NFNty-laND(NL) was by all accounts the most impressive game ever developed but was definitely the most massive game ever created. Fitzgerald Jane managed to get the three leading gaming companies in the industry to work together to build it. The first premise was the NL would reward players who were capable of thinking outside the box and further rewarded players that thought there was no box at all. The first, second and third powers were only limited by a player’s imagination. The idea was to create a role-playing experience while telling a multitude of stories to immerse a player in. RPG became RPE.

The second premise was a hidden one and rewarded players who quested and explored to no end. The first powers base contained over two hundred plus hours of gameplay including all the sidequest and main story arcs, but also contained an additional hidden side quest or main side story, that was two hundred plus hours of gameplay by itself. Only the most dedicated of all the players could find it and were vastly rewarded for it too. The first power then released one pack of downloadable content or DLC, which was an additional two hundred plus hours of gameplay, but also contained one hundred more hours that connected to the hidden story.

The second powers base was four hundred hours of gameplay and the hidden story was the same. An additional four hundred hours was released in two DLC packs, that also contained another one hundred each that connected to the hidden story.

The third and last power before the new technology was created, contained an impressive base of over six hundred hours of gameplay, an additional six hundred from the hidden story and another 600 plus hours released in three two hundred plus hour DLC packs. Each pack also contained 200 plus hours related to the hidden story. By the time the third power came out, NL’s popularity had exploded. Since you could no longer go back and play any of the previous powers once a new one came out, anyone who’d played the first and second, not only helped shape the third but also were immersed in a completely different story, with more powerful and skilled characters, since NL didn’t require players to create new characters with each iteration of the games.

With the creation of the mind-in technology, players would now be able to not just play NFNty-laND but be a part of it. Taste, touch, hearing, smell, and sight, all the senses were represented and that also included pleasure and pain. NFNty-laND had truly become an RPE. It would be a long while before anyone realized it wasn’t just a game and that the first, second, and third powers were the well-calculated set-up for the experiments and plots running behind the fourth.

Date: -YEAR TWO THOUSAND TEN, 4TH DAY OF SAGITTARIUS- Location: -Classified- Time(Universal):09:45

On a road just on the outskirts of a secret military base, deep in the northern half of the New-Eden Rainforest, and about four days south of the front lines of a hundred year war, three soldiers, battle worn and looking forward to a couple weeks of R&R, wait for a hover-ship that’s taken entirely too long.

“Are you going to pout the whole time?” A young elven male questioned.

A slightly younger one responds, jumping in the conversation.

“What’s her problem? Shouldn’t you be excited about a little time off?”

A young elven female, her voice slightly annoyed and seemingly let down responds.

“I would be excited if the F-ing Federation would mind their own business for once! No freaking pun intended, damn it!”

“Geez, what did they do now?” The slightly younger male questioned.

The other male soldier answers before she could.

“They shut down NL4 before she got a chance to play it.”

“What!”

“You hadn’t heard? All the Mind-Clinics had to close because they passed a law making the technology illegal.”

No! Damn, I was looking forward to that experience too!”

“You play?”

“ Heck yeah, since the 1st power.”

“Us too, wow! It’s rare to find another tier 3!”

The female again broke her pouty silence.

“It’s suppose to be tier 4 now! I can’t believe this. I’ve been looking forward to the 4th power for one hundred-fifty years, and this R&R, so I could play it, for six months. The Federation blows!”

The two elven males laughed simultaneously.

“Oh, this is funny to you two?”

“Just a little.” The younger male stated.

The hover-ship slowly moved in, turned and landed. After a few minutes, the doors opened, and people flooded out, soldiers either returning or reporting to their first assignment, while others waiting to leave gathered their belongings and started heading towards the entrance of the ship. The younger male grabs the other’s arms, signaling for him to hang back a second. The female continued her pouty trek towards the ship until she realized she was making the walk alone.

“Hey, what are you two doing? Let’s go!” She exclaimed angrily.

The conversation was quick, and afterward, the younger male handed the other one a small slip of hemp paper. The scale of a moment and the details are often lost, or unnoticeable while in the midst of it. It’s usually only after, that a mind realizes the things or events that make any one moment in time an important one. By that notion, this was one of those moments, and scale wise, it was a universal one!

“What was that about?” The female questioned

The younger male had already waved goodbye as he walked pass and boarded the ship.

“Nothing, Federation talk. He figured you didn’t want to hear it.”

“Well, remind me to thank him then!”

They both laughed as they too boarded the ship.

Date: -6TH DAY OF SAGITTARIUS- Location: Autumn City, New-Eden Time(Universal):15:49

“Where are we going?” The female questioned.

“Just relax” The male replied quickly.

The New-Eden city of Autumn was just one of many but was the closest to their base, and had what the male was looking for. The two approached a back alley building that was located in a part of the city low on crime, which meant low on patrols. It was the perfect spot to hide something considered outlawed, amongst the well to do elven class, that did whatever they wanted since they made all the laws anyway or at least they put the necessary councilmen or women in the positions to do so for them. An elven man in a black suit stood in front of the door that led to the surprise the male was taken the female too. A surprise that wouldn’t have been possible if not for that younger male soldier giving him the secret location of a RedMarket and the catch phrase needed to enter.

“Red elf glows in the forests dark night!”

The male looked at the other in the suit, while saying the phrase perhaps louder than he intended. The clean cut male stared at him for a second before replying.

“What the hell you staring at guy?”

He thought maybe he didn’t hear what he said after all, and started to repeat it, but before he could finish, a well to do older elven woman came crashing out the door in a hurry, that was pushed and held open by a shady looking middle aged elven male. Both the woman and the shady male caught the now louder repeat of the phrase. She assumed that her bodyguard had once again got into it with someone.

“What in Eden did you do now?”

“Nothing madam, I swear I don’t know this idiot. I think he’s on drugs or something!”

He slightly took offense to that statement but didn’t get a chance to reply before the woman and her bodyguard stormed off down the alley.

“Well let’s go then. I stayed longer than I wanted, and I’m late for the city council meeting.”

The shady male gestured, before speaking calmly out the door.

“Hey! Idiot, in here.”

As they walked inside, the shady male could tell he was about to repeat the phrase again.

“Stop already, I heard you the first two times, you’re good! What exactly are you and this pretty little thing looking for?

“Mind-clinic.”

The young female could barely contain her excitement once she heard the words and realized what was happening.

“Oh, my life! You didn’t, I can’t believe this. Oh, my life. I love you, I love you, I love you!”

She jumped up and down before finally hugging and kissing him passionately.

I love you Kavarious! So much!”

“I love you too Celes!”

The shady male was unimpressed by the display of emotion.

“You two love birds done? If so, follow me.”

They followed him to the hover-lift at the end of a long hallway, that had no doors and no windows. Once they were inside the lift, he used a key to open a secret interface that required his hand being scanned to unlock a secret panel. On that panel, there was only 0-9 and the letters A and B. The shady male-typed 300B into the panel and the lift moved so fast, it seemed like they all floated for half a second.

“What’s your name, man?” Kavarious asked.

“That ain’t necessary, we ain’t friends, and I don’t know you! You knew this location and the phrase. So, I’ll take you to where ever you need to go in the RedMarket, but that’s about the extent of this relationship. You or this pretty little thing of yours, do anything out of pocket and neither one of you will see the top of autumn or New-Eden again.”

“Well, aren’t you a friendly guide.”

Kavarious calmly snapped back, not liking Celes being threatened but understanding the situation.

Celes was still too happy and in a blissful daze to care what the shady man said. In a few minutes, she would be in a mind-clinic and be experiencing her favorite game in an entirely new way.

The hover-lift came to a crawling, then sudden stop. Through the massive clear and circular doors, 300B could already be seen. It quickly became very clear to Kavarious and Celes, that it was quite possible, that whatever this place was had to have been built long ago, by an ancient but advanced civilization of people. Celes first thought was the ancient civilizations of Laniakea and it’s people, as she stared at Kavarious. Even though every floor before 300B had passed in a streaming blur of lights, it was still clear enough to understand that every one of them was just like or closely similar to the current one. The shady male had said floor, and the lift moved them all downward towards it like it was but through those clear doors, as they opened, Celes and Kavarious were staring at a city much bigger than Autumn.

Just outside the lift, that opened into a back alley itself, was a hover-car decked out pretty nice, but the fire red color hardly matched the personality of the shady male, or at least not the one on display.

“Get in!” The shady male barked as he moved towards the left side and hopped in, pushing the passenger side door open afterward. Apparently, he was the only one allowed to enter that way. Kavarious moved the seat forward for Celes and climbed into the back right after her but not before receiving another kiss as she entered. Kavarious barely had the door closed before the hover-car sped off. 300B was truly a living, and breathing city full of busy and numerous moving parts just like any other. With hundreds of floors like this one above it and an untold number of them below it, Kavarious mind could barely grasp the scope and scale of it all. If every floor, he thought, had this much life, then this place was like it’s own universe and every floor, it’s own planet. Kavarious had questions but he didn’t think the shady male would answer.

“Hey!” Kavarious yelled up to the front, fighting the wind hitting his face, from taking his breath away.

No!” The shady male yelled back, turning his head slightly to the side so that he wouldn’t have to do the same.

“What?” Kavarious replied.

“No, the RedMarket Organization didn’t build the cities. They were already here, along with the floors. It only needed to be powered up.”

“How does the Federation not know about this place?”

The shady male smirked.

“In the beginning, they didn’t, but now it makes too much coin and supplies too many resources to the surface to stop. The federation gets a cut and other incentives to look the other way, no different than before and how it’s always been. The RedMarket existed before they ever found this place.”

“They’re already planning to take it then.”

Kavarious mumbled to himself but said it loud enough for it to travel to the front. The shady male laughed out loud this time.

“Ha, whatever! You might be right, but I’d love to see them try. The RedMarket Organization clearly isn’t run by mere criminals, just for them. There’s power behind all this and lots of it.”

Kavarious thought about how much of an understatement that had to be considering everyone typically feared the Federation, which took and did whatever it wanted, openly most of the time. If they had to plan to take something they clearly wanted or would benefit greatly from, the whatever they were taking it from, had to be a worthy adversary. In this case Kavarious knew and understood exactly who that adversary was. The Couso and Delaverde families were nothing to be trifled with, even the Federation walked on eggshells concerning them.

“There’s actually a funny story about how this all came about.”

The shady male was all of a sudden being a little too talkative for Kavarious liking.

“A team of Relic hunters found this place a few thousand years ago. Now normally a find like this would have been grabbed up the Federation, but it just so happened that and this is what I was told, not sure if it’s true or not, but it just so happened that one of the hunters on the team was some big shot in the RedMarkets organization. The rumor is he killed all the other team members and their entire families or anyone that knew about it. He also didn’t register the find with the Federation either. I guess using some knowledge and information from the initial find he found four more like this one. He killed the members of all those teams too, or so the story goes.”

Kavarious wondered for only a second how this story was funny but quickly understood why he’d become so talkative.

“So in other words, if you talk about this place on the surface to too many people, someone will make sure you don’t talk anymore?”

“A man, I’m just giving a little info, but if you were right, it would be to anyone at all. Only certain people are allowed to give out invitations, so if you get invited, it ain’t by mistake.”

“What are you guys talking about?”

Celes asked all of a sudden, to caught up in the beauty of the city and where they were headed to pay attention to the conversation. The shady male quickly answered.

“Nothing you need to worry about pretty lady, nothing at all.”

His smirk lingered a bit longer this time as the car sped across the lanes of the highway towards the exit that dropped them onto a quiet side street. The calm only lasted a second before they made a right turn onto a busy main street.

“People live here?” Celes questioned.

“Yep, it has everything you need. Eventually people realize it’s not necessary to go back to the surface.” The shady male answered.

“Holy New-Eden, this can’t be random! Fitzgerald Jane chose this place on purpose, the RedMarkets on purpose. We are already inside the game, as far as I’m concerned. You come to a place like this, that looks and feels infinite, to play something that’s infinite. This shit is brilliant! Which means, they always planned to put the mind-clinics here, the others had to be decoys. He knew the Federation was on bull shit!”

Celes was so deep in her thought she hadn’t noticed the hover-car stop, and Kavarious get out. He bent down and poked his look past the pushed forward seat, his eyes and smile inviting her to get out.

“You coming?” He asked.

Date: -6TH DAY OF SAGITTARIUS- Location: Eden City, New-Eden Time(Universal): 16:45

Back up top in Eden city, thousands of miles south of Autumn city, Fitzgerald Jane was planning his next move, while the Federation thought they’d planned theirs as well.

The razzi’s were in a frenzy, and much more than usual. The Federation had recently outlawed the use of Mind-in tech, forcing all the mind-in clinics to close and making it impossible to play NFNty-laND or so the media and the Federation thought. It was no secret to the public and it’s investors that the SDC had spent billions of coin on the creation of the game and hundreds of billions on the development of the mind-in tech. The media believed surely that his company would take a huge hit or even fold but there he was, the same as usual, his calm, cool and happily collected self. He didn’t appear to be stressed or upset at all and the razzi’s, as well as his investors, needed to know why. What was Jane hiding? Perhaps the reports of the mind-in clinics opening underground were true. There was whispers and chatter, some even tried to write about the possibility of mind-clinics in the mythical and fabled RedMarkets but the whispers were quickly silenced and any articles stopped in it’s tracks by the senior editors of every credible and noncredible news sources in New-Eden. This wasn’t out of the ordinary though, even before the mind-in clinics, the RedMarkerts and anything about them was off limits. Anyone who seriously pursued the story, disappeared well enough that not even their disappearance raised red flags but yet it still served as a warning.

Normally there were small hordes of razzi’s waiting for Jane wherever he went and it normally didn’t bother him but at his request, his team went through great lengths to make sure no one knew where he was going next. His team was usually successful but this time Eden city’s best journalists was hot on the trail of a groundbreaking story. A trail she was made aware of by an unknown source whose tips of information were turning out to be accurate and reliable. As Jane’s hover-car pulled up to the familiar building, the elven female journalists waited in the shadows, already given the heads up that he would be there. She couldn’t believe it though, not all of anyway. It wasn’t that far a stretch to believe Jane would be meeting with one of the families that supposedly owned and ran the RedMarket organization, if they truly existed it made sense to put the mind-clinics there, wherever there was. Her source quickly let her know that there was no supposed about the situation and that the RedMarkets definitely existed. Not only did they exist but Jane wasn’t just meeting with one of the families, he was apart of the family, the top to be exact. She found that part unbelievable, she couldn’t understand how no one knew. She remembered her source implying how naive she was because of how simple the answer was to why no one knew. With the amount of resources available to such a family, making a person appear to be someone they’re not, was as simple as a name change and the hiding of information. Jane wasn’t a Jane, he was Delaverde.

“Impossible!”

Is what she thought, but here she was, just a few days later, watching Jane get out his hover-car and stroll up to the Delaverdes known HQ, snapping digital images of his every step. There wasn’t a single paparazzi in sight and that was odd too. He would however, never make it to the front door.

Moments before Jane got out the hover-car, his young elven female bodyguard took a call after pulling up to the building. She removed the shades she often wore, not to block the sun but to hide her intimidating and battle hardened azure colored eyes. She liked to shock people, no one ever expected with such a dark cocoa melanated hue, for her eyes to be the intoxicating and enchanting color that they were. If they weren’t listening to what she was saying before she’d removed the glasses, they’d definitely listen afterwards. Then there was her impressive figure, she was tall, athletic, and a thickly slim. While also remaining ripped, toned, and curvy in all the right places, keeping seduction a part of her vast arsenal, an arsenal that had a foundation set and built upon by hundred of years of experience and training as a mercenary(merc). Once a merc, always a merc, was the saying around the island of New-Eden and she was one of the best. She still dressed like one too, her head was cleanly shaven, except for the long, thick ponytail, that was as old as she was, of which she wrapped around her waist. It was her second deadliest weapon, splitting into to two separate branches at the ends and both holding special blades sharp enough to cut through almost anything. She hadn’t tested them on everything but in the 600 years since being gifted them, they hadn’t not sliced through anything like butter, hence her codename, Whiplash, one of the deadliest assassins in merc history. Her skin tight gear matched her hue, her vest and boots her jet black hair, and if she could, she would have driven with her deadliest skill/weapon attached to her back, completing the look that so many were accustomed too in the merc world. Very few could match her skill with a bow and arrow, whether it be up close and personal or long range, any target in her crosshairs had a better chance against her hair due than her draw speed and accuracy.

Being Jane’s body guard was like a welcome vacation, but she’d started to get that itch again, she missed the merc life, and her old unit. She had no idea when she decided to take the job that it would eventually offer her far more adventure and thrill than she could ever imagine. Just what the hell was Jane and Dr.Evols end game? What exactly had she become apart of? There were so many questions, like pieces to a puzzle, and her heart raced at the thought of what she already knew, which wasn’t much, but it was enough to tickle her intrigue. Her mind crackled and sparked continuously from that intrigue, inching ever so closer to lighting the ignition of an explosion in her imagination as the possibility of an adventure unlike any other took shape. Jane opened her eyes to a world she didn’t know existed and had managed to do what no other male in her entire life had ever been able to, touch her soul. The heart was easy, and quite often fleeting, but the soul, her soul, was like a vault hidden away in maze, and you needed the map to traverse the maze, the blueprint to forge the key, and the fortitude, commitment and strength to take the journey. Jane had done it without even knowing it and she wondered if this was what it meant and felt like to find a soul’s mate. Her exterior was hardened by walls so thick, ice queen would have been a compliment, yet Jane crumbled them with just the mere leakage of everything he so easily was.

Just like the rumors said he was easy on the eyes, but was suppose to be some self proclaimed ladies man with so much coin even the richest of the island New-Eden couldn’t fathom it, so he had to be egotistical, arrogant, and easy to dislike, right? But as she worked with him day in and day out, women threw more ass and panties at him then a tree throws leaves at the ground during fall and that spiritual energy he leaked, slapped, grabbed, and threw it all back at them. Jane was too self involved and she loved it, but he was also highly intelligent, an extremely skilled fighter; which made her question why she was needed in the first place, and incredibly kind. She struggled to keep it professional, but his presence, voice, scent, and body made her soul wet. “Black King,” always echoed through her head while images of her walking up to her throne, which was his lap, streamed in her mind. What’s a King without a Queen? She recently began to question, already having decided that Jane is and always was hers to protect. He wasn’t going to make the first move though, so her seduction skill set was already in full play and she had no problem playing the long game, since she’d found her forever anyway! The loud beeping tone of the hover-cars comm-link snapped her back from her inner foreplay. Her eyes widened in embarrassing shock, as she took a deep breath to regain her composure, realizing that more than just her soul was wet at the moment. She couldn’t believe she’d lost focus doing such an important part of the mission. She took one more deep breath and reached for the button of the comm-link.

“Hello. Yes, everything is set!”

She glanced out the tinted driver side window across the street and into a alley’s dark shadows, right before, looking into the driver side rearview mirror.

“It appears they all took the bait!”

The voice from the other side of the link, disguised so anyone possibly listening in on the call, couldn’t determine whether they were male or female, replied quickly and terminated the transmission.

“Proceed as planned!”

The female pressed the button on the interface in the middle console of the hover-car to end the transmission on her side before taking one more deep breath and pressing another button to lower the partition. She spoke to him without looking, his close set and protruding sexy dark brown eyes more intimidating than hers, so she avoided eye contact.

“It’s time! Good luck!”

Jane smirked before replying.

Luck? They won’t know what hit’em!”

He quickly exited the hover-car, not taken more than a few steps before she pulled off, and another much bigger hover-truck along with a few dozen smaller hover-cars swooped in on angles. The vehicles were unmarked but the units that strategically and rapidly flooded from them weren’t.

“Fitzgerald Jane, hold it right there! You’re coming with us!” An older elven male voice yelled.

The Federation agents were heavily armed with weapons that were considered illegal on the island of New-Eden. Fitzgerald Jane despised guns and it was one of the reasons they didn’t make into the first two powers of NFNty-laND, but by the third power, New-Eden had guns, though extremely rare and hard to acquire. Art mimics life, and to tell the story right, the third and fourth powers of NL would allow the same.

Jane didn’t put up a fight and as the Federation agents dragged him into the hover-van, the still unseen reporter, in disbelief of what she was watching, continued capturing images until all the vehicles stormed off back in the direction they came from and she was left standing in the shadows and on the block alone.

“Target secured! We’re bringing him in!”

Back inside NFNty-laND, on the human side of the Ever-pass, and a few days before the sounding of the Telic horn, the two unknown figures watch as the young telic warrior they’d been observing, easily dispatches four humans soldiers, finds where they came from, discovers the truth about what’s headed towards the Ever-pass and into Ever-land, and also purposely draws a tail of two human scouts. A young elven female voices her amazement and anger to the other she travels and keeps watch with.

“He’s grown incredibly strong remarkably fast!”

“Yes, incredibly intelligent as well. To be so young, yet be so powerful, but also lack misguided ambition and ego, he’s not your typical male.”

“Why do you suppose the Queens have such an interest in this boy?”

“They have their reasons. Reasons we have no need to question. We serve our Queens and our Queendom and that’s good enough for me! We should head back, there is much too report.”

“Does the human army concern you? I detest humans, how can they be so cruel to each other, to this planet, and to other living beings?”

“You’re too young to understand, that while humans have indeed grown into quite a violent and benevolent race, a child will most often be exactly what those that raise it are. The humans are the youngest race, that we know of, on this planet and the older, more stronger clans of the De-mon kingdoms have taken advantage of that fact. Hence the humans de-monic nature.”

The younger elven female hung on every word of the much older and much wiser elven female of which she considered a mentor and a sister. Her mentor was right too, she was far too young, all she’d ever known or experienced first hand was the violent and hateful behavior of the humans; the older, powerful and much more benevolent clans of De-mon having already stopped their unrivaled path of conquering, killing, and destruction across the planet before she was born, realizing it was just too big and there numbers too small. Through her history lessons she learned that it was the elves of Ever-land, more than 100,000 years before, that brought the De-mon clans to their knees and now hundreds of thousand years later the Telic order, amongst others, kept them there. Her mentor continued her wise words as she thought outloud.

“It’s not the humans that concern me, it’s the Orcs, Goblins, and Trolls that accompany them that make me wonder.”

“Wonder? Jachophe.” The young female’s mind and heart raced with anticipation of her mentors next thoughts.

“Yes, Aphileia. Wonder! As in, I wonder if they’ve forgotten their place in the order of things?

Nevermind, I suppose it doesn’t matter. The Queendom of Eion will gladly remind them once more who’s planet they are all guest on!”

Aphileia’s soul thumped, and her stomach dropped. Eion oozed power, and Jachophe was an extension of it. Her updo with thick flat twist formed a natural jet black crown on the top of her diamond shaped head. Her hair was so long though, that the twist didn’t stop at the back of her neck but instead fell freely into seven smaller braids that touched the top her heart shaped booty. On the ends of them were hundreds of blue and red weighted beads, colors that matched her skin tight armor that was a mixture of Eion leather and Inner-Eion metal called Cabalite(strongest metal on the planet). Her breast plate, shoulders, forearms, hips and shins were protected by the beautifully blue cabalite that was light, form fitting, and flexible. Underneath it, fire red Eion leather comfortably gripped her ripped and curvy body. Her weapons, two blades, that were smaller than a sword but bigger than daggers, were also made of cabalite whose color matched her dark chocolate melanated hue. Jachophe was over fifteen thousand years old yet she looked as young as a thirty year old human female, but her deep set golden brown eyes leaked everybit of the experience and knowledge a being would have that’d been alive for that long.

“Quickly, Leia! Back to the Titan-Mares(15 times bigger than a draft horse), hopefully we can make it back to Eion before he sounds the Telic horn.”

“Right behind you Jac!”

To the Ever-Pass, and through it, across the Ever-Valley and back to Eion by horse would take almost 10 years under favorable conditions. On a Titan-Mare, one of the few mind-kind beast on the entire planet and unique to Inner-Eion, it would take at least two years, but like the Telic order and a few others around Ever-land high enough on the totem pole, Eion had access to the secret way of traversing the incredibly vast lands rather quickly. Jac and Leia would be back in Eion in no less than two days, as long as they didn’t run into any trouble. This didn’t prove to be the case but they would still manage to make it back before the sounding of the horn but only because the young Telic warrior, they watched over, would run into, or actually in his case, head towards that same type of trouble.

On the other side of the pass, a newly evolved shadow comes across two curious looking beast of which he’d never encountered before, and salivates at the thought of their taste, as well as, how absorbing their souls will affect his evolution and power. Believing himself to already be superior in strength and intellect, compared to the beasts that seem unaware of his presence as he at first stalks them like any other prey, but then just walks towards them questioning its ability to detect a predator. The evolved shadow prepares to strike before a powerful voice and strong spiritual pressure, not only stops him dead in his strides, but makes him take a leap backwards from the sensing of danger. The evolved shadow quickly realizes that he was never the predator and the beasts, never the prey.

“I wonder what they are, such a curious beast to me. So big, so strong, so tasty looking! I’ve evolved so fast and yet existence, the universe, brings more souls to devour, but I wonder how strong these beast could really be if they’ve yet to notice me. I suppose the only way to know would be to consume everything they are!”

“I’d think twice about your next move!” A powerful male voice bellows out from the what appeared to be, sleeping beast. The evolved shadow bounds backwards in terrifying astonishment.

“It spoke?”

Still without opening it’s eyes, the beast rises to all fours, first shaking and then stretching its muscles together with ligaments, pulling joints into perfect position, while resetting, by popping, it’s 540 vertebrates into correct placement. Its front legs were like well formed forearms at the bottom, and flexed biceps leading into strong broad shoulders at the top. The back legs were stout muscular looking thighs, supported by massive calves and solid shins, all four leading into what appeared to be hooves. It looked like a horse but didn’t feel like one, it’s snout was shorter but otherwise everything else was the same. It’s black thick maine on the back of its neck, was long and stood out amongst the intense white of it’s coat.

The horse like beast rose further until it stood upright on it’s hind legs, its front hooves uncurled into hands with five fingers like a human or an elf as it finally opened it’s intimidating and large black eyes, and was standing there staring at the shadow, daring him to make a move. The shadow now looked up at a beast that was over 95 ft tall and at least 15 tons, not including the massive sword and sheath on it’s side that was connected to the black saddle, that looked liked a mini satchel, on it’s back. The beast’s ripped muscular armor like chest and abdomen gave further warning to delusions of grandeur. Titan-mares were nothing to tussle with and if not for being a herbivore would have been considered the alpha apex predator within the entire beast kingdom in not just Inner-Eion but on the entire planet.

“Easy Bakari! Whats got you all worked up?”

Aphileia walked up and over to her Titan-mare, rubbing his leg to calm him down. He returned to all fours, his black hands and fingers curling back into a fist. They actually walked on their knuckles, which made it appear to be hooves but Titan-mares only had hooves on their back legs. Bakari bent down enough for Leia to lay her head on his.

“You’re always so easily getting worked up.”

“This creature had thoughts to make us it’s meal.”

Jachophe was rummaging through a small sack tied to Calico’s saddle until she found the glass bottle filled with water. She stared at the evolved wayward shadow as she calmly drank her water. In between sips she threw out verbal jabs.

“Just one?”

Aphileia looked at Calico. Besides having a slightly thinner face and frame, with wider hips, she looked liked her younger mate, Bakari.

“She doesn’t look to concern.” Leia noted.

“I’m not. I don’t even know what that thing is, but if it keeps bothering Bakari, I’m going to step on it.” Calico said calmly as she continued to lay on the grassy hill located right outside the entrance to the Ever-pass.

Jachophe laughed.

“Bakari, I didn’t know you were afraid of bugs.”

Bakari looked at Jachophe, turning his face up in disbelief.

“Jac, there’s very little I fear, and this creature doesn’t fall into that small category.”

“Well, then we need to get going. We need to make it back to Eion before Gar sounds the Telic horn.”

“How is the young warrior?” Calico questioned, as she rose to her feet following a similar sequence as Bakari.

“He’s strong and intelligent.” Jac answered back.

“As expected.”

“Calico, do you know something about Garbanzo? You always have an interest in him that makes me believe you know more than what your telling.”

Calico smirked but didn’t respond to Leia’s question.

“We should get going.” Calico offered her hand out as a step stool for Jachophe, who Leia now stared at, wondering why her question was ignored. Jac shrugged her shoulders before placing her foot on Calico’s and being launched in the air. Leia and Bakari followed suit. Leia pouted a little to Bakari after landing on to the saddle that was more high tech than it appeared.

“She always ignores me when I ask questions about Garbanzo.”

“Perhaps you should stop asking questions then.” Bakari replied.

As Bakari and Calico began to walk off, they noticed the vein on the side of the creature’s head, as well as his clinched fists. Leia was upset over Calico ignoring her, but they all had ignored the evolved wayward shadow of which he wasn’t happy about. Jachophe however wasn’t happy it was still there, and she was frightening when she got serious. Calico released a little bit of her spiritual pressure as well and together the aura of the energy distorted both Jac and Calico’s faces as they gave death stares, both looking down at the creature as they walked pass. As the creature stared up at what looked like monsters themselves, he went from being angry, to being relieved he hadn’t made the mistake of attacking.

“If you’re that hungry you can’t realize the difference between a predator and prey, there’s two humans headed in that direction. Eat good and get as strong as possible because the next time we see you, I will step on you, if Calico doesn’t first. Let’s go Coco.”

Not only were the Titan-Mares big, strong and intelligent but they were athletic and extremely quick too. That with the incredibly long strides, leaps, and bounds, they were all out of view in mere seconds, headed back towards Eion.

Next Chapter: Would you like a different perspective?(8)