Editing Nobledark Imperium Writing (section)

==Unnamed Shadowsun Writing==

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She awoke as always to emptiness, always the same feeling. Loss and regret and creeping dread of all the things left behind knowingly and the things she had not realized each time. When she was young T'au had been a far different place, better it had been to her mind or at least more familiar. She had barely known her parents or siblings as with all Fire Warriors though what she did remember was love and warmth. Old comrades, lovers, friends and even the rivals all lost to the Time Thief.

In the moments before the deep sleep, when the steel sheath came down over glass but the drugs hadn't put her out like a candle there was a moment of darkness. Candle flame is brightest in pure darkness without stars. In those moments before the sleep as all distractions ceased the light, the impossible light shone brightest. The light beyond space and stars and the inferno of war. In the stillness of a beatless heart, still lungs and almost total biological shut down, in the quiet and weightlessness of a sleep impossibly deeper than mere death her lidless eyes were naked before eternal warming flame.

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It was in that fire that her ashes were reborn upon awakening, time stolen from death, life beyond the Thief of Time. Usefulness once more in sacrifice to The Greater Good. More days stored away like winter grain offered in sacrifice to the heathen gods of ancient days, life, her life offered in stolen days for the lives of her people.

She had only seen the light of that candle flame in one other place. Reflected in the eyes of another living relic washed up on the shores of this strange era. In those eyes it was not candle flame flickering and dancing and gentle. In those eyes it was the constant glare. Two holes cut into a man's face right to the heart of a star, unceasing, incomprehensible intensity. It ultimately brought life but it was not gentle, it was inferno and holocaust and it was eternal.

The Thief of Time had stolen her friends and lovers and rivals but it clawed seemingly in vain at the stony countenance of Aun’o’T’au’Acaya’Va’Denta. Aun'Va, he of granite and basalt. Timeless as a mountain and about as stubborn. She knew that he lied, he was the old man she had spoken to in her youth, he who had commanded her into battle in another era. He told others that there had been a line of Va, a lineage of the name unbroken since the days of Aun'Da. But she knew that for the centuries that she had seen and knew of him he had always been himself. The same old man in whom the Greater Good burned like star fire.

How far back did he go? Was he the First Disciple of scripture? That would be impossible she knew, unthinkable and unreasonable, but these were unreasonable times that had seen things unthinkable and horrifying. He had lived impossibly long, how far did impossibility go?

And he knew that she knew. How many other knew of his unnatural longevity? How many had he lied to? Did it matter? Deception was one more weapon of war. Used when needed and put aside in times of peace.

Much like herself.

Her heart beat again in the darkness. The flame receded. Blood began to flow through her veins, sluggish at first, her heart a timid and flickering thing now in this time of rebirth.

Now was the moment of true darkness. The steel sheath still enclosing, protecting her as she awoke. The device she lay in was a relic of her era, familiar and comforting. One day she knew she would not wake up from it and it would be a deathbed. She was fine with that, her ashes would return to her people, distant now as they were.

Another beat of the heart. Stronger now. Blood forced to move. Sensation returned to her extremities, burning as the capillaries adjusted oxygen binding to cobalt as the decades old oxy-gel in her lungs was finally put to some use.

Another beat, she risked the opening of her eyes, blood red and bright, a sliver.

Light. Blinding, clean and white. She wanted to close them again but, that was cowardice and she knew it. Nothing born without some pain was worth keeping and she forced her eyes to open wider, to take in the light.

She could hear muffled sounds, mechanical sounds of antiquated medical equipment and the more hushed, gentle and deeper sounds of Earth Caste technician voices. With the speed of a glacier she moved one aching arm forwards and rapped gently on her glass enclosure as the blinding light resolved itself into people shapes. They jumped to her amusement she saw as she turned her head slowly to the side trying to ignore the light sensation as the anesthetics that had sat long dormant in her body finally found something to do.

The seals on the glass broke with a half hiss, half crack of still machinery coming away from rest, the fluids she had been suspended in drained away and left her resting on an old and faded polymer web mat. She swung her legs to the side and say upright, she felt weak, hideously weak, she always did. She could not afford to show it. She was a legend, a living legend. Unlike Aun'Va she had no problem with the public knowledge that she was a historic relic, it was good. She was a strong helping hand from the days of legend reaching forwards through time. Clarity was returning to her eyes now, some small measure of strength flowing back into her limbs. The figure before her was resolving itself into the robed figure that always greeted her when she awoke. She should feel honoured, she did not especially. He was another old legend like herself.

Grabbing a bucket from an Earth Cast orderly she emptied the oxy-gel from her lungs with as much dignity as could be mustered and took deep of the air of another century she should never have known.

"I have awoken and there is a war". She knew that this day would be recorded. It was always recorded. She had to play her part at all times. "I serve The Greater Good in all things."

There is always a war when we call upon you to serve." Replied the gaunt old figure standing before her. They had both played these parts many times down the eons, always it would go like this. It offered a chilly sort of comfort.

Shadowsun did not remember anymore how many times she had awoken. How many times she had lived and died and lived again. How many wars there had been. How much the Thief of Time had taken from her.

There would be a war. New combatants, new soldiers, new weapons, new horrors aplenty and that was for damn sure and always new faces and names and allies and friends as the Greater Good, the philosophy of unity and purpose was adopted across the stars under new names knowingly or unknowingly. It was the triumph and universally recognized truth of civility over barbarity realized time and again across the stars adopted by those that would survive and would survive and prosper because of it. She would sacrifice all she was or would ever be for it and do so gladly for such a truth, one death at a time. One day sacrificed at a time.

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