“I’ve tried to keep up as best as I can, but I know it’ll be a world I barely recognize. I see the sights and hear the noises on a daily basis. They’re all strange and unusual to me. Technology has advanced. Computers, mobile phones, the internet, they’re all things I’ve never experienced. My head knows what they are, but my mind has yet to learn their function in the world that I’ll have to live in when I leave here.”
“It’s not just that. The people, they’re different. Tolerance is fading.”
The man snorted a laugh of derision.
“I lived through many wars. Tolerance has never been a strong point for humans, or shifters. We’re not so unalike. We both seek to destroy what does not fit with our beliefs. I’ve seen the methods currently employed to instill belief. They’re not so different from when I was free the last time. I died the third time in a bombing campaign, remember.”
The fact his friend was immortal was always something he forgot because he aged like everybody else. Ethern had always thought of him as normal, if there was such a word for their species. It was only when it was time for him to die in his current life that he was returned to his youth and started again. He hadn’t always been this way, for he was a multi-shifter just like them. But the power, which surged through his veins, left him incapable of ever truly dying.
“I remember,” Ethern stated. “You’ve seen enough to give you an eternity of unwanted memories. We hid you away when we should and could have learned from you.”
“You hid me away because I’m more dangerous than anyone can imagine. That’s why. But the danger has shifted now, and I must prepare myself.”
The man’s eyes flicked again to a lizard-like appearance. Ethern’s own body tensed and relaxed alternately as he felt the power emanating from the man in front of him. He stepped back from the bars.
“Until it’s time,” Ethern affirmed as his skin turned green, and he began to disappear into thin air. Behind him, he heard the cries of agony when a giant fireball engulfed the dungeons, killing the shifters who suffered there. All except one, for just before he finally vanished, the sky darkened, he felt the air chill around him, and Ethern knew his friend had escaped and flown away.