Time. It always comes back to time, in the end.
He has always had a strange relationship with it; forwards, backwards, frozen, upside-down – the concept of temporal continuity has long since lost any and all meaning to him.
But for as turbulent as his personal timeline has become, there still is a beginning to it.
There is a point A to the madness, and a frustratingly linear stretch of time that spells out his early life.
Time. He rarely has a grasp on its flow these days, so lost is he in the unmaking of its laws.
Time.
There had once been a time when he had had no concept of it at all.
Yes, time – the child in his little containment cell doesn't perceive it.
He doesn't track the steps of those who pass by outside of the large glass walls that fence in his tiny world.
He doesn't count his heartbeats in those moments in-between, or wonder how long ago his last meal was and when the next one might arrive.
He doesn't search the sterile white room with his eyes to find something he can do to pass the time.
He doesn't do any of this, for he doesn't know boredom.
He doesn't know boredom, for he doesn't know time.
He simply sits in his little white room, surrounded by glass walls and pointy, gleaming instruments, and the world passes him by.
And he sits.
And he stares.
And he sees nothing.
The people that pass by his cell do so with purpose. Their stride is as clean and clinical as the rest of their surroundings, and the eyes with which they check notepads and machine read-outs are sharp and calculating.
Every now and then they will press a button or flip a switch and the child will jolt in his little glass cage, a physical reaction of pain or stress or maybe both, and then he will go back to sitting still and limp because the needles in his brain keep him from thinking or doing much of anything at all.
The people in their long white lab coats will clap and cheer and take notes on their notepads, and then they will flip a few more switches or press a few more buttons.
They also cheer, of course, on the day their experiment is finally complete. They cheer as they pull the needles out of the child's brain. They cheer as they replace them with five shards of green crystal, small and thin and unassuming, yet brimming with the power and potential of creation itself. They cheer as they seamlessly seal the incisions with technology we can't yet comprehend, and then they cheer some more as the child blinks his eyes and looks around in puzzlement, truly alive for the first time in years.
They cheer, and then they don't.
Because that is the moment the laboratory explodes.
Or perhaps, "explodes" isn't quite the right word. An explosion would imply fire and smouldering ruins.
What happens is more akin to a glitch in the fabric of space and time; there is a child, reaching up with shaking hands to clutch at his head, and then there is a shock wave that defies the human senses (though its flash would leave your blinded eyes with the faintest impression of the colour teal), and then there is nothing. No glass walls. No white ceilings. No metal instruments. No scientists. Just rubble, and a fine, red mist.
And in the centre of it all, there is a perfectly round crater, and in it there is a child, his mouth agape in a soundless wail as he clutches his silvery head, a tempest of pure, unconstrained chaos whipping around his small body.
It's hard to say how long this goes on for, but for someone who has only just woken up to the concept of time, it must surely feel like an eternity. However long it is, the child eventually slumps to the ground in exhaustion, his eyes rolling back into his head as he faints, and it is only then that the unnatural wind around him subsides, winking out alongside his consciousness.
It's no wonder the scientists were cheering in their final moments.
They had finally succeeded in creating their ultimate weapon.
And somewhere far away, on the other side of this burnt husk of a planet, the Ifrit roars and spreads its sky-encompassing wings.