If you're a Dragon, Lord of the Rings, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Norse Mythology, or a fan of Sarcastic and Sassy characters, you might like The Enderings: REMEMBRANCE posted by (Helios)

COVER BY Helios

Prologue

"I never believed that you would exist. That the parts needed to create a catalyst would ever survive," Loki laughed coldly as he looked down on the strange human contraption holding his descendant within. He'd only recently escaped his prison. The world that surrounded him was unlike anything he'd have ever fathomed, but that didn't matter. No, not when he could feel the power of this thing.

He had never been the greatest being that walked the Earth but he never expected to be punished for that. What had he ever done to deserve what he'd lived through? All he'd ever tried to accomplish was have a decent life after everything he'd survived only for his mate to betray him unforgivably, and his hatchlings to grow corrupted.

"But fate always has its ways doesn't it? Even if all the odds are against it."

Loki walked around the capsule, studying the still face of the young woman below. Calling her a woman was wrong for a number of reasons. The only thing human about her was her ability to sin. She was a creature of power, his descendant, supposedly his grandchild. She was a shapeshifter like himself, a predator, an animal. She was a servant of man just as all the creatures of the Earth are, but they were supposed to be greater, they were supposed to be beside man. Man repaid them for their gifts with death.

Humans were disgusting creatures. They were selfish and crude. They had only their own interests in mind. They crafted and spread lies for their own gain at the expense of others' lives. Creature of fellow man, it didn't matter. Humans would kill anything. They found ways to kill the unkillable, to destroy the immortal.

"I will help you. I will help you destroy them all if you promise me one thing," he looked down on the face of the Endering. He wished he knew who she was, what her name is. He wished he could be sure he knew who her parents were, though he had a very good idea as to who it was. Only one of his hatchlings had eggs before everything fell apart. He didn't think that any had survived. "When it's your time to wake, promise that you will destroy mankind,"

Loki leaned against the glass, pressing his hands against the smooth surface. He could see a faint reflection of himself as he stared down at his decedent. "And destroy what remains of the monsters I brought into this world. That is, if they don't destroy each other first,"

Chapter 1

VAUGHN

Present 25th Century

'I'm not supposed to be here,'

"Vitals are all normal with the acceptation of increased brain activity which we've been seeing more of recently." A man in a white lab coat said as he checked the screens on the glass of the sleek stasis bed. The person laying under the dome appeared asleep, using the chamber as it was intended for coma patients.

'Not that I'm supposed to be anywhere, being dead and all. That's what makes this so hard. I'm supposed to be the one controlling this scene, and I guess I am, just not in the way I'm expected to. Not anymore.'

I watched intently through another medic's eyes as they approached, almost shuddering out of sheer nervousness. Me, not him. "Could the activity be evidence of unresponsive awareness?" he asked while peering over their colleague's shoulder to look at the blue, yellow and orange demographics being projected on a heightened hologram, many more following the length of the glass surface; each relaying its own bit of information. The senior medic moved aside to allow his student to see what he was looking at.

'You see, I'm not human. On top of that, I'm not even normal for my own kind. I can manipulate minds like putty, reading thoughts, forcing someone to think or believe something, control their body, invade their memories or use them as an interface into the living world, into Midgard. I used to live here. I belong here, but someone took it away with the hopes of tearing apart someone's life. Unfortunately, I was literally torn apart in the making of that targeted revenge and then forced to play a part in the plot myself because I was weak.'

The senior doctor had been working on this case for a few decades now, having served many years recording all inconsistencies and gathering as much information that could possibly be milked out of the unresponsive subject. There was very little left for him to take away. He was growing old, his years of being useful diminishing every day that he remained. Knowing that his time with her would be coming to a close, he'd been preparing to hand down the reins to his new trainee the student at his side who was hardly a trainee anymore.

"I don't believe so. It's not significant enough to suggest she's entering a vigil state." The other muttered before swiping a hand over the cluster of holograms in front of him, collapsing them all back down to the surface of the chamber glass. He raised a tablet that he kept on hand, holding it near demographics to update recent catalogued data. They'd been seeing an increase in unusual patterns from the subject's biological readings. It was a pity that he had no more than a week left to work with her before he was to be retired; he had a feeling that this information was going to lead up to something amazing, something that he and a Cypress generation before him had been waiting for. He'd regret not getting to see what the heightened brain activity meant.

'I'm the reason why she hasn't been able to wake in the past. For weeks now I'd been trying to slowly bring her back. I wasn't sure what the side effects of being in stasis for five centuries would do to a person, nor did I want Hel to notice what I was doing. Hel is her mother,'

"Dr. Schultz, I'd like to ask you something. Now, this does not affect my dedication to my Unit assignment, but why are we putting so much time and resource into this subject? Going so far as assigning an entire Unit solely to its attention. Why are we keeping someone that was collected from the twentieth century war alive?" The apprentice asked.

I pushed away from the perspective of this human to jump to the older, wanting the better perspective he could offer. He could see her if he'd just turn his head.

The doctor sighed, "First of all, we are not keeping this subject alive. She is completely self-sustaining. It has been with us since 1944 during World War II and was found by the previous US troops near a small town in Germany. Despite their primitive technology and knowledge, they knew she was an asset worth taking before someone else found her. They'd expected her to die of her wounds and be an interesting dissection, but after spending weeks in secure facility it was clear that she wasn't going to die after her wounds had healed on their own. They tried euthanizing her multiple times throughout the twentieth century but never succeeded."

'Her name is Nyxn. As the offspring of death, of course she couldn't be killed, not that they knew that. It even took me a few decades to figure that out, but the reason she's here is almost directly connected to her inability to succumb to her mother's calling. Hel couldn't kill the daughter she'd grown to hate so dearly, so she planned the next best thing. Torture.'

"The US government didn't do much with her from there, simply shipped her out to a holding center in Arizona until the new United Nations took over after the Third War. Cypress was initiated and put took control of her case after she'd remained unobserved for at least a century. We saw that she was far more useful than she'd been letting on, so Cypress has been overseeing research and her care. There's little that we can get from her now, but there are things about her that confound biological science that are worth unlocking. Unfortunately, she's a master of withholding her secrets. We hope that one day she'll wake to give us what she's been hiding. My personal goal was to unlock the key to immortality. In all the time she's been here, she wasn't aged a day." The doctor droned on, earning him a bored look from his apprentice who had simply wanted a short and sweet answer and not a repeat of the same speech he'd been given one too many times . . . . . . . .

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OFFICIAL ART FOR THE ENDERINGS: REMEMBRANCE by Helios Helios_Narloch