Prologue

Long ago in the dark, swirling reaches of time before the secrets of Asisium had been revealed, before its many lands had been discovered and its many races had evolved into being, life was created, maintained, toyed with and destroyed by the Aspects; mystical beings of incredible power who had no physical form, instead existing within the elements of earth, air, fire and water.

The world of Asisium was the canvas of the Aspects: Aspects of fire moulded the magma deep beneath the surface of the world, keeping their creations hidden from others. Aspects of air revelled in moving the wind and creating creatures to glide on it and fly with it. Aspects of earth grew plants and trees, shaped mountains and hills and created beasts to roam their work and Aspects of water guided the ocean currents, rivers and streams and created lakes and fish to swim in all of them.

It was an Aspect of water, named Neptus who would unwittingly change everything. Neptus was unlike most Aspects, while others created something, experimented with it and then either destroyed it or left it isolated before they moved on, he had developed an affinity to a particular piece of Asisium; an archipelago made up of small, low lying islands and coral reefs which were clearly the combined work of an Aspect of water and an Aspect of earth and had been left relatively untouched for uncountable decades.

It was not a law but something of a well-respected rule that Aspects did not interfere with the work of others and so, with the original creators of the island chain long since departed, other Aspects had obviously decided not to toy here, but Neptus was different. He enjoyed watching the strange, fair skinned bipeds that lived on the land. They were not like most other creations, they were intelligent, either by design or evolution but they were certainly the most advanced thing he had ever seen.

They lived across the whole archipelago, in small wooden huts, roofed with large leaves, they fed themselves on the fish that swam among the coral and they moved between settlements on rafts of wood. They had developed a language of spoken word, similar to that of the Aspects themselves, something which Neptus had concluded must've been implanted by their creator and although they weren't his, he admired them and took pride in his observational study of them.

He spent centuries watching them, they seemed to grow slowly, taking almost twenty years before their society considered them part of the herd and once they were adult, they seemed to live for centuries. The same creatures that lived when he had arrived still lived now and very few of them appeared to mate, he decided that the society itself was controlling its own population. Remarkable! He thought.

As the years continued to tick by, he began to learn individual names; the oldest of all the creatures was Fendalas, he was beginning to weaken in his twilight years but knew much about how to catch fish. He often taught the youngest creatures from his home on the north-western island. Mandliachus was one of the few creatures with hair that wasn't golden like the glittering midday sun. His body was thinner than the rest, his face more gaunt and pale and he had a demeanour as sour as his looks. Rilithan was the greatest swimmer of all the creatures, she was thin and young and graceful and sometimes, Neptus thought she might be faster in the water than she was on the land. Neptus' favourite of all the creatures though was much more ordinary, his name was Ylendi and he was one of the youngest of all. He spent a lot of his time on the beaches away from the villages. He would sit and talk for hours and hours, to no one but the sea and Neptus listened, invisible beneath the surface. Sometimes he spoke of being happy but often he spoke of sad things; he spoke of his mother, who had died during his birth and he spoke of a great longing to leave the islands his herd called home and find out what lay beyond the vast ocean.

Ylendi was a lonely soul, even though he had a father who loved him and a village that cared for him, he chose to speak to the water, to Neptus and loneliness was something Neptus understood better than anything. He was always lonely, he had watched the islanders for hundreds and hundreds of years and, even though he listened to Ylendi, he had no one to talk to. So, after countless centuries, he created a friend - a pet - and gave it powers to speak, so that the two of them could watch the island creatures together and talk. She was almost ten feet long from nose to tip, with a scaled body, a tail and four powerful legs with talons and webbing between her toes. Her head was thin; her eyes narrow, with thin slits for nostrils and a great maw filled with razor sharp teeth. He called her Hydra.