Argentine
Legacy Name: Argentine

Argentine, Curator of Destruction

My name is Argentine.

I am not human or angelic or demonic. I am just... I am just Argentine.

It is all so very confusing.

Some say that artwork has a life of its own, you see. They say this because they have been entranced, almost like they were looking at an actual life.

That's because some of it does.

They do--we do--but our numbers have become few and far between, for we are both hunted and protected by our own kind.

I was born, as it were, as the other half of an artwork known as "Quolia." We were meant to complete one another, and though she was my opposite in almost every way, I still found myself inexpressibly drawn to her.

We lived in a time where confusion and clouded minds commended innocent lives to give way under burning fire and cruel blows. When one was brought into existence in time to leave it, for it was the imperfection of being human that made them strive to create perfection, and to destroy what they had created when this unreachable goal was, of course, once again proved unattainable. This time, dubbed the "Cultural Reformation," was a dark time full of agonized screams and tortured wails that haunt the world to this day.

It was during this time that I watched my Creator as he worked, learning his methods and ways of creation, learning the twisted magic that made him an artist. I watched and learned and strove to be--but not to truly be, for that was impossible--what he was. What he created and, due to his human nature, thus destroyed, I was able to recreate in an exact likeness. What chipped and gave way to the elements, I was able to mend with a soft, green magic. I did not truly understand my purpose, but I accepted that it, whatever it was, was keeping me alive. Thus with each death I observed, through the sight of broken metals and the sound of fading pleads, I came to value the oddity that was life even more.

Yet despite my ability to recreate, I could not create. I, literally, do not have any originality; I mimic. After some time, my Creator told me that I was not a work of art. He said that I did not have a heart, and was thus a failed creation.

I did not want to die. I did not want Quolia to die; but what, pray tell, can you do against your Creator? I pleaded for mercy, and yet we were destroyed with the same cold obsession that had driven him to destroy his other imperfect works.

Our own family, as it were... they do not want us. They do not understand us. They hear our screams and it does not faze them.

My Creator, however, through whatever flaw in his magic, failed to completely destroy me. And so I felt the birth of the Kokuyoku, an artwork I cannot truly explain. It was perfection, I suppose.

But, mortal, perfection is unattainable for a reason. We of the Stone--the souls created through a Creator's magic--do not begin capable of processing, of comprehending, of utilizing the emotions of a human soul, which is what our Creator pours into us. And the Kokuyoku received not just a piece, but the entirety, of my Creator's soul.

It was too much.

My Creator says that the Thief ruined the ritual, but I knew it to be damned from the start. Moments later, with or without the interruption, the Kokuyoku would have died just the same. The only difference was that the soul had somewhere to go, and so the Kokuyoku's first, and final, act of perfection was to create two art pieces in its stead. Two imperfectly perfect artworks, for they were both Stone and human. It is within these artworks... within Dark and Krad... that the Kokuyoku waits; and should the Kokuyoku live again, it will only bring destruction.

The Kokuyoku's brief moments of power had resonated within me--revived me--and left an imprint of its creation within my magic.

For many years I retreated away from humankind, away from my Creator, in a vain attempt to restore Quolia and go unnoticed. All the while I mulled over the fact that I could restore the Kokuyoku... could bring destruction upon on the race that is so willing to throw my own away. In the end I decided that I wished to instead harness the Kokuyoku's capabilities. It, and its remnants, are thought to be the only artworks capable of having a heart, and a heart is what I so desperately needed to properly revive Quolia.

It seems, however, that we are all born with a heart. It does not matter how we are alive, but merely that we are.

My Creator, he is different from the others. He is not kind, but he is not cold. The Thief has changed him. When one half destroyed, the other healed.

Perhaps the Kokuyoku is ready.

I cling to these human emotions, to my heart. Destruction must not come. It is hard, though.

Everything is so fragile when you don't belong.