My suite spun. Remy and Xian had tossed me into my bed a few dozen minutes ago before they had sought out their own. Their desperate need to talk to me had been to throw me a bachelor party in one of the recreation rooms of the Stellarae Enclave. Arx Maxima had explained the rules of games like billiards, darts, ball-throw, and blackjack to us while supplying a nearly endless amount of high potency liquor.

The room twirled around me like a spinning plate balanced on a disc. If I turned on Fortress Restoration or Citadel Adaption the effects of the alcohol would vanish in no time, but there was something wonderful about this state of mind. I’d never been allowed to drink alcohol in Havenstone. All the beer and spirits produced in Solarias were made by people with enhancing concepts and would have killed my blank constitution as a kid. That’s what Dad always said, anyway. Based on my current state, he had probably been right.

In the recesses of my mind, Havoc howled a song for me. I had never heard a hound sing before, so it provided an interesting diversion of thought from the worries about Amaranthine, my mother, and even how Miyuki and Claire were doing away from Monados.

Havoc’s song felt less like a ballad and more like an incantation. The powerful percussive voice of the hound gave birth to kaleidoscopic swirls of unreality that when filtered through my inebriated brain found new forms that no sober mind would, or could, conceive of. A twisted ballroom, huge beyond imagining, filled existence. The dancers weren’t people, but stars. Blue ones and red, orange and white, the difference in their colors gnawed at the back of my mind, but I wasn’t that interested. The black sun, Corvusol, stood out as a singular representative of his color.

A sharp bark from Havoc changed the scenery, the ballroom warped into an endless desert. Every grain of sand I saw contained a hidden, forgotten secret. I lifted a handful to my ear and listened to their whispers. Hundreds of discordant, eerie voices merged into one dissonant chorus. They told me about the duality of order and chaos in convoluted words that defied meaning. I channeled a flicker of lightning through the sand to form a ball of glass, and it told me to seek out the throne of Order.

The horizon shifted like a mirage to reveal spires built of impossible shapes—towers of glass swirled in wide arcs to climb impossibly high. Pyramids of glittering gold dominated the skyline, and endless throngs of people lined up to enter them. Beams shot from the pinnacle of the pyramid into the sky, and when I looked too closely at that light, it snatched me and carried my mind along with it. Into the sky, through clouds, into the great inky black, and through the door of a tavern.

I recognized concepts when I saw them. Farmagnuðr the Trailbreaker drank at the bar with an old man in ugly blue robes and a strange conical hat, all covered in stars. I knew instinctively he bore the name Merlin. A glance was all it took for me to know the names of any of those in the impossible bar that didn’t exist. The air vibrated with the energies of a thousand different realms. If you could call the woven cosmic threads that constantly reconfigured themselves into new geometries and patterns walls, then the walls were a beautiful vision of constantly changing peaks into far off where’s and when’s.

The bartender is a stick-figure, the representation of the concept of Service. It has no face, no name, but when I looked at it, it looked back. That gaze had a force of gravity behind it, and it plucked bottles from the shelves behind it to mix me a drink. The brightly colored bottles of its bar held the essence of life—ambition, melancholy, fate, hate, happiness, joy, and spite. Service mixed me a cocktail that looked like a blended rainbow.

“First one is on the house,” Service told me with a wink. It had no eyes, but I could feel in my gut that it winked at me, somehow.

“Why are you here?” a figure made from a swarm of crystalline bees asked me. It was Order.

I took a sip of my drink before I could answer. The taste of fruit warred with the burn of power, and the crooning howls of Havoc turned smoother. Rhythm joined in to sing with Havoc, and the walls pulsed in time to a beat that emanated from a multitude of realms and crashed against me like a tidal wave.

“I’m getting married tomorrow. I got drunk,” I told Order.

More than one of the individual bees that made up its collective body made rude gestures at me, and the entity itself seemed to tsk and call me to task.

“It’s bad form to pre-game before you come to the bar,” Order scoffed at me. “Are you prepared to traverse Chaos with your bride, and come out the other side its Ruler?”

“Err. Is that part of the ceremony?” I asked slightly worried. That didn’t sound like part of the ceremony.

“If you wish to be the Emperor of Chaos in truth, you will traverse Chaos. The you that emerges will be tempered into a better you. One capable of ascending to an even higher truth. My truth.” The thousands of bees buzzed so loudly that, for a brief second, their hum overtook the song of Havoc and Rhythm.

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My mind travelled past the destruction of Havenstone, past the deserted city of Crownhaven, past Solarias into the Domain of Ignisis. Through the volcanic mountains, into the heart of fire, where on a throne of human bones sat Mithras. Mithras in the form of a flame elemental avatar. He met my eyes for a second and cursed, then I was in the bar again.

The swarm of crystal bees stared at me.

“You have a rival for the Throne of Order. Terry not overlong on the seat of Chaos,” the crystal bees cackled and broke into a swarm. It didn’t leave the bar; it just went around other occupants to play darts with Innovation. Which, really, took a lot of the gravitas out of its dramatic posing if you asked me. The revelation that Mithras had another avatar didn’t shock me. It didn’t even surprise me that Mithras sought the Throne of Order, because of course that asshole would be after the same thing I was.

“Gullible much?” Doubt asked me.

“Huh?” I responded, stupidly. I took another sip of my fruity drink to make sense of the words. Doubt looked a lot like me for some reason.

“You’ve never even heard of the Throne of Order until moments ago, and now you’re ready to fight Mithras for it? You don’t even know what it is, or if you want it, but Order shows you a glimpse of your rival and suddenly you’re all in? Not much of a skeptic, are you?” Doubt vanished after they rebuffed me. Or maybe Doubt simply looked like whoever they talked to?

A woman who looked precisely like Amaranthine lounged at the bar. Her name was Dream.

“You’re a bit out of your weight class here, kiddo. If you’re going to dance to the strings of old hags like Order and Doubt you’re better off avoiding the bar. This is a dangerous place for people who don’t know what they want.”

Havoc and Rhythm sang in the back of my mind, a song of warning and approval of Dream’s message.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked Dream.

“How the hell should I know, kid? We’ve all been making it up as we go since that bitch Telos threw Fate in front of your spaceship,” Dream laughed bitterly. “You want to build a city? Have fun with that. You want to rip Mithras to shreds with your talons? Do it. You want to lick the clavicle of a fey? More power to you. But I’m Dream. I know what’s in there.”

The concept of Dream, wearing Amaranthine’s face and smile, taunted me.

“I see it. It’s the same dream that rules your friend, Xian. You want to be unshackled, to exist without consequence, duty, or morality. You want to do what you want to do, and everything else be damned. You want to dole out pain and pleasure like a violent tyrant, uncontested and unhindered by repercussions. That’s the dark dream in the heart of humanity. You aren’t human anymore. Look deeper.” Dream’s tone took on a near whisper quality at the end, and the song of Havoc and Rhythm encouraged me to follow the instructions.

I turned my gaze deep inside of me. Past the base desires that constantly consumed my mind, past my animal hunger for Amaranthine, past my hatred for Mithras. Far beyond even the idle daydreams of sitting on a throne of bones and inflicting consequences on others, into the darkest layers of who I was.

A quiet voice asked me. Are you meant to be the hero? What if you’re meant to be the villain?

The voice gnawed at the frayed edges of my soul. This voice had been there since I met Arx Maxima. You couldn’t join up with a being that casually spoke of obliterating planets and remaking existence into one narrow definition of utopian and not have constant worries about if you had strayed onto the wrong side of road. What if the cataclysm caused by Telos throwing Fate into a collision course with Arx Maxima wasn’t even salvageable, but instead needed to be mercy killed?

Did that change who was the hero or who was the villain between Mithras and I?

“Fate is dead,” Dream whispered into my ear.

“Then why can’t I think differently? Why do the trappings of meant-to-be linger irresistibly? Why can’t I frame a future with self-determination?” I asked Dream with a desperate need for an answer.

Dream’s visage shifted away from Amaranthine’s, and she took on the appearance of a golden skinned woman.

“Because you are bound by the weight of your own desires. You desire to be the chosen one, the instrument of fate, the tool of the Gods. A childhood of being a powerless blank warped your dreams. You wanted to be what you weren’t. You needed to be important to justify the treatment you endured from others. This is your desire, your need, your compulsion. You want to be powerful, important, needed, loved, and all of that other hogwash. Your need allows the trapppings of destiny to ensnare you because you want them too.”

Dream laughed sadly.

“The echoes of Fate draw you in, because a future without structure, meaning, or predestination is terrifying. Anything could be waiting for you. You long for self-determination but lack the courage to imbue your choices with meaning. What if your choices bring you to insignificance?” Dream shifted once more and looked like my mother used to.

“So, how do I escape the trappings of Fate?” I asked, uncertain if I had the strength to do it.

“Self-determination is not the absence of meaning, but it is the forging of your own. You must overcome the fear that without the context of destiny you cannot be what you aspire to. No frayed thread from a grand tapestry will lead you to any future. Xian cannot achieve True Freedom because it isn’t something you can bind as a power. His connection to Telos will limit him in the days ahead. True Freedom, for those of us in this world, comes from accepting we are the weavers of our own fate, not some old hag that got hit by an apocalypse cult’s space bus.”

“Okay, but that still wasn’t an answer?” I complained after I finished my delicious drink.

“Decide on where your going, and get there, kid.” Dream sighed at me, and her sigh carried me out of the bar and back to my bed.

The room lay quiet.

“How long until morning?” I asked.

“Two hours,” Arx Maxima answered.

“Wake me up in two hours. The Gossamyr gets two new rulers today,” I told Arx Maxima.

“Of course, My Lord.” Arx Maxima answered earnestly.

My Lord. I could get used to that.