A recent creation, perhaps. But the links of time for gods and mortals were ever shifting and changing - with how grown the Grove was it carried a sense of ancient existence. Fadewalker had been around for eons - earning his right to divinity. Each growth within the forest he placed himself and reared by servo into what they were. Countless sparks stumbled upon it, housed within areas previously baren. Rust swallowed land reclaimed by vitality and darkness, ruins giving way to spires and boughs of glittering blues and purples.
A place to safely rest and recollect ones thoughts or meditate, the air calm to soothe frayed nerves and processors. The creatures lurking in the darkness aimed to protect and not harm the mortal life that passed through, their purple optics all seeing and lead by the divine’s whim.
Celatum observes the taller mechanism avert their gaze with an air of intrigue. He, unlike other divines, chose to make himself safe to look upon. He was a teacher, a mentor, a guiding hand. His acolytes and followers were allowed to view shadowed and gilded frame of the entity without repercussions to their mental or physical state. But why would Predaking shy away? Did another quell his recollection of the figure before him?
Another task for another time to solve, he supposed.
‘You may call me as I am, Predaking.’ A soft, warm lilt kindles to the multi-limbed mechanism’s tone as tail sways gently. Celatum. Fadewalker. Black Dragon. All suggested titles for the beastformer to choose from, offered in processor as if by the entity’s own thought, alongside the feeling that it would be safe to gaze upon the deity.. He does not tamper more than that, however.
'Yet you prevail. That is good. Have you come to recover for the path ahead, if I may ask?’
The name slipped out reflexively, the others falling from his processors like the rain he flicked from his plating. Predaking was the only true dragon among Predacons, and the other name given held no meaning, was without import.
Besides which, the surroundings nearly trumpeted the Fadewalker’s name. The shadows whispered it in soft susurrations, the motes of light sighed it as the went past. The deity’s presence was stamped upon the very soul of this place, worn into it by eons of familiarity.
Though he could see the Fadewalker from the very corner of his optic, and knew himself safe from harm to gaze upon it, he resolutely kept his gaze away. To stare too long at another ran ill with his programming, honed for long cycles by interactions with other Predacons. A direct look at one more powerful was a challenge, an insolence not to be tolerated.
Though he knew that this God would not find it so, he could not find it in himself to offer such a challenge. Not after the last time, when his challenge had lead to the deaths of his species.
“The path ahead carries no dread, for I know myself strong enough to meet the challenges. It is the road behind that dogs at my heels and snaps at my Spark, casting heated sparks upon ready fuel.”
He could feel them, see them every time he closed his optics. Flames that melted mountains, light that drove mates to murder, the deadly all-consuming flares that had sunk their claws deep into Cybertron and laid low even the most obdurate structure.
The terror of losing himself, of feeling the light burn himself out of his processors and fleeing before it only to find that as far as his wings has carried him, the light had run ahead and waited for him with crocodilian jaws. The crushing despair at knowing that, for all their vaunted speed in the air and on the ground, his people could not outrun the light and that all the hiding places in the deeps had been sealed long ago by the hated Primes.
These memories and more had survived death itself, burned into his very being. If you cracked open his spark chamber, you would find them etched into the very walls as reflections of how they were etched into his fire-fueled Spark. Not a microsecond went by when he could not feel their poisonously fiery bite nipping at the edges of his processors, simply waiting for the spark that would set them into furious life once more.
Here, though, the memories were muted. He did not fear them any less, but here their teeth were pulled. It was not, precisely, peace - but it was closer than anything he’d experienced since his resurrection and for that he was grateful in many measures.
