Agony echoes off the invisible walls of this vast, unending chasm. Wailing that serenades the unyielding rage and sorrow within, but in the end, it still feels light-years away and is depressingly insignificant. These seem familiar, yet entirely disconnected and foreign to whom they’re aimed towards. Lifetimes pass in an instant but the fatigue that follows is tenfold and the echoes persist all the same. Sometimes they’re woeful and sombre, other times they’re vitriolic and tumultuous. Trying to make sense of any of them is an exercise in futility for any sound mind, however, the chamber of these screams did not belong to such a being at all.
Ezel plays with these echoes the same way a child would relentlessly bash away at a new toy that they’ve yet to comprehend. It wasn’t always like this but it may as well have been, since these have haunted him for as long as he can remember. A wise man would say he should seek counsel on this, but his intuition tells him otherwise. Keeping this locked away in his heart and mind, as his own lyre that strums the cries of disembodied beings, is what instinctively feels like the right thing to do. In a world where so much has been taken away and nobody bothers to try and get those precious pieces back, this is a solace that he refuses to become sullied by the indignation of those around him. The booming voices slowly dissipate into whispers that then turn into nothing at all. This is how it always ends, with the familiar rising sensation within his chest that sends him hurtling upwards to an obsidian canvas that eventually gives way to an abrupt radiance that incinerates everything around him.
His eyes opened, only to find himself in his all-so-familiar bedroom. The machinations of an erratic mind litter this space in an intriguing manner. A space of roughly 8 square meters, all it holds within it is a single mattress bed in one corner with a long work desk that has a cluster of machinery on the opposite side. A single-door cupboard is where his clothes are kept, but that along with the bed are about the only signs that a person rests here. All across the floor were pieces of paper that had incoherent sketches of machines that seemed to have never existed or had been lost to time and rediscovered by accident. All that’s certain is that these were Ezel’s wondrous workings of his imaginative mind. The most prominent feature on the work desk is what seemed to be the exoskeleton of a left-handed mechanical gauntlet that was still incomplete. A collection of 3 sketches hung up on the wall showed how the finished mechanism would look at various angles, with different key areas and parts being highlighted and written about in greater detail. This has been Ezel’s personal project, one that’s been chipped away at for an immense amount of days and months. Finding the old parts from a myriad of machines, as well as the materials that fit their respective purposes within the gauntlet, had been the ever-present stumbling block along its road to completion. From the looks of it, Ezel was missing the alloy plates that would interlink with each other and serve as the shell casing of the gauntlet; followed by an undescribed portable power source meant to spur it to life.
Still reeling from his dream, Ezel slowly rose from his bed and made his way over to his workbench. Silently staring at his incomplete gauntlet, he let out a sigh of exasperation. As if he were lamenting the amount of work that still had to be done. Turning around on the same spot, he stared out of the window to see the overcast sky that gave his bedroom a somewhat sullen glow. He’d woken up a bit later than usual. Making his way over to the cupboard, Ezel pulled out a new set of clothes for the day, then proceeded to change out of his nightclothes and into his new set of clothes in a well-practiced flow of movements. Following the adornment of his black long-sleeve shirt and a pair of multi-pocketed mottled grey cargo pants, he thoughtlessly grabbed his utility belt that was lined with hand-sized tools and capsules from his workbench and made his way out of the room.
Ezel immediately walked into a short hallway and descended the stairs after leaving his room, as it was the sole space that occupied the second floor of the house. He then emerged at the halfway point of what consists of the majority of the house’s ground floor. To his left is a modest lounge area, occupied by a circular and heavily scratched metal desk that has an electric lamp planted on top of it. The base of the desk is hollowed out and serves as an extra compartment space, which has a slew of tools, cords, and other miscellaneous items placed within there. Surrounding the desk on two sides in a clockwise direction are 2 sets of double-seat couches, with worn brown leather that has surely seen better days but is far better off than what one would expect. The signs of regular cleaning are seen throughout the area, despite the persistent yet unobtrusive veil of dust particles that are floating aimlessly in the air.
Behind the one couch, there stood a 2 meter long staff made up of an obsidian metal that seemed out of place. The end of the staff has 3 silver prongs of varying lengths sprouting out, while the length of the staff itself has varying rectangular patterns and indents running down the entire way. Ezel has always suspected that the dark metal is an alloy of sorts but has always reached a dead-end in trying to discern what it’s made up of following multiple attempts of analysing it under microscopes This belonged to Xero, the enigmatic yet caring guardian that he’s lived with for the entirety of his life. Xero is odd in that he’s not a person, but instead, is an old droid. Looking towards the right side of the house, Ezel sees him hunched over in a corner rummaging through an old box on the floor of the kitchen. The kitchen itself consisted of a door that led outside on the far end, with a 2 basin setup on the left side of the door, which is connected to a countertop that’s right by the window. Xero was on the right side of the door by the corner. While curled up, he was an odd shape of moving weathered armour plates and visible gears that creak and whir at a gentle humming tone. Notable enough to draw your attention, but not so loud that they’d drown out any thoughts.
Ezel approaches the droid, but without turning around or halting his persistent searching, Xero addresses him, “You’re up far later than usual. Is everything alright, Zel?”
While Ezel was his full name, Zel was the endearing nickname that he was informed his parents used to refer to him with. Both of them were technicians and Xero was, in fact, their old re-purposed assistant droid, who now looked after their son in their stead. As for where they are, Ezel has been told that they met an untimely end as the result of a maintenance job gone awry. The details are a bit incomplete in his mind but he remembers hearing that they were repairing a squad of 5 aged combat droids that used to serve as Eisengrahl’s border sentinels and one of them went rogue due to a form of malware that had infected its targeting system. Only 2 lives were lost that day, a couple who felt solely responsible, and a greater part of Eisengrahl went up in flames with multiple injured residents littering the pathways following the indiscriminate rampage that preceded the couple’s eventual death and the termination of the droid. Any time he recalls this story in his mind, Ezel can’t help but not feel anything. Which is expected, but when Xero told him this story when he came of age, Ezel couldn’t help but notice an unnatural stutter in his voice.
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“Struggled to sleep for a while last night, but it’s nothing major.” As he was saying this, he got caught off-guard by a lengthy yawn.
“Hmm, should I tell Iala that you won’t be able to repair the monument today? You’re far more sluggish than usual.”
“No really, I’m fine. If anything that’ll help wake me up. Besides, Iala is already complaining about how much I’ve been putting this off. It’s only been 3 days but you’d swear it’s a year with how much she’s complained about it already.”
Xero finally stopped his search and Zel could see him holding a dark and indistinguishable object in the palm of his right hand. As he was trying to get a closer look, Xero placed said object inside an open cavity by his left shoulder. The object fitted perfectly and metal plates proceeded to smoothly slide above it, forming the recognisable shoulder plate armour that had always been there beforehand.
“Well, that’s a first. What is that?”
“Hm? Ah, it’s just a replacement for my spherical shoulder joint mechanism. Or rather just a part of it. I was lucky enough to have a spare part, otherwise I would’ve had to rummage through the junkyard. An endeavour I’m not particularly fond of,” Xero replied.
Zel didn’t press the issue further. Since he’s the one Xero usually requests his aide from in replacing his parts, he did find it a bit odd that it wasn’t the case this time. He just chalked it off to Xero not wanting to disturb his sleep.
Xero then fully turned to Zel, “I have a good idea why you’re so tired. It’s that gauntlet again, isn’t it? I can hear you slaving away on it in the middle of the night. Look, it’s commendable to have a project that lets you unwind. However, it shouldn’t come at the cost of your well-being.”
“We’ve spoken about this a million times before, Xero. I know my limits better than anyone,” Zel indignantly stated while leaning against the countertop.
“You say that, but there’s been more than a handful of times recently where the other villagers are a bit disappointed, some even peeved, by your absentmindedness and indifferent repair jobs. Barragan in particular has voiced, let’s just say, less than kind sentiments about your recent work.”
Barragan is the leader of Eisengrahl, bearing the title of Älteste. Zel and Barra, as he diminutively refers to him only in the presence of Xero, have always been at odds for as long as the villagers can remember. Barragan has a view that all inhabitants of Eisengrahl should contribute to the village’s wellbeing, whereas this rubs Zel the wrong way since he’d much rather daydream and work on his projects for days on end without being disturbed. To add to their vexation for each other, one of Barra’s rules is an unnatural insistence for the young having to be subservient to all senior Eisenites. This particular creed has always felt like one endless labour placed upon Zel alone since he’s the youngest of all the Eisenites. In fact, no other person has been born since the arrival of Zel in the past 17 years. This oddity has crossed Zel’s mind an endless amount of times, half the time coming up with multiple theories on his own, and the other half is him being met with half-answers that are as hollow as empty kitchen pots. With all this being said, Barragan has been at the core of all resistance that Zel has been met with in his endless inquisitions about the world outside of Eisengrahl and the village’s ancient past. Oil and water is how Xero always describes the pair of them.
“That archaic husk of an asinine human shouldn’t have anything to say about work that only I can do,” retorted Zel. An unmistakable look of annoyance had taken over. This, Xero noted, seemed to have wiped away all the lingering fatigue from Zel’s eyes, voice, and overall body language.
“Now now, it’s a bit too early for such vitriol don’t you think?”
“It’s never too early if it has to do with Barra.”
“At least try to not make him think even worse of you than he already does. In his eyes, your only saving grace is the fact that there’s nobody else besides the two of us that can do what we do,” Xero stated. Which is true, to an extent. Xero has slightly above average tech knowledge and abilities by nature of being a droid, but Zel is a natural-born prodigy. From countless ideas for inventions that nobody could ever conceive of, to an intuitive understanding of old technology that is genuinely unexplainable, Zel is without a doubt the unsung crown jewel of Eisengrahl. However, his inconsistent work ethic in aiding others is what exasperates Barra and the villagers to no end. On the opposite spectrum, Zel holds an unnatural dislike for the Eisenites’ willfully ignorant way of living. Any inquiry into the history of Eisengrahl and the world beyond it has always been a dead end. As such, he’s always met with resistance in all of his attempts to leave the village. A common sight in Eisengrahl during Zel’s earlier years was him being dragged by both of his arms, by either an older Eisenite or border droid, towards Barra’s home after a failed escape. His escape attempts would be used as a way to plug up any breaches he’d have found in the village’s perimeter.
“You know in another world, I’d stop working altogether and a sensible Älteste would just send me into exile.” After saying this, Zel made his way to the living room to grab extra tools from the desk to add to his utility belt. Xero hasn’t moved from his spot, staring at Zel with concern. “You know better than anyone else that wouldn’t happen,” Xero said.
“I know. That's why I preceded my delusion by saying ‘in another world.’ ” Following this remark, Zel made his way to the exit in the kitchen, but just as he reached for the door, Xero lightly grabbed him by his shoulder, “Ezel, I feel the need to remind you that it’s forbidden for anyone to leave the village without the Älteste’s permission. Unless you’re a Starklander, the walls of Eisengrahl are as far as you can go. Please remember that.” Ezel lazily turned his head so that his eyes met Xero’s. Xero’s eyes were pitch-black lenses that had tiny blue pixels beneath that mimicked human pupils. The tone in which Xero addressed him rubbed him the wrong way, but he still managed to maintain a somewhat level temperament before he responded.
I ask questions and I’m denied truthful answers, Ezel thought to himself. I try to leave and I’m denied freedom. As far as I’m concerned, everything I’ve done for Eisengrahl is a favour that’s gone on for far too long. He sighed, then noticed Xero taking a surprisingly wary stance, waiting for a reply. “Don’t worry Xero. Even if I were to try anything, I always get caught. Everyone here knows that I’m not going anywhere.” Following that final remark, Xero watched Ezel walk off. His vague response sat with him a bit longer than it should have. He then lifted his right hand and grabbed the left shoulder he’d fixed not so long ago.