Back to her kingdom, the queen rode her black steed.

She was dressed in a sort of leather dress, black fur and silver plated reinforcements.

A royal but dark armour, still on horseback and pressing south with her escort and bodyguard, and Mombasa the barbarian warrior, she pressed on. A bad feeling or a feeling that something important was going to happen, and this time she would be in the right place at the right time.

A counsellor, soldier and warrior, armed with a huge square hammer, handed her a black onyx figurine, representing an eight-headed hydra.

"These are objects carved by monsters, near the mountain... They must be clever to make objects..."

The queen looked at the object then gave it to Mombasa who looked at it then gave it back to the queen.

"Careful, there's a point!"

This made the queen smile, but it was timely information...

Two days later, they arrived in sight of the forts marking the border of her kingdom.

The group huffed. They were in their own land, safe from a surprise attack. Indeed, what a boon it would be to eliminate the head of a kingdom, for the elves.

But that was not their objective at the moment. She remained in place because they had decided so, and not otherwise.

In a local palace, consisting of a luxurious tent held in place by pillars with rings, she settled into her relatively comfortable quarters.

All the furniture was simple, made of wood and set with copper plates and fur skins.

The bed was a rather large hammock filled with scattered cushions, drums, spears and shields made of skins decorated with hunting scenes.

The different layers of skins and ropes and weaves provided a semblance of a wall but also acoustic protection, against cold and heat or both.

Once everyone but the guards had gone to bed she moved to the darkest corner with only the brightness of the stars to be seen through the "window", a sort of high passageway, surrounded by stretched cloths, through which she could see the city and the hill behind and in the middle a shallow but in some places wide river.

It was hot during the day but cold at night, and if one were to describe the area, it would be a bit like ancient Egypt, wooded but not as arid as Egypt today.

Most of the buildings were made of cob, or mud mixed with straw, dried in the sun and glazed on the surface to resist the weather. Bad brick.

She thought back to her parents, the empire in all its splendour and then the raids and massacres of the drows and other elves.

The dwarves were neutral but had suffered a heavy price. Not an island, not a mountain, not a square inch had been spared. Only the magical shelters and the cities buried deep in the rock escaped the cataclysm.

But the world of dreams, the Alcheringe, had also perished, not with the cataclysm but by the geometric shape that was eating away at the world and its surroundings.

She took off her armour and took a jug and a clay basin.

After washing and purifying herself, she put on a black dress made of rare and fine wool for the time. A royal luxury.

Some of the embroidery was said to be made of giant spider silk, but this was certainly from a Drow trade stock.

She wanted to take a dagger, and so she did, and attached it with its golden brass scabbard to her black embroidered cloth belt. a bit like a veil, a long scarf.

And so the finely chiselled dagger of lost ancient alloy set with red rubies disappeared between the folds of her belt.

Making sure that no one could hear or see her, she closed the wicker panel which obscured the "window" into the tent and added even more darkness.

She also had a rather large black scale, probably fallen from the arena or from a moult or from a fight with one of the creatures of darkness, one of the creatures of the black mountain.

She took the hydra figutin with the sharp point and took the black scale. To her amazement, the scale could slip through the rings and ripples made by the hydra statuette.

Everything fell into place and she now felt as if she was being watched, observed.

It was like a feeling of haunting, of oppression or of unbelievable or unjustified fear.

Only those who were hypersensitive could recognise this sensation, or else young children and certain animals.

She pointed her finger and pushed the tip in and her skin was pierced.

It was painful, but the drops of blood flowed into tiny grooves almost invisible to the naked eye and a moment later she felt dizzy, as if the hydra's heads were moving and the eyes were looking at her, but it was an impression, not even an illusion.

It was useless, silly, and she put the statuette down.

She knelt down and implored

"O primordial Goddess of the Darkness of Time and Chaos, hear my pleas as your servant. Hear my plea to serve you and punish your enemies."

But only silence brought an answer.

Nothing.

Nothing happened.

But the blood had been absorbed by the idol.

Her finger still bleeding, she poured more on the object which was finally soaked.

She took the black scale and kissed it, then put it back on the idol.

She stood up and turned her back, sighing.

Then she went to look at the stars and went to bed.

But the idol's eyes were red and the heads were watching the queen fall asleep.

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Without knowing it, she had set something in motion that was beyond her.

Eventually, sleep got the better of the queen and she closed her eyes.

At first she was staring at the ceiling and the plain fabric began to ripple.

These ripples took the form of squares and spirals as if looking down on fir trees.

She felt like she was floating and then she sank into her cushions, as if there were hundreds of them and she was sinking into quicksand and then she struggled out of a huge pile of cushions filling the room to the brim.

"Phew" she said as she sat up and looked at the overflowing cushions.

But there was no door and the doorframe looked like an Indian arabesque.

The structure looked like corridors in a maharajah's palace.

Everything was unknown and glass lanterns illuminated the endless corridors very, very dimly.

At each junction, a lantern embedded in the doorframe and emitting a faint glow.

Where was it?

What was this place?

She then took the right-hand path and entered a strange room where the stairs were upside down leading to impossible passages upwards.

It was absurd.

There were also passages downwards.

She began to cry, lost and not knowing where to go.

The room with the cushions was lost in an infinity of corridors.

"Help," she cried.

But no one answered.

So she wandered around and felt a draught of air, of sea spray.

And she followed the light wind and eventually came to a sort of canyon, behind her a passage with a glass floor leading to timeless floors and ruins below.

There were also torches but she made her way out, between the paws of huge winged lions.

When she touched the stone, millions of pebbles came closer and moved up the ruins to reconstitute the original stone statues. The effect was like a statue falling apart but filmed in reverse, as if time was rewinding at an unprecedented speed.

The next moment, two sphinxes looked at her and half-opened their eyes, but no words or anything else appeared.

The canyon was filled with sand, like an extension of a beach, and it was towards this direction that she began to walk.

The sky was dark but slowly thousands of stars began to shine again.

One of the sphynxes spoke up.

"The world of dreams is open again, bless you, little queen.

She began to smile. A compliment is never unwelcome.

Her footsteps marked the sand and indicated an exit to a labyrinth.

But was she in a dream or a labyrinth? Was she asleep? Was she dreaming or was she with her body?

Drops of blood from her finger put an end to her doubts... she was somewhere else!

The queen asked herself a thousand and one questions.

Where was she?

What was this place?

And as she walked along the beach, she saw a castle flashing between a ruin and its intact appearance.

It defied all logic.

Then she picked up some sand and threw it away, and as she did so, a film appeared before her, projected onto the sand.

It was a dream, a memory?

But it was not hers.

She saw two metal dragons, built like arrows.

There were two of them, and next to them an egg and a torn human, the bottom like that of a dragon with a woman's bust. She lay panting...

"The egg is not broken..."

"Don't speak Iseult... save your strength..."

But all around them, full of volcanoes and the sky was only darkness...

Hella: "We are going to die! everything is collapsing... and they are all gone...Tiamat, the portal is destroyed and already swallowed...."

Alban: "Stop talking nonsense... we are made of metal..."

"But...but the sky is torn...the stars.... there are none left!!!"

He looked at the blue-black dragoness... "She won't last much longer.."

"Iseult... you must live and raise your child..."

"A... Alban... I'm sorry... I was beaten and didn't get the cure in time so I did everything I could to keep the child... Do you know where Tania is?"

"Later... she's wounded but alive... the Baron took her to his hold..."

"And... Tiamat??", hoping for a way out...

"she has. As ... disappeared, swallowed by crystal..... The Winged Lion fled into a golden portal and the whole area is an ocean of lava... The oceans will boil..."

"And... the sea dragons?"

"Disappeared in crystal and then... nothing! Like the White Hydra... it went into submission before a terrible shadow and was taken away...

I was afraid and ran away..."

"Hella... it's time!"

As Iseult lost consciousness, Hella opened her maw wide and swallowed the poor deformed human and Alban opened her neck and she laid the egg in her cockpit revealing 2 seats and an aeroplane pilot battle station.

"This is what I hate most about this body! It makes me a machine!!!"

The 2 steel dragons took flight and climbed up and through the clouds to see only a black sky.

Alban: "Phew... he's here"

In orbit, a rather large ship, well over 200 meters long.

"It's a ship of Baron Zergalor's armada!"

Alban circled it and pulled out a probe to connect and his system took over with a series of charm spells and hacker routines unique to his Helldrake species.

Hella: "How are we going to get in??? the interior is too small for us!"

Alban deployed a paw and a discus appeared and he cut the top of the command deck, empty.

The living structures were destroyed and the crew was floating somewhere in space, sucked into the void.

The two helldrakes clutched each other and entered the gaping hole.

"Engine initialization.....Main drive engaged.

Forward shield deployed,

Redirecting all resources to the three main engines.

"Hella, I'll pilot the engines directly into vector drive. We'll try to escape the time bubble..."

But time was beginning to eat away at the ship, but Alban didn't wait.

"Full power!"

The 3 reactors whirred and the shock of acceleration was so great that everything in the ship was crushed and much of the hull came apart, leaving only the chassis holding the engines and the autonomous propulsion system.

If they were organic, they would have been flattened like a pancake, but they held up.

The star points became lines and the acceleration continued until it reached the speed of light.

Alban concentrated on the map to avoid collisions and escape the time consuming bubble.

They succeeded but... the fuel ran out, caught in the mad acceleration and they broke away from the ship.

Hella and Alban formed a ball with their bodies in the back and their wings as shields...

"Hella... this is the end... we've escaped, we've passed the death-sphere but we're being blown into infinity... into the light..."

"Alban... how long??"

"I don't know my love... A thousand years? a million? we'll go into deep hibernation and leave an active beacon pulsing once a month.."

In the face of despair and infinite darkness, the queen felt pity... "So these would be the arrow dragons of the report??? they would be here and alive.??"

But the dream became a nightmare.

The stars went out one after the other... the worlds collapsed... there was only blackness and in the background, a light with the galaxy and huge space ships. Lots and lots of ships... And one of them picked up the crumbling ball, slowing down its crazy speed.

The image stopped and it continued on to the entrance of a cave leading down under the sea...to the now ruined castle.

The sea, calm, had gently stirred and night had just fallen.

The queen continued and the sand gave way to molten granite.

She could see cosmic fire burning everything in its path and the rocks turning fiery red, but it was an illusion, a projection from the past.

The blast came from the island, from the destroyed castle, melted rocks and bricks into one.

It was humid and the crystals in the walls gave a semblance of shine.

Shadows walked like ghosts through these corridors. and she came to a fork in the road. One led to the mountain inland and the other to the black island.

She knew it but did not know why or how.

It was just the way it was.

Naturally, she followed the spray and... she heard birds... seagulls??? What is a seagull? She knew, but she had never seen one on Gaia... Well... yes... there had been since the cataclysm.... those infernal beasts...

But the sound disappeared like a breath with the wind...

It was only a memory, one more ghost... a sound ghost.

She arrived at the torn castle, leaving only a few straight walls with square holes where there were windows and the rest of it just scree eaten away by a raging sea...blocks of reef blackened by a fire as old as time.

Only the waves gave a rhythm to the infinite sea on one side and on the other side, very high cliffs that would never end.

As if this world was a fortress and the sphynxes were guarding the only entrance, the only access... This island was an exception, defying the natural order of things and having suffered the devastating wrath of the elements.

She jumped from block to block and noticed the entrance to a semi-open cave made of basalt blocks, blocks made by giants who had disappeared over time.

She ventured into the cave but it made her feel an immense pressure, a hostile and dangerous presence.

It was as if she was on the edge of a spider's web, dozens of metres long, with death at the end of the tunnel.

But this was just another illusion... ghosts of the past.

She entered and came to different stones, red and ochre basalt and... all of a sudden, torches lit up and the whole place lit up and a gentle summer heat filled the area. It was pleasant and she continued further on

Stylish toads or humans wearing funny helmets...?

Some were sticking their tongues out between sharp canines as if they had been waiting for something for thousands of years.