Once upon a time in that world, some ten thousand years ago, there lived that creature…

With a long serpentine body covered in long scales that bore the appearance of a shaggy mane, the creature’s hollow red eyes gleamed with a malevolence that was unmatched. It’s teeth curved into huge tusks and some even curved back enough to tickle its narrow snout. Presently it resided in the land of illusions, what would later become the Desert of Illusions. The desert was then not a desert at all, but was an enormous stone courtyard that stretched as far as the eye could see. Crumbling pillars dotted it, giving it the appearance of a decaying stone forest.

The creature stirred, a scent was carried upon the wind that confused the creature. This scent came from something from beyond, in the ‘in between places’. A Human?

“How long has it been since I’ve seen a human?”

A man was walking towards the creature. He was slight man, dressed in a large draping cowl and the traditional garb of the Akaku race, though he lacked the crimson eyes. A bag was hoisted over his shoulder and a long white feather tied in his headband. The man sat the bag down and sat on a rock, heaving a tired sigh.

“Is this your world?” From the sound of his voice it was evident that he had been traveling for a long time, he was tired. “Would you mind if a weary traveler were to rest here a moment?”

The creature narrowed its red eyes, the human had yet to look it in the eyes, was he afraid?

“It has been a while since I’ve seen a human…what have you come here for?” The man was silent for a moment, then started to answer, but the creature interrupted. “No, don’t tell me, I know…You’ve come here to rob me of my armor in order to grant your ‘wish,’ correct?…Ha! So you believe in that foolish ledged!?” The creature laughed a throaty, scratchy, sandstorm of a laugh.

This only made the man smile. “I am but a mere traveler.” He leaned forward, supporting himself on his elbows, “This ledged though…what is it? I am in need of a good tale.”

“Humph…don’t lie.” Scoffed the creature, it tossed its massive serpentine head in the air.

“It is no lie.” The man seemed somewhat insulted, but it quickly passed. “Please tell me the story, I have yet to hear an ancient tale from an Emperor Draven before.”

So, the human knew what the creature was, perhaps he was not what he seemed. The Emperor Draven decided to humor him, so he lowered his serpentine head and spoke in a whisper. “If one gains hold of my armor,” It shook its shaggy scales, revealing a mantle of gold and gilded midnight-gold through which the scales poked through in small clumps of flowering plumes. “Then the ledged tells that they will gain a great and terrible power…the ledged was created by the humans, but it is no ledged.”

“Humans?” The man looked up in wonder, the Emperor Draven caught the faintest glimmer of the man’s eyes beneath his headband. Violet? Humans did not have violet eyes, so he must be something else, but what? He could not possibly be of the Water Nymphs, Raydra, Watarara, or a Spirit, they lacked Human forms. He could not be Ghent, a Glen Child, a Cerudo, Akaku, or even an Almora, none of those races had violet eyes. There was a twelfth race, but at the moment the Emperor Draven did not know the name. It decided to keep the stranger busy with the rest of the tale.

“What seemed like mountains of the two legged creatures came forth…boastful soldiers, ambitious swordsmen, men and women…even those requesting good will…none of them are left now, for I devoured all without exception!” The Emperor Draven coiled its tail around itself, lifted itself off the ground and spread its long arms. The Emperor Draven’s wings cast a dark shadow over the man that made him seem terribly small in comparison. “Their bodies filled with desire…I devoured one after the next as they swung with their swords!”

The man did not even flinch at the Emperor Draven’s show, he merely kept listening intently. As the creature lowered its arms and the man straightened. “That’s an unsettling story…” he feigned a shiver, “it gave me chills.”

The creature could see that the man was not easily intimidated, it knew at that moment that something was not settling right, but the creature laughed about it. It opened its beak-shaped mouth, letting loose a bone chilling cackle. Its bottom jaw split into two separate appendages, creating a sort of triangle shaped maw. The Emperor Draven had no teeth, nor throat with which to eat, for the creature did not eat in the normal sense of the word. Like all Dravens, whether Emperor or not, it sustained itself on the energies of other creatures, like the Almoras did. “Go ahead and say it…I’ll grant your wish! You have shone me great courage.”

“I have no wishes.” He pulled the white feather in front of his face, he ran his thumb along the narrow edge, as if studying its meaning, its purpose.

The Emperor Draven was stunned, no wish? Who could refuse the chance to have whatever they desired? “None you say?!” The answer confirmed it. The creature sniffed the air around the man, now he noticed a subtle aroma. One of magic and the ethereal threads of phantoms…the makings of Shade Fabric, an impenetrable armor that nearly had a life of its own. It would protect its wearer from any blade unless the metal was coated in the nectar of a plant called Arget Delois. “Then why do you hide your armor beneath your cowl? I can smell it, you’re a warrior.”

The man rested his chin on his hand, saying nothing. His violet eyes were unsettling, they spoke volumes without the man’s consent. There was something that the man wanted, but the creature could not understand what it was. “If you say you have no wishes, then why come to my land?” What ever it was, the Emperor Draven was not going to let him have it.

The violet-eyed man stood, pulling off his gray cowl, beneath it was a garment of moving black, dark-blue, and dark-purple. The ‘armor’ extended across his arms, down his legs, and even covered his feet. There was no hostility coming from the man, he merely showed the Shade Fabric and that he had nothing about it to hide. “The truth is that I heard there was a frightening man-eater here…”

“And you were sent to slay me?” The creature narrowed its red eyes, tensed its shoulders, and readied itself to fight the stranger.

The man lifted his hands in an effort to calm the creature. “No, that’s a lie.” He gestured to the vast monotonous landscape north of where they were. “I was drawn here by a strange force. This place…it is a world that you can’t say is moving…but you can’t say is dead either. It is also a strange world which isn’t stopped either…it is a paradox here.”

“Hm…” The Emperor Draven regarded the stranger with one of its cold red eyes. “How do you know? You surely are a wise fellow indeed to have come to that.”

The man kept on with his own explanation as if the creature had not even spoken. “I heard there was a beast who called itself a man-eater in this world. I wondered just how long it had spent time here alone? You cannot live, yet you cannot perish either…were you here ever since you were left behind by all the cosmos, even since then? Some one thousand years? Ten thousand years? For all eternity?” The man’s face looked at the creature with a sort of pity “How harsh it must have been…”

This insulted the creature. “So is that how you see me?! I am a merciless man-eater!!!” The Emperor Draven slithered forward, digging its three-fingered, clawed wing hands into the stone floor. It almost succeeded in snatching the man up in its’ maw, draining him of every last drop of his energy and leaving his lifeless body as a gift to the vultures that rarely circled the sky, the creature doubted that even they would accept the treat. It almost succeeded in that goal, but was stopped by a mere touch of the man’s hand resting gently on the tip of its snout, like some twisted version of a rider patting a horse.

“But there are no more men left to devour.” The man pointed out bluntly. In his violet eyes the creature saw the truth in his words.

It looked around. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing. Not a living soul inhabited the world it knew. Searching with its second sight, the creature also felt no other life force wishing to come into the land of Illusions, now or in the future. “Traveler…then why have I not left this place? Bound by the earth, bound by time some thousand years fold?” The Emperor Draven narrowed all his sights at the man, focused on his violet eyes as if they held untold answers. To the creature, this man had come only to see for himself if the creature existed, with its second sight it saw all that the man had told it…he was truthful. Suddenly a thought dawned on the Emperor Draven. Why was it still here? “Strange, I’ve never thought of it before…I wonder why?” The creature closed its eyes and turned its head to the sky in silent contemplation. “I have grown tired of being in this world…I would like to slumber soon.”

“Would you?” The voice…no, voices…they came from everywhere and nowhere at once. They were the voices of those who had sought the armor the creature wore, the voices of the dreamers that wanted the creature to have the wish it desired, even though it had denied theirs.

“Yes…” the desires of the countless humans it had devoured formed a whirlpool of chaotic energy inside the creature, forcing to life the dormant magic of the armor. “Now my first wish has been born!! My time…cause my time to move!!” The armor glowed in bursts of gold and blue-black, swirling around it in the voices of the thousands of wailing spirits.

The man stepped back, and grabbed his pack. “To move…time…” He opened the bag and pulled out an instrument shaped like a “Y”. A vineflute. He set the mouthpiece and let off a single note that hummed with its own voice. The man took the vineflute away for a moment, letting the still lingering note grow and then fade. “Listen to the rhythm of the balance…dance! Here is your only given melody…” He set the instrument again and began to play an entrancing melody. It sounded like the wind and the waters, like nothing and everything, it was hard to place a name to the melody and the sound itself. Whatever music it was, it made the creature want to dance, to take to the air and move with the wind and clouds.

The creature followed that feeling, taking to the air as the man continued to play, its serpentine body whipping through the air on gigantic leathery wings. The air around them both shimmered and everything was plunged into darkness as the glow from the creature’s armor intensified

The dead air wriggled and shook with the music and the voices. Time was being set into motion for the immortal Emperor Draven.

For three days and three nights, the creature kept dancing in the air, and on the morning of the fourth day at the same moment his breath ceased, its body disappeared…all that was left was the armor…

The man walked up, taking the feather out of his band, his violet eyes locked upon the fading armor, he had to act quickly or risk losing the treasure.

“Entice, on sacred ground
Carved forth, where to hold
Dark shadows and dank memories,
The soulful night abode.
Listen to my call
Enter in this form
And make the shadows fall.”

As he said this, the feather he held sharpened into a blade and he cut into the armor. He cut it into seven circles of gold and seven circles of black-gold, each the size of his fist, for that was all the armor could yield without vanishing as well.

Six of the gold colored disks he carved into various shapes, among which were a sun, a flame, a leaf, a moon, a teardrop, and a flower. Six of the black-gold disks were carved upon, they kept their medallion-like appearance. Around the outer tract the man wrote words; Ice, Fire, Water, Spite, Spirit, Shadow. In the center of these disks he hollowed out angular shapes to correspond with the words.

He stopped as he reached the two remaining disks. The ones who had requested him to retrieve the Emperor Draven’s armor had told him what to do with all but these two pieces. Was he to carve these to his own liking?

“Trickster!” A bodiless voice cried from the darkness that still lingered.

The man looked up suddenly. Normally things did not surprise him, but this made his eyes go wide.

“Trickster of a being!! You tricked me into listening to you and robed me of my armor!” It was the Emperor Draven. From out of nowhere a tendril of darkness wrapped itself around the man, lifting him off the ground.

The feather blade dropped to the stones with a clatter and reverted to its original form.

“No…you had time move…yourself…it was not my doing…Ah!” The coil of darkness constricted the man further and to anyone listening closely, they would have heard his bones groan in protest.

“You lie, Trickster!” From the shadows the Emperor Draven’s red eyes opened to regard him with distaste. “No being of the mortal plane could ever trick me with the ease you did, nor could they have done it without my knowledge…what are you?! You say a traveler, but from where?!” The dark grip increased slightly and the red eyes narrowed.

The man mouthed something, but it was soon lost in another cry of pain. The Emperor Draven relinquished his ethereal grip, allowing the violet eyed man to speak. “I…I’m not from this world or realm…neither the darkness or light of this world holds power over me….to your wish great draven, may you slumber forever more.”

“You avoid the answer, Trickster, but your name…you will either give it to me or I will take it by force…you cannot trick me a second time!” from the gathering dark void, a gaping hole of violently swirling green. It was the remnants of the creature’s mouth. The man said nothing, but his eyes retained a defiance that spoke volumes. “So be it.”

The connection was instantaneous, the Emperor Draven could feel the man’s thoughts as though he were shifting pebbles through his claws. It flinched at most of the thoughts and memories as they were so strange and alien to him, even the voices of conversations past were laced with strange accents and languages. It occurred to the creature that the man had not been untruthful when he had said he was from another world.

Suddenly there was another presence, a will as strong as the Emperor Draven’s own and it was fighting with a ferocity not unlike an enraged dragon. The Emperor Draven shoved the consciousness back with equal force and continued to search for the Man’s name, determined to gain power over him and get revenge.

Voices flitted past the creature’s mind “I will seal the power away for them…”

“You risk everything by doing that…will you not reconsider, my love?”

Such memories were worthless, not what the creature was searching for, but focusing on them might allow it to catch a slip of the violet-eyed man’s name.

“I can’t I’m bound to their wishes…they evoked the vow of Shades.”

“No! They can’t!” the image of a woman with raven-black hair, her equally violet eyes rimmed with tears. Her face was fragile and pale, like an ivory carved doll.

The Emperor Draven’s consciousness blinked from focus for a moment as the other force struck hard in rage.

“OUT!!” The violet-eyed man’s physical voice cut through the barriers to the Draven on the mental plane of existence. “MY NAME IS MY OWN!!! LEAVE IT BE!!!”

“As you wish.” The Draven pulled his mind away, feeling somewhat humbled. The man was a fighter and had fortified his mind to almost indescribable proportions…but there were other ways to go about revenge. “but heed these words, Hawk…I think that should be an appropriate name for you, because you have the eyes of such an intelligent beast…” The darkness abruptly dropped the man, condensing itself into a shapeless mass of swirling shadow.

Hawk, as he was now known and would continue to be known, fell into a crumpled heap as mental exhaustion rushed over him. It had taken a great deal to hide his identity from the Emperor Draven’s ethereal form, yet only to be given a new name that was a true reflection of his soul. His body was capable of nothing short of breathing at the moment, and he clung to that one task wholly.

“For your deeds, Hawk, I place a curse. Not upon you, but to your descendants.” The words drove daggers into his heart. “The disks you carved from my armor, no matter what they are used for, will always hold the keys to my resting place…the Chaos Rift. Your sons shall be twice born, the first under the Black Moon and the second shall come twelve years to the day. Your eldest shall be cursed with immortality, he shall be forced to watch those he loves die while he lingers on, yet the unkindest punishment of all shall be that his heart cannot feel sorrow for them when it knows it should.

The youngest shall never live to see the dawn of his first day, the darkness of the Chaos Rift shall tear his heart apart with the swiftness of a bolt, but should the Eldest’s light heart find compassion for the dark, his death will be far slower. This Curse is set alone for the Sons of Hawk!”

In a burst of blinding white light, the words the Draven had spoken were etched beneath Hawk’s own words on the disks of armor. It was done.

The mass of darkness vanished and Hawk was left alone in disbelieving silence.