This one is, so far, the longest chapter of this story, but I have a very good reason for this.

This is actually the first big lore chapter, where I can go into detail about the current setting of the story, and explain a few things, like who Break and Stone are, what's going on right now, and just set the scene for future chapters. I need to start working on the world that Solace will have to learn how to navigate, if they want to survive...

----

Stone sighed, as he listened to Break explaining to Solace what the Council was. 

He closed his eyesockets as he started to remember what things had been like...

Once, everything was peaceful, as it could get in a Warverse. Ink had explained that it meant that they were more likely to use violence to talk things out, and they left it at that.

After all, with Ink's faulty memory, it was better to not ask for all of the details, and it would be difficult for him to remember all of the finer details, so they just stuck to what was easier to remember.

Unfortunately, this caused problems too, especially when it involved beings like Error talking about 'balances'... He often compared whatever the fucking thing, that he and Ink shared, to the cycle of Life and Death.

At first, no one believed him, after all, they didn't have any proof that they existed.

But there was no proof that it didn't exist either...

The question was so complex that it led to a lot of powerful skeletons sitting down, to just talk about it.

Surprisingly, this had an effect on the worlds that existed outside of these talks. They slowly shifted from talking about the possibility of 'balances', to talking about conflicts in AUs, and between different groups, and eventually, they surprisingly switched to them just being calm moments, where every Skeleton there could just put their weapons down, and talk, slowly breaking down barriers that had been thrown up by constant wars and battles.

Of course, there was times where they could fall into old habits, and the fighting would start again, and sometimes, it felt like they did it on purpose, just to deal with excess energy that had no where to go...

He had loved those meetings. It gave him a chance to discreetly court the Skeleton that he had fallen in love with so long ago, and even now, he was still courting the same skeleton, even if things had changed so much that both of them weren't who they used to be.

He couldn't believe that Break was just that obvious... Even after his broken spirit had finally taken his body back from the minor parasite that had tried to kill him, when he was a kid, and had used his body as a host for centuries. His Soul was his own now, even though he was still slowly recovering from the possession, all these years later.

Stone had seen a glimpse of him when he had managed to gain control over his body, for a few minutes, during one of his minions's raids on his AU. He had found a lost child, and was helping them find somewhere safe to hide, but just as quickly as he had taken control over his body, the moment that the child was safe, Stone had silently watched as Break was forced back under, as the corruption regained it's control over it's host.

Over time, they had run into each other, a lot, during some of the times when that had happened, and as Break grew older, he was able to remove the corruption from his body, and give it a chance to grow up. They were actually about the same age, or the skeleton equivalent of it, they had just been forced to grow up too fast to deal with a world that wasn't fair.

Stone with his underground revolution against the royals of his AUs, when he found too many holes in their official reasons to turn his AU into what it had become, and Break, a Dryad Skeleton that had to endure periods of being frozen in time, as some worm Parasite used his broken body, as a host, to carve a path of Negativity through their Multiverse...

They really were quite a pair...

Stone frowned as his thoughts turned back to what had happened after those meetings. The more powerful Skeletons had been slowly floating an idea around... Of making sereval truces, mainly because a lot of them were tired of fighting, needed to recover from injuries that they had ignored for too long, needed to rest, or in Reaper's case, to have the time that he needed to clear out his backlog of Paperwork.

Many of them just wanted to see how the truces would affect how things worked in their Multiverse, and if it would inspire others to make truces of their own.

And while they agreed with that, the Council didn't.

In a move that none of them had seen, the Council stabbed their precious Star Sanses in the back.

Things went down hill from there, especially when the Council started to burn AUs to the ground, to get rid of what they called 'sources of conflict'...

Lusttale was the first one to fall... Stone remembered screaming as he fought to give others time to escape... His LV rose as he murdered Sanses that he had trusted, he had thought of them as friends, and his Soul almost tore itself apart from the pain of betrayal... The raise of LV within him, caused the LT that the Royals had forced upon his AU, to destroy itself as the increased strength and Magic from his levels going up, ended up burning it out of himself, and without his Royals to force fresh LT into his system, he was able to take the feeling of being able to control his body, back from them.

Dream shattered, using his newfound strength, and power, to buy time for the attacked inhabitants of the AUs to escape...

Dream shattering had affected Break, giving him the opening to murder that parasite worm, finally taking his body back from them, while they were screaming in pain, as the balance of feelings reacted to the shift in power caused by the Positive Guardian shattering...

But Dream lacked the control, and experience, that Break had over that form. It was easy for Ink to capture him, especially when they used Swap against him...

The Star Sanses had disappeared after that, only to reappear a few months later, to attack Break's castle.

Dream still didn't have control over his new form, and Ink didn't have his vials. The Council representative that had ordered them to attack the castle had them.

That representative had been a Swap Sans, with the nickname of Blue. He had declared that he had changed his name from 'Swap', to 'Blue'...

Break's boys had given their all to defend their home. Dream's shattering, and everything that had come with it, had given them enough warning to make escape plans, but Break was the only one to get out. His boys had become dust in the wind, leaving him with the unanswered question of knowing if they had died that day, or if they had managed to get away from the attack, and they were living in hiding, like Break was, in other AUs.

Blue then continued to make appearances as the Council's representative, and while many thought that he had betrayed Ink and Dream, Stone didn't believe that....

That thing did not feel like Swap. He and Stone had used to be friends with benefits, during a rough patch of Swap's life, so Stone knew his Magic signature pretty well, and Blue didn't have the same Magic signature as Swap.

But there was nothing that Stone could do about that.

It would be almost impossible for him to prove that Blue wasn't Swap, thanks to him not having any physical proof that he could use to prove that.

He was also one of the most wanted fugitives on the Council's list, because of him refusing to lay down and die, and fighting back, instead of just giving up. 

The Council had gone onto cracking down harshly on medicine being spread across the Multiverse, wanting to control the supply of medicine, to prevent future revolts, due to the lack of medicine that a revolution would need to use to survive... That left those that were still able to cling onto their neutral status, to turn to unconventional methods to get the medical care that others needed, if Sci couldn't get away from their new overloads long enough to treat them.

Such as Stone being shanghaied into becoming a physical therapist, with the excuse that since he forced his body into unnatural positions on a daily basis, he would know the right exercises to help others regain their physical strength after a long illness, or after a period of inactivity due to broken bones...

To be fair, they did have a point, he knew how to get himself back into shape, if he got out of shape, or after he had to rest long enough for his broken bones to heal, so it wasn't that hard to transfer that knowledge to the medical field.

This new job also gave him a semi legal identity, that he could use to get out of trouble, if any Monster tried to have him arrested, because of him looking like he came from a Lust based AU.

One of the few benefits of this new job of his, was the fact that he could stay in contract with the others, while they tried to come up with a plan to overthrow the Council.

It wasn't going to be easy though, the Council had their thumbs in many pies, and that included making it almost impossible for the Reapertale Gods to step in, and while those Gods could stop the Council...

They had thrown Reapertale's own laws back at them, Reaper had been allowed to interfere with how the Multiverse was run, as a matter of good faith, and to know where he would be needed the most during his shifts, but the Council had tied his, and the other beings of his AU's, hands by citing interference laws, after their takeover, and when others would ask them if they could interfere in other ways, they claimed that there would be too much collateral damage if they went down that route.

After sharing that news, they had gone silent, refusing to talk to anyone but each other, and ignoring all calls for help.

However, there was some little things that they seem to be doing to help them, like Farm's crops always producing more than they should be, less problems with Magical training, or a slightly larger than what should be possible, chance to bring others back from the point of death, but other than that, there was nothing from them.

So, apart from Error, who was still destroying random AUs, and Break, who had been forced to retire due to Dream's shattering, there wasn't a Skeleton that was powerful enough to that could act as a figurehead, and symbol of Hope, which meant that it was left up to everyone else to stop the Council...

And as much as Error wanted to help them, he had his hands full with the Council's Hit Squads. The only good thing about that was that he was keeping most of them too busy, for them to actually deal with the underground revolution that was slowly being formed...

Life, after that, fell into disarray, as the entire Multiverse, and it's inhabitants, shifted in response to the ones that were now holding it's strings.

Many Sanses went underground, scrambling to hide themselves from the originals, and copies, that led the Council, and to hide the new Sanses of AUs that continued to pop up, so that they couldn't be forced to join the fight.

Unfortunately, that wasn't very successful, for every Sans that they convinced to not join the fight, another would be pulled into the fight by the Council.

Even the children were at risk of being drawn into the fighting, until Reapertale stepped in, before they went silent, and took all of the children in as refugees.

The Council objected, saying that they didn't have the right to do that, and that they were breaking inference laws, but in a twist, Reapertale won by saying that the Council was breaking more laws, by leaving the children in an environment, where they would be forced to fight.

Break's nephew, Palette, had been one of the kids taken in by Reapertale... Break didn't even get a chance to hold him one last time, before he had to leave... Break missed that little bundle of energy, and the only time that Break got to hear his voice, would be when Palette found a spot in Reapertale with a good enough signal for his phone to use, and even then, those calls would have to be extremely short, to save battery and phone credit, and while Break could top up the credit on Palette's phone on his side, Palette hadn't found a safe enough spot to charge his phone, without risking it being taken away from him, and he had a limited amount of battery packs that he could use to charge his phone, on him.

And while it was for their safety, it didn't stop everyone else from missing the kids, and they wanted to hold them again... Children were so precious, and rare now, to the point that if a pregnant Skeleton was found, the Council would go overboard in ensuring their safety, and access to any medical needs that they required...

No one seemed to realise that it was their fault that the children had been taken away from them, the Council was so determined to have their way, that they often missed that many of the messes that they had to deal with, was due to their actions, and the Revolution just wanted things to go back to the way that they used to be, and while that would cause more problems, the old ways didn't make Reapertale step in, and take their children from them...

----

Stone was brought out of his thoughts when he felt a hand on his left shoulder, and he looked up to see that Break was right in front of him.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah... I'm fine... I was just lost in my thoughts..." Stone told him. "I couldn't help but to think of the past... Is the kid okay knowing what the Council is, and what they have done?"

"They're fine." Break told them. "They dropped right into sleep after I finished explaining things to them... I think that they're in a chocolate induced coma."

Stone chuckled. "That does remind me of someone..."

Break chuckled. "Yeah, it does... Is the kid going to be okay?"

"I don't know... Their laylines, and Mana lines, look okay, but without the specialist equipment to map them out properly, I can't see if there is anything wrong with them... The only thing that bothers me is that they look brand new, as if they had just been born, but they have the body of an almost fully grown Skeleton, it just doesn't make sense..."

"And the tools that you need are in the hands of the Council. Epic is still working on making new ones, but he just doesn't have the supplies that he needs, and we can't get the tools on such short notice without drawing attention to ourselves..." Break frowned.

"Maybe we don't have to worry about that..." Stone mumbled.

"What do you mean?"

"You know that I arranged to have those tools for Sci's appointment, next week, right?"

"Yeah?"

"There is a loophole that I have used a few times to justify using them on someone else." Stone grinned. "I will be around Sci's AU tomorrow. I know that he has copies of those tools in his lap, they're just not allowed to leave his AU, and a Council member should be there.

I can simply explain that I have an emergency appointment that needs Sci's appointment spot, and those tools, so I dropped in to do his appointment now, instead of next week, and that his original appointment time is the first available slot that I have to treat this emergency patient...

And as long as Solace attends a medical appointment within a week of Sci's original appointment, the Council normally signs off on it, and doesn't ask any questions."

"I should be able to come up with a strong enough lie to explain his existence by then." Break suddenly grinned. "How do you feel about being a parent?"

"What?!" Stone blushed. "But they don't look like us, apart from the eyelights, which can be explained due to your eyelight colour. You have a purple eyelight, they have two lilac eyelights. The colour difference can be explained by suggesting that it's a result of our eyelight colours mixing, and we can say that they got the ability to have two eyelights from me, but it won't explain most of their physical features!"

Break chuckled. "Who says that a Poof baby can't have more than two parents? We can say that they took after their other parents physically, and that they only 'poofed' now, because of the unrest delaying their birth. We can say that the other parents died, or went missing, during it, and that we are worried that the delayed 'poofing' might have some very serious side effects. We have already seen one in their lack of feeling anything below their thighs, we just want to make sure that nothing else is wrong."

"That might work..." Stone hummed. "As long as they don't ask too many questions..."

"We have seen it for ourselves that they tend to ignore those that are physically challenged." Break gestured at the series of healed cracks on one side of his skull. "Or at the very least, aren't good enough to be one of their 'soldiers', they ignore me, don't they?"

"Yeah, they do.. This might just work..."

"It will work, now come on, let's follow Solace's idea. We need to sleep. Goodnight Stone."

"Goodnight Break."

----

So yeah, this Multiverse started out as a Warverse, but by the time of 'Seeking Solace', it has become a Council controlled Fallen Stars Multiverse, that shouldn't cause too much problems for Solace, right?

Heh heh heh heh...