A promise.

That’s what they told us, the ones who had dared to ask.

The Olders lived up in the mountains, in damp shadowed caves on beds of moss and poisonous mushrooms, exiled from society.

They alone had taken the perilous trip beyond into the Gauldrim. They alone had payed the price of light to escape the constraints humanity had placed upon themselves. Venturing into the beyond had robbed them of their sight so they could see the past and it had taken their human form so they could assume every other. The few that now remained had imparted profound knowledge and what more? The promise of truth.

Mankind had long ago discovered an infinite energy source and eventually immortality. The dark had all but faded with the ignorance of suffering and imperfection. Now humanity was ideal and thriving, once more.

The new colonies had been dubbed Pandoram after the patron who was tricked and held blame for the cruelty that contained us for eons. Now, we were the gods.

And they the chained.

Because the light had illuminated what was broken with society and fixed the kinks, it had also managed to hide what defined us. We had no motivations, no needs, or wants apparently. But I always wanted jellyback abos.

Anything I could think of I had, immediately.

Instant gratification, and with no tests to build our strength or character we had lost meaning as a species. Bone and matter playing aimless bumper cart on a floating rock.

I asked Older Fron what a bumper cart was and he looked at me blindly from the deep orange eyes of a toad and croaked ,

“All in time”

However being a toad for good was unappealing and I couldn’t fathom what was so wrong about living forever. Then I could acquire jellyback abos whenever I wanted. Wherever I wanted! When I tried to summon a plate just to show Older Fron how good they really were I was rapped across my forehead and thrown from the cave. He didn’t let me back for weeks after that.

“We’re you born to eat, sleep, and die? Are you not then just an animal?” Hissed he in the form of a great green black serpent some time after I had been allowed back into the cave.

I blinked but didn’t dare make a quip about the situation at hand.

“An animal,” I continued carefully as Frons enormous viper head leveled with mine, inches from my face.

“Who has no needs?” I finished, feeling very small as Fron scoffed and dismissed me.

“But wasn’t this the goal!” I added in desperation “after Pandora opened her box weren’t we supposed to obtain peace again? Is that so wrong?”

Somewhere in the back of the yawning cave, from wherever Older Fron had slithered off to- a low deep voice uttered,

“At the cost of what.”

*****

At the edge of the land, just before the ocean, Mount Gauldrim groaned and screamed under the unholy weight that had bled the land dry of life and fortune. An invisible cloud directly above the behemoth cast the mountain in sinister twisting shadows that reached across the sprawling desert in tendrils as if searching for its next victim. It was said that the ancient deities and spirits alike roamed there- soulless, robbed of their power and cursed for infinity to wander without purpose. Here, apart from the shaded caves high in the lush waterlogged mountains were the only darkness to be found here in Pandoram, forever in Spring and the warm glow of a rising sun.