The Books of Askani' part II

Tetherblood

Of all those who have stood beside the Askani'Son, Tetherblood may be the most vital key to understanding Nathan Dayspring.
Meeting Nathan shortly after he had been forever separated from Redd and Slym Dayspring, the man called Tetherblood raised the boy who would one day become the Askani'Son as his own. While anyone who suspected Dayspring's destiny treated the boy with much reverence and a wide berth--or just as often, fear and intimidation in the face of a would-be savior--his contemporary Tetherblood had no such compunction.
To Tetherblood, Nathan's future as messiah to an entire world held absolutely no dispensation from everyday responsibilities whatsoever. It didn't get Nathan out of chores. It didn't mean he could skip school. It did not even keep the younger boy from occasionally getting trounced by the older Tetherblood.
In many ways, the relationship between the two "brothers" helped keep Nathan grounded--never losing sight of the living, breathing, loving populace he would one day be called on to lead toward emancipation.

Apocalypse

He was there in the beginning...when the first light of the amber sliced across the azure sky. There, in the shadows.
Surviving.
Both blessed and burdened by a life that will not end, he who was once called En Sabur Nur has slept but a handful of sleeps since the dawn of time. Each time he arose, he was confronted by "change" In time, those changes came to be called "mutations"
He understood that one day, those mutations would stop. Evolution will have run its course. "The weak will have passed the way of the wind, and the strong will stand tall as the mountains!" Yet, for all his vision, he did not see the forthcoming of Xavier--a man with a vision stronger than his own. A man who saw that the wind is always there, ever changing, and that any mountain may fall to the shifting of the earth, or the roar of the river!
As centuries passed and civilizations rose and fell, this man called Apocalypse would wake to discover there was one constant that never changed. Since Xavier and his X-Men, there were others who would stand against him--mutants willing to fight not only for their own survival, but rather for the survival of all living beings. They were called the X.S.E. The Scions of Xavier. The Askani' The Clan Chosen. Yet despite their victories, he is still there.
There, in the shadows. Surviving.

Stryfe

Scion Of The High Lord

It is said the opposite of love is hate.
Yet the truth is more horrifying.
The opposite of love is the absence of love...a void where love and life and laughter are supposed to exist. So, too, is it with the Dark Heir of Apocalypse and the Askani'Son. For though it is true that one is the clone of the other, it is difficult to believe they have even a single strand of DNA in common.
Whereas Nathan is happiness and hope, Stryfe has always been about sadness and despair. While one walked the desert in search of a home, the other lived among the highest spires of Apocalypse's towers. As a Dayspring, one managed to live off the crumbs and kindnesses of strangers. The other could never abate his hunger in all the countless feasts of flesh and misery which attended his every whim.
There are some who believe that because he is not infected with a techno-organic virus, Stryfe will one day be heir to the power of Apocalypse--That the New Canaanites are secretly struggling to insure a new world order.
Others still--a silent minority--know otherwise.
Stryfe may one day rule...but he'll never possess the true power--for the greatest power of all...is love.

Unit Dayspring

Something less than a family, yet infinitely more.

The breeding avowal which was instituted in the later half of the past century left no room for noncompliance:
"Couples not possessed of the designate mutant-dominant gene are strictly forbidden to procreate."
Because the unit known as Redd and Slym Dayspring could not risk the gene-testing that would have revealed them as mutants, this brave and selfless couple posed as the non-mutant adoptive parents of Nathan Dayspring.
Almost nothing is known of their life before their arrival amidst the wreckage of the Askani' Cloisters. Even less so regarding their fate after the most recent Fall of Apocalypse.
What can be said with any degree of certainty is that they raised the boy who would one day become the Askani'Son as if he were their own...and that if they had not taught him how to fight the infliction which crippled an otherwise omnipotent vessel, the world would have become a darker place for never having reaped their efforts.
Had they never formed the Unit Dayspring, sacrificing any chance for a normal life by constantly staying one step ahead of the authorities, they would not have begat the Clan Chosen.

The Alpha
And Omega

Xavier

It is the only name left of a man who is said to have inspired several generations of mutants to champion not the survival of the few, but rather the cause of genetic harmony for all
History itself has forgotten his station in life...or why he took it upon himself to dedicate his entire existence to something as insubstantial as a dream.
Only the whispered legends remain...tales of his so-called X-Men, who vowed to protect a world that feared and hated them.
And if Xavier was, as many believe, the first X-Man, destiny dictates that his last disciple will be the young man called...