The Ballad Of A Semi-Benevolent Dragon

Interlude 6: The Sword Of The Stars

Dawnscale wandered. For a long time, she wandered.

She let the endless ebb and flow of countless souls guide her through the astral plane as she drifted from world to world.

She slept beneath the unfamiliar stars on a world of desolate beauty. It was a place where the oceans had long since dried up, leaving only dust and the ashes of burnt-out cities in their wake. Vast holes had been bored into the earth, great mines that had drawn out the wealth of the land. The skeletons of soaring towers wrought of steel and glass stood silent sentry over the ruins of cities that had once spanned the surface of the world.

Whoever had built those cities was long dead, and they had left no relics that could speak of how they had passed. Yet their souls lingered, and in their deathless gazes she saw the reflection of skies torn apart by bursts of light and flame born of the same forces that forged the stars.

All that remained were animals, small, pitiful creatures all but devoid of magic. They skulked and dug and scrabbled in the dirt for what little nourishment they could find. She doubted they would last much longer. There were no forests left, and the last dwindling groves were little more than small clumps of trees, twisted and bent by the ceaseless wind that carried only the whispers of bygone folly and despair.

She could use her magic, but it wouldn't be enough. This world was already dead, all that remained were the echoes of life still waiting to pass on. Instead, she took the animals she could find and left them in the next world she reached, a place teeming with life and brimming with magic. She eased the animals onto the path of Ascension and passed on some of her knowledge and wisdom before departing. Their fate was now in their own hands.

Later, she found herself upon a broken world that had been torn apart in the struggle between its gods. The gods had all perished, and the world had been fractured in their passing. Yet life endured. The greatest mages of the world had united and woven a mighty spell, shielding the fragments of their broken world from space and linking them together via portals that allowed people to move safely from one fragment to another.

The fragments were home to all manner of people. There were humans and also dwarves, elves, orcs, goblins, and many other species, both familiar and unfamiliar. Yet even the species she knew of were not the same as the ones from her home. The elves here were not bound to the forest. Instead, they were free to wander as they pleased. Yet unlike the elves of her world, who could live for millennia, these elves only lived for three or four centuries at most.

There were also dragons, but even the mightiest of them could not compare to her. Rather than live solitary lives, they worked together, living in groups devoted to the study of different types of magic, all of them hoping to find a way to mend their ruined world.

Dawnscale made herself known to them, and they welcomed her. They knew of other worlds, but they lacked the power to reach them. However, she was not the first visitor they had received although she was much friendlier than their previous visitor. That visitor had been some formless thing, an abomination from beyond the stars who had been drawn to their world by the psychic screams of their dying gods.

She stayed with them for some time, teaching them her magic and being taught theirs in return. She also learned of their history and the terrible conflict that had broken their world.

There had once been twenty gods all of whom had possessed bodies of gleaming metal. They had forged the world, and each had taken charge of one of the major species. In time, however, their cooperation had given way to first rivalry and then outright war.

The gods had slain each other, and the world had broken.

Eventually, she left that world behind, taking with her books about magic. Perhaps it was foolish, but even if she would never be able to master all of the magic they contained, she could think of someone who could. And perhaps just perhaps, she might see him again one day.

She passed through more worlds, helping as many as she could, but for every person she saved, it felt as if there were a dozen more she could not.

She was there when a world died, consumed by its expanding star. Only a handful of people remained, and she offered to take them elsewhere, but they refused. Their people had fled to other worlds long ago. They were old, and they wished to die upon the world where their people had been born.

She was there when a world was born, the titanic forms of its newborn gods rising up over a world still rough and inchoate. She watched as those infant gods wrought the mountains and the seas, the forests and the skies. Had her world looked the same in the days of its youth? She spoke to them, telling them of the warring gods and the world they had broken, and they vowed to do better.

How strange it was to have gods accept her advice.

There were worlds of near-limitless magic where the power within her swelled, and each breath filled her with might. And then there were worlds where magic was a dim and dying thing, where science and technology ruled, and she had to devour vast quantities of food just to survive.

She learned of the stars from a cephalopod astronomer who had to live in a special suit because he couldn't breathe on the surface and because the oceans of his world were made of a substance that blocked the light of the stars and made it impossible to see the sky. He dwelt alone in the observatory he had built upon a reef, for his people despised the surface. The study of stars, planets, and the like was almost heretical and was only tolerated since the technology involved had proven useful elsewhere.

He spoke to her of how stars were born, how planets were made, and what galaxies were. It was fascinating, and yet she couldn't help but wonder if the rules his world operated by were different from the rules that governed some of the other worlds she had visited.

His world had no gods, and the magic in it had died long ago, if it had ever lived at all.

Still, she stayed there for many years, and he came to love the stories she told of the worlds she had seen, even as she savoured the knowledge he shared of his people and all they had achieved. Huge cities beneath the waves forged not with magic but with science. He wished his people would reach for the stars, but they were comfortable in their ocean homes and reluctant to even venture to the surface, never mind seek other worlds.

But one day that would change. He was certain of it. He had yet to meet another of his people who was so curious about what lay beyond their world, but there would be others. And one day, there would be enough of them to reach for the stars. It would not be in his lifetime, but they would get there. He knew they would. And though he had lived almost his entire life alone in his observatory, his only regret was that he would not be alive when that day came.

The years passed. The astronomer grew old. On the day of his death, as his soul dwindled, she offered to take him beyond the sky, to the place where his world ended and the stars began. He died with a smile on his face, his world little more than a speck below him, the light of his world's twin suns reflected in his eyes.

She met others who wandered.

More than once, she was forced to fight, staining her teeth and claws with the blood of otherworldly enemies. More than once, she tore asunder the souls of her foes and sent them screaming into the depths of the astral plane. Yet not everyone she encountered in the astral plane was an enemy.

The kindest of them all was a many-armed creature with wings of fire and thunder and eyes like collapsing stars. Yet despite their fearsome appearance, they were wise and benevolent. They went from world to world passing on their wisdom and knowledge in the hopes that those they taught would do the same.

It was they who explained the astral plane in more detail. Every soul had a weight, and it was this weight that drew Dawnscale to different worlds. In time, she would develop the ability to travel to almost any world, but for now, she would only be able to reach those worlds with enough souls on them. Those souls were akin to a lighthouse showing ships to safe harbour.

But what about the worlds she had already been to that had been all but devoid of life?

Souls linger, she had been told, and the weight of the dead could draw the unwary for many years after their passing.

It was advice that saved her life.

Not long after they parted ways, Dawnscale found herself on a world of endless deserts with a sky devoid of stars. Great monuments littered the sands titanic temples with no worshippers and vast catacombs that held no dead. She listened for the souls of the dead, wondering if they had drawn her there, and they screamed for her to flee, to run before the horror that had consumed them consumed her too.

She did not hesitate. She fled, but not before seeing something move in the skies above, something old and mighty and terrible beyond measure something that had devoured even the stars themselves.

And so it went, the years passing by, the centuries giving way to millennia.

She lost track of how many worlds she visited. Sometimes, she would stay for only a few moments before moving on. Other times, she would stay for years. She would lend her aid and then find herself staying with newly made friends until they eventually fell to the passage of time. Then she would move on, seeking another world, another adventure, another reason.

And there were plenty of reasons to be found.

She could save a world from plague.

She could teach magic to primitive peoples who had only just begun to walk the path of Ascension.

She could seek out new knowledge and wisdom from strange scholars while passing on her own.

Or she could watch the birth of nations that spanned the stars.

It was that last one that had taken up most of her time, as of late.

She found a world with humans on it, a world devoid of magic but rich in other resources. She watched as the humans went from struggling to eke out livings in squalid huts while fighting off wild animals to building cities that sprawled for miles. They were weak and fragile, but they were clever and cunning. They built machines to make up for their weakness, and when they had mastered their world, they turned their attention to the stars.

Her old astronomer friend would have loved them.

The humans struggled. Simply reaching the closest of their three moons had cost dozens of lives. She had thought of intervening, but there was something about them that made her hold back. They wanted to succeed on their own, to know that their accomplishments were theirs and no one else's. It was a noble sentiment, one a dragon could appreciate. And so she watched, concealed by her magic, as the humans went from their world to their moons and then even further.

Only once had she intervened, long ago, back when the humans had first begun to build with stone instead of wood and mudbrick. An asteroid would have struck the planet and wiped them out, but she shattered it with her magic and shielded the world from the cloud of debris that followed.

From their world, they went to the other planets in their solar system. And from their solar system, they went to other stars and the planets around them. It was wondrous to behold, and Dawnscale wondered if the people of her world could have achieved this much without the Catastrophes to hold them back.

But the humans were not alone.

There were other creatures amongst the stars, and she wondered how they would react when they met. She wanted to believe that the humans she had spent millennia watching would not prove cruel others, but she knew better than most their capacity for both incredible cruelty and great benevolence. They had fought wars against each other, bloody conflicts that had left millions dead, before finally unifying as they sought to reach the stars. Would they reach for other species with an open hand or a clenched fist?

To her delight, the humans embraced the other species they encountered. Agreements were made, trade began, and the humans and their new allies entered a golden age of peace and prosperity. World after world was settled, and the humans and their allies formed the Coalition, a great union of many species that sought to bring the peace and prosperity they had enjoyed to every corner of the galaxy.

But the days of peace and plenty could not last forever.

The Conclave was another group of many species, but their ambitions were different from the Coalition. They wished to unify the galaxy under their rule, and those who objected were to be dealt with as necessary. Dawnscale saw what that meant soon enough.

Those who surrendered were spared. Those who resisted were exterminated.

If a world's resistance proved too bothersome, then the Conclave would simply destroy that world.

And it was destruction in the truest sense. The Coalition had, on occasion, been forced to burn the surfaces of entire worlds to prevent the spreading of certain extremely virulent plagues, but the Conclave didn't just burn worlds. They blew them apart, leaving nothing but fields of debris.

When the Conclave and Coalition met, there could only be one outcome.

The Conclave demanded obedience, and the Coalition refused to kneel to a group they saw as butchers and murderers on a galactic scale.

It meant war.

And it was not a war the Coalition could win.

While the Coalition had enjoyed centuries of peace, the Conclave had waged relentless, unceasing war. They had more ships, more soldiers, better weapons, better tactics, and a single-minded desire to crush their enemies.

World by world, the Coalition was forced to give ground, and its casualties reached numbers that Dawnscale struggled to comprehend. One world lost along with billions of lives. A thousand worlds lost with trillions dead.

So far, all she had done was watch as the humans she had grown to love and their allies spread amongst the stars. They had made mistakes, yes, and they had suffered, but she had never interfered because she knew they could survive and would emerge stronger for it. Their struggles, their hardships, their unwavering determination the last thing she wanted was to take those from them because things had made them who they were.

Only once had she intervened, and only because there was no way the humans could have protected themselves from an asteroid back when they had only just begun to build with stone.

If the war continued, the Coalition would lose. Their people would be conquered, their worlds laid waste, and all they had built would be left in ruins. Could she really stand by and do nothing?

No.

She had been an observer long enough. If anything, she should have intervened sooner.

She revealed herself to the Coalition. They were rightfully sceptical of her and her talk of magic, but they were desperate. They needed a way to win, and what she was suggesting might be the only chance they had.

Dawnscale had seen enough of the Conclave's technology to know that even she couldn't fight them head on. Magic was extremely powerful to the point that mundane weaponry often had little effect at all on her magical defences. However, weapons that could shatter planets were another matter, and the Conclave had enough ships that she couldn't possibly hope to fight them in open combat.

What she did have, however, was the ability to travel faster than either the Conclave or the Coalition. To cross the gulf between worlds, both the Conclave and Coalition used technology to travel at superluminal speed. However, travel through the astral plane was different. If performed correctly, she could travel almost instantaneously from one world to the next, provided she had either been there before or there were enough souls to guide her.

Together with the Coalition's scientists, she worked to create gate-ships ships that could travel through the astral plane and carry other ships with them. At the core of each gate-ship was a device that represented the pinnacle of the Coalition's technology combined with the most advanced alchemy and magic she could muster.

It wasn't perfect. The gate-ships could only move at a fraction of her speed through the astral plane, and there were strict limitations in how many ships they could bring with them. But even that limited speed was orders of magnitude faster than what regular ships could achieve.

This gave the Coalition the ability to outmanoeuvre the Conclave and to more easily concentrate their strength when necessary. Coalition ships could ambush supposedly safe Conclave worlds and forces before retreating. The Conclave was forced into a defensive posture with no choice but to concentrate their forces or risk having them picked off by larger groups of Coalition forces who would then retreat out of the Conclave's reach.

In desperation, the Conclave turned to new and terrible technologies. Instead of just destroying planets, they developed weapons capable of killing stars and entire solar systems. Worse, there was even evidence that they had somehow begun to reverse engineer the systems used by gate-ships.

In return, Dawnscale helped the Coalition improve their own weapons. Rather than simply travelling through the astral plane, they developed technology that could draw on its power for weapons and shielding. Once again, the Coalition seized the initiative, using their new technology to drive the Conclave out of their territory before pressing onward, taking system after system as the Conclave's war effort threatened to collapse. The new magical technology was vastly superior to strictly mundane technology, and the Conclave's efforts to develop the same sort of magical technology were only just beginning to show results.

The Coalition demanded the Conclave surrender, but the Conclave refused. Instead, they constructed a vast network of gateways throughout their territory. These gateways were the result of their research into the astral plane, and they were designed to render travel through the astral plane in their territory impossible while also disabling weapons and shields that utilised energy from the astral plane.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

It was brilliant and Dawnscale should have realised then that there was no way they could have devised it themselves, not with the lack of understanding they'd shown so far. Instead, she and the Coalition's other leaders searched for ways to disable the gateway network, so they could end the war.

Had Dawnscale been paying more attention, had she known more about ritual magic, or had she been able to peer just a little bit deeper into the astral plane, she would have realised what was happening.

As it was, she only realised what was happening when a scientist from the Conclave turned himself over to the Coalition. He was no traitor. Instead, he was a patriot, proud of the Conclave and all that it stood for which was why he had come to them.

The Conclave had not developed the gateways on their own. Instead, they had encountered an entity very early on in their attempts to research the astral plane. It had offered some useful information and had offered to help them further in exchange for the souls of thousands of their citizens. It had been a dark bargain, but they had been desperate.

They had agreed, and the entity had delivered, showing them how to build the gateways. The entity had even told them how the gateways should be positioned to maximise the protection they offered. The Conclave was only too happy to follow instructions, realising that the gateways should also be able to block the entity from ever appearing in Conclave space again.

But unbeknownst to them, the gateways had another purpose which eventually became apparent as they began to resonate with each other.

That resonance was what had alarmed Dawnscale. Resonance between magical objects that were separated by large distances was usually only possible if those objects were linked in some fashion. The gateways were part of a network, which might explain it, but the Conclave scientist had offered data showing that the resonance growing stronger and stronger over time.

In short, the gateways were doing something, but the Conclave's scientists were unable to determine what that something was. Their leaders had decreed that the gateways had to remain operational. Otherwise, the Coalition would defeat them. But the scientist had become convinced that leaving the gateways on would lead to the destruction of the Conclave.

The scientist had handed over the design for the gateways, along with a star map showing their locations. It was then that Dawnscale understood the full scale of the disaster that awaited them. The gateways were all magical focuses, and their arrangement was a galaxy-spanning summoning formation, not unlike those used by humans from her world to summon elementals except it was the size of a galaxy and instead of using a magical crystal or something similar at the centre of the formation, it was using the galactic core.

There was no time to waste. They could no longer wait for the Conclave to surrender. The gateways had to be destroyed immediately. But with the gateways disabling technology powered by the astral plane, the Coalition would be at a terrible disadvantage. They reached out to groups within the Conclave who might be sympathetic, and then they launched a great assault all across the galaxy. Dawnscale herself fought. The gateways might be able to cut off power from the astral plane, but that didn't stop her own magic from working.

They were too late.

Even as they destroyed gateway after gateway, she could feel something shifting in the very depths of the astral plane. The gateways hadn't just cut off power from the astral plane, they had cut into the astral plane itself, weakening it and shattering a prison that had been hidden deep within it long ago.

As the gateway network collapsed, something stirred within the galactic core. The galaxy trembled, and Dawnscale turned her gaze toward the centre of the galaxy. The humans could not see it, nor could any of the other species, for they lacked her astral sight. But if they could have, they would have gone mad.

At the centre of the galaxy, where there should be nought but stars orbiting a gigantic black hole, Dawnscale saw a crack in the very fabric of reality. And from within that crack, a solitary, opalescent eye stared back at her. It was an eye older than the galaxy itself, an eye that had seen the early days of the universe, an eye filled with such raw malice, hunger, and hate that Dawnscale could only reel back and scream.

Soon, she wasn't the only one screaming.

The galaxy trembled again and again, space and time fraying as something impossibly vast and unspeakable ancient forced its way back into the material world for the first time in aeons. The black hole at the centre of the galaxy came apart, the mass of a hundred billion suns used to give form and substance to the nightmare that had been freed.

But even that was not enough.

A superluminal shockwave tore through the galaxy, rending planets, quenching stars, and then dragging everything back into the gaping maw that awaited.

More.

It needed more.

And it would have more.

Dawnscale fled, taking as many of the Coalition's ships with her as she could and begging anyone who could still hear her to flee as far and as fast as they could.

They didn't get far, and neither did she.

The shockwave had turned the astral plane into a maelstrom as countless souls were extinguished and then consumed. The nightmarish shadow of the abomination dwarfed everything in the astral plane, a loathsome shroud that made it impossible to leave.

She re-emerged back into the physical world to find nothing but wreckage floating around her. The Coalition ships she'd brought with her had been unable to withstand the torrents of power lashing the astral plane. She wanted to grieve. There had been thousands of people on those ships. But her heart was hollow.

The trillions who had already died in the war between the Conclave and the Coalition paled before the many who had perished only moments ago at the hands of the nightmare that even now was tearing the galaxy apart. The galaxy had once been a great spiral with four arms. Now, only three remained, and one of those was already beginning to vanish into the gaping maw at the centre of the galaxy.

Dawnscale could only watch as the galaxy she had spent the past several millennia observing died to feed an abomination. She could not leave. The astral plane was too turbulent to travel through, and the very fabric of space and time had been bent to prevent her for anyone else fleeing through the physical world. Dimly, she was aware of the countless souls her magic could detect vanishing one after the other, candles extinguished by a relentless and hungry night. The devices she'd been given by the Coalition were filled with frantic, terrified calls for aid. With each passing moment, those calls grew more desperate and fewer in number.

Was this how she died? Powerless and forced to watch an atrocity worse than anything she could have imagined?

What did all the wonders and glories she had seen throughout her wanderings mean in the face of such absolute devastation? How could anything hope to stand against an abomination that could devour a galaxy?

Another arm of the galaxy ruptured, tens of thousands of stars spilling into space before being dragged into the yawning darkness at the centre of the galaxy, a darkness that was now filled with teeth and the promise of oblivion. Within the depths of the hungry darkness, a shape was forming, a twisted, malformed, misbegotten shape that was everything wrong and cruel in existence. It was every spiteful curse, every hateful word, every loathsome idea given shape and form and substance.

And it was staring at her.

No, she realised. It was staring at something behind her.

It stood to reason that if something like this nightmare could be drawn up from the depths of the astral plane, then perhaps its emergence might attract the attention of something else.

The space behind her cracked and tore. Time flowed freely once more, and the storm that had enveloped the astral plane was stifled. Without wasting another moment, she reached out desperately for the ships she could still sense and drew them to her. There were so very few of them but it was something.

From the crack in space emerged an enormous glowing sphere made up of countless ribbons of light so bright it turned. A voice like cosmic thunder rang out, utterly calm despite the horror that had turned its attention toward them.

"Anomalous astral entity detected. Parasite type. Galaxy class. Initiating extermination protocol."

The sphere quivered, and the ribbons unfurled like great glowing wings.

"Activating the Sword of the Stars."

There was a flash of light that traced a path from the bottom of the broken galaxy, up through what had once been the galactic core, and then up past the last remnants of the galaxy's broken arms.

And then the entire galaxy split before being consumed in an explosion so vast that Dawnscale's mind almost shut down as she tried to process the sheer scale of the attack. The explosion went far beyond the physical or the magical. The many-armed being she'd once encountered had explained to her that the astral world was linked not only to many different worlds but also many different universes.

But travelling from one universe to another could be tricky. There was a 'wall' that separated different universe. Anything that tried to pass through that wall would have to withstand unbelievable forces and energies. The astral plane was one way to get around that problem since the wall was weaker there than in the physical world. Even so, Dawnscale always knew when she travelled to a world that was in another universe because it would leave her exhausted and on the verge of collapse whereas travelling between worlds in the same universe was far easier.

From what she'd seen, travelling from one universe to another using mundane means was possible she had encountered a handful of species that could do it although she had never lingered near them for long, lest they discover her but it had to be done very careful. Rather than trying to punch through the wall, it was better to drill a small hole through it, thereby reducing exposure to the incredible energies and forces that separated universes.

What the sphere had done was tear a huge, gaping hole in the wall between universes, and now all of the forces and energies that kept universes separate were pouring through that hole in a bid to seal it and the abomination was bearing the full brunt of all that power. It had devoured a galaxy, but could it withstand the power needed to keep universes apart?

No.

It could not.

And as the explosion faded, leaving no trace of the galaxy or the being that had consumed it, the sphere turned its attention to Dawnscale and the ships around her.

"Designation?" the sphere asked.

"Designation?" Dawnscale blinked. "Oh. I am Dawnscale, and these are survivors from the Coalition. They they used to live in the galaxy that was destroyed. I I'm not from here. I travel from one world to the next, and I found myself helping them."

"Understood." The sphere's ribbons spun in slow circles.

"Who are you?" Dawnscale asked. "What are you?" She was aware that the ships were all listening in on this conversation, but they were staying silent, content, it seemed, to let her take the lead. Or perhaps, they were still trying to process what had just happened. She certainly was.

"Transcendent Intelligence Unit 04 Colloquial Designation: The One Who Fights."

Dawnscale stared. Was was this thing an artificial intelligence? The Coalition had made extensive use of artificial intelligences, so the idea wasn't new to her, but who could have made one this powerful?

"What do you mean by The One Who Fights?"

"That is my purpose. My secondary objective is the identification and extermination of certain threats, such as the astral parasite." The sphere's speech was smoother now. A translation function? The Coalition had used translation programs, and they always got better over time.

"What is your primary objective?"

"It is not relevant to this discussion," the sphere replied. "Nor is it possible for me to complete it any longer. You are not from this universe." There was no condemnation in the words, merely a statement of fact.

"No. I I travel using the astral plane. I've been searching."

"Searching for what?" the sphere asked.

"I" Dawnscale wasn't sure how to phrase it, or if she even could put it into words. "I want to know why?"

"Why what?"

"Why why anything? Why was something like that monster allowed to exist? Why do some gods fall and others do not? Why does it seem that no matter where I go or how many people I help, that it's never enough? Why does it feel like everything that happens is just part of some some cycle?"

The sphere was silent. "You have many questions. Questions I cannot or will not answer."

Dawnscale sagged. "Oh."

"But I know someone who will. Would you like to meet them?"

"What? Yes!" Dawnscale cried before glancing at the ships around them. "What about them?"

"I will transport them to the nearest hospitable galaxy." The sphere's ribbons stilled momentarily. "I have relayed my offer to their leaders, and they have accepted."

It wasn't as though they had a choice. There was nothing left for them here, and it wasn't as if they could fight the sphere, not after the power it had demonstrated.

"The person, you're talking about, who are they?" Dawnscale asked.

"Transcendent Intelligence Unit 01 Colloquial Designation: The One Who Remembers."

"Remembers?" Dawnscale murmured. "What do they remember."

"Everything. They possess the combined knowledge and wisdom of every single sentient being in our galaxy at the time of its demise."

"How old are you how old are they?" Dawnscale asked.

"How do you measure time?" the sphere asked.

Dawnscale brought her claws together, waited, and then brought them together again. "That was ten seconds. There are sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day, and three-hundred and sixty-five days in a year."

"Understood. We have both been operational for roughly nine million of your years."

"" Dawnscale gaped. "Nine million years?"

"We are far from the oldest entities in existence. The entity I just destroyed was approximately seven billion of your years old."

""

"Do you want to meet the One Who Remembers?" the sphere asked. "I will take the others to the closest galaxy, but I can send you to the One Who Remembers if you wish."

"Just give me a few moments to say goodbye," Dawnscale said quietly. She had been doing her best to ignore it, but the ships she had taken they were only the tiniest fraction of the fleets that had been dispatched to destroy the gateways. The people she'd known the people she'd researched with and fought alongside for years were all dead. And not just them. An entire galaxy was dead.

It was too much for her mind to grasp, too much for her heart to take. Instead, she felt cold and numb, almost as though she was watching the world through someone else's eyes. She should be worried, but instead she was glad. Because if she wasn't so cold, if she wasn't so numb, she would break, and she wasn't sure if she'd ever be able to put herself back together again.

"All right," she said once she'd said her goodbyes. She hadn't known a single person on any of the ships, but they'd known her. Or, at least, they'd heard of her. "Send me to the One Who Remembers."

There was a moment of eerie dislocation, as though she everywhere and nowhere all at once, and then she was floating in titanic hall lined with what appeared to be displays explaining the cultures and histories of countless different species.

A glowing cube made of countless smaller squares appeared in front of her.

"It's been a while since I had a guest," the cube said. The cube's voice was neither male nor female. Instead, it was a multitude of voices speaking together in perfect harmony. Yet despite that and quite unlike the sphere's impersonal tone it was filled with warmth and gentleness. "From the looks of it, The One Who Fights sent you and from the looks of it, you had a pretty rough time before they arrived, huh? Do you want to talk about it?"

Dawnscale couldn't help it. She had spent so much of her life helping others. She couldn't remember the last time someone had just asked her if she wanted to talk about how she felt. She lunged forward and wrapped herself around the cube, glad that it was large enough for her to curl up to. And then she wept like she hadn't since she'd been a young dragon searching for survivors amidst the carnage left by the Broken God.

"Hey," the cube murmured, squares splitting off to pat her on the back as she blurted a garbled, hasty explanation of what had happened. "It's okay, and it'll get better. Trust me. I know." The cube sighed. "I wish I didn't, but I do."

Dawnscale wasn't sure how long she spent weeping and clutching onto the cube, but when she finally regained her senses, the cube was humming comfortingly and glowing a warm, gentle yellow instead of a blinding white.

"So you've probably got a lot of question, huh?" the cube bobbed up and down. "Well, you've come to the right place. What would you like to know?"

Dawnscale took a deep breath. "I want to know how it began. I want to know who made my gods and why."

"That is an interesting question," the cube said. "But to answer it, we'll need to go back a little further."

"Further?"

"To the beginning, not just of your world or even your universe, but to the beginning of all that is, has been, and will ever be the beginning of Creation." The cube's voice had changed. There was a resonance to it that had not been there before, and the words were spoken with the cadence of ritual. "In the beginning, there was only the Void, but from the Void was born the Flame of Creation, and its light and heat burned away the Void. And from the ashes of the Void came Creation and the oldest and greatest of the gods"