2 Years Ago

38 Years Before the Fall of Hybra

“Do you want to be free?” The voice asked him again. Micah rubbed his eyes, shivering in the cold of the incoming surf, his battered hands finally beginning to heal. The fall had shattered nearly every bone in his body, and conscious, he’d been forced to endure the ethereal mending as they creaked and snapped back into place. That was the thing about Liminality, wasn’t it? It wouldn’t let you die no matter how badly you wanted it. Once you were here, you were here to stay, writhing and wriggling around in the belly of the beast as it consumed you and allowed madness to overtake you. “Well?”

“Well what?” Micah demanded as he worked his way to his feet. He placed a lacerated-but-healing hand against a stalagmite of jagged rock jutting from the beach, breathlessly pressing his weight against it. The figure was a little more clear now; before it had seemed to take the form of a slender shadow, but now it was more solid, more human. It certainly still had that dark aura to it, but was quickly becoming tangible. The thing looked at him, Micah could almost see traces of a smile stretched across its face in the moonlight, or so he thought at least. “Are you one of the ‘shadow people’ they keep yammering on about up there?”

The thing tilted its gaze upward as Micah jerked a thumb toward the top of the cliff, hundreds of feet above. A harsh wind grazed the beach, sending a shiver down Mica’s spine as his tattered military jacket flapped about his waist.

“Quite a fall,” The thing observed.

“Well,” Micah smirked. “It was easier than walking around.”

“Efficient,” The thing agreed. Micah noticed now that its voice sounded hollow, like an empty drum beaten with a stick. He paused, waiting for the thing to speak again, perhaps follow it up with something, but it stood there in silence, not even looking to him expectantly. Micah stole a glance toward the water, briefly taking in in the long reflection of the moon as it was disrupted by the crashing waves at regular intervals. There was so much about this place that reminded him of home but at the same time it couldn’t have been more alien.

“Who are you?” Micah finally asked. The thing looked away, toward the water.

“I go by many names,” The thing said. “And I have seen many things.”

“You speak in riddles,” Micah said accusingly. “Refreshing, I suppose, given the stupidity of most here.”

“Who I am is complicated,” As it spoke, Micah could clearly see the grin. “He calls me ‘The Other’, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“Who is he?”

“There’s a word in our language,” The thing explained. “it describes this place. In the common language we made for you, it’s ‘Liminality’, the space between. In our language, we call it ‘Reet’. Means the same really, ‘in-between’. There are few of us who can move in between, to pass between the ‘Reet’ and, well…everything else. It was just me, before now, you see. To make the journey between, we call it ‘The Mock’. All sorts of complicated.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Micah demanded. “What are you?”

“What I am, is your ticket out of here,” The thing finally rose, taking on a more human form. It looked like a man, perhaps in his mid-thirties. Black hair, a mustache, fairly thin. “I can tell something about you, something important. You’re from that place, the world that has exactly what we need. Let me tell you something, child. We brought the gateway to your world, but we can’t move far from it. That’s something you can help us with, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Micah nodded. “You…refer to the mines of Jybaltin, do you not?”

“Piddly little example,” The man scoffed. “We’ve allowed your people to trade, to mine, and give us a cut of their findings. Steady supply, but we need more. We need all of it, you understand. When the Mah’Kur can leave Liminality, they can go anywhere.”

“What a concept,” Micah smirked as he took a step toward the water. “And you believe there is more of this…mineral on my world?”

“Greater arctesonite is plentiful on your world,” The man confirmed. “In a place that we cannot reach. You can.”

“Can I?” Micah mused. “Pray tell, where is it?”

“The largest vein I’ve found? Beneath a little place you call Auglire.”

“Klocby,” Micah laughed. “And you want me to help you get it. Tell me, specter, what would be in it for me?”

“Your freedom, obviously,” The man shrugged. “But also, the victory that your father seeks. We provide the greater arctesonite we have on hand, your father uses them to power his machinations. You take Klocby for us, and we both get what we want.”

There was a long pause as Micah considered the words that the thing had said. A soft breeze and the crash of waves broke the silence at intervals as the night waned on. The situation began to stew in his mind; he had left Axock two years ago seeking victory for his father, a way to breach the Stormveil. To prove that he was more capable than his sister. If this thing spoke truth then he had not only achieved that goal, but also truly set himself upas the next heir to the throne. He could imagine Robin’s face upon hearing the news. Forever in the shadow of Micah Lavoric, the man who had tamed the Mah’Kur.

“It will take time,” The man said. “He will try to stop us, to exert his will onto us. We must be prepared, to do what we must. You understand, he exiled us here, the rest of us, we can’t travel the Mock. Won’t happen. They can’t even take ten steps from Hybra.”

“But you can?”

“Indeed,” the man nodded, a small expression of pride beginning to creep onto his face. “I am, in fact, the only one.”

“And you can prepare me? How?”

“I will make you like me. You will cross the Reet, you will transcend space, and time, commune with arctesonite itself.”

“I see,” Micah chewed over the thought. “Very well, specter, and what shall I call you?”

“I go by many names, one that your human tongue could never pronounce, and some call me Parsifal. You may call me, The Mockreet.”