The Heart of the Void had slept in peace for eons.

But all sleep is interrupted.

Eventually.

There had been a Promise. And a Call had breached the Great Silence of the Eternal Sleep.

The Call had been made by One with the Power to make a Bargain, and so They had Awoken.

The Endless Darkness had opened upon Their eternal Realm, and from one of the infinite solid realms, places where disparate realities were expressed by Beings of Energy, much like Themselves, who had been cruelly limited by the laws of the own realities to acting and existing through the manipulations of physical matter. Enslaved to the madness of cycles of growth and entropy in infinite variety and constantly overlapping repetitions.

A Being of Energy and Power had breached Their Realm with a Question. But a Price was required. There were rituals and customs to observe with the ambassadors of other planes, those mad beings willing to enter another’s realm.

Thus it has always been that energy and force must pay for any actions taken by Them for those beings of other realms. Pushing One’s influence beyond the boundaries of Their Realm cost one greatly. Dealing with Realities that engage in the madness of matter and energy coexisting as losses of energy in the Realm could cause entropic decay.

Negotiations took moments to the Heart.

The Young Soul made incomplete offers and was rebuffed for their efforts over and over. And the Young Soul returned with new offers, over and over. The concept of Time did not exist for the Heart, though Continuity was a commonality amongst many Realms, the heart of the Void’s realm included.

Finally an offer had been made for a trade that would bring the Heart more energy than that expected to be used to carry out Their efforts.

The promise had sparked a Bargain.

All Bargains must be headed and obeyed. There are penalties and forfeits for both failure and also for bad faith.

The Life Fluid of the Young Soul had been given, with the use of a Talisman of Power, wielded by that Young Soul, the Soul who strove to reclaim a title and a position on his plane of reality. The Young Soul would be made King among his kind.

And in that use of the Talisman, allowing the Giving of the Life Fluid, thus the Bargain had been struck. The Deal made, Sealed, and the Promises of Payment agreed upon.

Amongst those things promised, a Pure Vessel.

It would act as an anchor on this physical plane, and as an embassy.

A door eternally open to a realm, a plane, that up to this point in this Continuity had only allowed for the Heart to be contacted by those of this plane, and never from the Heart.

But, now the Bargain would allow the Heart a Keep in this physical realm.

The Young Soul, the one who became a King though it had happened outside of the Bargain as it was struck, then made changes to the Bargain. It had gone astray, wandering far outside of the parameters of the Bargain they had made, and sealed with the Life Fluid. But the Young Soul’s alterations were now greatly imbalanced in the favor of the Heart of the Void. The new parameters were agreed to, and the alterations accepted.

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That single Drop of Fluid had been freely given to seal the Bargain, and once it had breached their eternal Realm, it had coalesced into a crystalline solid. Now the only solid in the entire plane known as the Great Red Void to some few beings of consequence. It floated amongst the eddying power and ethereal substance of the Heart of the Void.

The Heart had gathered the proper information that had been called for in the parameters of the new Bargain.

And then the physical realm that the Young Soul inhabited had shifted and shook, vibrations of dissonance amongst the planes. Another set of Souls had attempted to overturn the state of Continuity in that physical plane.

The Young Soul fought another Soul, a darker, imbalanced, and sundered soul for supremacy. For its very existence.

The Young Soul had almost ceased.

The Heart of the Void could not allow that to occur. On that path lay a great imbalance.

An imbalance of such magnitude would lead to Entropy and Decay.

They had reached out to the Talisman wielded by the Young Soul, and… pulled. Using the ties of speelwrought obligation and the contract of the Bargain, the Heart pulled, and strained, and made the Young Soul pull the Talisman from its sheath, and drive it into the torso of the Mad One who had been attacking him.

With that effort, that purposeful expenditure of power, another exchange, an entirely unexpected trade, had been made. A new variation on their Bargain, this time enacted by the Heart.

There was a feeling of contraction, infinite pressure and pain to a being for whom those had only been concepts for which energy forms trapped in the bonds of solid matter would find themselve subject to. Beings such as Humans… deer… salmon… those ephemeral beings such as called The Children of the Forest, and the Gods of this plane.

Crushing weight from all quarters, simultaneously tearing the Heart asunder and compressing it into a single point of excruciation. The Heart did not comprehend what had happened. What was happening. It was endless, and only took a moment as those matter based life of this plane would count such things. A part of the Heart was fascinated, while the rest of the consciousness of the Heart screamed in agony and fear.

Terror.

What was still happening, as they were dragged from the safety and calm of Their own void, out into this plane of harsh physicality.

The world opened up all about the Heart as they experienced expansion beyond what they could have anticipated.

They had begun to drift, free of the pain and terror that had wracked Their mind in these last harrowing moments. It was a sudden and all encompassing surcease.

The bulk of Their body, such as they had ever had one and could be ascribed to an expanse of sentient energy, floated freely within the walls of the lower chamber of the great stone structure that the Young Soul known as Myrl had called his home. As the tendrils of its form stretched out to sample the confines in which it found itself now.

As it reached, it attenuated.

Attenuation could not be supported.

The Heart felt … loss.

Dissolution was near.

And as quick as this thought was formed in the Heart’s dwindling core, something tugged upon its substance. Starting as a gentle pull, the world around the floating consciousness of the Heart of the Void began to shift and turn itself about that tired and wounded mind. The Heart was being pulled toward a new void.

It could feel the touch of the Mad One upon this new void that pulled upon the Heart as it twisted and spiraled into a new abyss. With a scream that was only heard by those few beings of this plane who were themselves only tethered to solidity in limited and eldritch ways.

Darkness covered the Heart as it settled into this new void.

And surprisingly, They found that They were now not alone. There was another mind, or fragments of one, already in this new void to greet the Heart with resonating terror and wave after wave of anger.

For the first time in its eons long existence, the Heart of the Void was no longer a singular mind in a void of energy and thought.

Tentatively, reaching out to this new consciousness, “Hello… “

This was met with a wracking sob that shuddered through the entire void in which they now both floated.

“Oh Hoab… what have you done…?”