Again, I dreamed of an ancient world.

The world was cold and clear.

Ice covered trees moved slowly in a distant wind, each leaf preserved in a thin layer of diamond-clear frost, the colors below stunning crimson, gold-orange, earthen tones of yellow. The trunks dripped with frozen rivulets of water.

Shine-Catch was in the snow beside me. She blinked her eyes open slowly, lifted a handful of snow to her face, and-

Screamed. Quite a loud, braying scream. The kind of sound you imagine a horse making. She thrashed about like a madman trying to kick and claw the snow away from her. By the time I realized why, she was trying to climb up the ice-slick tree.

“Shine-Catch. The snow here isn’t poisonous. It’s just… snow.”

She paused, face stricken pale, and went, “Oh,” as she toppled down the tree.

We lay in the snow together. Her, staring up, letting flakes land on her face and melt away in bitter-cold drips of meltwater. She started to chase them through the air, the movement of her hands creating just enough wind for them to be blown away like fireflies evading her fingertips.

“Huh. So they’re just- water? Water does that? Why?” She managed to catch one on a fingertip. It held for a moment before the structure - like a tiny palace of ice - collapsed and ran off her nail.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Nah really. S’weird tho'. An why’s the moon all funny? You can answer that one. Is that another moon? A secret one we ain’t allowed to see?”

She tilted her head sideways, dark dreadlocks falling over her pointed ear, and gazed up into the night. The sky was thin here. It was a half-transparent dome of thin blue, and I could see the way it curved down around the tiny world, barely high enough to clear the tallest treetops. Beyond that barrier of sky, out among the stars was a strange, ash-grey moon, so different from the blue-green tinge that ran across the silver eye. Great swirls of sickly water divided broken continents, and there were flares of burning orange near the eastern edge, where the land gave way to a churning wound of magma.

It was a world I knew well, although admittedly, it was worse than I realized.

“That’s not the moon.” I said, even as I realized. “This is. We’re there, looking back home.”

“Oh.” Her mouth scrunched up, dissatisfied. “Ain’t pretty at all. Really, looks like crap. Can’t see why we’re bothering with there if the moon’s so nice, we should all move here.”

“And how would you get us here?” She had a mind like a magpie. Clever, yes, but constantly chasing the last thing it saw.

“Bet if I got enough big roc-birds chained together we could just pull the whole thing over and climb from one to the other.” She said, and pausing for a moment to think that over, nodded to herself, affirming it was indeed a good plan.

“Maybe we will. I don’t have legs, so you’re going to have to carry me.”

“Nooo, we’ll put you in a little sling and tie it round a small birds neck, and you can tell the bird ‘go right’ and ‘go left’ and be-”

“Shiny. I meant now. I need you to carry me, so we can go see the goddess.” Like a magpie that had maybe dented its head a little.

But she lifted me out of the snow, the heat of her hands warming the frost that had collected across the facets of my stone core.

“Where to?” She asked.

“Just… walk. We’ll find where we’re going.”

And we did.

The trees gave way to a river, moving fast beneath a thin layer of ice struck through with colors of rainbow. Beautiful koi with milk-white and blood-crimson scales swam past, chasing the white-water froth below, out towards some ocean. In the distance I felt a pull at my mind, and we headed upriver for a long ways, time seeming endless.

We walked past scraps of paper in the snow, written with ancient runes. They were waterlogged, fire-burnt, destroyed. Their fluttering, ragged edges poked up from every snowbank, and the wind sent scraps twirling through the night like broken birds.

I already knew we wouldn’t meet the Lady of the Open Skies in a place like this.

We came to a lake where a woman lay, a giant, her every feature pale and precise, her hair the color of starlight. Blood leaked from a wound torn across her belly.

There had been two threads of divine power that held Arak’s crown of flame back. Two goddesses, and now I met the second. It was not what I had hoped for.

She lay underwater, drifting. Satin robes clung to her body. Her skin was a lustrous grey stone, her lips blue, her eyes black. The goddess’ face was like a cracked mask. Pearls of ruby blood dripped from the terrible wound and became the koi we’d seen, racing along under the water.

“Little core.” She spoke without moving her lips, and pale smoke crawled from the dark space between her teeth, as if the words were a ghost escaping. “I am the Lady of the Lunar Eye, goddess of prophets, madmen, moths, and spiders. I am the second of the living pantheon, the last of the light.”

“Living? I don’t mean to be rude, but, are you sure?” I couldn’t help but ask. It did seem a bit of an outrageous claim.

“Living enough. Enter.” She lifted herself from the water. Hair the color of midnight trailed over her shoulders, the lake cascading off her skin. She was made of stone, I realized, not flesh at all. The eyes were empty hollows. Her hand came forward to the lake’s edge.

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“This’ creepy. Not god-like at all. There’s s’pose to be doves ‘n angels ‘n such.” Shine-Catch whispered, stepping onto the hand. It lifted us slowly, towards the face, and as we approached the open eye I realized there was a hollow space within.

A living temple.

“I don’t think you’d want to meet this god’s angels.” I muttered back. Her entire style was simply grisly.

As we stepped within Shine-Catch’s footsteps splashed through puddles of water on an azure-tiled floor, and the sound echoed down. It was a strange room, bare of furnishings except for slim pillars of white marble going up to the roof. Each pillar was divided into elongated diamonds, laid slightly diagonal with one another to form a rising spiral.

“Witness the last testament.” One of the segments slid forward to reveal a drawer within carrying a tube of blue crystal. A spark flickered within and the goddess’ voice spoke from within.

“Sixty-seven years from the day of this prophecy's reading, I saw myself dead. How I die is a mystery to me, but I suspect Arak will be claimed by madness, and kill me first. He has always feared my gifts. So it will be.”

As soon as the message ended another drawer slid open. Another recording began to play.

“Twenty-nine days before my end shall come to pass, I have had a final revelation. I cannot use the weapon I have worked upon to seal Arak. The design’s ultimate limitation is impossible to overcome. Instead, I must go along with Sky’s madness, and leave this final tool for her to find. So it will be.”

She really was dead. Dead, but preserved. Acting from beyond the grave with the help of her foresight.

A new recording began. “Five hundred years from the day this message will speak, I saw you. A heart of crystal in the hands of a madwoman-”

I was prepared to shush Shine-Catch’s protest. To my surprise, she didn’t say a word.

“-bearing the hopes of a world. I do not yet know why the world will end but I will fight to preserve what I can. I record these messages to leave a guide. It is a natural thing for a living soul to die, be they god or mortal. It is anathema for knowledge to be unwritten. This archive serves as my final act of war and my refusal to be forgotten. So it will be.”

The resolve in her words was overpowering. Even through the ages, I felt the strength of will. She had prepared weapon after weapon against Arak, every message in these walls aimed like an arrow through time, all the while knowing not a single one would avert her own death. I was left in awe of something, something I found lacking in myself. A cold and meticulous logic that refused all doubt.

“Three years before my death, at time of recording. I feel time painfully. I have sequestered a core unknown to my sibling gods, studying the rift within. With it I have prepared a weapon against the Black Wolf’s return. A binding formation utilizing my own death as a catalyst. Rather than avert my fate and shatter all prophecies that follow, I will go willingly, so that by my death I can tie threads of Sacrifice and Duty into the design. It has one flaw. A flaw I must overcome. In order for the formation to stabilize, it must be centered around a living core-heart...”

And for a moment I heard her laugh. The sound was chilling, like the ring of a bell made of ice, and it pitched into an almost hysteric glee before it faded. It must have been lonely. Working on this, feeling the seconds pass.

“I have designed a seal that only works if everything Arak seeks is inside with him. A prison that works by handing the prisoner his key. A door with a lock on the inside. No prophecy has yet to tell me I will succeed. I am as blind as everyone else, and all this effort may just be- just-...” She stopped, cold. I heard the small flicker of her throat as she bit back a scream or the start of tears. When she spoke again her voice was hardened. “So it will be.”

The recording flickered to a stop.

“Are-” Shine-Catch was staring in horror at the temple around her. The pools of ice-water in the corners, the slimy rust that gripped the metal pediments of the pillars. “Are all gods like this?”

“No. No the other one was an absolute joy. The other other one is a madman. I… suspect… gods may simply be very intense, and this one… It doesn’t seem like she had a happy life.”

The soft click of a drawer sliding open punctuated that thought.

“I have a year and a day left. Precisely. I have always known it will be Open Sky, frivolous and silly, barely even a god, who will carry out my will. Somehow she will be the one who falters last, long after Valor and War and even Spite have lost their resolve. I want you to be kind to her. I have been a poor sister, and worse, I can already see I will be a terrible one before I die. So it will be.”

In the silence that followed, Shine-Catch very quietly asked. “I was thinking- do you think she’s got a proph-see for me? Because I’m not sure I want one.”

She flinched as the next recording snapped out and began.

“One hundred years and a day from now, and I have finally seen you clearly. The Black Wolf is coming. It has already torn apart more worlds than I care to think. Its essence clouds makes my foresight uncertain, and I have used this excuse to retreat from the war-councils of my fellow gods. I am considering trying to convince them all I’ve gone mad. Anything to free me from wasting time on endless meetings, over a war I already know we’ll win.”

And with people she already knew would die. What was that like? To remember their dead bodies while they still lived.

“Arak looks at me with pity. Can you believe that? Him trying to console me, plucking away at a lyre like a moonsick bard. And all the while I already see him as he will be, hollowed out and full of nothing but hatred. I must look past his fate and fight the next war, and you, you will be my only companion. I have built these archives for you, filled them with what you will need. Answers to questions I will know you asked, even before you are born, but which you must ask. So it will be.”

The silence waited for me.

“You said- You had another core, one you worked on to build my protections. Thank you, by the way. They’ve probably saved everyone twice now. They will again, I’m sure. But- this core, does it still exist? Is it alive? Can I find it?” It was my best hope. An ally who could match me, and better yet, understand me. I wasn’t sure if I could do this alone.

My answer slid out from the pillar.

“I left it hidden deep below the earth, knowing it must be kept from Arak. You will have to leave your home of green and blue, follow the Archer beneath the night, the snake that lies across the false lands, and make your way to the dwarf-home. There you will find my servants. So it will be.”

Another silent moment, the dripping of water expanding through the empty temple. I was about to speak, about to ask the next question - how to kill Arak. Shine-Catch spoke first.

“Oh, moon-goddess, moth-lady? Could you tell me why I’m like this? I’ll uh, I’ll make you a shrine, and I’ll pray to it every day, all dutiful like, but-”

This time the answer cut her short, unfolding from the pillar mid-sentence with a force that seemed irritated. “Yes yes. You are not forgotten. You will be many things, but not forgotten. I left your fate with another. An old thing that lives in the valley west of the desert. It will tell you what you must become. So it will be.”

And then it was too late. I could feel the dream starting to crumble, to fade away at its edges. The temple full of the dead god’s bitter prophecies came apart as a fuzz-edged darkness crept in and swept away her final words.

“You will return to me when the moon is full."

As darkness closed over the world I heard the hidden drawers snapping shut.

"So it will be."