It was a hot night, one of the hottest he had ever experienced. The sky was clear, and the air in the workshop was still, leaving the sand tracked in by the coming and goings of his creator to reflect small points of moonlight onto the ceiling.

“It is said man was sculpted by the hands of the gods. If so, then you, who were sculpted by these hands before you, by my hands… And I, whose labors and hands gave you breath and life… What are we, then? What does that make us? In your fabricated heart, which I gave unto you, what is it that you believe?”

Unsure how to answer, he remained quiet.

“Hmmm… perhaps you aren’t yet—”

There was a loud bang from the entrance of the workshop, which caused the man to jump.

“What have you been doing?!" An angry voice called out, “Open up!”

“Oh bother… I’ll be back in a moment. He should be as easy to drive away as he has been every other time.”

The man before him sighed, pushing himself up from the chair he was sitting in.

“I wonder if he remembers the other times…” the man mumbled as he headed out of the room, “How early does consciousness start? Something to test out later… Come to think of it, why didn’t the wards warn me of his approach?”

He waited for his creator to return, but before long the shouting grew louder and closer and angrier.

“So it was bewitching magic that drove me away before! You’re that shameless? You’ve changed… the old you would have at least checked to see that it wasn’t sealed…”

“You mustn’t go any further, my friend! You trust me, don’t you?!”

The door to the room reopened, and a man with a massive white beard stepped in, followed right behind by his creator.

The new man’s eyes widened in shock as he beheld the room before him.

The flasks filled with blood, the human limbs and organs in jars, some cut open and some left whole, pins embedded in various small creatures, holding their still-twitching bodies to dissecting tablets, the ooze that remained of his failed siblings, still pulsating on the pedestal behind him…

He couldn’t imagine why this man was so fearful of it.

So fearful of him.

“…What have you been doing?”

“I’ve been-”

“Is this what happened to everyone who has gone missing? Is this it!?!”

“I-”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses, anymore! You’ve gone too far! I thought we were working towards the same goal, the same pursuit of knowledge, but you’ve been doing this?”

The man gestured towards him.

For reasons he didn’t quite understand, that last comment stung.

Then his creator did something that surprised him.

With his magic sealed and everything he had tried so hard to keep secret on the verge of being revealed, he had little choice but to run, to run away and leave everything behind.

The other man wasted no time in giving chase.

“Get back here!”

And just like that, they were both gone.

He waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Eventually the other man returned.

His creator was nowhere to be found.

The man had a knife in his hand, and a troubled expression on his face.

He looked up at him, as he raised his hands, the knife gleaming in the candlelight, in the moonlight.

He flinched, raising his arms to stop the oncoming weapon, and the man hesitated, the blade hanging in the air.

They looked into each other’s eyes for what felt like an eternity before the man turned away, dropping the knife to the floor as he held his head in his hands, not quite sobbing but not exactly not sobbing either.

“I can’t do this… this isn’t what I came here to do… I wanted to stop fighting… it was always so pointless, but now what have I done? Maimed my best friend and nearly killed someone who hadn’t done anything wrong?”

The man straightened his back, standing up tall.

“This workshop will be set ablaze come dawn. Gather whatever you need for a trip across the desert and depart by then. This town isn’t fond of magic seals like you, and I can’t imagine that the rest of the world would be much different. I’ll pray that your life isn’t one of hardship, but I can’t do much more.”

Kishuna awoke slowly, knowing there was nothing pressing for him to attend to. The lords wouldn’t reach Nabata until later in the day even if they rushed, and he could take his time waking up. He rolled over in the bedding he had laid out the night before, and thought a bit about the dream he just had.

Dreams always made an attempt to disappear as soon as you woke, but when they were based on a past memory it wasn’t particularly hard to cling to what had been going through your head moments before, and filling in for whatever managed to escape was an even simpler feat.

It wasn’t surprising to him that he had dreamed of that night from long ago. He had considered stopping by Arcadia on his way here, to this old workshop that even Nergal had forgotten about, but decided against it. After so many years, he still wasn’t much of a fighter and he knew Arcadia’s current guardian was both a firm ally of the Archsage and a fearsome foe, so Kishuna didn’t expect his hometown to grant him a warm reception upon his return.

And there wasn’t much left for him in Arcadia, anyhow.

And so, as Kishuna pushed himself to his feet, he once again waited.

Kishuna had spent most of his long life waiting, and things had finally begun to move forward, so another day wasn’t particularly difficult for him.

But it was almost unbearably boring. It wasn’t like back on Dread Isle, where he had made a place for himself to live and spend his time maintaining; this workshop was a brief pitstop on Kishuna’s journey through life, and he didn’t have anything meaningful to occupy himself with.

He could try to see if the other morphs in this ruin had miraculously developed some sort of consciousness, maybe try to teach them how to play catch or do literally anything else to pass the time, but…

An hour later revealed that the stray morphs that had been left here and the few that had wandered into this abandoned pile of stones and sand were all… lacking in their sense of self. They had the innate survival instincts found in all morphs without a leader to instruct them, but not much else.

With an exhale, Kishuna resigned himself to waiting idly until the lords found their way to his current location.

That state of being lasted for what couldn’t have been ten minutes before Kishuna gave in to his restlessness and decided to go for a walk outside.

The sun cast harsh rays across everything in Kishuna’s view, but he welcomed it all the same. The arid land reminded him of home, and upon his second appraisal of the landscape he had to remind himself that Nabata had been his home, however brief his initial stay had been. It wasn’t something that he was particularly attached to, but it felt familiar in ways that no other land in Elibe could possibly hope to accomplish.

Feeling particularly whimsical in this moment, Kishuna paused his leisurely stroll amongst the dunes and sat down to watch the clouds pass by above in the sky. He didn’t personally subscribe to the cloud-based fortune telling some mystics in Elibe used to inform all of their decisions, but it was still a decent way to pass the time as he let his thoughts wander.

One of the advantages of being a morph, Kishuna mused, was that he could actually do this. Any human would dehydrate themselves in an instant, but Kishuna had no need for water and could spend the entire day basking in the sunlight, staring at the sky, and experience no adverse effects. How many people were there in this world that could lay here and simply relax for hours on end? Kishuna couldn’t imagine that they would total in the double digits, and of the ones he could think of offhand he was the only one willing to spend his time like this.

Athos was too busy, Nergal was both busy and several cards short of a full deck, and that mercenary… well, he hadn’t been a mercenary for quite some time now, but he had things to work through before he’d let himself enjoy things again. Maybe the dragons in Arcadia wouldn’t be opposed to it? They’d have to eventually re-hydrate, but they’d probably last a long time out in the desert, making them perfect cloud watching companions.

The sky lazily scrolled by as Kishuna lay there, his body and his cloak splayed out across the sand.

After spending so long on Dread Isle, the most humid place in all of existence, the dry heat felt heavenly. It was-

The distinct, distant clash of metal against metal grabbed Kishuna’s attention, and he propped himself up in the sand. Nabata still had a problem with bandits, so perhaps the lords Kishuna was waiting for had made their way here already.

They would find their way into the workshop eventually, and all Kishuna had to do was be there, waiting for them. With a grunt, he pushed himself to his feet and returned to the underground ruins, dismayed that his relaxation had to be cut short.

Sure enough, Hector and his friends fell into the pitfall Kishuna had prepared, their disorientation giving him ample time to gather the morphs which they would face and direct them into the rooms where they would stay in until approached by something their instincts deemed as a threat, spaced far enough apart that their human hunters would have a fighting chance.

Kishuna wished he could turn off his sealing ability, but the best he could do was reign it in, to make it not extend for a whole kilometer like he had when the lords had fought Aion. Thinking back on it, he couldn’t help but let out a chuckle thinking of how Aion might have reacted to his magic being sealed right when he needed it most. Aion was, in a word, insufferable and while Kishuna didn’t exactly wish to see him dead, the irony of it being because the one thing he had so loudly took pride in failing him at the last moment hadn’t escaped Kishuna.

Pacing back and forth, trying to focus on both his thoughts and keeping his seal sealed to the best of his ability, Kishuna turned his thoughts to Aion’s idol, and of why he had allowed Kishuna to continue to draw breath.

He didn’t know why Nergal had allowed him to run around freely after he regained his strength during his rest in Bern, and especially not after the lords’ first visit of what might be many to Valor. Did he simply not view him as a threat, despite being the one thing that may completely seal his powers? He didn’t doubt that Nergal was unaffected by the loss of Aion, and if anything was probably happy to have someone so boisterous out of his hair, but was he able to handwave the deliberate action Kishuna took against him as a mere accident brought upon by the whims of a wandering morph? Or did he genuinely not know what had turned the tides in that battle?

Perhaps he felt some lingering sense of fondness towards the only creation he had granted freedom to…

Regardless, Kishuna had his answer. He had the answer that had driven him to lead these lords here, for them to discover the errant morphs that had resided here for longer than they could possibly imagine.

It had taken him the better part of a millennia, but Kishuna had found an answer for his creator’s first and final question to him.

‘What are we?’

His words echoed in Kishuna’s head as the sounds of battle drew closer and closer, as his siblings on the other sides of these walls were cut down, as the lords and their allies gathered on the other side of the door, as the ancient lock was slowly but surely picked by deft hands, revealing to them Kishuna’s stoic expression and the strongest morphs they had yet to face.

His job now done, Kishuna splashed himself with the curious warping dust he had found at the Dragon’s Gate long ago, well before Nergal had relocated to Valor, and warped away despite all the magic in the area being sealed.

It wasn’t an answer Nergal would like, but Kishuna had nonetheless found an answer he was satisfied with, and to justify what he had done here, he needed nothing more.