My name is Samathin Thierry, I used to be human once, but now, I am not quite so sure what I am. I have travelled through strange realms just to get to this very moment in time and space.
This is how my story started.
It is South Australia in the 1830s. I sit hunched over behind an oaken desk, pen nib in my left hand and my right hand fervently holds down the parchment. My study is brimming with books, they almost pour from the walls, and are shoved behind doors. Right now, as we speak, I am on the brink of uncovering some secret about the universe, it pours out of my brain through the pen, forming diagrams and scrawling shapes. I start to be filled with an ecstasy unlike any other.
It all makes so much sense.
But if word got out that I found this out…
I then hold my hand to my mouth in fear.
There’s no way. I can’t let anyone know. It’s too risky.
I roll up the parchment and stuff it in between the rows of books on my largest bookshelf. Here it would have to stay. For many decades it would go untouched. Gathering dust, until my twilight years when word got out I was less like a rambling madman and instead, someone that knew the Great Truth.
They burst into my dusty sealed up study. They held a gun to my head.
‘Tell us where it is, Thierry!’
I move between the shelves, holding my ground. Unwavering in my conviction whilst forced to walk with a cane. I still remembered exactly where I had stored it, those many years ago.
‘Even if you have it, you won’t ever grasp the Truth.’
I found the scroll. It had been nibbled by insects around the edges and some still living insects dropped out and scurried away across the floor. I gingerly unfurl it and…
It was….completely blank?
‘What happened? I swear it was this one.’
I wondered if the ink had completely faded, but no, it was more as if the symbols on the page had sprouted legs and walked away.
‘You idiot! This will cost you your life!’
Before I had the chance to beg for my life:
BLAM.
Samathin Thierry - a brilliant but unrecognised light - was now extinguished.