"Have you made up your mind yet?" said a voice to my right as I gazed out at the horizon from the top of the mountains I was in.
The view was one of the most incredible and disconcerting things I had ever seen in my existence, the terrain was rugged as if a catastrophe had raised these mountains.
The horizon was also strange, with different colors here and there, as if each area in the distance had passed through something different, a strange dichotomy of environments, from dry rock, large forested areas, and to the north. A kind of sea or lake in the sky that stretched for several kilometers. Something that in my previous life had not existed, and 'something' more ominous than that.
"It's not something I can decide lightly", I replied to my strange companion.
"I know," he said, his tone hinting at impatience, even with his deep, booming voice.
"But you cannot delay too long, the next awakening of Ovathrax is approaching, and human forces are dwindling with each passing day", there was something in his voice that made me glance at him, something that spoke of finality and inevitability.
"You talk as if you care about humans", I couldn't help but say, it was the first time since we met that he spoke with any feeling about something other than him or me. What I said didn't go unanswered, though not immediately. He narrowed his eyes and frowned slightly, taking a few seconds to reply.
"I don't", he replied somewhat sharply, "at least not in the way you make things important".
"And how is that?" I asked him, now looking at him directly, it still caused me some surprise and strangeness to talk to the being next to me, a large black wolf with red eyes whose fur moved like smoke. This gave the sensation of being made of shadows. On his forehead was a red jewel in the shape of a sword.
His whole being should have scared me, what it was, it should have terrified me and made me question my sanity, given what I knew of beings like him. But instead, there was none of that, only understanding, camaraderie, and a strange feeling of complement, like a brother or close relative.
"You know what we are", he said, as he stood up from his lying position and sat on his hind legs.
I nodded at what he said, I was more than clear about what they were, although I was still having trouble assimilating it.
Trenodians were the evil of humanity, born from corrupt AIs of a system that had been created to prevent the Lament or Lamentations if you want to be more specific.
Mass extinction events, something that I still had a hard time assimilating and believing, I had never seen or experienced something of that magnitude firsthand, and I hoped, I really hoped not to experience something similar.
"What you probably wouldn't expect is that we are more closely related to humanity than anyone knows", I frowned slightly at what he said, and I began to wonder what the reason for this 'related' he was talking about could be. Although I didn't get to think about it for a long time, since the wolf spoke again.
"We Trenodians feed off the collapsed will of humans, their frequencies after death, all their desires, regrets, despair, obsessions, resentments, and so on", I was more or less clear about that, that they fed off the frequencies of humans.
"But each Trenodian feeds on different parts of those frequencies depending on what concept they adopted during their creation, and the rest they discard to become Tacet Discords", well, that's something I more or less expected.
"But not all of us seek the destruction of humanity. We are like a counterweight, or a cycle, but…" he remained silent for a few moments.
"We need humanity to continue existing", now that's new.
"And why would that be?" I asked, puzzled, and he looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
"I think it's clear, we feed on its frequencies, which generate our being, power, ego and purpose, everything we are comes from humanity, and without it, we cannot continue to exist", that… makes perfect sense.
"But why attack humanity if they require them?", I asked, surprised.
"By our concept of birth, the frequencies we feed on create our purpose and direction, like Ovathrax you see over there, his concept is war, battles, fights, conflicts of all kinds, and war… it creates nothing, it only destroys and there isn't much left to destroy," I could only remain silent at what he said and look at the giant colossus half destroyed or half formed depending on how you look at it. It was enormous even at the distance it was at, with purple lights that spoke of the terrible power it carried.
'War', I said in my mind, 'how terrible war is'.