Generations ago, the ones who took our land recreated it in a fantasy of their own making.

We had lost the war, and the earth suffered, our island kingdoms swept away in the rising seas.

When we awoke into this strange new world, we found we could move mana in ways we never could before.

No paradise lasts forever, and we were invaded again by otherworldly beings, driven by an unquenchable thirst for mana.

Unable to drive them off, we found a way to coexist in an uneasy harmony—we give them our mana, and they grant us access to their technology, including the gates that take us to alien worlds.

We call them Lapuhe’e—ghost squid. The children love them like they would any other creature in this world. Why wouldn’t they?

Now, the new generation has never seen the real world. Nor do they have much interest in it. We elders are fossils—brittle and inflexible—and the future is virtually endless. I fear we have lost our way. Though, perhaps, through trails unexplored, we may yet find our way back home. . .