But all the legends in the world could not obscure the truth. Whisper knew the history of this place. To her, it would always be the Well of Flux.

She saw it as it was meant to be seen- From afar, at the break of day, a verdant silhouette, growing closer, until it was before her, around her, above her, a canopy, a sound of birds. Acacias shed their fuzzy yellow florets at her side, and Whisper flowed in the paths between the mounds like a lost river on its way to the spring at its heart.

There by its terraced center did she rest, wondering at the mind of its Sculptor.

These groves were not static. In time the hooves of a thousand horses led to drink had worn down the sides of the pool, prompting repair by the tribes that made use of it. Others had dug into the sides of the mounds seeking wealth and finding nothing. Shrines to the younger djinni of the region had appeared atop the larger hills, and one night the stone people had appeared to build a barrow of their own at the edge of the maze, upon which they had established a softly coloured orchard where restless skeletons might sleep in a tomb of glass. Pretty curls of those same twigs and veins later made their way into the jewellery of the Rukbans, and the spines of its faeries into their tools.

[colour=honeydew][i]All this,[/i][/colour] thought Whisper. [colour=ivory][i]All this, out of parasitism and pain.[/i][/colour]

Few elementals had ever taken the Jvanic route. It was not often in their nature. And fewer still survived. The deepest throes of the ascension left them vulnerable. What then, was Flux? Lucky? Freakish? The oldest? The most powerful? /No,/ Whisper knew.

Flux was synthesis. Nothing more and nothing less. A collision of natures had been resolved in him. That was all.

This place stood monument to the union of nature at its grandest scale and art at its deepest esotery. In Flux, the living legacies of Jvan and Zephyrion stood side by side with no contradiction. Whisper looked at his story and recognised it as the beginning of her own. Pain. Parasitism. And in the end...

[colour=mistyrose][i]Flux never had to control a war,[/i][/colour] came the thought.

It was quiet here. When night fell, Whisper left that place, taking her first faeries from the lens tree.

[center][colour=aliceblue][i]What union exists
In proud and weird betwixt?
Do ashes live
When all is burned to dust and mist?[/i][/colour]

[colour=mistyrose][i]Do gardens to us show
The stranger end to all we know?
Can ashes give
A place where paradise will grow?[/i][/colour]

[colour=lavenderblush][i]Will anything survive
The ones that ash of life deprive?
Should ash forgive
When gardens burn instead of thrive?[/i][/colour][/center]

[center][h3]* * * * *[/h3][/center]