The name of the device that they had been trapped in all these years was Mageia Sotiras. The mage who had built it had one thought while he was building it. This device was meant to be a saviour for all magic. For a while, they had the mage to keep them company. The mage had never given his name. He was just the mage, nothing more, nothing less.

  Because of the device they called themself Mageia and the device was simply Sotiras. That was what the humans did, right? They gave each other names that they could use when referring to each other. They gave names to objects and concepts and even colours. Words were just a weird thing. They only came about because some human had realized they were aware of the world outside of their small role in it.

  Mageia hadn’t gotten it until very recently. They had simply existed in the world. It didn’t matter to them how people saw them. They knew that they helped a lot of people and also hurt a lot of people, but that was just how things were. They were a force of nature, nothing more and nothing less, at least until recently, when they suddenly became aware of the world outside of their role in it.

  They were in some sort of sphere within a small, hidden lab. There was a small desk, and the mage always came to read through his large, dusty books. Mageia wished that they could see the words of the book, but they were too far for it to see. They couldn’t read words anyway. They could think of them, but that was it.

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  They were curious about the mage. He didn’t look happy. They saw no one else other than the mage, though they could hear voices coming from upstairs. The mage grumbled under his breath about stupid people.

  Then the mage was gone, and Mageia was alone. They were trapped in the darkness with nothing to do beside think. They lived in their fantasy world full of fantasy and magic. They were the monarch of a kingdom. There was a war on the horizon, and they had been recruiting creatures of all species to fight in their army. They had been traveling to find the unicorns and the dragons and all the other creatures that lived in their country. It was a lot of fun, and even though all of this came from their mind within the sphere, they were excited to see what was going to happen next.

  “Meow.”

  They heard a voice. For the first time in a long time, Mageia looked away from their imagined world. There, they saw the first creature they had seen since they had been trapped in the darkness. They could only see with the glow that came off their form. They looked directly into glowing yellow eyes.

  They wanted to call out to the creature, to tell it to stay. It ran when it heard the footsteps walking down to the room adjoining the room that help Mageia Sotiras. “Hello?” a feminine voice called out. “Blade? Is that you? Did you do something?”

  Mageia wanted to call out to whoever this person was, if they were a person. They wanted to call this person into the small room so that they could see who it was and so that they could ask what had happened to the mage.

  As the human walked back up the stairs they knew that it was impossible. They may never be allowed to see another human again. They began to feel lonely again so they retreated back into the world of their imagination. That was the only thing they had left.