Kole felt a change wash through him. His sensitivity to his surroundings was the same... the voices of the elements still trickled past his periphery... he could listen to them if he tried... but his abilities had not shifted, only his motivations to use them. Heat.

There was a heat rising in him... some kind of burning absolute.

In the fifteen years he trained with the Shinn, he experienced nothing like this. Of course, part of the training was learning to recognize the inner patterns of one's own mind - the warrior who knows his own mind can not have it used against him. When you begin to lie to yourself, you leave yourself open to blind spots that an opponent can exploit.

Kole began to see walls forming in his own mind. He was having difficulty connecting to the larger patterns... his focus was growing narrow. Klalech was his only goal now. Klalech was an infected mass that needed to be excised... no matter how delicate he may be connected to other patterns... and Kole refused to see the other patterns.

Kole knew that something larger was happening. He could tell by three events that led him to this place: one, the passage of Klalech into this realm - an Elder must have been bribed to allow his passage; two, the bonesword dismissing his queries into the subject so brusquely; and three, the fact that Damir gave Kole the bonesword in the first place.

Approximately one month before Klalech crossed over to Earth and killed the other guardians, Damir asked to meet with Kole privately. This was not unheard of. Damir would regularly bring Elders and guardians together to discuss the goings on in the city, share tales and connect to the Balance through ritual and meditation. Damir would also invite individuals to share with him when he knew that they had something that needed to be said or discovered within themselves... at least, that is what all of the guardians guessed. The truth is, Damir's motivations to meet with individuals was entirely mysterious to them. The stigma that emerged was less than pleasant...out of the mystery of not knowing why he had been summoned, Kole assumed that he had done something or found something inside of himself that needed to be expressed for the sake of Balance. In other words, he thought he had done something wrong.

Kole ascended Damir's tower that day - an exhausting climb up 30 floors of an ancient building that was restructured to symbolically represent an ascension through the levels of consciousness - and expected to submit to some ritual of purgation... some kind of intense introspective meditation... it was precisely not what actually happened that day. Damir... is a Magan. In the presence of Magans one is exposed to inscrutable and eccentric behavior from them, and always encounters with them are punctuated by synchronicities and odd coincidences. It is just the law of the patterns. Those who are truly connected with the deeper patterns act as funnels - as if the order of reality reassembles to roll everything towards them. The long ascent to his sacred space at the top of the building acts as a processional to allow you to adjust to these new patterns. Invariably, when you get to the top, you feel the connections to the all of Balance. The world swims with meaning. All the knowledge of the universe can be tasted. Explored. If one was not careful, it would be easy to be absorbed by the larger patterns, and become just a naive speck of pollen in the universal sky. Ironically, Damir is both the cause of this "raw nerve" in the fabric of reality, and the one who distracts you from falling in and being absorbed. This is one of the reasons for Magans to have their eccentricities - they are torn between the ebb and flow of the forces that tell constellations to change, and the delicate web of the Earth's current standards for reality. Kole had reached the top of the tower and found Damir with his back to him, working on some kind of machine. Kole approached with hesitation. He did not want to startle the Magan. Of course, chances are that Damir knew when Kole would be arriving at the top of the steps one week prior to when it actually happened. Maybe he forgot...? Kole cleared his throat. Damir spoke without turning. "Kole, thank you for coming... I'll be with you in a moment. Have a seat."

For a moment, Kole watched the little man laboring over the machine. He moved in jerky steps, making adjustments to the device. Almost completely bald, Damir had a habit of forgetting to cut what remained of his hair and it hung down past his shoulders in fine stringy tangles.

Kole turned away and looked around. It was unusual to have the freedom to observe the area without distractions. All other visits to the tower were met with intense meditations of protection, clarity, and other purposes that required focus.

The top floor of the tower had been cleared away of all things except for a few concrete pillars that supported the half of what remained of the roof, and a couple of rooms beneath the roof section that still remained that Damir kept locked. Kole and the other guardians speculated that those rooms were filled with arcane objects from lost worlds - talismans, totems and fossilized relics suffused with primordial energies. Today, the door was opened. Kole knew there was no place to sit anyway, so he repositioned himself to get a clearer view of the contents of the room.

Kole looked back to see that Damir continued to tinker with the machine. He took a step closer to the room and saw what it was filled with...

"Junk."

Damir was standing directly behind him. Kole moved out of the way and Damir walked past him into the small warehouse of clutter.

He stood amidst the piles of ancient objects. Some of the things Kole could recognize from the illustrated books about the Old Earth he had read as a child. A bicycle. Part of a car door. Other trinkets and plastic things were piled in crates and shoved between the cracks of the larger things.

"Not quite what you would expect to see among a Magan's treasures, is it?"

Damir turned to face Kole.

"Everyone needs a vice. This is mine. Memorabilia from a time when things were not as complicated. It grounds me."

Kole forgot himself for a moment and studied the room's contents for long minutes. Somehow, Damir had slipped past him and his voice came once again from behind Kole. This time, it was further away.

"I have something for you, Kole..."

How long had he been looking at these alien artifacts? Stories had flooded into him as he looked around. The ancient world filled his head now. Details of everyday life from a thousand or more years ago...

Kole reluctantly returned to his present and approached Damir.

"How long have you had your weapon?"

Damir gestured to the wooden staff sheathed on Kole's back.

"... Since I began training with the Shinn... twenty... twenty seven years ago..."

Damir looked into Kole's eyes, as if measuring him from the inside. Kole could sense the examination thoroughly saturate his being. Despite this, he met Damir's eyes and found each moment to be excruciatingly painful. Invasive.

At length, Damir lowered his lids and nodded slightly, and Kole received both and apology and praise from this subtle psychic motion.

Damir sat down on the bare floor next to the machine he had been tinkering with.

"Is that something you could get used to?"

Kole gave him a questioning glance.

He continued. "That examination, I mean."

Kole paused to consider the question.

"A constant examination by a soul much older than mine?"

He did not have to consider it longer before he responded.

"Could I? Yes. The Shinn trained me to adapt to a variety of nether influences. Would I prefer it? No."

Damir smiled. It was a smile an older brother gives to his younger when he recognizes his own impishness.

"A greater Shinn warrior would not hesitate." Damir grabbed a length of what appeared to be a meter of straightened bone. It had been leaning against the machine, but Kole had not seen it until that moment. "A greater Shinn would recognize his place in the universe and accept this honor without hesitation."

Kole felt an uneasiness - whatever he had done wrong would soon be revealed. He had been honest with Damir. He had found the Shinn to be too structured. Their code of behavior was deeply rooted in counteracting a particular wavelength of Chaos - and Kole decided to leave the Shinn before he had been sworn into the brotherhood because of his disapproval with their dogma.

Damir finished his thought. "A greater Shinn would not be able to listen to what this entity had to say." And handed the bone to Kole.

"Kole, this is Jhebon Mettit. He will be your guide. Jhebon comes from a race that watched our sun form."

Kole felt the presence within the bone.

"He has no respect for anyone who takes his word at face value. You two are perfect together."

Only a moment or two passed before Damir interrupted.

"Have you ever seen a Movie, Kole?"

The question threw Kole's train of thought. "I've heard of them, but I've never seen one, no."

"Have a seat."

Damir pressed some buttons on the machine, and it began to make whirring noises. Some small lights began to glow. Kole sat down gently cradling the bone.

"Don't worry about him, he's seen this one already."

A rectangle of light shone onto a white sheet and music began manifest from all around him. The white sheet gave way to images...