Banon stood, or floated, rather–since he was not in his body, and rather something approximating a specter or a ghost–on the edge of a cliff that stretched as far away into the distance in either direction as he could see. The smooth, white material of its make was covered in an endless series of markings that held a curious resemblance to the ones the Pyathen princess had painted on her body the last time he saw her. Over the edge, it dropped down into seeming nothingness, which also stretched far away in front of him, though another white cliffside was visible a very long way further on the other side of this void–which perhaps made it more of a trench, just one so massive in scale it was almost incomprehensible. Behind him, the same symbol-covered stone-appearing material stretched forever away from him, though eventually a dull grey fog obscured him from seeing further that way.

When he turned his attention upwards instead, he saw something almost equally as curious. Placed in the middle of a star-filled sky was a splotchy green, brown and blue circle. Or perhaps a ball, though whatever it was, it was far too distant to tell.

Turning his attention back to his immediate surroundings, he began to notice that down below in the colossal trench he had been placed next to, there was a dull purple glow growing in brightness with every passing second, until eventually it was unmistakable in its color.

Kimitrius?

Something began to happen all around him, multiple other presences making themselves known by a series of sparks dancing in the air at first, but soon showed themselves as a series of flickering purple beams all around his disembodied awareness. After the lights went out, six vaguely Ooura-shaped figures stood around him on the smooth, white ground. And they were standing, their phantom forms being much more defined than Banon’s. Through some sense that was as natural to him as taste or smell–one that he couldn’t explain but somehow knew was only available to him in this spiritual state of being–he knew these fellow phantoms were his ancestors.

Each of their transparent purple figures reached out their hands to Banon’s soul in synchronization, and then everything was consumed into a purple light so bright nothing could be seen other than its blinding color. And then, instantly, he was in the jungle again, but this time still as a wraith made of nothing material. Banon’s awareness floated through tangled vines and over mat covered lakes and open rivers, a disembodied viewer, not able to interact, only watch. Abruptly, his awareness stopped, and his attention honed in on something he found impossible down among the lower canopies.

It was… well, it was himself that he saw down there, fully formed in his usual flesh and blood body. But older, wiser, different in some fundamental way. He couldn’t place exactly what it meant, but there was a feeling exuding off this older version of himself, one that told him the Banon who he looked upon now was not only more in the sense of experience and age, but his soul was more too. Something had been added to it. The older Banon was directing thousands of indistinct figures, all climbing up a Mew tree towards a series of pod-shaped buildings hanging in the highest branches that were of such scale they put the chamber of rites to shame.

He wanted to believe what he was seeing was a dream, but there was no mistaking it. Everything here was too clear, too crisp. There was only one explanation he could give that felt true, as silly as it was to think about.

These were memories of the future.

Again, his focus shifted. High in the sky above it all, he saw Kimitrius’s eye. Something was happening to it, though, changing its shape. The purple ring that had always resembled an iris around a milky white pupil was now filling in, turning into a solid colored dot instead, and glowing, glowing… glowing brighter and brighter until it was overpowering even the sun.

His vision flickered, and he was somewhere new. Still the jungle, but on the border of something… impossible. A lake without end that stretched past the horizon. He saw a beam of light shooting down towards the shores from Kimitrius’s eye, only that it was no normal kind of light. Wherever the beam touched, it burrowed into the earth and scorched the surrounding jungle. Banon watched as the beam swept across the land, carving a trench of impossible scale. He saw the lake without end becoming the source that would fill that trench, turning it into a raging river. He saw water flooding the jungle. He saw the mats rise triple the height of the highest seasonal floods. And they were not done rising yet.

His presence was then above the Enka, who Banon watched scrambling desperately to save their lower-lying cities of stone, and failing. He watched as thousands were taken in the torrent that turned the entire jungle into a confluence of currents and chaos. Heard their human screams. Saw the once great power toppled in moments, leaving only a fraction of their number alive to retreat into the high mountains.

And lastly, somehow, despite having no mouth with which to taste in this disembodied state, his phantom dove down into the murky currents and managed to taste the water that ravaged and swept away entire swaths of the jungle, leaving only the soil-rooted mew trees still in place.

And that water tasted of salt.

Abruptly, Banon was torn out of the vision and found himself standing, or floating, again surrounded by those same six purple souls who had guided him into the vision. Once again they were back to the white stone cliff on the edge of that massive trench. As he studied these familiar souls, he found a truth seeping into his mind. All this time, he had thought it was Kimitrius who watched over him personally. But it was not so. These glowing purple beings gathered around him, he could now tell, were his closest ancestors' spirits, men and women who had carried the torch of his bloodline into deep time. And it was they, not God himself, who had chosen him.

All this time… he had been so sure he was the chosen champion, the only blessed enough to be the focus of the moon God’s eyes. Now, he saw that he had been under the watch of many instead. Each time in his life he had felt that feeling like someone was there, nudging up against his senses but never fully detectable, it had been one of them, and each time he had seen the purple flash and something impossible had happened, it had all been because of them. Kimitrius may have provided the power, but his people had chosen him.

As he realized this, it must have manifested in his soul somehow, because each of the six ancestor spirits buzzed and fizzled into fractal shapes and impossible colors that conveyed clearer to him than any words ever could have that he was correct, and that they had chosen him for a purpose, a purpose they were eager to show him now. He felt the fringes of his soul being tugged at and prodded as they eagerly awaited his decision.

More unsure than before, but still needing to know what meant, he agreed.

Without hesitating, the spirits grabbed hold of him and pulled him over the edge of the cliff with them. They then turned downwards and began flying him deeper and deeper towards the sea of purple lights glowing in the depths of the trench.

They accelerated faster and faster until the white walls of the cliff were long left behind them, and all that there was were dull purple lights scattered in the infinite darkness all around them. It was then, finally, that Banon began to pick up on something. The purple lights… they weren’t some homogenous glow like it had seemed looking down from the cliff’s edge, but rather thousands and thousands of other souls, just like he and his guides were. There was something different about them, though, something wrong. There was no other way he could describe what he saw, what he felt, than to say that they were in a state of decay, of soul-rot. Some of them even appeared to be completely inert husks, barely even visible at all. Others twitched and writhed, their shapes taking sickly angles and their buzzing exuding a profound sense of pain.

Then, the group shepherding him finally came to a stop once they reached the center of the sea of souls. Or so Banon imagined it was. He could see no edges to it in any direction anymore, only dark purple souls swimming weakly around in an infinite void.

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His guides came together as one, and a deafening blast of soul energy emanated from them, smashing his soul senses into some kind of hyper-alertness. And it seemed the effect had extended to the other souls around them as well. Banon could tell that all of their awarenesses–thousands of them, maybe infinite–had turned to observe him and his ancestors. Even though there were no perceivable eyes looking at anything, Banon could feel it for certain. From the uncountable souls focussing on him, he began to sense at first a trickle, then an overwhelming flood of intermingled feelings. Fear, hope, anger, but most profoundly, doubt in what the future held for them.

Without asking permission, his six guides shoved their fractal tendrils into his soul and started pulling, trying to tear him wide open, or so it felt like. Banon resisted them, and immediately felt a sense of surprise and frustration from them because of it. He didn’t care that he could tell they were his nearest of kin in his lineage, he refused to be compelled to spill the guts of his… well, his everything, out for all of these souls to observe.

Eventually, they seemed to realize they could not make him budge.

It was then one of the phantom ancestors took charge over the others, one that had projected strength and intelligence right from the beginning, despite his actual soul body appearing no different from the other five. With a series of sharp instructions sent through soul-bursts, this leader commanded the other five to stop prodding him. More soul speak between the six of them. And then, it seemed, they had come to an agreement.

As one, they turned their attention outwards, their tendrils somehow extending to every other soul regardless of distance, all at once. Their colossal web of soul tendrils ensnared everyone, and Banon felt through the vibrations between them that they were requesting all of them to open themselves as a sign of good grace. There was a palpable hesitation at first, but then, faster and faster as time went on, more and more of the souls opened up their connections. Those who were more resistant were forced open by the six ancestors' superior might, regardless of Banon’s own objections or theirs.

In the end, Banon was left with an uncountable amount of witnesses, all open to him. The clear leader of the six approached Banon more carefully this time, instead deciding to open his own soul first. There was no hiding what was underneath. It was raw thought Banon was observing. Through this raw stream of consciousness, he assured Banon that it was no trick, no ploy.

All of Banon’s inhibitions bled away in the face of this. There was no mistaking the genuine nature of his request. Whether it was really in Banon’s best interest or not remained to be seen, but his ancestor seemed completely certain Banon would succeed where others had failed. That was what he felt most strongly.

Banon focussed internally and now that he was, realized just how tangled up his soul had become while fending away the perceived intruders. After massaging the defensive back into a relaxed state, he found the rest of the process came incredibly naturally to him.

It wasn't hard to open his soul, nor to project his own will upon them all. His deepest truths exploded outward, vibrating along the wire-like tendrils connecting him to the other souls. He had spent practically every moment of his life dedicated towards one goal, saving the dwindling empire of his father, saving all of his people and becoming the last Ooura emperor. And once his heart was open, all of it, everything he had ever come to love and cherish was laid bare. There was no hiding his pious, his ambition, the fire burning in his soul that sought to burn the enemies of Ooura into ash and see their empires blown away in the wind as if they were never there at all.

All at once, millions of phantom souls buzzed and fizzled, blending into one another and into him as well, their soul-bodies ceasing to be sensible and instead turning into an infinite series of fractal shapes that interlocked with the same shapes he could feel sprouting from his own soul. The feeling was indescribable and impossible to know exactly what it meant. He felt a profound sense of acceptance from them, yes, but laced with the weight of a mountain, the weight of all their hopes and wishes, the weight of responsibility for the continued survival of all.

The leader of the six moved in again. Instantly, a series of ideas was communicated to him. There was so much there, but it boiled down to a simple enough concept.

Kimitrius was dying, losing the battle against Demnus for control for too long, long enough that the detrimental effects were becoming permanent. The second part, the one that terrified Banon, sending his soul-shapes into chaos and causing the other spirits to flee away from him, was that it was his responsibility to prevent their God from his slow degradation. For inside the end well of Kimitrius, one's soul was only as strong his was.

It was Banon’s responsibility to save them all.

Banon’s soul writhed and twisted away from them, desperate to get away from the weight of everything that had been thrust upon him.

The ancestors took mercy on his panic, all of them reaching their hands out in unison and tore him back through space, and now he found himself floating over his own body in the jungle again. Not the older version, but him, now. His body’s chest rose and fell just enough to tell he was still alive, though the dried blood covering the side of his stomach was more than a little concerning. Banon should have been relieved to find he wasn’t dead, but it was hard to be. Not only because of everything he had just been shown, but also because the shock he felt gazing upon the dozens of figures clustered around his body was overpowering.

Yubuou.

Before he could form thoughts about that, his ancestor spirits winked out of existence and he was left alone. Alone… except for a blue spirit that was slowly gliding through the lower canopy towards him. This spirit was completely alien in its appearance to the purple ones he had been among just before.

This one was not a fractal of interlocking of shapes. It was fibrous, like a single thread woven back on itself a thousand thousand times over, and it swam through the air too slowly, as if it was submerged in transparent liquid.

It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Just before their spirits touched, both stopped, examining one another, both of their forms twitching in curiosity. The blue spirit glanced down at his body lying on the forest floor below, and immediately, her form began to speed up, exuding a sense that she was filled with confusion, perhaps worry, or perhaps nothing he was interpreting was true to how she really felt at all.

Banon reached out to her.

Her blue tendrils snapped into place, and suddenly the strings were clustered into many distinct dots, almost giving the appearance of stars.

“Wake up,” a feminine voice whispered, though the sound was deafening and came from all directions at once.

Banon’s first experience of being inside flesh again was to gasp and open his eyes, and the second was to realize just how strange it felt to blink. Every minutia that was once taken for granted was brought to the fore, in fact. Blinking was to slide taught flesh over fleshy spheres that caused him vision, and that vision was only in one direction rather than omnidirectional. Breathing was–besides obscenely painful–to force open the bone-encased chamber that protected his lungs, creating negative pressure that resulted in a cool feeling in his throat as air rushed through it. And more, and more, and more. Everything was more and new, hard to get used to, like he was partly experiencing what it was to become an infant exploring the world with his senses again.

Once his more broad-level perceptions came back, he realized he was on his back and surrounded by Yubuou. Ugtang’s entire tribe was here, standing over him and staring down at Banon curiously. He blinked rapidly until he finally figured out he needed to narrow his eyes to prevent the bright light from hurting them. The bright light… of day. It appeared he had been out for longer than he would have liked. His gaze flicked from face to face. Why were the Yubuou so placid? So docile? Just staring at him rather than mulling about, all ancy, picking at themselves or swinging from branches.

Once he finally adjusted to the light, he noticed it…

Every single one of their eyes had a dull purple glint within them.

And Ugtang…

Ugtang was there. Very much there, and fully healed. Even his fur was blonde and unblemished, and his smile was gold. Once, Banon would have thought he might react differently to such an impossible sight as Ugtang, alive and well, after the state he had last seen him in. Now? It was hard to even bother questioning it after what he had seen in his vision. So instead, he just skipped to the good part.

Banon sat up and wrapped Ugtang in an all-encompassing hug.

***

Standing off to the side of the commotion while Ugtang’s entire tribe bustled around the corpse of the Orux, a future emperor and his Yubuou brother stood facing one another, sharing one last smile before Banon departed. Banon kneeled, reaching out to Ugtang, and the Yubuou responded in kind. Ugtang’s much smaller hand clasped inside his, Banon looked deep into his friend's smiling eyes. “I leave this to you, little brother. Another task is calling my name.”

Far away, as if his own soul was momentarily projected there, Banon swore he could hear talons curling into bark, smell its pungent aroma, and lastly and most vividly pictured in his mind's eye, he saw the first rays of sun reflecting blindingly bright against golden feathers.

Not for the first time today, Banon smiled in the face of an impossible task, and then he left Ugtang to his own devices, trusting him to lead his tribe.

And trusting Kimitrius to watch over them all.