Preamble: Weird time travel, medias res, lots of Fidchell dialogue and I heard on the day that I wrote this that if you stop in the middle of a word it's easier to pick up your train of thought next time you sit down and write. It didn't work. At all. In fact, it was rather counter productive since I now had the problem of ending on a dangling sentence that led nowhere 'cause I couldn't I remember what I had in mind at all. Woe.

Disclaimer: The World and its characters belong to Cyber Connect 2.

I give each and every word to God.

. . .

.:The Lamentations of Fidchell:.

"Fidchell has a bit of a different idea than Tarvos, so don't think Pi's report will help here," he cautioned the human.

No matter the timeline, Yata had never been keen on action unless he had all of his ducks in a row, but fear of personal danger could change anyone.

He dropped the Key, its pieces landing in a half circle fence at his back. After a bit of thought, he pulled out Fidchell and Skeith's fragments. Skeith's piece often needed to be tapped first to activate the others. The way of both worlds said that something must first die before it could live. He couldn't force what the humans had dubbed as an Awakening without it.

He hesitated. Things could go wrong. The human factor for one. The second reason was the very same reason he was here doing this in the first place. This World was not his own, but one long past. Who better to ask about a lost future than the Prophet? His own emotions troubled him though. For the life of him, he couldn't solve why he feared the Prophet more than a fortelling.

He set his jaw and willed the fragments together. They snagged in an odd dissonance for a moment, then hummed into sweet harmony. Morganna's music lived inside the Key, inside of him, and that music drew on her Phases. For a moment, the song sealed his own electric signature to Fidchell's, forcefully pulling the Epitaph from his user.

Suddenly, he was pinned to the ground. Fidchell hovered over him.

"Get off me."

Fidchell laid a firm hand on the unwitting captive's chest; the Phase's eyes glittering with menace underneath his mask. "Where thou hast trod, time hath grown still. Where thou hast rooted thyself, memory corrodeth. Dost thine eyes see naught?"

Puzzled, he let himself lay there for a moment unsuccessfully trying to see what the Prophet considered dire enough to intervene over. His ideas were fruitless, and his patience ran out. He briefly tested his strength against the Epitaph's, unsurprised to find himself utterly outmatched. Neither could he rewrite his location.

Yata lingered quietly in the background. Watching as always. Although admittedly, there was very little he could do with Fidchell nearly removing the human's influence for the time being.

Fidchell stared at him, directly into his eyes. As if the AI was looking for something. There was a pondering atmosphere about the Epitaph. Fidchell apparently decided it was time for an interrogation. "What be thy name?"

"Key." He answered immediately and in honesty.

The Prophet's eyes shone through his mask, searching ever deeper into his own. "Skeith. Thou. . . Dost thee believe thyself? Verily thou holdest the Key, not be."

He scowled. "I am not Skeith. I carry part of him in me, much the same as I carry part of you and all of the other Phases."

The Prophet shook his head. "Once, thou surely wert."

He must have messed up pretty terribly with Fidchell's premature Awakening. Maybe he should have used all of the Factors instead of just Skeith's. Confusion and irritation laced his retort, "It's always been that way. Look, I just used his fragment."

Fidchell lanced a free hand through his shoulder. "Mayhap there be something amiss." The Prophet's analysis bored through his senses with no consideration to privacy and peace of mind. It didn't hurt though. It seemed Fidchell didn't wish him any harm.

Fidchell suddenly jerked back and out from his data so abruptly that it made him oddly dizzy. "Thou dost not! Wherefore dost thee? O' wherefore?" The Prophet's voice shuddered with grief. Fidchell raised his head to gaze directly at Yata, suddenly pulling the watchful shadow of a user to the center of attention. "User, Master, I beseech you. I implore your forgiveness. Hither be my brother, and thither be his inequity. Wert he of sound mind, he never would dareth."