There was a time when blood flowed through my body. I was a mechanism of meat and bone then, kept alive by chemical reactions too small for the eye to see. Yet, as with all people, I was more than that. I was a consciousness, emergent from the finite structure of my body but at the same time in command of it; if I were intrigued my mind would race. If I were angered my blood would rush and grow hot. My body became animate, alive, barely able to contain me.

Now there is no body. No blood. I stretch out my arm and watch it stretch without end. I feel the warmth of the sun and realize that what I thought was my arm was in fact a sand dune baking in the desert. I run my hands through this sand only to find my senses overwhelmed—my consciousness goes on for miles, from the oases, to the dunes, all the way to the river at the edge of Shurima. My country.

My country? No. My body. The desert is my body, and its rivers my blood.

There is a blue sky above me. I can separate myself from this sky. I am the land over which the wind blows, but I am not the wind as well. I feel feet tread upon me; am I one of those that treads upon this land? I sit, and I think, and a generation of so-called "men" grows old and dies. I decide I am not one of these men. Within the sand there are imperfections, clusters of minerals that are denser than the rest. I feel the men dig them up and reshape them into weapons, tools, and idols. Am I these minerals?

Yes, I discover. I bend the minerals as I might bend my finger and the minerals yield to my will. What was the name of this mineral? I watch it elongate, twist, flatten, disintegrate, then reform under my attention. Within two generations I remember the name: Gold.

I flatten the gold into perfect circles. I know not why, but the shape appeals to me. Soon enough the men of the land find my caches of gold circles. They declare them treasures and revel in their fortune. I watch with curiosity as men horde the gold circles into great troves. They fight over them. They die for them. I watch a man rush back into his burning home and die in flames trying to drag a chest of them to safety. I watch a bandit cut a woman's throat for two of them.

A warlord comes from a distant land. He seeks to plunder me for all the gold he can find. I watch his caravan get within site of my border. I let his cohorts see the greedy smile on his face. Then I shift the sands beneath his feet. He screams at the unfairness of it all as his caravan sinks into my body. The gold returns from whence it came, and no more do foreigners plunder me for anything.

Yet more foreigners still come. In the night sky I see fire illuminate smoke clouds that hang over a far-off country. Soon enough its people come to me. They are tired. Hungry. They seek not my gold. Nor are they much interested in me at all. They simply have nowhere else to go. I make ready my oases. I clean my rivers. How pathetic would I be to let such humble travelers die? I cannot stop them from running into burning houses or cutting each other's throats, but I can keep them from succumbing to the elements.

Their pursuers arrive soon after. Black armor. Weapons of bubbling green chemicals and blood red magic that I have never seen before. They talk of conquest and the purity of races. They, tiny as they are, would dare presume ownership of me? My wrath is not so measured as before. From deep beneath the surface of the dunes I bring mighty mountains up to meet these invaders. Miles of land is turned over. Even the wind recoils at the stony walls I bring up from the depths.

Ten generations pass by, and in that time, I watch my people grow. In time there is no difference between the "foreigners" I welcomed ages ago and those native to my land. For they are my people—perhaps not all borne of my body, but all in my care. I may not have a body like they do anymore, but I remember what it was like to be human. Don't I…?

There is one among my people, a bandit, to whom I always feel my gaze being drawn. She is at times alone in the desert, and at other times hidden in the crowd of cities. Yet I always see her. Who is she? If I truly was once a man, then perhaps I knew her. But no, that cannot be. How many ages have come and gone since my time as a mortal? Everyone I knew from before is dead.

I watch her wander into a tomb. It is constructed of gold and sandstone, like something I would make now, but I know it not to be made by my will. Strange, why have I never thought of this tomb before? It must have existed since my time as a human. It seems terribly familiar to me. Yet I never thought to move it as I moved the rest of the desert. Why? She is bleeding, and as I watch the blood leave her body, I feel the wind begin to stir. What is going on? What does the wind know that I do not?

Her blood spills upon the floor of the gold structure and I—

I…

I begin to reconsider my body. I remember the shape I once took. Like heat taking the form of a flame I erupt from the sand and gold of the temple and construct myself a new body. She—who is she?—she watches as all the forces of nature rush to submit to my will. I remember having blood, and bone, and a body. I remember the shape of the golden circle: The sun. I remember the woman's name is Sivir, and her blood is my blood, as is mine hers.

A gang of bandits enters the temple chasing Sivir. Sivir is too shocked by my appearance to speak, but I hear what she thinks towards the bandits: "Traitors!"

From my body I stretch out my arm, forming a shoulder, an elbow, a wrist, then a palm. I open my palm and let sunlight spill for from it. In a moment the bandits are ash.

I split the land open and lift the tomb out of the ground. Sivir clutches the floor and watches as Shurima spreads out before her. Shurima… I am Shurima. But I was also once called Azir, and I believe that name suits me, even after all these years.