In the broken city of Botta, every type could gather. It was a place of thieves, merchants, nobles, and knights. Demons and humans lived side by side, but not in harmony. The rules were nothing more than words on paper to guide the naive. It was to this place that they gathered. Only here could the freaks, the outcasts, the ones who caught glimpses of other worlds, congregate without fear of hatred.



There it was easy for him to find them. He was an idealist dreamer, wanting the future to hold more than the chaos they lived in. He wanted time to be set right. They could see it, and he would make it happen. Seeking out others, they created the ideals of a new order.



Even others joined them. Others who had the ability to reach out and brush those other worlds that their visions touched. They grew immediatly. People flocked to his promise of power and stability. The greedy craved the training and the honest craved the justice, but they all had a common goal.

The original members formed the Council. They gave the outcasts the title of Seers, relying on their words of wisdom to direct those who acted as Portals. The city of Botta became divided; those who allied themselves with this new organization prospered and those who refused fell further into decline. It was obvious where the future was heading.



As time passed, they became too big for Botta. The Council moved out onto the ocean, keeping their link with Botta only as a single train line. They had room to expand now and began to flourish. The Council began research into the magics. Demons became elemental masters and humans achieved great strides in the studies of runes under their funding. The Council discovered a way to preserve their lives and they persevered for hundreds of years, building their empire.

They became known simply as the Order. Their mission of time stood plainly in the main hallway, a maze of glass and sand that counted the time down as accurately as any clock. It became the greatest honor to sit among the winding art and watch the colors of the sunset glow through the glass contraption as it turned to accommodate the new day.



And so time passed and wherever the influence of the Order reached peace began to grow.

But the minds of humans and demons are not often pure...



Among the Council, few began to grow restless. No longer content with their physical limits, they began to play with lives in an effort to surpass their previous power. He could not know, for he was still honorable, and so they worked under the cover of their own reputation.



The rumor of the melding of two demon kinds, a dangerous hybrid, began to circulate. A brother and a sister, born to two noble demons with money as the driving factor. That the Council would support such a taboo subject stirred up dissention once more. He realized his peers' intentions and slipped into the shadows to try to find a reason. Without him, they lost their honor.



The situation grew worse with each passing year. News was kept secret but it began to leak what they were trying to create. By using the magic of spirits without the buffer of a demon, they could boost the power of a human's body to unimaginable heights. But the beasts that began to stalk the streets couldn't even resemble anything with a soul. They had begun to discard their failed experiments.



To give a demon two spirits was to corrupt the soul. But this did not give them mindless beasts, no, it gave them warriors who would have the mind to take and give orders. The subjects did not last long before the corruption had consumed them, but they found ways to delay the damage. There was always one flaw that they could not explain. And so they simply forged ahead.



Their experiments had no wish to be imprisoned in their hospital beds. The first to be baited understood, and he stole them away. They discovered their own way to survive but at the exchange of their physical bodies for their minds; the Order had given them the curse of immortality, but they refused to be the mindless beasts their predecessors had fallen to.

The first waited, knowing they were not complete. The Council would continue to ignore the rules, no matter how many were becoming aware of their fates changing. There were many who supported the fallen. They still held his honor.