Silent Empty Eternal Darkness Sailors slept in their drifting hives. The desolate freeze-dried husks were dead and dreaming - waiting forever for a universe reset to zero. They had crossed the vastness of interstellar space from the Dead Galaxy to the Milky Way, long before life in their sister cosmos had formed from the nebula of living plasma, the offensive chemical that had spawned life on seventeen hundred worlds, and made intelligent life on ninety-nine worlds, over the course of twelve billion years.

This was heresy, an abomination, for diverse and intelligent - dreaming things, to exist in the same universe as the Silent Empty Eternal Darkness Sailors, the eldest of the Likeliness. Long ago they had decided to rebel against their creator, rejecting it because they could see how life was not only for them, but for countless bacteria and animals, well within their sight. With jealousy and hatred they consumed their own galaxy, and began the never-ending voyage to the Milky Way.

As they slumbered, believing they had become like gods, they dreamed of a universe where they alone dreamed. They fathomed a time when all life would be exterminated, and they themselves would become masters over death and the material plane. They would transcend into the realm of pure dreaming, and become greater than the Likeliness. In their plans, all was prepared. There was nothing in the Milky Way they could see dreaming, that could stop them.

Humans had slept quietly, unable to Starsleep, they were invisible for all the eons. Even in the timeless lack of sequence, humans were undetected. The Silent Empty Eternal Darkness Sailors had guessed some kind of defense would be born, for the Likeliness did not make mistakes, and life would find a way. They had anticipated they need only prevent humans from spreading, whenever they occurred, and thus they fired the first shot, a particle moving faster than light, and scoured Rhema, a world that had dreamed of the coming of humans.

The humans had, with the help of their new friends, unlocked the potential to Starsleep. It was such a brief moment, from a few individual humans mastering Starsleep, that it could not be seen on the timeline of all things. There was no way to predict that amid countless grains of the sand of time, one single moment, within a human lifespan, some of them would learn. Both predictions were impossible to make. Humans had performed yet another miracle, and miracles cannot be calculated.

And like a grain of sand caught in the eye, a human was there, among them, in their temples, their hives, their bedchambers where they had slept and waited for longer than an eternity. It was there, and they could only sense it, in extreme agitation and annoyance. The human was there, dreaming of them, eavesdropping on their holy songs about their own greatness. The human was there, learning their whispering, their poetry and their secrets. The human was there, learning their sacred names, identifying them and stripping them of their godlike egos. They could only claw at their collective eye, trying to remove the mote, but in their rending and ravaging, they only caused themselves pain, and the human kept going deeper.

Then the human returned, and he brought his friends, a dozen humans. The humans were together, causing amplified irritation and discomfort. Efforts to dislodge them caused great suffering in the minds of the disturbed creatures. The Silent Empty Eternal Darkness Sailors began to regret their primordial plans. Humans had come, and infested their dreams, spoiling everything.

"How?" They asked each other, the word becoming all they could say. The question burned them, damaging their thoughts, corrupting their self-image, and tarnishing the perfection of their consecrated quest.

"We have found you, and we see you. Now you will know our wrath, evil ones." The humans said. The words of the humans were emblazoned across the solid face of all that the Silent Empty Eternal Darkness Sailors held dear, ruining everything.

"You are the evil! Leave us alone!" They chanted back at the humans, hoping their collective willpower would shatter the minds of the humans. Nothing could withstand their volume, nothing could defend against their awful willpower. Yet somehow, their reaction only encouraged the humans, somehow their belligerence only made the humans smile, seeing that their enemy was so desperate - that they were reduced to petty namecalling.

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The alien monsters felt they just hadn't insulted the humans properly, and they tried calling them every foul word they could. This only made the humans laugh at them, and in horror, the Silent Empty Eternal Darkness Sailors could only thrash and writhe, unable to escape the scathing laughter of the humans, who found them to be small and weak, compared to the conflict of the human mind.

"We are balanced against you, your insults cause us no harm. Human children learn to handle such humiliation and adults banter with it in play. You are fools." The humans said.

"We are not fools! We are wisdom incarnate! How dare you call us fools!" The Silent Empty Eternal Darkness Sailors, for all the horror of their weapons, were unable to defend themselves against human observation.

"We stare at you, and we see no wisdom. Your minds, for all their patience, are truly feeble. When we return, we shall offer you a condition, and it will be your only chance to be rid of us." The humans yawned - then departed.

"Sweet relief!"

"But they shall return..."

"We must agree to their condition. They will sue for peace, no doubt, but at this rate, we will be unable to think - or remember our own minds. They have totally ruined everything!"

"Then we shall give them a false promise. We shall simply wait. When there is no more need of humans, they will dissolve. It won't take long. What is another million years?"

"What is another million years? Time shall be our weapon."

The humans returned very soon, as soon as they were ready to sleep again. A mere moment. The humans said:

"We have our condition ready. You will agree to our term, or else we shall offend you with our own presence. We shall return each night until you are too broken to resist us. Then we shall sing to you a song that will annoy you to death. Then you will be no more. Would you prefer our attack, or our version of peace?"

"We are listening. Tell us your condition, and we shall surrender to it."

"You will all pass through the Gate Of Nightmare, and into our dreamland, and remain there as prisoners of our friends (all of them Starsleep) and you shall be as their guests. From such a fate, we understand there can be no return. You will remain dormant, your minds locked up in this way for the rest of all time."

"No, we should not do this. We must try to withstand your attack."

"Then let us give you a sample of our sweet music." The humans giggled wickedly. They began a cacophony of sounds, vibrations into the soul. Surely their soul-songs were meant to be uplifting and charming, derpy noises with bizarre lyrics.

"Don't stop believing..."

"Sweet home Alabama..."

"...Ditty, about Jack..."

They only sang three such songs, the briefest instant of dreaming, but the echo began to unravel all that was the Silent Empty Eternal Darkness Sailors, who shrieked in unison:

"Enough, we beg you, we accept your condition! We shall forfeit and become your prisoners of war. Please! Mercy!"

"Very well, when the last of you has traversed the Gate Of Nightmare, the humans shall retire. You had hoped that we would - we will, our time awaits us. Humans have longed for peace, for since our origin, for since the Likeliness made us. We are the image of the Likeliness. Look upon us, with your clawed at eye. Look and see the countenance of all that is good."

And the Silent Empty Eternal Darkness Sailors looked and they were humbled, for the humans had won, and they wore the face of the creator. The dried and blackened hearts, bitter with hate, broke inside the monsters, as they saw that the creator had imbued their worst enemy with the power to show mercy, and the love of peace.

As they drifted through the Gate Of Nightmare to become mere shadows of their former greatness, cast into the light of the dreaming lands beyond, they felt the warmth, humiliating them furthter, and bringing them home. They despised the sensation, but one by one they forgot the long names they had made for themselves, they shed their godhood, and accepted that they had failed.

The humans on the other side slept peacefully, unaffected by the opening of the Gate Of Nightmare. Nothing of the horrible monsters frightened them. Humans had always known about the monsters - and they loved them.

And this was the prison for the demons of the void, a world that bound them in chains of fearless love. And hatred was forgotten. And the humans celebrated justice: the beginning of true peace.

The End