The Battle Prophet Arrives in Biodome
(This story is told with periodic visual aids that contribute to a theme that can be found in keynoted links throughout. Please, click on these links/cues and immerse yourself into the vision as they pop up for a better overall experience. Thank you)

The threat in Adenna had been neutralized. But at what cost?

A great many things were paid for in ensuring the safety of the citizens of the country. One such price had been Mage?s home. He was no longer welcome here. After what he?d done, he didn?t blame them. That didn?t make them any less wrong, though.

What he?d done, he did to save the city and all the people in it. But he could never expect the people to begin to understand the things he saw with his Future?s Gaze. It was a power that spoke only to him, and he could only ever speak to it. To tell anyone his visions was to endanger them from ever happening, and since it was the future he saw, he could not allow that. Sometimes even he had to ensure the futures he saw. He guided a man to his death to save his country... and they could never know.

Mage had waited on confirmation back home in the land of Abastumanani for re-entry into their sacred city where his blood and countrymen lived. It was looking like it would be the only place he?d be able to return to now. That was until notice had arrived by one of his clansmen who also shared the prophetic Future?s Gaze ability:

?Mage,

We applaud your efforts at being able to save the country you?ve lived in so long, but your work in the city of Adenna has come to an end. Our prophets with the longest Future Gazes have determined your pen is complete at writing the outcomes posed by your own Future?s Gaze. You will return home and retire your eyes before our council. Please incinerate this missive.

? Waiver,
Third Seat?

Mage knew what that meant. His usefulness ? or rather his role had come to an end. Retiring his eyes was closing them forever, and if he did not return home, then his people would send a team after him. Any option at this point ended in his death. But something was different about him now than when he started working as an upholder of the True Future: he didn?t want to die.

In the beginning he had accepted his fate. Now, he never felt more alive, or more willing to fight for his life. He did burn the letter; for protocol?s sake and because he no longer wanted to behold the slip of paper that requested his fate.

He was slightly confused and unsure of the future, but this gave him the idea to break one of his clansmen almighty laws: using the Future?s Gaze for your own True Future. He closed his eyes and tapped into the power, and the more time he spent searching for the vision, the more aggravated did his closed eyes become. He saw no bits or pieces, heard no sounds or utterances. It was all a void.

What started off as an aggravation and nothing at all, quickly turned into quite something to Mage. He saw no future for himself because it was not yet in place. If his death at his clansmen?s hands was not cemented, then he still had say-so in his destiny. This made his decision all the more clear: it was time to leave Adenna forever.

This last glimpse over the city he was making from a not so high rooftop in Warrior?s Way, he deduced, would be his last memories of the city?s beauty. He had been fortunate in a way to remain here a day longer than he had planned to leave, but now the plan had changed slightly. He was still leaving, but it was not back to Abastumanani now. His last moments in Adenna would be restocking on rations for his travels, wherever those might be.

He bought a dry and longlasting bread in the market that was easily rejuvenated by dunking it in clean drinking water. He also filled his canteen with purified water and bought a cured leather gourd of wine for his travels, and he stocked for some very long travels.

Trading in all but his large sword, the All-Killer, he exchanged camp and food and survival materials for his weight in armor he had left behind. He no longer needed it. Mage the warrior, now Mage the ranger; Mage the wanderer.

He used his stealth skills to exit the city without notice and continued to maintain a state of high awareness until he was well outside the city limits. He had a very specific destination, but after that he would have to just pick a direction and begin walking in it. The city was well behind him now as he descended a large boulder that was one of the last high perches that still saw anything of the Adenna?s rooftops. He was on one of the larger islands beyond the city, and a short sprint away from a transportation relic that would take him to another realm.

Before reaching it, a voice carried over the valleys and hills across the island reached his ears.

?Mage!? The voice shouted.

It was difficult, nigh impossible to make out the person, but to Mage it could only be a very short list of persons. Actually, he was almost positive who it had been: Christopher Andan.
Lending itself to this theory was the tossed golden hair on-top of the figure?s head so far away. Yes, there?s no one else it could have been. No one else had bothered to take an interest in what he had been doing as of late. And what Chris wanted was to convince him to stay.

?Let me go, Chris.? Mage hushed before stepping onto the transportation relic.

The Chase Begins

Pursuit at Sea

Two mighty sailing vessels cut to the open waters of the deep blue.

Chris was the closest he?d ever been now.

Mage navigated a small sailboat by himself, frequently paying attention back to the boat that followed him back at the horizon? unmoving. The waves lifted the bow of his stolen boat and crashed it back down with the aggression of the hunt taking place.

With the All-Killer crammed in at the back of the boat, Mage visored the beating sun with his hand while his shirt was blown by the high winds carrying them at such high speeds. He saw an island in the distance, and made for it.

It was Chris who washed up next to the abandoned boat and continued his chase on foot, traveling much lighter than the sword-carrying Battle Prophet. It was a beautiful country, and running through the woodland directly beyond their small beach space, he soon came into contact with the type of place this was.

There were gnomes in this area Chris had arrived in, which surprised him but he was mindful to keep his attention on the mission. He walked at a brisk pace past machines of noise and notable size. It was clear the gnomes were tinkerers, and their trainyard he passed by was particularly impressive.

Several train cars were parked in closed tracks, and even fewer engines, but they were impressive engines. One would come in his way as he continued tracking, and he read on its side: Key?s Forwarder.An engine of prestige no doubt, and he praised the gnomes property until he was alone with the country again.

Mage?s skills as a vagabond further showed in this country in another of the Island Nation?s neighboring districts from the gnome town. He was in a town occupied by simple and peaceful humans who were not as far progressed as others just across the sea. A short clock tower built of brick was pleasant to gaze upon, and led to the street where neighbors lived in modest houses next to and across from each other.

He clasped his hands together and pleaded in a polite and calming manner to be put up in an elderly couple?s home for the night, something they obliged him on wholeheartedly. And when Chris came investigating to that very house just before dusk, the man and woman convincingly shook their heads to his inquiries about a man whom he was looking for and described.

He was safe another night.

Morning came and he knew he had to get out. No place was safe for too long. So he thanked the couple for a quick breakfast and for allowing him to stay with them no-questions-asked, and then proceeded on his way, back on the run.

His next plan was to score a train ticket and close some serious distance between him and Christopher Andan, but it had to be done in a certain way. Ticket in hand, he regularly watched the boarding and unboarding of passengers during the loading time. He would get on right when he was sure Chris wasn?t on, and likewise he would abandon the plan and flee at first sign of him.

The final whistle blew and time was running out. He decided to get on, and that was when the watchful eye of Andan caught him from across the boarding platform. All Mage could do was speedily make to an unoccupied seat in the car and sit with his sword, watching out the window as Chris ran to catch up with him.

He got the closest he ever had so far in this chase, running up to smack on the side below the window Mage sat at. Getting his attention even more with that, the two shared a stare while Chris had to increase his run speed to keep up with the accelerating train. It was too fast to grab onto now, and Chris ultimately had to stop at the end of the platform and swing out a punch to the air.

Mage watched him become a small figure in his view and then was able to relax in his seat until the train arrived wherever it would.

By now Abastumanani agents would be after him as well. Time would be running out soon. It was time to try and use his Future?s Gaze yet again to see if he foresaw where he would go next, and then divert from that course. If he could not elude Chris, then he could not elude his assassins, therefore he would have to elude history?s key points before they happened.

Mage had done the unthinkable. He had avoided death.

If his clansmen could not find him in Rhydin, then they could miss finding him again, and again.

With these windows of chance now available, Mage designed to leave Rhydin, and Adenna, and all familiar realms forever.

To do this meant traveling to places already far beyond the reach of most men.

An interstice his people had known about for many generations was always spoken of as a moral and lesson of how fate and destiny balanced things in our universes. It was never a physical place that his people were told they could visit. But Mage knew it must be out there.

He speculated somewhere he crossed into the ?territory? of this place long after he actually had.

For some reason, purple grass, and purple stone, and purple sky and purple sea hadn?t even occurred odd to him. Oh, that sea; oh that sky.

A picture was worth a word that there were no words for.

He had stopped walking automatically upon reaching this magical place?s harbor and sat himself to a chest of spices and so hungrily feasted on with his eyes the view of this sea. He was not sure he was even making coherent choices any longer.

Beside him, a voice confirmed he was not dead, or drowned in a place where people were only forgotten from the worlds.

He told him that he was a sailor, and would be departing soon, and Mage was welcome to come with him.

He eagerly obliged, expressing his thanks, never once taking his eyes off the purple horizon where the colored sea and sky fused at a warm fuzzy glare.

On-board the large clipper and headed into the sun, Mage seized the rail at the bow of the ship, and couldn?t be bothered to admire the purple wakes cutting on the sides of the vessel; not with that sun ahead of him.

At some point they sailed out and crossed into the very sun. Its definitive color traded places with an intense feeling of warmth and only then did brightness consume the meager limitations of mortal absorption.

When his eyes were able to see again, they did all at once, and he saw he was in a place the likes of which had never been seen before.

The First Beholdance of Biodome

The short man at the helm far behind Mage grinned while he observed the stupor that his one and only passenger was in.

Mage had no words for what he beheld, save to say that it instilled a comforting fear within his soul.

The world before him was being reached by an astral-sand coasting craft, and it was bringing him to a wine-colored world peppered in continent-sized terrariums and overcast with violet lightning strikes.

To Mage it was a haven that was often experienced at the end of a chase. For some it meant collapsing and replenishing the energy they had spent going such huge distances. This would be no exception to that rule if it were the case. For others there was a groove point to fall into where you were rewarded by Fate a safe zone for all your efforts. Which could it be, Mage wondered right before his collapse on-board the ship.

Facing those amethyst skies before large white dome bodies began to creep in around the sides of him and the ship like looking up beside skyscrapers might, but the scopes of this situation were too unusual to recount.

When he fainted, he did so with a grin on his face.

A grin that he had arrived in such a beautiful place.

A grin that his pursuers were finally gone.

A grin that he might even be dead.

But he would wake up.