Broken's Story - Prolouge

I am Broken.

 It is my given name, and by given names I always use. Broken is a fascinating name in many aspects, and Broken is what I will be called.

The will and power of the eagle, lion, wolf and shark all flow within me, supplying me endless courage, boundless energy and everlasting wisdom beyond measure. Both darkness and light are within my heart, yet they work in unison to guide my choices. Yet there is something I do not have.

Peace.

I constantly fight a demonic force, a force that always supplies itself with new fighters, a force that never tires, a force that will stop at nothing to take everything to love and everything to not love. Their malicious, evil kings always need energy to feed their dark powers, and no matter what I do, they always claim new victims to either turn into soldiers... or to consume.

They are the Phantoms.

I am a black cheetah with crystal blue eyes that, at the right angle, seem shattered into tiny pieces. I wear gauntlets of dark, swirling energy on my paws with jagged sharp claws that corrupt everything they touch or destroy it, an Elf helmet with sapphires full of dark energy set in it, a sword with a brown leather strap and sheath that has darkness enveloping it, and plated tail armor of corrupted metal.

 As you can tell, darkness if my theme.

A burden has been placed in my heart, as if someone had cut it open, put it in there, and sown myself back together. It is a heavy one, one that will never cease to cause me endless sadness and regret, one that will never melt the ice that must freeze my heart for me to live, one that will never let me live a happy, normal life, one that will never, ever be lifted.

I was created by the Phantoms, in a test tube, as a perfect replica of a normal Jamaasian. I was to infiltrate the world of Jamaa, a world of peace, variety and happiness, and to capture or destroy as many Jamaasians as possible without being discovered. Their ultimate goal for me, a nameless minion, was to capture one of the key fighters in the war between Phantoms and Jamaasians, the all-powerful Alphas, and to use their power to ultimately let the Phantoms take over Jamaa.

Unfortunately, I succeeded at first. I was sent to Jamaa, at the distant island named Delta in the paradise of Stripe Isles a few miles away from Jamaa's coast, and Liza on the ship known as the Blue Heron picked me up to take me to Jamaa. I had no consciousness back then, just some animation magic within my form crafted of darkness to give me enough life as to not be suspected as a mindless killer, and I do not remember my first weeks in Jamaa. But I do remember that by the end of my first month in Jamaa, I had captured at least fifty Jamaasians and sent them off to the Phantom Vortex, the dimension in which the Phantoms reside. Their fates I do not know of.

But one day, when I had cornered a small, white bunny who cowered near the recycling center in the woods, a blue-grey streak of flame intercepted my spell to send the helpless bunny on its way, and the runes compromising the spell shattered into a thousand pieces. The flame, shaped like a bird with wide wings seeming to be made of rusted copper, swooped around me several times in a circle of flame, and by the time it had wound around my neck, the bunny was gone.

I thrashed, struggled, cursed, spat, clawed at the rings of flame surrounding my paws, my neck and my tail, but the flame held. Eventually, I gave in, and after that, I do not remember anything.

But when I did wake up, I was in a warm house with furniture all over, with golden rings around my neck and paws that seemed to sap most of my excess power to control me. They vanished as soon as I got up, but I could still feel them feeding on my power. I became a normal Jamaasian after that - and for weeks I did not figure out that I had light and darkness in my heart now, that I was a demon turned to the other side, that it was now my cause to fight the Phantoms as to save the beautiful land of Jamaa from total destruction.

But Greely appeared to me in a swirl of darkness in my dreams, and he explained everything throughout the course of several dreams over several weeks - how I was once a demon, how I had been semi-purified by mystical flames sent by Mira herself, how the inhibitor rings made sure that my power stayed under control, how it was now my task and burden to destroy the Phantoms for good.

So, I am Broken, and I am truly broken within myself. The following stories are all true, and depict my life as a slayer of Phantoms, as a champion of justice, as a great force that will change the course of the war between Phantoms and Jamaasians.

Will you help me save Jamaa... or will you destroy it?