It wasn’t long before a guardsman patrolled every street.

  My kin have retreated.

  Leaving me alone.

  But accordingly, I can act without regard.

  A building partially out of place, in the middle of the street. Covered in snow, the old building of the warm blooded rests as an elder to the vigorous youth surrounding it.

  The warm blooded call it a mythical place.

  It’s existence a warping of common normalcy.

  So those warm blooded say.

  A tomb of the legacy.

  It opens to few.

  Four years and most know that several legacies inside reside.

  Of honored, none grasped the picture of those legacies.

  The snow crunched beneath the weight of my foots unfaltering will to carry my body forward.

  A woman with hair that of mammals that hide and ravenously eat hard shells in trees stepped down from the doors raised entrance.

  Sighing softly, then glanced at me.

  Taking no insult from it, I reached for the handle once my hands were within range.

  Using all force, the door opened without so much a scream.

  The woman standing in the snow quietly floundered.

  Speech and action at the same time.

  Entering, the legacies were in the form of square thins. What the warm blooded would say is a ‘book’.

  In dull and sharp colours, they all rested on wood.

  …A far cry from the legacies imagined.

  Sitting, a warm blooded tapped a strange trap. Pieces of metal clamped together, and the warm blooded swiftly moved their finger away.

  Their expression resembled Harka. That constantly bored kin if not fighting.

  However in comparison to warm blooded seen, movements are sluggish.

  Weak.

  Like the snow, easily crushed.

  In my mind they were not a warrior.

  My kin would disregard and promptly grace them with mercy befitting the fragile.

  In sight is only one. The beholder of the legacy.

  The beholder merely played with metal.

  Tools of various purposes grasped in the hand and put down once that purpose was achieved.

  The beholder this time put their finger on the circular disk. Using their finger to push it down.

  The force of my feet made no sound on the soft entwined threads below.

  Engrossed in prying the thin metal resembling jaws, they made no effort to even be wary of threats.

  Until the movement of their hands stopped as their sight was shadowed by my presence.

  Slowly the working hands rested on the wood.

  Eyes of deep shadows indecipherably did not move from the metal trap.

  Considering the clothing among warm blooded, it was just as strange.

  The beholder's head looked up.

  “What do you want.”

  The beholder said in a flat tone.

  …The beholder's face resembled less that look of boredom.

  A profound madness coiled in the beholder's eyes of shadow. Contempt rising with every second.

  A prickly sensation crawled over me.

  My hand reached for the axe.

  “What do you want.”

  The beholder asked again in a lighter tone with cynicism.

  “My head? Claim it.”

  The beholder returned to adjusting the metal in place.

  With that, their eyes turned downwards. The prickly sensation receded.

  From a strengthless warm blooded.

  “What are you?”

  The beholder snorted.

  “What do I look like.”

  Secrets in the tomb of legacy.

  And the beholder of the legacy is one as well.

  How interesting.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “I seek greater power.”

  “Power. Ha.” the beholder sneered.

  A lashing from the past?

  “The second floor.” the beholder's hand pulled out a compartment. “Illitarates. Let it guide you to the section.”

  The beholder tossed it.

  Grabbing it, the light of the guiding spirits flowed to the destination.

  Following the trail of wispy light, it flowed in the air with direct lines.

  Climbing the stairs led to a slightly different colour everywhere. The first floor was red tinged.

  Now a blue tinged place. Looking downwards brought about this change.

  The rails of wood were distinct in sharp borders.

  Sharing both tinges.

  A detail blandly remarkable.

  Returning to the light's guidance, it led to a section of legacies residing on darker wood.

  A carving of words above hung. A language of the warm blooded? Yet recalling no such language.

  The light ceased to appear from the flat see-through square with a paper of white in it.

  Remaining in my hands gripped by the thin thread coiled. Similar to a necklace.

  Moving in between the legacies, I took one out.

  Opening it, a vision formed.

  [One…punch…?]

  The guttural yell of a bald man sounded.

  From there, the vision continued with beasts of all kinds, so easily erased from life.

  The snuffing of any fight.

  It was certainly power.

  Yet not the kind I seeked.

  Placing the legacy back roughly, I grabbed one legacy below.

  [Power is strange. A concept between physical and figurative.]

  ‘Then power in a story is like… food. The urge to consume.’

  No vision graced my sight.

  But words shook with vigor as they became understandable.

  Detailing someone's thoughts to what power is. What it means. What it feels to have.

  It is the words of someone far from any taste of power.

  No warrior would second guess themself before a challenge.

  But it gives an interesting insight to power. A version sought out by the weak.

  [              ]

  The one next to it had nothing.

  ‘   ?     .     ….’

  No words.

  [    ]

  ‘ .’

  The one after that.

  [  ]

  ‘  ….’

  Empty.

  All that stands with vigor in sight are the end of words.

  Scouring through all of them in the row, was the second legacy to not refuse it’s contents being shown.

  Perhaps I am not worthy to see those legacies.

  [I am the creator. Bear your sanity. Bear your insanity.]

  ‘For peace I must… put down freedom. The child must be an adult for them.’

  Restriction emplaced upon themselves for those they lead. Having limitless power, swallowing pride and self. Burying it deep inside.

  Suffer for those that will take your role in the future.

  Teach for those that will have children.

  Listen to their pain and agony.

  A light to their path.

  Dissent must be crushed before it can sprout, slowly or quickly, order must be established.

  A legacy of someone raising children. The vision that appeared was hazy.

  No sight but a vague shape of the chieftain with no title.

  Monsters and animals that could talk, servants of the sky in myths adhering to the words of the chieftain with no title.

  Their word law.

  Their word order.

  They do it all for the prosperity and survival of those that follow them. Those that they created.

  What flows from them is everything to give and everything to lose.

  There is more.

  This legacy is what I want.

  My hand closes it with a snap.

  Though the other legacy is not necessary it might advise on a different perspective.

  Leaving the area the wisps of light guided me to, I returned back to the first floor.

  Seeing the beholder reading a book. With the metal trap no longer on the desk with nothing from it being there.

  Their eyes of shadow repetitively went back and forth at a slow pace.

  Eventually they dropped the book and stared upwards. Placing their arm on their face.

  Approaching towards the desk, they quietly sighed.

  One eye gazed at me from under the arm covering their upper face.

  “...Got your things? Great. Get out.” the beholder thumbed the door after lifting their arm.

  The contempt in their eyes grew fiercer despite no change in expression.

  “What else do you want.”

  “I found what I sought to acclaim.”

  “Ha. How wonderful. Anything else you want to say.”

  “How jaded are you?”

  “Haha.”

  The beholder snickered with a curved smile that fell in seconds.

  “Not very much.”

  A flat faced lie left the beholder's lips.

  I moved to the door and opened it.

  With ease it opened.

  The beholder seemed to care not one bit.

  Not for the one who came, nor for what is taken.

  The moment my feet crossed the door, the beholder spoke.

  “See you next time warrior Inkal.” the door moved with life in the split second the beholder gazed with gleeful madness.

  Slammed into it’s resting place, the door became a wall with a protrusion.

  Those worthy of acknowledgement get in.

  Those worthy of the legacy are picked.

  A question of the beholder was sprouted and left to wither.

  For at this time, as the dark rules the sky, the warm blooded search.

  The woman from before had widened eyes. Staring like the underhanded with base greed to the legacy I hold.

  Passing her, the street was scarce of warmblooded.

  “Y– Wh–What did you–”

  “There!”

  The stuttered woman was interrupted as the warm blooded like hounds traced my location.

  Breaking into a sprint, I ran towards the warm blooded. Gripping my axe.

  Silencing them will earn less glory but leaving them alive will alert others.

  That woman might too.

  The tomb of the legacy slips from my mind.

  In time I learned how powerful the legacies were.

  And the suppressed craving for more that sparked.