Yeah reading it back today it is a bit confusing for sure. Fun concept to play with in the future maybe, and I'll give it another spin. Thanks for the feedback!

I took a deep breath, straightening my posture and swaying gently back and forth. Moving slowly, I pulled a sheet of paper off of the stack on the table before me. As I slid it towards me I closed my eyes, listening to my fingertips, to the whisper of the paper as it slid across the table, to the paper's fibers slipping apart as I folded. Colors twisted and shimmered across my vision for a moment, but I stayed focused on the craft.

With a slow and final breath out, I opened my eyes.

Perfect. Six hundred and thirty-four.

I inspected the origami crane in my hands, admiring the sharp edges and clean lines I'd managed to produce. The on-site therapist was always encouraging me to have a calming activity, and had signed off on getting me an absurd amount of origami paper after I'd taken to the art.

Relaxing my shoulders, I stood slowly and paced towards the back of my little living room. Just as I was about to add it to the rows and rows lining the wall, the lights dimmed and began to pulse blue.

"Should I put some pants on?" I asked aloud to the camera in the corner of the room.

"Yes." I winced as the voice crackled through the intercom by the door. They'd done their best to avoid spiky disruptions to my environment - changing the blaring klaxon to those blue lights, building day/night cycles into my living space, turning down the speakers - but it was still a bit jarring.

When I was done getting dressed, I grabbed the earpiece off of my nightstand and put it in.

"We've had another activity spike," Alex's voice came through as I bent to put on my socks. "Doc's projecting a nasty breach in about twenty minutes."

I put on my boots, waiting for him to continue.

"She thinks probably on the outskirts, so it'll be drop procedure if that's alright."

"Yeah, I guess," I twiddled with my dampener cuff absentmindedly, sitting on the couch ten feet from the door as per protocol. "The sound fittings are done, right?"

"Yeah, should be a quieter ride than last time," Alex replied, and I could hear the concern in his voice.

-----

Real air. Outside air. Night air.

I didn't mind the facility, honestly. It was for everyone's benefit, I understood, and the people at the facility were very accommodating.

But god was it a rush to be out sometimes. Especially on a night like this.

My combat watch's readout ticked as I walked down the empty street, but it wasn't really for me. They just wanted the data.

"Ready?" Alex asked, more nervous than I'd ever been. I felt a little bad that they were all so scared of me, but I couldn't help it much.

"Yeah, go for it."

"Cool. Uh, be safe." I let out a small laugh, but his genuine concern was always touching. "Hot in five, four..."

My dampener cuff vibrated slightly, and I watched the little lights tick down.

It always hit like a ton of bricks. My mind flickered for a moment as the power crackled through me. Reality wobbled, warped, growing sharp, impossibly fractalline. I could feel the hum in my teeth.

The facts began to filter in, whispers at first.

I was about ten feet from the hotspot and I could taste it. Strong this time. Wicked. Hungry. Different.

The breach opened and a humanoid stepped out.

Humanoid? I wasn't supposed to hurt human-shaped things. No. I always felt bad.

But humans always smelled so soft. This wasn't soft.

The figure stepped forward, under a streetlight. Acrid, it smelled.

"Well, hello there." Its voice was all wrong, like gravel and velvet. "You're quite a thing, aren't you?"

"Yes." I dragged the words to the swirling surface of my mind. They echoed in my skull like a thousand voices speaking in almost-unison. "What.. are you?"

"Well that's a good question now, isn't it?" Cold and hot at the same time, the voice burned.

They'd all been animals, before. Destructive but. Blind. Heedless hunger. This was not an animal.

The thing stalked closer. Wrong, wrong, all wrong. Poison and fire.

"What the fuck is that?" Was it Doc's voice, in my ear? I couldn't tell.

"Ooh, it has friends," the thing said, tilting its head. "Friends that don't know what we are, do they?"

"Okay, listen to me," it was Doc, wasn't it? Her voice was full of triangles. "Do you think you can take that thing in?"

"No." The word was all I could summon before the thing lunged.

My vision fractured, the creature unfolding out along four dimensions, past and future spiraling out around it. I sidestepped, smearing myself out along the same impossible directions it had. The me that hadn't moved caught the thing by the throat. I split again, driving a fist at it's head from the side while dashing towards the breach where the thing's past stretched out behind it. Then again, the me that had it by the neck squeezing tighter while dropping my grip and stepping to the other side.

As the fist made contact, I plunged a hand into the breach, grabbing the creature by its past, feeling the impact of the punch ripple through its timeline. It thrashed, twisting from my grip, but the me on the opposite side of it was ready. I drove my hand into its future-chest and it screamed.

I drank in the noise, and the me standing over the breach pulled.

To an outside observer, it probably looked like nothing had happened. The monster was there, and then it wasn't. But I saw it, felt it rip back into the hole in reality it had made a mere minute ago, sliding through my hands and back out of time.

Then everything went black.

-----

[I ran out of steam after trying to write that 4-dimensional fight scene lol. Let me know if that made any sense and/or if anyone would like to see me continue this a bit further.]

"^(Please, hear my cry, Qriris of the fury. Shield me not, but wreathe me in the armaments of your wrath. Drink of my fire as I walk your burning path beneath the stars.)"

A chill rippled across my skin.

The prayer was quiet, distant, a lone voice in the night.

But it was there.

My name.

My words.

A call to the old-fire.

Though it keened out in a different tongue than the creatures had once invoked me, it echoed against the same cold heavens, spoke of that same furious and ephemeral and beautiful rage that had always kindled a fondness for the humans that had once known me.

It lit my weathered soul ablaze.

I closed my eyes, casting out to find that which had called me. I could feel the beating land beneath my fingertips, ran my hands once more over the great peaks and swelling oceans, searching for the cry.

It wasn't hard to find.

My hands trembled as I set my drink on the bar. Though I'd known his father and his father before, I barely registered the bartender's nod as I walked out into the street.

The cold of so many nights was gone. I felt the hum again, that thrumming current that ran beneath it all, and tipped my head back.

For the first time in a millennia, those once-familiar flames licked at the edges of my being. I tipped my head back in the rush, and in an instant I was gone.

The human was small.

Gods, they were all so small.

My heart broke again for these beings I'd once shepherded, seeing the human there, knelt by a tiny fire. That was always why I'd answered their calls - the heartbreak. That such luminous beings were tethered in such papery flesh, that these fires they built could only ever be such shallow mimicries of the rage within them. That they could themselves gaze on this cosmic injustice, and yet by some cruel fate their bodies had deigned them unworthy of their anger in the face of it.

I knelt by the fire across from the little thing.

"You burn bright, child."

The human opened her eyes, and I saw now the tears streaming silently down her face. There was no shock at my appearance. No, this was why she had been able to call me. The world had taken her shock, hollowed her luminous rage to dull points that strained against the dark.

"I'm so tired," the human said, and her face broke entirely now. She wept, falling to the ground, wracked with a wrenching sorrow.

"Shh, shh," I moved to sit by her, "The world has taken much from you, my darling."

"I can't-" she fought through the choking tears to speak.

"Shh, darling, sit with me, with this fire."

The human sniffled, quelling her tears faster than I thought she might. I helped her up, and we sat for a moment, gazing at the flames. I could feel her breathing quicken, the cogs in her mind begin to turn, the realization of what she had done setting in, so I have her a moment to process.

"You're real?" she asked, and the clawing fight against more tears filled me with a wave of simultaneous pride and sorrow.

"More or less," I replied. "More, now that you've invoked me."

"I didn't know what to do, I didn't-" gods, she had power in her, even as helpless as she was now. "I didn't know how to keep- to keep fighting."

"You're not alone anymore. And that prayer you managed to cook up can be more literal than you think, child." I pushed power into my words, enough for her to feel just how real I could be. "You are entitled to your anger, and that fight is something still in you. I cannot give you that. I can only right the injustice that is your inability to act on that fight."

This seemed to get through to her, and her next word struck me with incredible force.

"Good."

Though she still sniffled, though tears still lined her face, I could feel her kindle once more, the promise of my fire rushing to fill the hollow in her the world had made.

I felt a single tear fall down my own face, and I caught it as it fell, holding it on an outstretched fingertip.

"Tell me, child," I reached my hand into the flame, feeling my tear crystallize. "What has this place done to you?"

"My family- my village-" she gritted her teeth and stood, the sheer force of her will washing over me. "They poisoned the water, they- they took everything."

I stood after her, carrying the drop of my essence now bathed in fire.

"Not everything." I said, and emotions I hadn't felt in centuries filled me, lighting my eyes, my hands, bathing the room in the red glow of the old-fire. "They cannot take your fury."

I held out the teardrop, and she turned her gaze from the night to face me.

"You already know the path. Take it," I said, the voice of the old-fire joining my own. "Take it, and burn them all."