Man of Tomorrow

"With the benefit of hindsight..." he began, but a surge of energy stunned him, interrupting his train of thought.

Tyburn was having none of this. His dragonmark, having recently grown to encompass his entire right arm and start sending feelers across his shoulder, glowed with iridescent energy. It felt good, and right. So it probably wasn't either.

"Listen to me. I hold your life in my hand. Speak plainly, and answer my questions. Nothing else." He glared levelly at the warforged--no, the Reforged, as he identified himself.

"Where, and how, were you forged?"

Gladius righted himself. The surge of power wasn't meant to be painful, but it was debilitating, and a creature crafted to perfect stature ought to play the part. His "skin" was gleaming steel, shining with polish and barely marred by the considerable damage he'd suffered in combat. But underneath, there was no organic material to be found. Warforged were created as animations of inanimate material, like a golem, but with more intelligence and the capacity for sentience. But magic had no need for gearworks or machinery to animate them, and most were comprised principally of wood, stone, iron, and simple (read: cheap) materials.

Gladius was not that. His body was a marvel of engineering. A true automaton, with "muscles" of braided steel cabling, "bones" of alloys impossible to craft outside a Cannith forge, and a power source capable of powering a locomotive or a small airship: a Khyber crystal. Truly, he was not a warforged, but an evolution thereof, leaps and bounds more capable, and more dangerous.

"Unlike you, human, I was made with a purpose. A glorious purpose. Let me tell you the story." His voice was clear, humanlike, but ringing with a clear metallic sheen, as if blown out of some incredibly complex brass horn. His voice dripped with derision, and his superiority complex was evident in every syllable, but Tyburn wasn't about to let a bad attitude stand in the way of a good story.

"Humanity is...hopeless. Or nearly so. For all your gifts, you are indelibly flawed. It isn't your fault, poor things, it's simple the consequence of nature. The inevitability of entropy, the call of the void, that beckons you--" Tyburn's mark flahsed, and Gladius revised his speech accordingly.

"The greatest of your kind imagined me. Or rather, imagined a shadow of me, and in time, was just barely able to glimpse the possiblity of me. Mankind's Glorious Evolution. A superior form, a superior mind, a true successor and a worthy inheritor of this world. And so, was I forged, along with the first of my kin."

Tyburn smoldered at him. "Where?"

Gladius took his time, seemingly weighing the pros and cons of honesty, or perhaps just indulging his theatrical whims. "The city of Making. The new city. The City of Tomorrow." Delighting in the micro-expressions of frustration, confusion, and an audacious glimmer of hope, he tortured Tyburn with an artful pause. "Xulo."

Tyburn didn't need to ask. Gladius knew the question, and knew the weight the answer would hold, so he relished its delivery, like a slap to the face.

"In the Heart of Cyre, on the graves of the fallen, where Making used to stand. The Creation Forge was destroyed, of course, but it was salvaged, and its parts birthed something new, something greater by far. The Genesis Forge. The altar of mankind's deliverance, the focus of his ultimate purpose: to birth the Reforged."

"So you're some kind of...improved warforged, then? Better materials, stronger power source? And that's what makes you so great?" Tyburn tried to match his foe's dismissive stance, to dispel his veil of superiority, but it was fruitless. His curiosity, his longing for a lost home, his vain but everburning hope for its renewal--it was all plain to read on his human face.

"Oh, hardly. I wasn't born in a Creation Forge. I was born just as you." He paused, savoring Tyburn's skeptical glare. "Human."

"You expect me to believe--"

"Tyburn. I was born Ozlan. Son of Starrin."

Tyburn couldn't stop his eyes from widening, his jaw from clenching. This heresy, this lie couldn't be abided. And yet, it didn't have the scent of a lie, not just so. Gladius's chest flared with light, as his dragonmark glowed upon its surface. The Mark of Making, just like Tyburn's. A mark possessed only by trueborn heirs of Cannith.

"I was the son of the last Patriarch of Cannith, and the true heir to your house. And now, I have become what Merrix dreamed of, the fulfilment of your house's purpose. You no longer need to endeavor to create, to strive for invention, to become better than yourself. Rest now, human, for your work is done. I...am the future."