The Second Island

The Stonefield Aftermath.

Darkness gave way to light, light gave way to air, and air gave way to freedom. I breached the surface, gasping for a breath I didn't need, and I found... nothing. An ocean of ink, every which way, was all that I could see for miles. For the first few days, I think I swam in circles. It's hard to tell. It gave me a chance to get used to the new sensation of being a biped, however, and I can be decently thankful for that. Us Saturnians, we're built for living inside a gas giant, not climbing trees and scaling mountains. The eyes on the Vinped suit I so graciously borrowed from my captors are one of the weirder things to get used to. I'm used to what humans refer to as compound eyes, I have one myself, suddenly having that information filtered into two singular eyes is jarring to say the least. Having two arms and two legs was a particularly uncomfortable experience to adapt to, I felt as though I'd lost so much, in gaining my new body. The wings were an odd choice of theirs, I don't even know if they finished them. One still is bare metal, after all.

Using my wings as oars to catch the surf, I decided to let the tide take me where I was to end up. The sun overhead never moved from its perpetual twilight, the stars in the sky never once changed, the clouds stayed perfectly where they were without even a whisp of movement. Sandy shores greeted me on the horizon, and my tireless body was filled with an emotion that was somewhere between dread and excitement.

I reached the shores, and I saw four Things, sitting there, most of which immobile, and they seemed to notice me before I noticed them. On my left, I saw a violet stone, rough like a meteor, who was covered in a smattering of rainbow moss. In the center, I saw a statue of a great dragon, petrified as if it was protecting something once in the distant past. On my right, sat a silvery stone with a single eye, covered in a crimson moss. Floating above them all was a great pillar of wood and ink, and as it moved, ink dripped from its endless well. All four of them were massive, the smallest of which easily dwarfing me, even in my new, larger body.

The pillar moved, it shook the ink onto all three, and with each droplet of ink that would hit the three stone sentinels, their voices would call out to me. The rough gurgling growl of the statue broke free over top the others, and the pillar rested above it. The Sentinel introduced itself by the name Elardel, introduced the violet stone as Nalgol, and the silvery stone as Nueni. It apologized to me that they couldn't have their ally with them for such a momentous occasion, said the Crimson Dragonstone was busy elsewhere, leading the blood pebbles against the last of the Gellaris. I don't think it noticed my confusion at the idea.

The great pillar of wood moved, above no myself this time, and as the ink dripped onto me, I felt its question seep into me. It wished to know if I would hear their story.

Having nothing better to do, and having my own curiosity piqued, I sat there, and I listened to their story.

Tikon, The Great Deroga, moved and the violet stone began to speak.

The Great Deroga moved once more, and the once captain of the Greystone Pirates, Nueni began to speak. It told me of the Dragogel War, how they'd lived in uneasy peace with their slimy neighbors for centuries until the tensions boiled over, about how they crafted strange weaponry for use against the Dragonstones. It told me how the Gellaris rained their destruction from the stars,

One last time, Tikon moved, and the guardian spoke.