Prologue

Silence. Space. Darkness.

The void is empty. From insurmountable distances shines the light of ancient, dreary stars. It is silent, as not even sound may pass here.

In this location, there is a small planet system. One burning orange star; and 9 indiscriminate planetary bodies, drifting in the void around this burning ball of gas. Ordinary; all in all, there really isn’t much to see.

A strange thing happens then; something one would think is impossible - reality folds in on itself, forming a sort of gateway to places unknown. And through steps something eldritch in nature; vaguely humanoid.

Impossible sound forms from the lips of this being - sound that should not be; there is no air for which sound may travel in the first place! Nevertheless, there is sound.

“He is here; it is from here that he lies, dreaming of those distant realities. I can sense him.”

The language isn’t anything one should be able to speak; it is guttural and utterly alien. Yet, if any sentient being were there they would be able to understand for some strange fantastical reason.

The Being takes a slithering step into the nothingness of the void, then freezes. The space around him constricts; he, if he can even be called a “he” in the first place, freezes in place. He is stuck.

Once again reality folds in on itself, albeit in a distinctively different manner. From within steps what looks to be a humanoid woman, blue of eyes and blonde of hair; with ears pointed and long, and a fiery red dress to match; she is tall, beautiful and proud. Yet another impossibility; she strides across the void towards the eldritch being as if there were firm ground beneath her; takes breath as if there were air to breathe in the void where there should be none.

“You can not wake him, Nyarlothep,” She says.

The being’s eyes, or what passes for them on such a creature, constrict. “How do you know my name?” it hisses in its alien, guttural tongue.

The woman smirks. “We of the Order know many things; enough to keep both him and his world out of view. The only reason you stand before me is because it was ordained that you be taught where you stand.” The woman raises her arm, and gestures.

Reality warps; twists, and settles around the horror. And then it is gone without nary a shout; never to be seen or known again by any that walk the cosmos.

The woman sighs. “They know nothing of what would happen if he were to wake. The fools.”

She Turns, and again reality folds to form a gateway. She steps through. The fold closes.

And once more the void around the verdant planet is quiet. As if nothing had ever happened.

“Jesus Christ Brian!” my boss screams, spittle flying all over the front of my apron. “How many times do I have to tell you to be here on-time!”

Fuck my life. I try my hardest to not wallop this sonofabitch across the face. It’s a serious struggle; this fucker has repeated this same treatment towards me since I started this damn job. Overweight asshole that he is, though, I have to shut up and deal with it; I’ll never get paid otherwise. And gods damn do I need the money.

Hi there! My name is Brian Griham, age 16, part-time sandwich maker and writer of webnovels. And welcome to my little corner of hellish heaven.

The Manager, “Mr. Vienna,” as he demands to be called, continues to scream at me.

“I’m not paying you to be late! I’m paying you to be here when you are told!”

“Yes, Mr. Vienna.” I nod, and try my best to look meek, as much as I want to sock the guy in the gut. I’m not late, by the way. No, I’m actually relatively early, and yet I’m still getting screamed at. Ah, this fucker needs to die in a hole somewhere.

“Hmph!” he harrumphs, proceeds to straighten his incredibly oily beard, turns, and walks away, as he shouts, “get back to work, you damn cunt! And don’t bother me unless it’s life or death!”

He walks into his office, and as the door slowly closes I see him pick up a half eaten doughnut as he plomps his fat ass on what looks to be a La-z-boy.

That is literally the epitome of a lazy douche boss. I sigh, and grab a broom out of a corner. It’s going to be a long day.

I work part-time at a small sandwich shop known as Vienna’s Sub Stop. Apparently, it’s been in the bosses’ family since the early 50’s. And to this day, still hasn’t expanded. Which is really not that surprising; the food here is absolutely average, and hasn’t changed in over 70 years. I love it though, which is why I work here, even though my boss is such a twat. I’ve basically lived in this town since as far as I can remember, and Vienna’s is essentially me and my friend’s go-to place to play Dungeons and Dragons.

The small town of Coupeville, Washington, hasn’t really changed all that much basically the whole time I’ve lived here, and I’m honestly glad for it. It’s quiet, and I love it. But sometimes, I yearn to go on some form of road trip; see the world. Travel to other places; see the Niagara Falls, Walk around Central park, in New York City. Travel through Europe, See the Eiffel Tower, The Pyramids in Egypt. The Great Wall of China. I’d love to Go to Japan and visit Akihabara, home of all the weebs and Otakus.

But no; I’m here, working this job as a sandwich maker. In my small slice of hellish heaven. It’s not much, but it’s home.

As I’m doing a sweep of the store’s lobby, the bell on the storefront’s door jingles. I look up from what I’m doing, and see my co-worker, and long-time crush, Melody Sayers, come in. She is an absolute bombshell of a girl. She stands at 5’5, with a lithe body, beautiful blue eyes, youthfulf face and waist-long hair tied in a braid behind her. She’s wearing the traditional Vienna’s work uniform, over which she has her signature rugged black coat with a gray fur lining the insides and poking out along the neckline. Even though it's covering her work uniform, she rocks the whole outfit.

She could literally wear a burlap sack and still make it look good. I smile at her, and she smiles back. The smile fills my vision, and I realize a second later that I stopped breathing, which I belatedly begin to once more. “Hi, Melody,” I say. “Right on time as usual.”

“Hey Brian,” she responds. “How’s the boss?”

“Cranky, as usual,” I sigh. ”I got chewed out for being late when I arrived over 10 minutes early. Oh, and he has also demanded that unless it’s ‘life or death,’ he is not to be disturbed.” I make air quotes. She giggles.

I laugh along, and then sigh. “There really isn’t much to do, till the store opens. Looks like the boss took care of most of what needed to be done.” Mr. Vienna may be a total asswad, but he is diligent, I‘ll give him that, at least.

“Yep, he’s one cranky workaholic, that’s for sure. Anyway, is there anyone else coming in for the morning shift, as far as you are aware?” she asks.

I frown, thinking for a second. “Brennan, maybe? I’m not really sure.” I finish my sweep, and move into the back, with melody following behind. I set the broom down, and check our schedule. Huh. looks like he is coming in. That's rare; the boss doesn’t let us work together usually. “Yep, Brennan.”

Melody smirks. “Don’t make too much trouble when he gets here, ‘k?” she places a hand on her hip.”You guys always do some horrid prank or cause issues on-shift when you work together, and you always get hell from Mr. Vienna. You do realize it’s part of the reason why he’s such an ass towards you right? I mean, he’s kind of an ass in general but you get my point.”

“I grin. “But we have to! It gets too dull around here if we don’t!” I proceed to splay my fingers and make a pyramid, with a shit eating grin on my face.

She rolls her eyes with an exasperated expression. “You look like an evil mastermind that is plotting the end of the world right now, you know.”

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“Muahahaha, yess, you should join in on the pranks, Join the dark side, we have cookies.” A voice says, mimicking Palpatine.

My shit eating grin becomes a wide cheshire one, and I spin towards the door to the lobby. There, stands a Barrel-chested Hunk of a man, 5’8 with wide arms, chestnut hair and deep chocolate eyes, a handsome face the likes of which you could see playing a famous character from some action movie. At least, he would look handsome if not for the fact that he had the same evil mastermind hands and shit-eating grin that I had just been sporting.

I proceed to turn back towards Melody and join my fingers once again and say, in an absolutely horrid Palpatine imitation, “yessssss, youngling Melody, Do it.”

She looks at us, Rolls her eyes, and says, “Gosh, why do I even hang out with you nerds.” she turns and begins looking down the daily checklist to verify what needs to be done. Brennan snickers, and turns towards me. “‘Sup bro, how ya doin?” We fistbump.

Brennan has been my best friend since we were in grade school. If I’m the brains of the operation he's normally the brawn. Things are always amazingly fun with him around.

“Not much, B, how ‘bout yourself?” I pause, and then smirk. “I heard an interesting story about a certain Muscleheaded idiot making another attempt at asking a certain Cassandra Helard out, and nearly succeeding even, if not for certain circumstances.”

He blushes, hard. “Yeah, so? At least I have the courage, unlike a certain someone who happens to like a girl named Mel-”

Before he can finish the sentence, I’m in front of him with my hand clamped tightly over his mouth. “No,” I state. My face is absolutely burning. This little shit almost ratted me out! I’m so getting him back for this slight!

I peek out of the corner of my eye. Melody looks like she didn’t hear; that’s good. I turn back towards Brennan, look at him for a second, my cheeks still burning. I can feel the wide smile upon his stupid handsome face below my hand. A pause and a loud clatter later and I have him in a headlock.

“Ack!” He makes a strange noise. “Oh now you’ve done it!” He proceeds to slip out of my headlock and attempts a grapple. We wrestle for a few moments, making quite a bit of noise; until suddenly, the boss’ office door slams open, through which strides Mr. Vienna. “Brian! Brennan! What the fuck do you two think you are doing while you are on the clock!” A roar sounds from Mr. Vienna’s mouth as he storms out of the office. “I bet everyone within a city block could hear you two roughhousing! Do you want to be fired?”

He begins to Berate the two of us, who have separated extremely quickly and are now standing at attention with barely mantained stone faces on. In the background, Melody sighs with a gentle smile as she watches us. “ I told you so,” she murmurs, and proceeds to begin wiping the kitchen counters down as we continue to get berated by the boss.

Roughly 6 hours later, we get off of work, and Brennan waves goodbye as he gets on his bike. “I’ll see you this Sunday for our D&D session,” He calls as he rides away. I wave back at him, and begin walking home. It’s about 3pm, mid - summer, so it’s decently warm out; enough to make me sweat a little. Vienna’s is on the corner of Main and Route 20, and home is close by, luckily. I walk north along the sidewalk, past the fire station, and make my way about a mile down the road, up to 4th street. My house is along here; an old place that has been in my family since my great-grandfather. Old Harold Griham, as his friends called him, moved down here from New York in the late 50’s before buying the place. It is 2 stories tall, with cracked gray paint upon it’s walls. It looks old, but not out of place in a small town like this.

I walk up to the front door, and pull open the Heavy oak door, entering before closing it behind me. “I’m home!” I call into the interior of my house. No answer; guess the parents are both out at work still. It’s not all that surprising; they are normally out late for work most days.

I move upstairs to my bedroom, enter in, and toss off my shoes. I cast a quick glance into the mirror to make sure that my hair is still in place; I see a familiar face. Bright green eyes, a slender chin, messy black hair, and freckles.I pucker my thin lips for a moment, and make a duck face. The normal. I Grin, and point at the mirror. “Let’s do this,” I say to my reflection.

I turn towards the rest of my room. The room is 600 by 800 square feet; the walls are a dark blue. The ceiling is full of small glow-in the dark stars that have been there since I was little. In far-left corner is my bed, with black sheets and a blanket covered in constellations and stars. Posters for various rock bands and sci-fi videogames line the walls. A bookshelf full of books of various kinds, one shelf full of sourcebooks for multiple tabletop roleplay games, stands against the far wall at the end of my bed. My dresser is on the rightmost wall, next to my half-open closet, from which peeked lots of clothes. My desk is along the left wall, huge and made of a dark oak, inherited from my great-grandfather when he passed. Upon this desk sits my rig; a custom-built gaming PC, Cyan blue lights lining the inside of the see-through case and illuminating the expensive components inside. Next to this is a set of 3 monitors, drilled into a mount that is built directly into the wall. A headset, with the same cyan lights along its edges, sits in front of an old keyboard that has smiley face stickers over every key.

I sit down in the chair in front of the desk; an old leather thing also inherited from my great-grandfather. I turn my PC on, and it boots up quickly as a fiddle. I open up my dream journal; I’ve made a habit of writing my dreams down, as they are almost always incredibly vivid and give amazing ideas for stories to write. One of the perks of having narcolepsy, I guess. This is one of my hobbies; writing webnovels. I have quite the following too!

4 hours pass rather quickly as I pour my heart out into writing. I have a novel on a certain website known as “The Traveller,” and it is my magnum opus, in my opinion. It’s gotten quite long, I note, and sit back in my chair, smiling contentedly.

I stand; I’ve been sitting here for some time. I look at the time.”Huh. It’s gotten quite late.” I decide to head downstairs. I get about halfway down the stairs, when the front door opens, and in comes my father, surprising me. “Ah, Hi dad! How was work?” I ask.

My dad is 5’9, and looks not a day over 25, surprisingly; I really hope I’ve gotten that gene! I mean, he’s 34 years old! I know I get my hair and freckles from him, as well as my high metabolism. Me and him always eat a huge amount during dinner, and it's apparently a huge drain on our budget, according to my mother.

He sighs. “The bank was crazy busy today. Apparently there’s going to be a dip in the economy, and all of the investors rushed in for all manner of reasons. I swear, they’re a bunch of hyenas, those investors.” He hangs up his trenchcoat on the hanger by the door. I eye the coat. I hope I’m able to get one of those one day, and look as good as he does in it.

“ Is mom going to be home late again?” I ask. “Yeah, unfortunately. You know how her work is; erratic as all hells.” He shrugs. “‘Tis fine, we can just order pizza.” He walks down the hall and passes into the living room, grabbing the house phone off the wall as he passes through. I follow behind, Fistpumping the air.. Yay for pizza. Pizza is love, pizza is life.

.I enter the living room, and spend the rest of the evening with Dad. Like he said, we have pizza- even better, we have 5-meat pizza, the best kind. I then head upstairs, and climb into bed. There is silence. The room is dark; the stars glued to the ceiling glow softly. “I wonder what kind of dream I will have tonight?” I say softly to the air.

Time passes, and the silence and warmth of my blankets lulls me softly to sleep.

Far above the planet, in the void of space. 4 individuals appear from nowhere, standing on nothing. The blonde lady from before, now recognisable as Melody Sayers, now with the same long ears that make her seem as an elf. She no longer looks like an adolescent; she is a full-grown adult. She wears a blue dress, similar in color to her eyes; it moves, roiling like the waves of the ocean. Next to Her, is another lady, in what looks to be a business suit. If you were to look closer, it seems to be constantly changing from one texture to another, at a speed invisible to the naked eye. Yet another impossibility. She is tall; an exact 6 feet tall. She has brown Hair, A fair face clean of blemishes, and bears distinctive bright green eyes; a look similar to that of Brian Griham.

Next to her stands an adult version of Brennan, Brian’s best friend. He wears no clothes but that of a barbarian from the east of Earth; His chest, arms and back are bare, exposing his Herculean body. His skin looks as though it is made of a dull bronze. Upon his back rests a sheath that carries a massive broadsword, the blade of which is hidden from view. The handle bears a black scaled leather, and bears a tassel of fiery red feathers; if one were to look close, they would see that these feathers are literally made of flame; a strange, beautiful and fantastical sight.

And in front of them all is a strange hooded being of a twisted hunched shape. The hood hides its face; yet this is now what one would be drawn to look at if one were to study this being. It is inhumanly tall; over 9 feet, towering over the others, yet still seemingly skinnier than a human skeleton. The hooded cloak looked to be made of starlight, sparkling with constellations that seemed to move if you paid close attention. The creature looked even more fantastical than all of them combined.

And after a beat, the creature spoke.

“It begins soon.” it’s voice sounds old; older than any creature has any right to be. The others nod, and they stepped apart as one, as if this was a maneuver that they had been performing for a very long time. Seemingly in an instant, the single step brings each of them to four different points around the planet. The Hooded one stands in the void above the North pole; while the other 3 take 3 points around the equator . even though they are so far apart, separated by countless amounts of space, they are equal distances apart.

Another beat passes; and the hooded one speaks once more. “Begin.” its voice echoes across the void; that airless void, and seems to transcend space as all 3 individuals that currently float in the void above the equator of the planet are capable of hearing it.

Another beat passes. Suddenly, all 3 raise their hands into the air. And the hooded one speaks once more.

“We are the Order of the Transcendent Watcher. We guard He who Sleeps, and we must make sure he never wakes. This duty has been passed down since time began. If he ever wakes, the Universe will cease to exist. We must not fail.”

Then, He raises his arms. It is noticed that he Has 4 arms, and upon each hand there are 3 fingers, upon which there is wrapped a pale gray skin, tightened against the lean muscle beneath. He then begins to emit a sound that sounds as though it is a song of angels. It is ethereal and ephemeral; and as he sings, the others join. The sound echoes through the universe. Reality ripples, and around the planet, reality begins to warp and form straight planes of a glass-like substance, hard as the strongest material in the universe, unbreakable by no one other than He who Sleeps.

The planes intersect at each individual, lines of warped reality forming between the 4 impossible beings. A strange 6-sided prism forms around the earth as the song continues, and symbols begin to form upon the places of space-time taken form that surrounds the earth. Fractals, patterns from which the very reality of the universe is programmed, and made; the very language of the universe itself. As the song these beings sing rises to a climax, these fractals form together, and create a symbol of such complexity that if the mortal mind were to set their eyes upon it, they would go mad near-instantly and die, their bodies exploding from stress.

The symbol glows with power, ripples of black color flickering upon the lines that make up its form. Dark matter, the fuel upon which the impossible is made possible. Unreality given form. The song reaches it’s end- and the great formation pulses- and the earth seems to fade into dreamy illusoin. The formation disappears, along with the earth. Yet, the 4 anomalies, the for impossible beings, the transcendents- still stay where they are; the lines of warped reality still connecting them.

Upon the earth, shielded deep in Unreality, in his bed, safe, sound and warm, Brian Griham, He who Sleeps, The Traveler of Universes, falls into slumber.

And in reality, a small indiscernible light flashes, in the center of the transcendental formation.

And so begins the journey of worlds.