I stood there for more than a minute, shocked. I'd only rarely seen Azen act differently than his usual condesending self, and I'd never seen him sad, let alone crying. I stood there, unsure of what to do. He was obviously upset! I ran over and knelt by him. "Azen...?" He didn't react, and the sobbing just increased. I could tell he wanted to be alone. I backed up and whispered, "I will be in my room... I'm sorry." I glanced one last time at him kneeling, head in hands, and ran off. I climbed the ladder quickly and ran to my room, feeling horrible. I just had to go open the door, didn't I? I should have just left it alone. Why did I have to be so damn stupid?! I knew it'd upset him!

I threw myself on my bed and tried to think rationally. He would've gone down sooner or later, right? It wasn't like I'd killed them myself! I sighed. Who had taken over after his mentor's death? Maybe his room would have clues? Hopefully Azen didn't get rid of everything yet. I ran over to Azen's room and quickly examined it. Damnit. Completely clean and set up. I sighed again, thinking. Where did he put the rest of the stuff? I quickly ran to a storage room and started opening drawers. All of Azen's stuff. I ran to a different storage room and threw open a drawer.

It wasn't Azen's, that was for sure. There were just stacks of research papers on multiple subjects, mostly on the human world. I ruffled through a few other drawers and found another fact. There were two people who had written papers. One was named Seran Diarel, the other was named Leace Keriv. I glanced through a few more papers. All of Seran's were older, so Seran had to be Azen's old mentor. Leace was the murderer. I grabbed a stack of Seran's and Leace's papers and ran to my room, curious about both of them.

I began reading through them. Seran seemed like a casual, friendly, funny person by the way he wrote. Leace seemed very cold and calculated, very detached from emotion. You could tell a lot by how a person wrote. Most of the subjects were boring, and I couldn't follow them. I found a single one written by Azen in the stack that I must have grabbed by accident. Why was Azen's work in there? I examined it carefully. It wasn't very well written, and it was more than a hundred years old! How old was Azen?! I sighed and put the papers away, tired. I slipped into bed and blew out the candle, falling asleep instantly.

The next morning I woke up to a huge crash. I jumped out of bed and sprinted to the source of the noise; the library. I opened the door and ran in, scared of what I might find. One of the shelves had fallen, and hundreds of books had flewn everywhere. I looked around, wondering what had happened. Where was Azen? I froze. Was he under...? "Azen?! Azen?! Are you in here? Are you okay?!" I heard a muffled sigh, and immediatley felt releived. Azen spoke again, voice comically muffled. "Yes, but It'd be nice if somebody, hmm, maybe pushed this huge shelf off of me?" I rolled my eyes and lifted the shelf up long enough for Azen to crawl out. It was heavy!

I watched Azen stand up and dust himself off, looking angry. "What happened?" I asked, barely able to keep from smirking. He still glared at me. "I was trying to reach a book. The book was stuck. Very stuck. The bookshelf fell." I rolled my eyes. "What book was it?" He held out a book and I accepted it. I flipped through it and my eyes widened. It was written by Seran, and it was a manual about the underground mini-world. I quickly handed it back to him. "What are you trying to do?" He smiled softly. "Fix it." I nodded. "Need any help?" He looked at me for a few moments, and then grinned. "Just don't get in my way."

We climbed down the ladder and walked to the river's origin point, which was a hole in the wall. He examined a passage in the book and grinned. He walked over to large gray boulder and wiped away some dirt at the base. He pressed a small button and covered it back up. About thirty seconds later, a hole in the wall opened up, and we ducked inside. I froze, staring in awe. There was a six-foot wall of dull gray mass. There were objects made of weird material sitting everywhere, and you couldn't take two steps without trampling papers. It looked alien.

I turned to Azen. "What the hell is all of this?! It's not from this world!" He smiled at me. "I'm not supposed to tell anyone this, but you're my Kerilin, so its fine I suppose. My mentor's partner's form was able to travel through time. All of this is technology from many hundreds of years into the future." I looked at him, wondering if he was insane. My head was spinning from all of this, it was just so weird. It almost seemed stranger than the existance of demons. I smiled faintly. "That's nice." he rolled his eyes and sat in a chair. "My mentor taught me about all of this stuff while I was with him. I know how to keep it up and running, but I had no idea how to set it up and fix it, so I needed the manual."

I blinked. "Thats incredible!" He grinned at me. "It certainly is." He paused and glanced at me. "Aris... I'm sorry for breaking down like that. I should have had better control over myself, I apologize." I shrugged. "It's fine, I don't mind. I'm here to help, right?" I grinned at him, and his eyes softened. "Whatever." He turned back, smiling. He pressed a button on a strange object in front of him and it lit up. I stepped back. Were there candles inside?! How did that work?! "What the hell is that, Azen?" He smiled at me, probably remembering his first day. "It's a computer, it runs on electricity." I stared at him, even more confused. He opened a drawer and ruffled through it, pulling out a book. "It's a bit confusing, but it explains computers, electricity, and wiring. Read it!" I sighed and began reading the book.

It took me more than six hours to read the damn thing. I was still a bit confused, but I figured I knew enough. Computers proccessed ones and zeros into commands, and were able to solve incredible mathmatical problems and run whole continents. They ran on electricity, which is energy. It was kind of like how food powered us. Azen was still messing with the computer. I sat down by him and watched numbers and words cross the screen, Azen typing quickly at the keyboard. After forty-five or so minutes, he gave a cry of triumph. "The water is on!" I wondered what had taken so long, but decided to not say anything. We walked out of the hole in the wall and stared. "That's a lot more than water, Azen." I mumbled.

Crystal-clear water had started flowing out of the hole, but that was the least impressive thing. The dull gray ceiling had come to life, and was now a light blue sky dotted with white fluffy clouds. The clouds even moved! There was a bright sun that looked exactly like the human realm's, and I could feel the heat from it! It was much warmer and brigher, and I even felt a small breeze! It would've been a perfect paradise if not for all of the dead trees and all of the skeletons. I could tell Azen was thinking about it too. He had walked out with a happy expression, but was now walking back in, looking stony-faced.

He began reading the manual again, and after a few minutes, his face lit up. "That's incredibe!" he practically leaped out of his chair, grinning. I looked at him, startled. "What?!" He grinned happily at me, eyes shining with joy. "My mentor could be very lazy sometimes! He must've not wanted to have to replace everything if something went wrong and it all died, so he added a genetic code into everything living! If anything died, he could just send out a certain frequency, and whatever died would repair itself! This technology is incredible! He must have went a hundred thousand years into the future for it!"

I grinned happily at him. "That's amazing! Can you do it?!" He smirked at me. "Don't doubt me, dammit!" He began to work, his eyes still shining with joy. A few hours later he stood up. "Let's go see if it worked!" We walked outside, and his eyes filled with disappointment. Nothing had happened. He glanced back inside, and sighed. "I tried everything." He sat agaisnt the boulder and closed his eyes, seemingly exhausted. "Well, you still were able to get the water and sky working! That's amazing!" He shrugged. "I guess." I sat by him and watched the clouds.

About ten minutes after Azen fell asleep, something happened. I noticed a speck of green appear by the river and walked up to it. A beautiful blade of grass, green and very much alive. My eyes widened as I saw the green start to spread, and soon all of the grass I could see was a deep, living green. The trees that had fallen did nothing, but the ones still standing grew fresh bark, and leaves started growing quickly. A few seconds later, I saw a vole dart into a leafy green bush. I saw a fox and her kits grow out of skeletons into living, breathing creatures and walk into their den. It was amazing, but it also just seemed wrong. Life out of death.

I nudged Azen until he woke up. He opened his eyes and glared at me, but then he froze before saying anything. He slowly turned his head and surveyed everything, his eyes growing from dull to shining. Everything was better now.