Chapter 1 - Awakening

You waken. Your body is stiff, as if you haven't moved in months. As you stir and attempt to open your eyes, everything is hazy; you can barely make out light from dark. Blinking a few times, your vision clears, though not entirely. It'll come in time, you assume. As you begin to stretch, trying to stand, you try to think how you got there.

...

How did you get here? Actually, where is here? Actually, nothing is coming to mind, at all. Every thought you try to pull up just brings up a blank fuzz. A bit of worry is starting to set in. Actually, there's NOTHING coming to mind. No name, no family, no history, not even a favorite food. It's only by looking down at your arms and feet that you can remember what sort of being you even are. And looking down, you notice you're wearing simple robes that look faded and worn with time, somehow both ancient and yet holding together. Your brain can't completely make sense of it.

Still blurry, you finally focus on the room you're in. A floor with only shreds of cloth in a corner... maybe once a mattress? A ceiling, smooth, as if from a single slab of... stone? 3 walls, with no seams where they meet the floor or ceiling. The floor and walls are smooth too. Is this room maybe carved from a single giant block of stone? It's not that large either... And in front of you... bars. This is a jail cell. You're in a jail cell. What did you do to get throw into jail? The bars are strange too. They're not just parallel and perpendicular beams. Interspersed are crystals in the center of intricate metal patterns, pieces of wood set into wreaths of faded, dead plants and flowers, candelabras with pictographs inscribed on them, the wax of dead candles left in them.

It's too bright to see outside the bars. The only noise you can hear is stone creaking.

You actually don't smell (bad). Given what you look and feel like you'd think you stink, but strangely, you don't.

As Jorem shifts towards the bars, he starts to make out what's outside the cell. It's very bright, but not a harsh light; perhaps a warm light? It's definitely sunlight. It's still not clear, but you see a large mass outside the cell, maybe 15 feet away. It looks sort of like a table? It's too hard to tell; you'll need to get closer to the bars to see more.

As your minds begin functioning again, you realize you know things. You know language (or maybe more than one), you know how to speak, you know what people are, what things are... you just can't remember who YOU are. What you are. Anything specific to you.

As Jorem crawls closer to the bars, as Tetsuwan stumbles forward, as Elric approaches the bars, you can more clearly make out the room. Sunlight floods in, bringing in peace and warmth, though only though a relatively small hole in the ceiling. The central mass looks like a circular slab of stone, about 15 ft in diameter, 3 ft high. Made of a smooth white stone, it has 6 circular daises on it's inner perimeter, set at equal distances, each a foot or so in diameter, raised above the central platform. Each has something on it, though you can't make it out. There is a dais directly in front of your cell. The white stone would be completely unmarred, except there is a radiating fracture from it's center, presumably caused by what appears to be a small, dark ball in it's center. Clearly, that fell through the ceiling and broke the stone.

As your eyes adjust to the light more, notice the ground and ceiling outside your cage is made of the same substance as your cage, again as if from one piece of material. Outside your cages, however, you see an intricate lattice of channels dug into the ground and ceiling. Paying careful attention, it looks like a channel originates from the dais in front of you and makes its way to your cage, splitting, forming patterns, as if a river breaking into a man-made delta. You can see small chunks of crystal, tiny broken pieces, laid into the channel randomly, the rest simply filled with dust.

Only Jorem can feel power coming from the grooves in the ground, an old, faded power. Arannis and Dwoinan can feel faded power in the aligning wards on their bars.

You can see someone who is up near their cage.