In the center of everything...

There is a place in the center of all universes, in the center of all things.  The crisis point in the center of the natural and the supernatural. The divine and the infernal.  It is a place that writhes with primeval powers, where the rational and irrational meld and breed and spit out microforms of itself, larval worlds which age and grow old and die in showers of ash and are reabsorbed in aeons, in instants, in a plane in which time does not exist.

Worlds are born and thrive and burn and die.  Uncountable sentient beings are born and return to dust in the slow blink of the universal eye.  It has always been so. It will always be so.

Except…

See, there.  See the scatter of silver sparks, as bright and as dangerous as live wires, burning too bright to look at in the abyssal crater.  See them in the heart of the pulsing black that is the heart of the multiverse.    

Watch very closely as that stygian darkness... cracks, like glass, the obsidian surface marred by a single, long flaw.

This is felt across the multiverse.  Planes tremble, realms are built and crumbled into dust, and in millennia, in an instant, all is still.  

In some distant, unimportant world, Roland Carter burst out of sleep, gasping at nightmare horrors that were already fading as he careened into wakefulness.  He wiped a hand over his face, ineffectively smearing the sweat beading at his temples and streaking down his cheeks.

Dear God, what had that been about?

He struggled to remember the dreams.  They felt important, somehow. Portentous, weighty.  Like something was happening. Something dark, and distant, but no less essential for that.

Roland blinked hard to pull up his Sensor and winced at the time.  Four-oh-three in the morning. He’d actually slept more deeply than usual.  Not better, but longer, at least. His sleep was often broken, but these dreams were somehow worse than his usual scattered dozes.

But they were already fading, both in immediacy and importance.  He wiped at his face once more, the sweat growing chilly on his skin.  Well, he was up now. He didn’t have to start getting ready for work until six thirty.  That left a little time for Legacia.  

He was exhausted, and something about the dreams still bothered him, but he ignored it.  They were just dreams, after all. What point was there in being afraid of bad dreams? He pulled the damp covers off of his naked body and walked over to his battle station, his pride and joy. 

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He built it himself, of course.  It was only his second real build, and he’d cut some corners in the name of cost, but it ran all the newest Realities like a dream.  Well, maybe there was that teensy little burnout in Legacia, when he stepped through portals.  Sometimes he could see visualizations that were clearly glitches, distant landscapes that he was almost positive weren’t part of the known game.  He’d considered posting them on forums to check with the more veteran players, or even sending the information to the devs to let them know about the visual glitch, but his screenshots never captured the true nature of the experience, and so he’d never bothered.

The chair creaked comfortably as he strapped himself in, and he could feel the pressure foam adjusting to his familiar shape.  The headset was sitting on its accustomed peg, and it, too, was soft and comfortable as he pulled it over his features. Outside, he knew, the helmet’s eyes would shine as it picked up his hard-installed tech and synced with his eye movements.  Purely a fashion statement, but one that Roland liked to hold in his mind’s eye as he logged in.  

Only one of his friends was on and she was playing the newest weekend free to play, some fancy new shooter.  He eyed her stats appreciatively as she climbed the ladder even as he watched. In the end, he knew that Gyvas wouldn’t even buy the game.  She would play for free long enough to soundly thrash the top players and then stop playing when it suited her.

Showoff.  

He pulled up Legacia and eyed his own stats critically.  Most of the time, he was sure that Gyvas only grouped with him to have someone to laugh at.  This was one of those times.

He’d slipped off the tail end of the leaderboards during the night, which he’d mostly expected.  He wasn’t high up enough on the boards that he could waste time with a good night’s sleep, but this wasn’t his only hustle at the moment.  He had other obligations.

Roland checked the clock in the headset.  Four ten. Time was slipping by.

He navigated back to the login screen, a desert-like, mountainous backdrop with ancient, decaying Roman statues decorating a cliff face like Moai.  The title of the game, Legacia, faded in the foreground in bold font across this vista.  

Beneath that, a throwback that Roland particularly enjoyed: Press Any Key To Continue.

He did so, tapping at his keyboard, which was balanced across his lap.  Invisible, with the headset on, but he didn’t need to see it. It was custom made and his fingers knew every groove.

The screen flashed.

Roland frowned.  That wasn’t what was supposed to happen.  When you logged in the portal was supposed to open, and then bring you to the loadout animation.  This was something different.

Was there an event he hadn’t heard about?  He tried to check his feeds, but the helmet also seemed to be glitching out.  He couldn’t pull up anything, not even the in-game menus. The flash became white-hot, blinding.  He put his hands over his eyes but the image was coming from inside the helmet.  

Inside of that dawn-bright flash was something familiar.  Roland squeezed his eyes shut against that light but he knew what he’d seen.  One of the visions that he’d seen in the portals. The glitches. Those alien landscapes.  The light slowly began to fade into a deeper black than Roland thought the helmet was capable of.  

That’s when the feeling of falling started.

What the ever-loving fuck was going on?