"HO! You seem to have regained your senses."
A deep, middle-aged voice rang through the whole place as soon as the door of the cage opened to reveal a tall man.
The man's age could not be determined because of the poorly lit atmosphere of the cage.
Cain was uncomfortable, the voice that the man spoke with was similar, almost indistinguishable, from the voice that welcomed users when they logged into the system in the secret oval room situated beside the mainframe room of A.M.B.E.R.
Cain looked up at the man's eyes from his kneeling position.
He was wondering if his spit would reach the man's face from down there.
He closed his left eye, the man seemed like a burning flame from the special vision that his left eye gave him.
There was no heat but somehow just looking at the man through his left eye caused Cain's brain to feel pain.
It was not a pain that burning caused but he was sure his brain would melt if he was forced to witness the man's flame for a prolonged time.
Cain studied the man with his right eye.
He didn't spit on the man's face, not because he feared this man -who for sure was dangerous- but simply because he didn't have enough strength yet to get enough force behind his spit.
"Marvelous." The man spoke again.
Distracting Cain from his thoughts of showing defiance by shooting saliva off of his mouth.
"Let's see your face clearly, shall we?" The man spoke while bringing his left hand closer to Cain's face.
A flame burst out from the man's hand, illuminating the cage, and finally revealing the face of the tall man.
The man seemed to be In his late 50s, his visage bearing a few etched wrinkles, each line a silent testament to trials endured and lessons learned. Locks of white hair streak through his auburn mane, glinting like silver threads of hard-earned wisdom –in this man's case, Cain was sure that he had treachery in case of wisdom and a lot of it.
"Your eyes remind me of someone... Specially the jewel on your left." The man said, his face was calm with a subtle smile on it, mocking anyone who mistook this Middle aged man for anything less than utter danger.
A face Cain was sure many gerontophiles would kill for.
"Perhaps you knew my mother, I may be a secret child of yours considering all the attention I got from my childhood." Cain said with a straight face.
"A man of humor, I take you." The man said with a faint smile, And continued: "No, you sadly are not. You remind me of Dolores."
The man seemed to reminiscence for a bit and continued: "She was your ancestor, likely a great great aunt or something along those lines."
"So you had a thing for old women when you were young." Cain said, stopped for a bit, and continued while having a straight uncaring face: "That still doesn't explain you meeting her while she was alive, so did you perhaps saw a portrait of hers and fantasized your self a lovely love story."
"Haha! No no, I didn't have much time for romance in my eventful life, I did have a lovely rivalry with Dolores. I knew her when both of us were young." The man said with the same small smile playing carelessly on his face.
"So... are you some kind of a cyborg EmberWake made with your frozen body or maybe a vampire or maybe you guys know a way to safely store and transplant a brain while keeping memories and cognitive functions intact." Cain asked this time finishing with a yawn, as if he didn't just wake up from being unconscious.
"Nothing along those things. I'm simply old." The man said, made a movement with the fingers of his left hand –the flame in his left hand flew up as soon as he did, it reached the ceiling of the cage and spread throughout it, burning while flowing like water in the ceiling, causing a warm bright radiance to spread throughout the room.
The man stood with a straight body, the radiance making his whole body finally visible.
The man wore a gambeson, hands now behind.
"Let's get to business." The man wore a serious expression now, no hint of the slight smile he wore until now.
"You are worthy enough to know my name. And be glad to be in the presence of... Ravanan R Pholz." The man declared.
"What is the R in the middle for?" Cain asked with a slight smile and continued: "Don't tell me you are weird enough to use Rich as your middle name."
"It's for Regicide.
People started calling me that behind my back after I slayed Dolores. So I wore it like an accomplishment." Ravanan replied plainly.
"Do I have a claim to the throne of some secret society you belong to, because Dolores was my ancestor? and that is why you haven't killed me yet, because there is a faction that still backs me and you don't want a civil war or something." Cain said rapidly and without care as if this conversation wasn't to decide his but someone else's life.
"You have a sanguine imagination of your situation... No, there is no faction of importance backing you, and you don't have any claim to any seat of power. How could you? You, who was just two days ago part of a structured, sheltered society, you who have not whiffed the faintest scent of secrets, of horrors that lay hidden behind the common knowledge of reality." Ravanan chided plainly.
"You may live in a different world than mine but what do you mean that I was living in a structured, sheltered society?" Cain asked then opened his left eye and continued, "People are living in a controlled chaos, most aren't even living, they are simply walking corpses, living on the edge between intellectual death and madness, with bodies that are filled with toxins and diseases, what do you mean I know little about secrets and horrors, I know plenty of horror and much of it was shown by you people" Cain said while enduring the pain that he felt from simply opening and gazing upon ravanan with his left eye.
The streams of floating energy he could perceive now was somehow different now as if interacting with him, a few strands of thread like streams parted from the flowing streams of energy and slowly circled around him as if waiting for his command.
"What knowledge of worth do you even have, you ignorant child," Ravanan said with clear disgust betrayed by his voice.
"I know many disgusting secrets, secrets that sound like delusions of a madman, and even if I try showing others that they have been lied to and kept in the dark, kept in servitude of deceit, no matter how much I tried, no matter what proof I gave, most didn't believe, most even forgot, hell, even I forgot, you people messed with my mind, you made countless people disappear as if they didn't exist, and now I don't even care if the people are exploited, mislead, made to fight against each other, because I know it's pointless, most don't want to know the truth of the World and still live and struggle in it, most just want a hopeful lie, an escape from the responsibility of their choices, a distant dream of a good life that deep down they know don't exist for them." Cain replied with disgust of his own.
"ATLEAST THEY ARE LIVING!" Ravanan shouted with rage. His eyes were telling a story of hatred. Long accumulated hatred.
Ravanan's shout wasn't the loudest that Cain had heard, he had Heard loud screeches of literal monsters and loud deafening booms of artillery fire. But none effected Cain as much as Ravanan's shout, it was as if his soul was shaking by his voice.
"All that humanity has achieved throughout the ages are the results of hard work and sacrifices done by a few chosen people, and what do they get for their contribution? NOTHING! They are forgotten, their legacy tarnished, defiled, stolen, burned to ash. You don't even need to find forgotten history nor look for truth in manipulated scriptures of religion, just look at the society today, capable and talented people are exploited, dreams shattered and forced to live and work a job they don't even want. Do you think it was all because of us? NO! we simply used human nature to bind the population in a cage of it's own sins." Ravanan stopped, walked closer to Cain then bent forward to grab Cain by His neck.
Then continued: "And you were forsaken by heaven to be born with the potential to awaken, thus you have to be one of 'us', us accursed people who bear the responsibility of delaying the end of this world, to resist the gates of hell itself, we who were betrayed by the humanity, we the guards of this godless world." Ravanan had just stopped speaking when Cain opened his mouth and spat.
Cain spat right onto Ravanan's face.