I wake up in the morning to Vivian snoring. Nothing is quite like having someone who probably hates you snore next to you when you'd really like some sleep. For those who haven't had that experience, consider yourselves very lucky. It is not pleasant.

Aislyn is sitting under the fountain in the corner of her room, letting the water run off her glossy scales. Lotus is still sleeping, turned at a weird vertical angle between Vivian and I. I guess she must have rolled into it when she was sleeping.

Unsure of what to do, I walk to Aislyn, who turns back to me and leaves the fountain. "Morning!" she whispers, though it's clearly taking all of her self-restraint not to shout. She shakes herself off liberally, getting me all wet, and then begins stretching out, careful to extend her still sopping wings.

"What's with all the energy this morning? You look like Lotus in the early spring. She wakes up way before the sun has risen and starts going on about all the plants she's going to sow and-"
I bite my tongue. That's not my life anymore. There will be no more spring harvests.

Aislyn tilts her head. "And what?"

"And nothing. So, what are we doing today?"

"Welll, I think we were going to head out, but I still feel that I owe you a better explanation then whatever you got from Vivian. Not that she's wrong, it's just that she's missing the context and probably most of the important details. For instance, she didn't tell you how we were going to find the fifth Canis, did she?"
"No."

"What about why we need to find the four-ish Value keepers? That's a pretty important one."

"No, she really didn't, did she?" I say, half to myself.

Aislyn nods in earnest understanding. "We should get going then."

"Lotus and Vivian aren't up."

"Yes they are." Aislyn says, and I look back over to find both of them are staring at us. I can only imagine how loud we must have been talking and immense embarrassment fills me.

"Good morning." Vivian tells me as she passes by. She sniffs the air. "I smell Canira."

"That's probably just the servants. I saw one come in earlier to resupply us with food." Aislyn says. She dismisses it quickly, as if the notion of them being there makes her uncomfortable.

"You get servants up here? Honestly, Aislyn, if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were in line to become the new queen at this rate."

"What are servants?" Lotus asks.

Aislyn blinks.

Vivian's eyes light up with amusement. "Of course you wouldn't know that. They're, well, they're usually Canira, but the species doesn't matter all that much. They do a lot of work around the castle. Think of them like some of the lower ranks out in the pack. Don't you have to fetch leaves for denning or whatever ferals do?"

"Yes, we have some Canis who do that, and I'd really prefer that if you didn't refer to us as ferals. You don't know half as much about us as you think you do." I say coldly.

Aislyn jumps in between them. "Alright! Let's not get into this and have some food instead. Who wants some squirrel? They delivered this weird gold stuff with it. I think it's fruit but I'm not sure." She pokes at it with her nose, then declares, "Oh, that smells really good."

"It's bread." Vivian states.
Aislyn gulps it down, and then washes it down with the squirrel. "Tastes really good too. Can we bring some food with us when we go on the road?"

"I'm sure your mother would be fine with it." Vivian says, "Speaking of such, you two need to eat so we can go." She stares Lotus and I down.

I quickly eat the food provided, caught between trying to savor each bite and a futile attempt to hurry. By the time I look up, the others are waiting for me, with the exception of Lotus, who is still taking small bites. I roll my eyes at how silly she is and stride to the stairs, waiting for her. Once she finishes, I walk quietly and calmly down the steps. They're far easier if you relax. It's like walking above the ground: Don't look back! Don't look down!

I look around, realizing that I don't recognize either of those phrases. They sound in my head as if someone else had said them.

"Did any of you say anything?" I ask.

"No." answer the others.

The Queen of Dreamland is expecting us this time. She's lost deep in meditation, looking straight ahead, but with only a glance from Aislyn, she looks up at us. "Hello, my warriors. You must be ready to head off. However, I know there are many questions I haven't answered. Though prophecy states you are the ones who must undertake this journey, and the information I am about to give might dissuade you from trying at all, I ask that you listen well."

She hops off her throne and begins pacing before her throne, luxurious tail sweeping the ground as she walks.

"To truly show you what we are up against, I will have to tell you a story. However, it is not one that can be spoken in our normal language. Two days prior, I told it to Aislyn as well as I could, and after working out some details, I believe she knows how to tell it in it's original form, translated from the runes the Terreskians left upon creating our world. Aislyn, are you ready?"

Aislyn nods, courage bright in her eyes as if she had just volunteered to go off to world or something equally deadly. However, it is not a deadly magical spell nor a declaration of war that leaves her mouth, but instead, a quiet melody.

There are no words, only the sweet tone of her voice. However, as I close my eyes, I scent something and the words are there again-

Don't look back! Don't look down!

I know the tone better this time. It's male. They sound cheerful, as if they know that the danger isn't real.

You won't fall, I promise.

I look down below me and there's nothing but the void, but I can still smell something very strongly, something like chestnuts, oak trees, and rain. As Aislyn's song flows over me, the smell fades away and I begin to feel tingling up and down my body. My pelt changes to the dark colors and shimmering stars of a Terreskian's and my Verhamera's Horns retreat back into my skull. I open my eyes and I'm no longer in the castle at all.

There's nothing but darkness all around me, but as I look up, I see light- a trail of stardust blazes across the sky, illuminating the nothingness to reveal for a brief second thousands of dark creatures like me in the shadows.

Along with the other Terreskians, I chase after the starlight, but my movements are not my own. It's almost like I'm a stranger in someone else's story, just a little closer than the stories my mother used to tell me: a story told with all five senses, so to speak.

As I continue running, I reach the edge of the nothingness, a single point of light moving outwards. I can sense time diverging into billions of different timelines all at once, all of them born from these very first seconds, but as of now, I am separate from all of it. From among the Terreskians rises a single blue Canis- no, it's not a Canis. Standing at three times our height, she is far more than any Canis could ever be. Her fur glows as brightly as the stardust, and her three Verhamera's horns indicate that she herself is Verhamera. A crown of pure light shines above her head, like a halo, and thousands of ribbonlike tails billow behind her. With one flying leap, she descends towards the light, and one by one the Terreskians jump, myself included.

Only one stays back, afraid, and as I watch it standing above us as it stays in awe of the light, beginning to melt back into the nothingness.

The light blinds me and I wake up in a palace, a moment suspended in time outside of all of the worlds. It is the line between reality and what was before that. Verhamera has one throne and below us are many rooms that she herself is mentally creating as we sit in awe of her.

She looks amongst our number and whispers, "What of the last one?"
"Not coming."

"The rebel. No doubt that there will be trouble from them." Verhamera says, but instead of speaking, a silent birdsong echoes in the air around her. It's a sort of melodic telepathy, one only the Terreskians and Verhamera can explain, the one this story I am standing in must be woven with. I feel the scene dissipate around me as I question, but I force myself back into the melody, away from question and the present.

Two Terreskians stride forwards, both bearing a single crown in their mouths, and they lay them before Verhamera. One is embedded with round pink jewels, and the other with well-cut blue ones. They both vibrate with a power much like hers.

"Space and Time," her song grows low and distressed, "These are the physical manifestations of space and time themselves. They and not I are the true rulers of all of these worlds." She gazes upon them both and shakes her head.

"Holy one, you must take them." The Terreskians plead.

"I can not. This power is one that must belong to the physical world. The most we can do is hide them both, and hope that they are far less powerful in a domain of matter. I know where the Diadem of Space must go, and as for the Diadem of Time, there is a world where nothing will ever grow. Life will never grace it's planets. In the darkest reaches of space, we will leave it, and take care that no species capable of travelling worlds would be able to live on a planet like it, much less excavate it."

One Terreskian nods, taking the diadem in its mouth and leaving.

Verhamera steps down to another and whispers something into its ear, making the whole room buzz with tense melody.

That Terreskian departs as well, heading out and into the timelines.

The others realize in silence where it is taking it.

A world that will exist soon yet in the absence of time, exists forever.

The world Verhamera herself will create.

Dreamland.

I am grasped away from her palace up to where the Terreskian who stayed behind is still standing, but now its form has completely melted. Here, in the void, it will cease to exist, but something burns within it, nothing less than a burning and feral will to survive, bright as Vivian's lava. It glows red, its whole body illuminated from a single point as it becomes a corporeal being. It dives towards the light, eager to make up for its mistake, but it lands instead on an empty planet, one where surely nothing could ever live.

An unpredictable variable not even Verhamera could account for. A one in a billion mistake.

The creature no longer looks like a Terreskian. It's pelt is nothing but glossy black, and the stars reflected in its smooth body are not part of it but something separate, an enemy awaiting conquering. On this tiny planet, the raw determination to live cools, burning only at its core, and it becomes a creature with no emotion. Still, the hunger to continue existing burns within it, and around it from its hot heart spill drops of lava.

It is cooled stone, hardened from pure emotion into something deadly and sharp.

Lucifer, child of Nethre, the eternal void.

Later it takes the name of its creator and is known as Nethera, Queen of the Obsidians.

Around her, drops of lava form small creatures who grow from the dead earth, becoming colorless creatures like her, capable of changing form at will. They are a complex hivemind, bound to her, born of her body and one of her mind.

She has her Terreskians. Now she only needs her kingdom.

Time stops.

I realize abruptly we've changed to a point in the future, long, long past that fateful moment of creation. The entire planet is covered in factories, excavated from other worlds and taken from materials fused by dead suns. Killed by very little around them, at least nothing that has no souls with which to fight them, they have mastered the small and confining dimension they are in, almost bad as an interstellar prison.

Without that burning rage inside of them to survive, now that the threat from the beginning of their existence is over, they need it from elsewhere. Otherwise they will cool and become solid, harmless as stone.

Thankfully for them, the creatures have learned to cross worlds. They seek out other creatures who could hurt them, beings with souls who burn and rage to live on, but unlike them, those creatures feel and are bound to each other.

They will be their prey.

Of course, to a creature who no longer needs it, this emotion is pointless. They scoff at their prisoners. Torture them ruthlessly to get the emotion they need to live off of. Use their genetics to create weapons, hideously mutated. Their first planet becomes the Obsidian Factory, home of the Queen, and place of a million souls forever crying out for mercy.

Far away, far in the future, a single Obsidian mining for minerals on a far away planet finds something their drills, hard enough to cut diamond, have found something stronger than they.

It climbs into the crater and dusts off a single, shimmering jewel. They pull up a diadem with glittering blue jewels on it and a smile crosses their face.

Finally.