it glistened, had a sickly tinge to it. Grains of - what he thought to be - sand flaked and fell away from the oddly glowing tablet the man was holding. Bit by bit, Sepeti watched as it disintegrated into a fine dust. What the hell was going on?

Whatever she had read made little to no sense. The more he turned it over in his head the less he understood. To him, it sounded much like the ramblings of a certain prescient God whose name he refused to remember. As the memory of the God surfaced, a knot formed in his stomach.

Memories of the Presage made his head ache. A splash of pain sizzled across the half vision he possessed, leaving a bright spot of static in a corner of his eye. The pain grew, roaring in his ears as more of his vision was taken up by the singular bright spot. Words he thought long forgotten echoed in his brain. He let out a yelp but was unsure if he’d made any noise at all as it was quickly drowned out by the clamorous pain that was ping-ponging around in his head.

Something hard was wedged between his teeth. Hard yet malleable. He bit down, channelling the pain into his efforts to break whatever was in his mouth. A hand mopped sweat away from his brow. Some of the sweat slid down his face and he couldn’t tell whether it was hot or cold. All he knew was pain.

“When the stars twinkle no more, when they fall one by one. Look to the sky, look to the shore.” A ghostly voice whispered through the pain. Or was it the pain that was whispering those unwanted words. He remembered them all too well. And the memory burned. “For those who are Chosen, for those who are Commissioned. Will come the choice, between life and world. Prepare, children of ‘Oseni. Amongst you lie the saviors and the damned.”

Stars burst in his head. The jagged white scar that blocked much of his vision, even with his eyes closed, undulated as the old words cycled. He spat the hard thing out of his mouth as a river of bile pushed its way up his throat. It ejected itself and all he could do was turn his head.

A firm hand grasped his shoulders and he was suddenly on his side. The stream flowed out of his gullet as the intense pain ratcheted up a notch. The white scar grew brighter, illuminating the darkness his closed eyelids provided.

He could just barely make out a pair of familiar voices speaking to him. They sounded so far off. Everything felt far away. Nothing was closer to him than the pain. It was his everything.

A cool wetness spread up and down his body. It was a momentary reprieve as heat quickly settled, stifling any comfort the cool moisture could provide.

The white-hot scar continued to grow, invading the darkness of his bandaged eye. Roaring continued to roil in his head. His ears rang loudly with static. It was either static or screaming, he couldn’t tell the two apart at this point. The static-howling ebbed and flowed like the source of the noise was moving back and forth at a rapid pace.

Sepeti became aware of an aching spreading through him. The pain seemed to emanate from his very soul as the stifling heat continued to grow. Everything felt hot. The searing light that was spreading from one eye to the other pulsated with the pain.

Sepeti found himself hoping and wishing for unconsciousness to take him. Whatever was happening to him was more than he could handle. He couldn’t tell how long he spent, crippled by the blazing light, the roaring pain, the stifling heat. All he knew was that this was his life. There was nothing more than the pain and the agony.

The ghostly voice of the prescient God, sounding far off and hollow, whispered inaudibly. It drove him mad. He knew what she was saying, knew it by heart. But he couldn’t hear her properly. It was like she was talking to him through a thick, poorly insulated wall that allowed bits and pieces of sound to travel through it.

Hours passed. Or maybe it was days. Or even weeks. However long it was, Sepeti had no clue. He was too busy holding on for dear life. Unable to fall into blissful unknowing unconsciousness, all he could do was ride the intense ebbs and flows of the pain and the noise and brightness.

Occasionally, a splash of cool water would infiltrate the cloud of heat that he was locked in. It served as an island of refuge amidst the raging storm of pain. He clung to the reprieve each time it came around.

Voices, melodic and lyrical, would waft through the overwhelming static. They were muffled and distant but they offered him another chance to focus on anything but the overwhelming pain. He strained himself as he tried to make out what they were saying. Anything to help him pass the time. Anything to help push him along as he hung in painful limbo.

Darkness ate at the edges of the brightness that filled vision. It started as tiny tendrils curling around the edges. They were nearly imperceptible at first but they slowly grew. The dark little spots steadily gnawed away at the implacable brightness. As they whittled it down, the pain and the noise slowly subsided as well.

The static grew soft. Where it had been hard and edgy and grating only a few moments earlier, it was now soft and rounded. It didn’t hurt his ears as much but it was still present.

The pain grew docile and gentle. It’s roiling rage finally lessened as he slowly began to regain himself.

The only thing that refused to lessen was the abhorrent haze that he was locked in. If anything, it felt like it had gotten hotter. Each time the spot of cool would come to pass grew in frequency but his body refused to cool down.

As the brightness shrunk, Sepeti was finally able to see an end to his woes. Weariness quickly spread through him as his body began to relax. Unconsciousness tugged at the edges of his existence and he happily embraced it. The darkness came swiftly, swallowing him whole and dulling the aches and noise and brightness.

Sepeti gasped. His head jolted upright before he could stop himself. He flinched as phantom pain warned him not to move too fast. His body felt cool and weightless but sweat still trickled down his brow.

Licking his lips, he slowly opened his eyes. Half of his vision was still missing but this didn’t surprise him too much. He let out a croak as he realized he was somewhere dark, maybe even subterranean. A soothing blue light provided some illumination but not so much that it would be overwhelming.

The muffled sound of trickling water grounded him. It sounded like a small babbling brook was nearby, calmly bubbling close enough for him to be able to hear. An overwhelming sense of relief washed over him, allowing his mind to clear some of the cobwebs.

As he looked around he realized that something soft was holding him aloft. He could move his head but he was locked in place. For the first time in a long while, he couldn’t feel the constant aches and pains that he had grown accustomed to.

Tentatively, he began to explore with his hands. He tried to touch his face but a barrier blocked him. As he waved his hands around he could feel some resistance but he couldn’t quite differentiate. He was sure he was in a pool of some sort of liquid. The problem was that it didn’t feel like normal water. He floated effortlessly in the liquid, feeling like it was holding him up. Everytime he moved a limb he felt like the liquid was guiding him softly, trying its best to keep him from exacerbating his injuries.

He felt great. After whatever it was that had caused him to blackout, this was heavenly. He was still worried about the headache and bodyache returning but allowed himself to enjoy the ability to fully relax. His aching muscles loosened. Days spent in bed had done him no favors. He floated silently, licking his chapped lips in an effort to moisten them.

Tiny tremors ran up and down his body. The liquid, whatever it was, seemed to be massaging him as he felt kinks he hadn’t been aware of slowly loosen. He let out a moan as the massaging liquid worked on his lame leg, expertly avoiding the heavily injured parts of his body as it continued its work.

The sound of a door opening and closing momentarily drowned out the babbling brook. The door was just beyond his line of sight so he couldn’t see who or what had entered the room. He was sure that someone had entered.

Sepeti concentrated as he instantly switched to the defensive. Not that he could do anything in his current state, what with his being bound and weightless in a pool of liquid. He listened intently, hoping to catch an errant breath or the person's footfalls. Anything to help him prepare himself for whatever might be happening.

A large hand gripped his head. It tousled his hair before the fingers started digging into his scalp. Sepeti wanted to pull away, just for the fact that he didn’t like being touched. But he was, quite obviously, unable to.

He braced himself, half expecting the dreaded pain from before to return just because he was being touched. Instead, his head began to feel better as the large hand massaged his scalp. He could feel the strength residing within the owner of the hands. Whoever they were, they knew what they were doing and he couldn’t resist.

The hand was large enough to press on both his temples without seeming to strain itself too much. It applied just enough pressure to elicit another moan from Sepeti.

Sepeti felt his face flushing red as the realization that he’d just made such an unseemly noise in front of another sunk in.

A deep, rumbling laugh erupted from behind him as the hand stopped massaging his temples.

“Well,” an equally deep voice said not far from his ears. “That’s an interesting sound you’ve made there, sonny.”