It's amusing, almost, how condemning we are of the humans as blind idealists, when we too are guilty of the crime of seeing things in black and white. Of course the rikahvrai are right, anyone will tell you - or maybe wrong's truer, but a deep and perfect wrong.

We're not perfect, and, to put it bluntly, we're really rather stupid.

Speaking generally, of course.

I don't think they even know what the rikahvrai, as a race, are striving for - they couldn't, after all, because ask a dozen different people and you'll get a dozen different answers. To enslave the human race - to enslave the asthalei, even. To eliminate the humans so that our war can be fought as it should be - directly against the asthalei. To kill them and take their power as our own; to erase all life but our own from the planet.

Impossible plans, all of them, because they make a fatal assumption: that we'll ever work together long enough to accomplish any goal.

The rikahvrai not a loyal race; we tend towards suspicion, and rightly so, because treachery comes as natural as breathing. Why even pretend that we're good, when evil comes so easily, when cruelty feels so right?

I can admit who I am. Self-centered, prone to jealousy, not at all a team player. So why should I try to be?

I'm Kyytalan.

It sounds like darkness, doesn't it? darkness tinged with pain, with threats. Beautiful. Dangerous.

And I try to be.

Human legend would loosely term me a vampire, I suppose, delighting in pain and death, feasting on blood that tastes of forbidden sweetness and fleeting, ice-sweet souls, the rarest delicacies... I live for pleasure, because what other reason is there to live? if you die and your life has not been continually wonderful...

And that's the biggest, maybe the only difference between us and the angels - they don't love, and so they could never betray; they keep themself distanced from everything and everyone, and they're never happy. Are their lives better for that? do they even know what they're missing?

I don't know, I can't force myself to care. This isn't a particularly interesting discussion, anyway - many things I could be doing, all more pleasureable than this.

We're not immortal, you know, only better than the humans at evading death... And when you admit that you could die anyday, tomorrow, it suddenly becomes of infinite importance that you don't waste a moment, that you can truly say you've lived every second of your life...

Could you say the same?

It's a more relevant question than you'd think.

In fact, I'd estimate a minute, maybe two, before your heart stops beating...

Yes? No?

Come on, only one word, not hard, you can still answer, I know you're not dead yet.

My god, answer! how can you stand dying like that, terrified and wide-eyed and not even knowing if you've ever lived?

You haven't, have you?

Too late.