The Three Kings of Fundament

There was a forest.

There was a forest whose trees were endless towers of wood like stone, their canopy a curtain that swallowed the light. There were people who lived in the forest, but they lived in two different worlds. Those in the canopy enjoyed sunlight, fruits, safety and peace. They were the lords. Those at the bottom suffered in cold, damp squalor, surviving off the scraps of the archtrees. They were the thralls.

There was a lord.

There was a lord who was content. He was lesser than his peers, looked down upon and traded from one to another as attendant, but he accepted his lot. After all, better a lord than a thrall. He served his betters quietly and with respect, and his life was easy. And then one day, his easy life ended. His better was thrown from the canopy as punishment for some slight or another, and the little lord thought this unfair. And so he, too, was thrown from the canopy, and forgotten.

The little lord fell, and he fell. For days, it seemed, he contemplated his life and, now, his death. What had he accomplished? Nothing, he thought. What had he done wrong? Nothing, he thought. The warmth of the sun faded from first his skin, then his bones, and finally his heart. What had he done wrong? Nothing. Lord though he was in nothing but name, he acted with dignity and respect, and had garnered naught but hatred, disrespect, and a swift and thoughtless dismissal. He fell from the light into the darkness of the pit, into the cold mists of the duff, and as the wind whistled through his ears he welcomed the death swiftly approaching.

But death did not come for the little lord. Instead the ground welcomed him with open arms, with gifts of agonizing pain, a ruined body, and endless torment. But he suffered in silence, for he understood his fate. He was a lord no longer; he was a thrall, a slave to the very same system from which he had once profited.

After a hundred hours of quiet, freezing fog, a creature came across the broken bleeding thrall. Finally, his destined death had come to end his suffering. But the creature did not exact revenge upon the lord-turned-thrall. It cleaned his wounds, wrapped his limbs, and carried him upon its back. For days, the thrall sat in stunned silence. What had possessed this foul creature to spare him? Why did it not inflict upon him the pain he deserved? Why did it not take vengeance upon its oppressor? Finally, as the thrall saw light in the distance, he spoke. 

Why do you help me, creature? The thrall asked.

Because we are the same. The creature answered.

The creature carried the thrall into the light, and what he saw brought sense to the creature’s words. A village of creatures, each entirely unlike the other and yet all the same: trapped at the bottom, suffering, surviving. The creatures greeted each other, and welcomed the thrall. Congratulated him on finding them. Tended his wounds. Fed him. For days, for weeks, for years, he gave them nothing, and they gave him everything, and finally he understood. His whole life he had worked thanklessly to earn what the torment of the darkness fostered implicitly: respect. But not the respect he had known, the fear of reprisal from your betters; this was the mutual respect of shared anguish.

The thrall understood. He grasped this love, placed it firmly within his heart, and felt true warmth for the first time in his life. The creatures had given him life when he expected death, light when he was lost in the darkness, and meaning when he had had none. The least he could do, he thought, was to repay that kindness.

The thrall gathered his fellows before him and spoke of the world he had once known. A world of light, and warmth, and plenty. Everything they would never experience. The thrall spoke of the lords, their callousness, their disrespect, their blind hatred. They do not deserve their lives, the thrall told the creatures, but you do. Follow me, and I will give them to you. The creatures loved the thrall as their own (because, of course, in a way he was), and so they followed him. They followed him to the nearest village in the mist, to whose creatures he delivered the same speech.

And they, too, followed him, to the next village, and the next, and the next. Until one day, the scattered peoples of the duff stood together as one.

The thrall stood amongst his people as one of them, not above them as he had once falsely believed himself to be. He presented his plan to them, and they supported it. As he prepared to offer his own body, a hand stayed him. The creature who had long ago saved him.

Let me. Said the creature.

No, said the thrall. Already you have rescued me. Already you have healed me. Already you have fed me. Already you have saved me. You gave me a people, to love, to fight for, and to die for. How could I ever ask one whom I love so dearly to sacrifice themself for me, if I would not do it myself?

The creature smiled. You needn’t ask, he said. That’s why it’s love.

And so the creature climbed the archtree, leaving behind all he had known and loved to deliver a message to the lords of the canopy: accept us among you, or suffer.

For two weeks the people waited, worried, none among them so much as the thrall. And on the fifteenth day, they got their answer. A sickening thud in the dirt, a crack echoing across the mist-veiled forest floor. The thrall stood over the broken, annihilated corpse of his savior, and the warmth in his heart sparked into a flame.

The people worked hours on end, for days and days without sleep they labored, until the work was done. As the thunderous cracks and booms filled the air, many of the creatures gasped, covered their eyes, or cried at the horror of their actions. But the thrall stood in silence. He watched the archtree fall. And he smiled as it crashed into another, and another, until over a dozen of the eternal towers lay in dust before him.

By the time the thrall and his army completed their climb, the war for the canopy had been over for days. Faced with the threat of annihilation (or, perhaps more likely, the consequences of their actions), much of the canopy had collapsed into riots, infighting, and anarchy. The lords that the thrall found were not the proud, stubborn monsters he had remembered, but the sad, fractured survivors of their era’s end. And as he looked down at their frightened faces, he thought of the creature who had once saved him. Had I once looked like this? He thought. Broken, bloody, begging for death? When he had asked for death, he had been given life. When he had been lost in the darkness, he was brought to the light. And when he had been without meaning, he had found love. So instead of the sword, he gave them something they would never have offered him: forgiveness.

The thrall’s conquest of the canopy came not through war, not through cunning, but through endurance and harmony. He brought his peoples together, and he became a king.

There was an ocean.

There was an ocean whose waves were endless walls of water like glass, whose depths were the infinite black of night. The peoples of the ocean lived in two different worlds. Those of the coral groves lived sheltered lives in fear of what was beyond. They were the thralls. Those of the dark deep lived in the glorious unknown. They were the lords.

There was a thrall.

There was a thrall who dreamed of the world beyond her home. Every day she swam in the same sunlight, she ate the same plants, she saw the same people. She was safe, she was cared for, but she was unhappy. In the days she did as she was told, stayed where she was protected, ate what she was given. But in the nights, she swam to the edge of the reef and looked out into the darkness below, and she listened to it call for her.

One day, she awoke to screams. She left her home and saw something beautiful and horrible all at once. A lord of the deep, destroying the grove and voraciously consuming everyone and everything she had ever known. A part of her wished to scream and cry in fear. A part of her wished to scream and cry in elation. She got the chance to do neither, because the lord’s destruction was cut short by an even greater disaster: an emperor wave. As the mighty tide tore across the grove, her home broke into pieces and slammed into the thrall, knocking her unconscious.

When she awoke, the wave was gone, as was her home, her people, her safety. All that remained was the lord of the deep, laying pathetically across the ruins of her life. A piece of the great coral reef had broken off in the wave and speared it through the middle; great rivers of blood spilled from the lord, and its breathing was shuddering. It was dying, and nothing could save it.

Overcome by her curiosity, she limped forward through the water, coming face to face with the lord. It looked at her with one eye, and summoned all the dignity it could muster as it asked, Come to gloat little fish? 

The thrall shook her head. I could not gloat, for what have I to gloat? My people are dead. My home is ruined. My life is ended.

The lord looked at her. But I am responsible, he said, and now I suffer a slow painful death. Does this not bring you joy?

The thrall shook her head once again. You are a beautiful creature, my lord. I wished to know you, to understand you, but I will not get the chance. Your death takes from us both, if not equally.

The lord looked at her in silence. She spoke up once again. The wave would have killed us all anyway. You are a lord, and I am a thrall. It is your nature to destroy just as it is my nature to be destroyed, is it not?

The lord looked at her again, but this time it saw something different. Once he saw food. Then he saw a tormentor. But finally, he saw potential.

Your wit is sharp little fish, said the lord. My lifeblood is leaving me, so let me gift you this before my time is gone. I, too, was once a little fish. The deep called to me, and in the darkness I found power. More I cannot tell you, for the journey into the deep is one different to each who makes it, but know this: there are more dangers in the deep than you can imagine. 

The thrall barely heard the warning, for she was already swimming away. In the death of all she knew came the birth of all she dreamed; this, thought the thrall, was a fair bargain. Into the darkness she swam, seeking not the unknown but the unknowable. 

First, the thrall reached the edge, and with it her first trial; that of the fear within. She floated gently in the imperceptible current here, farther than any of her people had ever gone with a view ten times that distance and further yet. Though still she felt the warmth of the sun, she felt herself shiver with cold. How could she, a little fish from nowhere, possibly survive in the cold darkness of the below? Even now, still firmly within the light, the heat of it had faded. It was time. Her adventure was over. It was time to return home and hide in the warmth and safety of-

But, no. She reminded herself, there was no home. There was no warmth, no safety. As she had wished, so had she received, and now glorious life or ignoble forgotten death were the only paths left to her. So she drew out her fear and held it in her hand, clutching it tight as she swam over the edge. One cannot go back if there is no back.

Down through the fading light she swam, the darkness creeping slowly at first but then with purpose and dark intent. Here within the threshold, she met her second trial: that of the sharpness of the mind. A lord unlike every other awaited her within the threshold. Though the Fear in her hands quaked and pulsed, she knew it had no sway over her; yet, even she was befuddled by the melancholic sway of the lord. It did not move as a predator, it did not hide nor coil to strike nor observe her with the eyes of the hungry.

Instead, it approached her calmly, with the ease of movement of a creature that knows neither predator nor prey; one entirely outside of what the thrall would consider the natural circle of life. A theory confirmed as the lord spoke.

Greetings, little thrall, spake the lord. I am a titan of the deep, and I offer you a game.

Why should I play? Asked the thrall.

Because if you deny me, I will kill you, answered the titan calmly.

And if I should win? Queried the thrall.

Then you will continue your journey unabated, the titan spoke once again.

And if I lose your game, spoke the thrall slowly, then I-

Will die, finished the titan with the same level calmness.

Then I accept the game, spoke the thrall. Explain it to me.

The titan offered something dangerously akin to a smile. The rules are as such: I will ask you a question. If you answer it correctly, you win. In the interest of fairness, I shall grant you three questions with which to gather information, and three guesses to answer my own. I swear to tell you only the truth; if, however, your question is unworthy of my game, then too shall I devour you.

The thrall nodded. I understand the rules, let us play.

The titan wrapped its body around the thrall, and spoke with a breadth that shook the water for miles.

What… it asked, is my purpose?

The thrall thought for a moment, clutching the fear in her palm. It would serve her no purpose here but to cloud her judgment. The thrall opened with her first question: Is there only a singular correct answer to your question?

The titan enclosed around her until the edges of its colossal body were touching the thrall. Yes, and no, answered the titan truthfully.

The thrall pondered for a while longer. She desired deeply to continue her adventure, but this task seemed impossible. How could a mere thrall hope to understand the reason behind her own existence, let alone that of a lord? The endless possibilities danced through her mind as she asked, did you tell the truth about the rules?

The titan began to constrict the fish as it answered. No, I did not.

The thrall’s mind was nearly to its limits. Without constants, there could be no conclusions, only meaningless guesses. She gasped as the very literal walls began to close in around her, but suddenly she felt the quiet shaking of her own Fear and understood: she was her own worst enemy. So she reached within herself, grasped tightly her emotions, and ripped them out with her very last cry of pain she would ever experience. With all of her Experiences clutched within her hand, her mind was empty save for the cold Logic. And that Logic asked the last question: are you real, titan?

The titan smiled, knowing already that the game was over. In every way that matters, yes, spoke the titan truthfully.

The thrall looked up at the specter of death and spoke aloud the only truth it could ever know: Your purpose, said the thrall, is to allow me to pass.

With the rush of a thousand years of currents, the titan unravelled itself from around the thrall in a blinding flash until there was nothing left save a voice saying, Very good little fish. May you find that which is everknown and everforgotten.

Down, down, down, into the cold of the abyss swam the thrall. For days, months, years she travelled in the only direction she knew, and arrived eventually at her final trial; that of the fire in the heart. The gelid depths of the ocean had long since forgotten the kiss of light, and the thrall found herself forgetting it too. What is light to darkness? What is warmth to liquid ice?

She felt every inch of her lithe body quaking, slowing. Nothing could survive here, she reasoned to herself. Heat is life, and thus had she found death: not calamitous and toothy, but slow and quiet and cold. She need only turn round and return to the sun and she would yet live; but which way was the sun? It had been long, so very long, since she had felt it, since she had abandoned anything except the path forward, that she knew she could not turn even if she wished. Clutching tight to her Fear, grasping her Experiences with her aching fingers, she reached within once again and drew out Courage. But no bravery could survive her journey; so she crushed it in her palm until naught remained but the hardened glowing core of her Will. Her Will to survive. Her Will to overcome.

And this Will was greater than her warmest days under the sun, for how can the body be cold if the heart is ablaze? So ever further into the depths swam the little fish, until she saw something unknowable; the light.

And in this light, she attained that most inexplicable of phenomena: greatness. She became the greatest of the ocean lords, and subjugated each other to her indomitable Will. She ruled with that most steadfast of loyalty, because her thralls knew that she had shared their Experiences. And she never Feared another, for that she had left in the deep; after all, what is Fear to a lord? The thrall’s victory over the ocean came not through might, not through war, but through cunning and willpower. She learned the hidden truths of her world, and she became a king.

There was a desert.

There was a desert whose dunes were blazing oceans of sand like blades, whose nights were screaming orgies of death. The peoples of the desert live in two different worlds. Those of the night lived short, brutal lives of battle and rage and ecstasy and agony. They were the thralls. Those of the day lived endless, honed lives of strategy and wisdom and jubilation and despondence. They were the lords.

There was an outcast.

There was an outcast born on the edge of day and night. She was small and weak like a lord, but mortal and fleeting like a thrall. So she was cast from the lords into the night, but even the night would not take her, and so she was alone.

The outcast, against all odds, survived. She had no one, and nothing, except the strength of her wit and a cold calculation unknown to the wrathful, deathmongering thralls of the night. The thralls lived such short, excruciating lives, that they took no heed of the tiny scaled nothing picking scraps at the corpses in the wake of their entanglements (romance or battle, they were much the same to the thralls). They did not notice a few shards of silver missing here, a scrap of a shield there, a few crumbs of a meal. 

Until one day, they did notice, for the outcast stood up and offered herself to the arena. The thralls laughed and they jeered at this pathetic tiny creature; but, they could not escape their bloodthirsty nature, and so a reluctant allowance quickly grew into a near-blind lust for pain as the diminutive creature entered the battlefield against even a fairly-tame specimen of the thralls; a nine-foot-tall scaled creature with four arms and twice as many weapons.

Imagine the thralls’ surprise then when, a few short moments later, the arena was awash with blood. The thrall combatant had succumbed to its baser instincts and opted to simply crush its opponent in its hand rather than bother swinging its weapons; it barely had time to regret this choice, however, as the outcast relieved the thrall first of its fingers, then its two left hands, and finally the comparatively thin stretch of musculature protecting its carotid artery. The thrall screamed and spun as it spouted its lifeblood out like a hose, before tumbling to the ground leaving only the outcast standing.

One might expect the thralls to have reacted unfavorably to this turn of events: however, the thralls are so simple as to be blinded by their desires more often than they see. Although it’s true that some of the thralls experienced something akin to anger, the fact is that the festival of bloodsoaked pleasure lasted nearly seven nights in the wake of the match. By the time it was over, the outcast had recovered from her injuries and, strangely, had nearly doubled in height. Though to the outcast the change was incredible, she was still of such a size as to be considered meaningless to the thralls, and so they put her in another match.

This match, and the one hundred and thirty-nine that came after, ended much the same as the first; though she sustained a number of injuries (some greater than others), the battles ended invariably with the outcast standing, bathed in the blood of her enemies, and ever-growing. For the first dozen matches, she was thought of as an insect. Then, a child. Then a dwarf, and then a lightweight, before finally she matched, and then outgrew her competition.

In fact, she outgrew them in more ways than one, for well before the time that the outcast towered over her opponents, she had grown bored in the fights. She knew that her time in this world was limited, and she aspired to a form of battle greater than the mindless brutes of the night could offer her. So, in her final act of blood-drenched ecstasy, she committed a genocide the likes of which I cannot describe to you. Suffice to say that, after forty-two nights, the lords of the day had become well-familiar with the rivers of blood that rushed from the lands of the night; still, even they found themselves surprised when the outcast they had long since forgotten rose out of the darkness and into the light.

A near-colossus in her own right, the outcast trekked across the burning wastes of the day for someone, anyone to match her in combat. The first lord she met put up a good fight; his armies were well-renowned for their magical prowess, and the outcast had experienced precious little of that from the species she had brought to extinction in the lands of night. But this lord of magic fell too, and the outcast spent several days recovering in the lands that had once been conquered by armies now fallen to a single warrior.

The next lord was, by comparison, a disappointment to the outcast. An ambush predator, who attempted to wear her down with hit-and-run tactics before launching a surprise attack. She spat on the ground as she batted aside each weak attack, before showering herself in the lord’s blood.

One after another, lords were felled by this challenger from the night, until finally a number of the most powerful lords gathered in the first alliance the desert had seen in countless years. They discussed, and they researched, and they strategized, and they invented plan after plan after plan. And each plan was crushed into oblivion by the inexorable, near-thoughtless advance of the outcast. They could not out-strategize her, for she had no strategy; she simply moved forward towards the next fight, and the next, and the next. Though the lords would not know it, they were in a sense quite lucky that the outcast no longer grew in stature with each bloody victory. In another sense, they were quite unlucky, for the lords of the day were quite a different breed than the thralls of the night, and each baptism by blood grew the outcast’s mind and spirit rather than body.

By the time the outcast reached the center of the lords’ desert, only three remained. A lord of might, a lord of magic, and a lord of guile. Though they dared not speak it, they all three felt in their souls the oblivion that was to be their destiny and so, rather than run from it, they gathered their armies and stood together for one last battle. And this, thought the outcast, was what it was all for. Finally the outcast found a worthy adversary. A legendary battle. Something to make her blood boil.

For all their singular might, the three lords were an incredibly potent trio. Had they combined their forces long ago, they might have ruled the daylands with iron fists; but here at the end of all things, they served no purpose but to hone the edge of a blade that had long ago grown beyond them. First fell the lord of guile, his tactics useless against the inexorable march of battle. Second fell the lord of magic, her blasts of fire and ice meaningless against the endless strength of the outcast. And finally fell the lord of might, who slashed and crushed and pierced for three days but could not stop his own extinction. And as the outcast bathed in his blood, she became something different.

One cannot be an outcast if those which cast one out have been consigned to oblivion. She was weak, so she immersed herself in the blood of the strong and she too became strong. She was mortal, so she showered in the blood of the everlasting and she too became immortal. She was wronged, and so she destroyed all who had wronged her. The outcast’s triumph came not through strategy, not through guile, but through endless battle. She slaughtered all in her path and she became a king.

The Dark Cannot Die

There were three kings, each the undisputed master of the worlds they knew.

The Forest King, who stood amongst his people as an equal until they lifted him above.

The Ocean King, who traveled deep within herself until she had forged her body into something greater.

The Desert King, who cut and thrashed and tore at those above her until everything was beneath her.

Each king believed themself to be singular and unmatched, and they each looked to the sky and desired more. Each strode the sky searching for a new land to conquer, and instead they found each other. One would naturally expect such powerful minds to come immediately into conflict, but the truth was quite different. The Forest King, though not a naturalborn leader, had come to his power through cooperation and understanding. He had desired a new home for his people to grow, not an enemy to conquer. The Ocean King, though a tyrant of a sort, had come to her power through a journey of the self, only to find out if she could. She had desired a greater understanding of herself and her limits, not a war against other kings. And the Desert King... yes, she had gained her power through battle. She had bathed herself in the blood of enemies until it was like breathing to her. She came to the sky looking for new kinds of death to deal. But, you must remember, the Desert King had not slaughtered because she enjoyed it, not at first. She killed because her people had shown her no love, and so had she delivered unto them death, swift and brutal. But now for the first time the Desert King, the brutal and relentless killer, had found what she had always lacked: a people. 

The Forest King bowed deeply and respectfully offered the sky land to his fellow kings. The Ocean King shook her head and relented, admitting that she had no need for the sky land. But the Desert King, against all odds, spoke up. The mirthless genocidal king spoke to the intelligent king and suggested a logical course of action. The barbarous murderer king spoke to the understanding king and suggested cooperation. The Desert King suggested a coalition, and the others, surprised at their own thoughtlessness, agreed without hesitation. The Forest King found a new, more fitting place as a leader among leaders, an equal among equals once more. The Ocean King found two powerful minds with which to sharpen and grow her own. And the Desert King found a brother and a sister, a family with which to rebuild the home she had burned to the ground.

And so, like the dawn, an era of great peace, prosperity, and power rose before the three kingdoms. However, Adriel, just as the sun, so comes the night.

For centuries, the sky land hovered above and between the three kingdoms, neutral and beautiful and untouched. The three kings had agreed that there was no need to despoil it, and so it remained perfect. Until one day, a black spot appeared. The Ocean King was the first to notice, for she spent much of her days studying the sky land and the swathes of vivid stardust around it. She mentioned it offhandedly at their next meeting, as a new but mostly uninteresting development, and it was forgotten for several weeks until the Desert King looked up and noticed she, too, could now see the spot. When she told her sister king, however, the Ocean King was quite confused. The black spot in the sky land had not moved nor changed, she said, and there is no way the Desert King could see it from her kingdom. And then, the Forest King said he too could see the spot.

Within a day, the spots grew and grew until they covered the entirety of the sky land in their shadow, and that is when the war began. For, you see, Fundament was the birthplace of the first light in our universe. But with light inevitably comes shadow, and that shadow had arrived. The explosive strength of the birth of light created an inferno that rages to this day, and the birth of shadow consumed the entirety of the sky land in a matter of hours. It had a name, you know. A people. The three kings had luckily chosen to spare it without even knowing, but it was truly a.... spectacular place. I tell you this only so that I may impress upon you the untold loss that the shadow had wreaked upon the universe even in its mere creation. The sky land was home to the Ibo people, who had called it Thrygn. But on that day, the Ibo people and all of Thrygn itself were burned out of this universe in the agonizing creation of the primordial darkness.

From the perspective of the kings, it was a strange apocalypse. The light of Fundament was taken from them in an instant, and that was that. No epic battle, no awe-inspiring cataclysmic eruptions of nature. Darkness simply covered their skies, unmarred. For others, it was much more... climactic. The kingdoms of Fundament were, you must understand, only a small part of the universe. There are countless worlds, each filled with fathers and daughters and beasts and sights impossible for any one mortal to comprehend. And each of these worlds, they watched as the lights in their sky went out one-by-one, as a terrible web of darkness spread impossibly fast throughout the endless plains of existence. As two colossal red eyes and a maw vast and gruesome fell from the sky like a storm, culling life from the mortal plane with such dreadful efficiency...

The three kings did not know all of this, not at first, but they suspected. They felt in their cores that what had happened in their skies had spared them, not from anything resembling mercy, but from a bloodlust so incomprehensible that it couldn't help itself from striking out as fast as possible. The kings spoke to each other, a mere three words of complete and total agreement that said all that needed said. "It will fall."

So the Forest King rallied his people as he did best, and turned them to harvest the archtrees. An enemy of vast size requires weapons of titanic make.

The Ocean King focused her will as she did best, and turned it to forging a heat like a star. An enemy of vast darkness requires a power of utmost light.

And the Desert King closed her eyes and thought of her brethren kings, and turned her mind from love back to the death it craved. An enemy of vast evil requires a slayer of ruinous death.

Once more, Adriel, I must refrain from describing the battle to you, for the Desert King's considerable growth in love and understanding had marked a commensurate growth in her capacty for calamitous destruction, and the primordial darkness was an easy match for her in this regard. But the three kings battled to the last, together as one, and they were victorious. The clawed the darkness back from all the worlds they had never seen and trapped it back in the hole left in the space where Thrygn once flew. This, however, was not enough, for the dark cannot die so long as the light yet lives. So instead, they compromised as best they could; they divided the cursed darkness into three, and sealed it deep within each of their kingdoms, that it may never again taste the death it so desired to wreak. In doing so, they found that they had earned the respect and love of not only the innumerable mortals they had rescued from certain death, but the primordial light itself, and the three kings were given a gift rarely given freely: godhood.

The sealing too, unfortunately, was not enough, because in the throes of defeat the beast unleashed a cursed hex upon creation: speak its name, and it will return. The three kings had learned this too late, and were trapped within their kingdoms, each fighting a shard of the cursed shadow alone for what would be eternity, for the worlds of the material are countless and they could not spare even a moment to try and stop the infinite masses from speaking its name. A lone hero, however, granted the gift of prophecy by her god, heard the pleas of the three kings, and took it upon herself to save them at the cost of her own life.

Her name was Amnesis, and although no mortal will be able to understand how or why or even what she did, she occluded its name from the memories of the mortal planes, and in doing so became one of the Moirai. Thanks to her, the three kings left their kingdoms behind and became the Triune, celebrated gods of battle and war.

However, you must remember, Adriel. You cannot destroy the darkness, it cannot be erased. An echo will always remain. The shadow is inevitable. It's only a matter of time before the sun goes dark.

The Woman Who Made You

Adriel opened his eyes but, as was slowly becoming familiar, he was not awake. His body, his real body, lay in bed before him, slumbering contentedly as he stood and began to make his way outside. He passed the rooms of his Chosen, leaving them to whatever journeys they were experiencing privately; all would be shared in the morning, at their own pace, in their own words. No need to interrupt. As he entered his father's throne room, the paradoxical duality of the seat itself perplexed him once more. The right half of the throne stood towering over him, imposing, an immense weight of terror pushing down on him like gravity. Even now, the sight made his skin crawl and his palms sweat as a primal, immature part of him wanted to run and cower from its presence. At the same time, the left half of the throne was small, plain, gray and cold and unfeeling and unyielding. Adriel wiped away an errant tear as he passed it. These emotions that were thrust upon him, alien as they seemed, felt normal and expected at this point. Does anything shake him anymore, truly? He'd have to unpack that later.

Outside the throne, he looked to the sky and saw the man for whom he had come: Luminar, an otherworldly beautiful and colossal man floating nonchalantly in the clouds, a smile revealing the slightest dimples in his cheeks as he noticed Adriel. Brushing the long jet-black hair behind his ear, he gestured at Adriel to join him on his perch, and the young prince did so, taking scarcely a single step into the air as the space between where he was and where he wanted to be disappeared. The Dreaming was a strange place, difficult to master but easier in the presence of such a confident, warm presence.

"Adriel..." began Luminar, the smile slowly fading from his lips. "I fear that these visits, unintentionally on my part, have ended mostly with my delivering warnings and stern reminders. So perhaps..."

Luminar turned away, biting his lip. This was unlike him, Adriel thought, or at least insofar as Adriel has seen. Despite the comfort in his presence, Adriel still knew next to nothing about this god of Dreaming, save that they seemed interested in protecting him. "What's up?" Adriel reached out, trying to offer some of that same comfort. "Just say it, it's no big deal."

Luminar turned back to the Prince. "I was wondering if you'd like to hear some stories about Aravi. The mortal woman who birthed you."

For a moment, Adriel was stunned. All these years, all the timid questions he'd begun only to get coldly dismissed by his father, or the quiet shaking of Drius' head, and even Alessia's confused shrugs. Nobody had ever offered him the slightest hint of what his mother was like, and now Luminar offered it freely. "Yes," replied Adriel. "Please."

Luminar nodded, adjusting his relaxed laid-back posture to a somehow more "official" crossed leg stance (it's hard to describe a nearly-naked thousand-foot-tall man, whose musculature seems the very definition of the word chiseled, as "stately," but this was perhaps as close as one could get).

"I can't tell you anything about The Blank, you understand," he began, tracing a finger idly through the air before him in the shape of a rectangle. "Specific events, actions, those sorts of things would just slip from your mind like water through a sieve. But I can tell you thoughts, feelings, try and... paint you a picture of what she was like."

As Luminar spoke, he began swirling his fingers through the clouds before him, as if he were literally painting. He described Aravi as a devout and devoted woman, not just to the God-Pharaoh but to the people of the kingdom. The kind of woman who sees to issues in her community personally, and knows the name of every person who relies on her and how best to help them. "Everyone adored her," Luminar spoke, a faraway look in his eyes as he continued moving his hand through the clouds. "Even the tough guys and the hardasses, like Verskaya or Obrona. She was like a sister to Drius, too..."

Luminar grew serious. "She went to a seer, once. An old wise woman who could glimpse fortunes. The seer told Aravi that she would, if she followed this path, if she continued putting the needs of others before herself, that she would die screaming in agony to protect new life. And you know what she said? She said, 'Then I'll die with a smile on my face.' She just... didn't care. You get that from her, I think. That light inside you, that... drive to do whatever it takes to protect others."

Luminar sat in silence for several minutes, continuing his work on the cloud. Adriel thought several times to speak up, but chose against it. Finally, Luminar turned back to the Prince. Pain was obvious in his glistening eyes, his twitching lips, and his quavering voice. "When you were born, Adriel... things looked so dark. And then-"

Luminar's face snapped away from Adriel, with such force that a gust of percussive force nearly pushed him onto his back. Before he could even speak, Luminar cut him off. "You should wake up now, Adriel."

Adriel opened his eyes, staring at the top of his four-poster bed. Answers, and more questions. Exactly what he'd come to expect from these midnight jaunts. The knock at his door, however, was not what he expected. It usually took at least another minute before the others got dressed and came to his room.

Adriel opened his door in a hurry, taking little care to cover himself from his closest compatriots and comrades. When he met Thassa's gaze, however, the dark rings under her eyes punctuated by her raised eyebrows, he slammed the door perhaps a little too quickly. A few moments, a pair of pants, and an unbuttoned silk shirt later, the door was opened again, and Thassa thankfully ignored the red on the Prince's cheeks as they both pretended that this was their first time seeing each other this morning. Perhaps unfortunately for the young Prince, he couldn't quite spot the similar flush in his childhood crush's cheeks.

"Sorry it's so early," Thassa began, "But you... Well, you've never really worked on a 'normal' schedule anyway, and this-" Thassa raised the large covered rectangular prism in her arms, "-is several months late, anyway. Or... early. I don't know. I'm not really sure what the rules are supposed to be when someone hands you a handful of coins and says 'Make me something.' But, anyway, inspiration finally struck, so I um.... Made this. Last night. Er, this night. This morning? I've been up all night and I made this." Thassa's speech hastened further and further before she finally sucked in a breath. "Okay sorry for bothering you bye~" she trilled as she masterfully extricated herself from the situation, speedwalking down the hall before any further embarrassments stained her decade-long social career.

Adriel scarcely noticed, however, because as he uncovered the piece, he couldn't help but find himself enraptured by the kind red eyes of the priestly woman depicted on the canvas.

The Reason You're Here

"Ah Adriel. It is wonderful to see you again, child. Your presence is a guiding light in these dark nights. Although... Hmm...

"Well, it is strange that you've only started visiting me recently, yes? Twenty-odd years without a step into the Dreaming, and now you visit with a peculiar regularity."

Luminar raises a hand a swirls the clouds around Adriel into a large, strangely familiar spiraling structure.

"Each of your... shall we say, dream escapades has a longer break than the one before it. You see it, right?" Luminar looks at Adriel for a short moment, then back to the spiral before frowning. "Ah, right. Mortal eyes. Well, it's... You see, the... Ach, your mother was always far more adept at explaining such matters of magic...

"This spiral, it is um.... unstable, I guess is the best way to put it. Deteriorating." He modifies the cloud spiral so that it gradually begins to vibrate as it travels onwards, eventually vibrating so powerfully that the cloud dissipates and floats freely away from the structure. "This ten-point spiral is a somewhat common structure in complex magical effects. Effectively it's a self-terminating structure, as you can see.

"It has many uses, the most common of which are to either ensure an effect ends naturally rather than enduring perpetually, or to intentionally mark a passage or unit of time. The entity creating the effect can shrink or extend it to ensure the effect lasts exactly as long as they intend it. Which is to say, someone or something has intentionally created this effect that is pulling you into the Dreaming. Although it's unclear whether that was the desired outcome, or simply a side effect of something greater..."

Luminar ruminates in silence for some moments. "Ah, my apologies. I was just reminiscing. Well, was there anything you wanted to talk about tonight? I get the feeling that you've gotten quite tired of my one-sided stories."

The Sunblossom

"Mmh. You've changed, Adriel." Luminar's voice is quiter than usual, and not only because he sits facing the horizon away from Adriel. "You stand a little bit taller, walk a little bit more confidently. But I can see the burden you carry, and how you wield your anger…" Luminar's voice trails off. Adriel looks up at the dreaming God and notices he seems… smaller than usual. "Your sister is still missing." It wasn't a question nor an accusation, just a somber acknowledgement.

Luminar turns to Adriel, his brows furrowed. "May I… tell you a story? About my first daughter."

Luminar shrinks down to the size of a normal man in a blink, sat cross-legged on a flat marble altar that Adriel imagines would be terribly uncomfortable if he were forced to sit there in real life. "Her name," Luminar begins softly, "was Aniia. Your mother and I… Back then, my vanity had not yet bloomed into the rotting sickness it would become. We loved each other; or, at least, I loved her, so very much. I'd like to think I know better now than to claim to know her mind or her heart.

"We had stood at each other's side for millennia, and many times had she suggested bringing a new light into our lives. Each time had I rejected the idea outright for a different, petty reason; the truth was that back then I was afraid, afraid of losing what I had. I did not want to lose the worship of the mortals which I felt I had justly earned, I did not want to lose the affection from your mother which I had come to crave, and I did not want to lose whom I believed I was.

"I do not know whether she saw through my fears and acted out of love, or whether she simply made the decision for the both of us regardless of my feelings. Regardless of the source of her intentions, she made good on her mastery of deception and trickery and elected to seek forgiveness rather than permission. A drop of my blood and a night of perplexing dreams later, she presented our glorious little bundle of twilight to me and things were forever changed."

Luminar smiles as he speaks, his feelings evident on his face. "In an instant I knew what your mother had done, and also that she had been right to do so. My shallow fears and jealousy melted away in a flash as I looked upon Aniia's precious face, and I knew that I would never hold the peculiar circumstances of her birth against her (or her mother, for that matter; her schemes always seemed to work out for the better for everyone involved, including myself).

"Aniia came to be known as the Sunblossom among the mortal worshipers, a nickname which stuck much more powerfully than I would have expected. She was a goddess of dawning, of beginnings and light and love. She faced every day with endless kindness and curiosity and vivaciousness which, I admit, was quite a challenge for her poor parents. We had grown accustomed to a slow, relaxed life in which few things changed and even fewer required swift action. Aniia changed all of that rather swiftly, and we often struggled to keep up.

"Before long, Aniia took to Creating (an act which neither your mother or I particularly engaged in), quickly filling the worlds of all our worlds with lush and complex life before moving her attention to her grand ambition: a smiling flower on every world. She was a natural at Creation, weaving animus and ertse flawlessly, but despite all the wondrous creatures she bore, nothing held a dearer place in her heart than her plants, particularly flowers.

"She danced across the universe, planting an endless menagerie of flora in every color imaginable (and many unimaginable) and bringing guileless smiles and love to countless worlds. This was an earlier age, you see, before the… barriers between god and mortal were as thick and scarred as they are now. Even on the rare world on which she was unwelcome, she would happily plant her seeds and await the day when gold and pink blossoms would bring smiles to the faces of children.

"And then…" Luminar's voice catches in his throat, the smile fading from his face as his brow furrows and unfurrows and back again, as if he's trying to capture enough of himself to maintain his composure before continuing. "You must understand, the universe is so much more vast than the world you call home. There are countless beautiful places fill with light and life and glory… and there are also countless places of darkness, of vile hatred and monsters who wish to corrupt and destroy and bring an end to all things.

"The worst of all these places is called many things, a barren wasteland of death and atrocity and eternal eclipse. In this vile plane there existed four depraved monsters that I would not dare call gods, each one the distorted inverse of four primeval Astrans called the Lustrum; but there was a fifth apocalypse daemon, older and greater than all the others. It was this ancient creature, the First Prince of Darkness, that called the others to ride with him and begin a black crusade against the light of the mortal universe.

"That was the first time war raged across the planes, although I'm sorry to say it was far from the last. The brutality of it was shattering; neither mortal nor god on any world or any plane was prepared for the vile atrocities committed by the riders and their dark prince. As I said before, the likes of your mother and I were long accustomed to peace, to careful consideration and thoughtful actions before engaging our influence. Even our growth alongside Aniia had not prepared us to react fast enough, and before we knew it over a thousand worlds and two planes had been devoured by the despoilers.

"Aniia met with a small number of her fellows, younger gods like her; gods without the strength to stand alone against the the riders, but who might have the will to stand together and delay them long enough to push the sleeping titans of the Lustrum to battle. But… Aniia was even then unlike the other gods. She was awash in that most crucial element of which her fellows were bereft: hope.

"And so, as the Lustrum took council together for the first time since the dawning of the universe, Aniia… Our daughter… She went and faced the First Prince of Darkness. Alone, with no allies, no support, nothing but a smile on her face and hope in her heart. Our little Sunblossom went to war alone."

Luminar pauses for a long time, the pain on his face evident. Finally, painfully, he speaks. "We do not know what happened to her, not truly; neither god nor man walked by her side into the darkness, and by the time we found out anything had happened, it was all already over. The four riders returned to their wasteland with their spoils but claiming no more; the First Prince was sealed away, his darkness to watch evermore above the black wastes of his kingdom; and our Sunblossom, our Aniia, was lost."

Luminar pauses again, breathing slowly as age-old wounds reopened slow their bleeding and recede once more into memory. "Her favorite creation, the asterishai (now known as the common sunflower), grows still on every world she touched and a hundred thousand more. And every day, from dawn to dusk, the flowers look to the sun, hoping to get a glimpse of her light once more. Every day, I…"

His breath catches again, the grief choking him once more, but his meaning is clear. Every day, from dawn to dusk, I hope to get a glimpse of her light once more.

Luminar looks at Adriel with a sorrowful, forced smile. "I believe you'll find Alessia, some day. Your sister may be lost, but she is not forgotten. She is not gone forever. I believe that, truly."

Luminar turns on his platform, facing the east as he was when Adriel arrived. In a moment, Adriel notices the platform is bigger than it was before; enough room for two. Wordlessly he sits next to the solemn god, the god he knows to be his father and yet seems different in every way to the strange dispassionate creature with which he shares the daylight hours. After a while lost in his thoughts, Adriel takes a risk and reaches a comforting arm to Luminar sitting next to him. Wordlessly, Luminar reaches back, and the two share this small act of kindness and connection as they wait and watch the horizon, hoping to see the sun rise together.