***

You are walking. You don’t remember starting, and you don’t know where you are going. Darkness stretches out in all directions, a miasma of the night that oozes hungrily around a little bubble around you. Your bare feet slap against the cool, flat, dead-feeling ground as you walk, never finding anything to be harmed upon. Inside your little bubble, a little field so small that you couldn’t fully extend both arms in either direction, a dim light, whose source you can’t determine, illuminates everything until the darkness. It feels suffocating, claustrophobic even.

You continue to walk, completely unaware of which direction you are headed in. You look around you at your little ovoid bubble, at how the darkness isn’t complete outside of it. It roils and boils like smoke or steam inside a closed container, never sitting still but never filling the space.

You hug your arms around your body and wring your hands, fidgeting as the darkness seems to press in on you. The darkness aches. It wishes to crush, choke, suffocate, and kill. You quicken your pace, eager to be out of this place.

The Abyss stretches seemingly endlessly, with no respite from the claustrophobia. You begin running, straining to be away from wherever you are. The miasma is disturbed by your passing like smoke after a hand is passed through its contours and vapors.

You run and you keep running until you suddenly break into a clearing. An oasis in which the darkness doesn’t roil. You glance around, breath coming in fast but not difficult from running.

The darkness twists and runs about outside of this little bubble, unable to get in, but still blocking the light. You turn your eyes to the center of the sphere and your spine goes cold.

There, in the middle of the oasis, is a chained man. He is no longer being hung by his left hand, instead only bound by the ankles by the shiny bands and the chains that extend into the darkness beyond. His skin, previously a sickly grey, is now an ashen tan, like a tree that was burned and has since healed. He wears only a pair of storm-cloud-grey trousers that are so frayed at the ends that they might have been furred.

“Nova! Oh, how great it is to see your face,” he exclaims as if you were an old friend. He rolls his left shoulder, producing a series of loud pops and cracks that are audible from where you are standing.

“Shut your ashen mouth, Sa’Bel. I know what you set me up to do.” You spit back at him, a scowl twisting your face.

“Oh, do you? Please, enlighten me.” he taunts, inspecting his broken, decaying fingernails idly.

“You killed me and I killed your servant, Der’ii. You want me to be your assassin, but I’m not going to do it.”

He rolls his wrist without looking at you, “How strange that you call yourself L’Neeri, now.” He turns his sharp, piercing gaze to you, “You don’t even know half of it, do you?”

You shift slightly, uncomfortable. “I know enough.” You respond as flatly as you can muster, hoping that the chained man doesn’t catch on.

The man shifts his feet, causing the chains to rattle and ping across the floor. He shakes his head but doesn’t say anything else.

“Now, how did you get here, Nova? This is my prison alone, but it will not be much longer.”

“Are you named Oblivion?”

Sa’Bel seems taken aback by the question. He murmurs, still audible but obviously to himself, “Is that what they have Named me?” He pauses as if running it through his mind, “Why could that be?”

“Are you called Oblivion?” you restate, forcing the chained man to spill his seemingly infinite secrets to you.

His chains rattle and ping again. “I was called Dust,” He gazes out into the darkness beyond his oasis, “I had a brother, too. He was named Breath before I killed him.”

You unconsciously step forward to hear his story that you somehow, miraculously managed to pry from his ashen lips, careful not to disturb his tale-weaving so that you might hear more. Maybe something to use against him.

“Yes, it was a necessity. I mourned for him as I did it, but he simply would not be swayed to my side. He adamantly stated that the Primordials were above man and that I could never achieve my goal.”

“What is your goal?” you ask tentatively, hoping desperately he won’t stop talking.

“I only wished to bring order to a chaotic, violent, tumultuous, WORTHLESS UNIVERSE!” His words climax in a roar filled with irate, frustrated hatred of everything that lives. He screams at the hidden heavens with such odium that even the miasma outside the boundary shies away.

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“I WOULD BRING HAPPINESS TO THIS MISERABLE, WORTHLESS UNIVERSE, RID IT OF IT’S MEANINGLESS SUFFERING!” Oblivion rages against himself, roaring and writhing there, bound by his ankles, “I WOULD RIP THE GRAND CHAPTER FROM THE INCOMPETENT HANDS OF BRADE, AND FREE IT FROM THE VILENESS, THE INIQUITY THAT HE TURNS A BLIND EYE TO!”

You shy away from Dust, instinctively placing your hands wardingly between you and him. The chained man breathes heavily, growling, groaning, seething, there in the center of the oasis. He clutches his head, bent over at the waist. He snarls through his teeth like a bound animal, fighting the psychological bonds placed upon him.

You watch with wide eyes, unable to turn away as Dust fights with himself until his strength is spent.

He stands there for a time, eyes cast to the ground, back slumped, arms limp at his sides.

“Go.” He states solemnly, defeated. “Kill the Aarkiel.” He turns and walks away as the soupy darkness envelops you, his chains snaking after him like loud, loyal snakes biting at his heels. You don’t fight it as you are pulled out of that horrible place, and you wonder to yourself if you should feel pity for the imprisoned man.

The man named Oblivion.

***

Charred, ashen grass tickles your face as the soft, grey light of the underworld invades your eyelids as if it were a roving Branded One looking for a Tree to conquer. One of the many things the Bookmongers get wrong about most Branded Ones.

You shift, the wood underneath you unyielding and uncomfortable. You groan and cough. Terrible aches and pains suddenly present themselves to you like the court of a Queen eager to have her attention.

You hear a familiar voice speak from out of your field of view.

“Oh! She’s awake!” Sel’Ozsia the Branded One’s disembodied voice shouts from a little ways away. You blink and open your eyes to the grey light as much as your mind allows but you don’t move.

Sel’Ozsia’s head and torso pop into view above you, “Hello, Nova! Sorry about the pain, I can’t heal someone if they are unconscious.” She quickly takes your face in her hands and the soreness disappears. You sit up, stretching as the Grabber speaks again, “Hey, Nova, where is L’Neeri? And what happened to you? What did you do to your hair?”

Painful memories arrive in flashes.

“He– he is dead.” You manage, “He was killed by,” you cough, “the Branded One Der’ii. I managed to take revenge for him.”

Sel’Ozsia’s eyes cloud and her face twists slightly with grief. “Oh.” That’s all she says.

You two sit there for a moment, your head hung. You sift slowly through your new memories, straining against the torrent of sorrow you feel building below.

No, not right now. I can grieve later, I need to get home.

“And this?” You gesture to your new, prematurely grey hair, “I have no idea, it just happened after L’Neeri died.”

Your Grabber comrade seems to ponder some possibilities, but she ultimately comes up empty-handed. “I have no idea what you mean. This may require some study.”

You jump back, surprised, as Yyl flashes to the side of Sel’Ozsia. A burst of wind blusters around you, “Study of what? Oh, hi, Nova.”

The small woman glares up at the speedy, lanky man, who raises an eyebrow to restate his question.

“The study of why Nova’s body changed after L’Neeri’s death.” The Grabber replies begrudgingly, sighing and looking out over the abyss.

“Oh, Blaze of L’Oos, he’s dead?” Yyl seems quite distraught, looking at both of you while messing up his hair with his hands. You avoid his gaze.

Yyl appears to wrestle with the new information, before ultimately saying, “Hkaa, who did it? I’ll kill that Kiisk, I’ll–”

“He’s already dead.” You cut him off, stating.

The speedy man’s face twitches and contorts. He looks around wildly and then seems to calm himself a little, and then he is gone in a puff of wind.

You sit there with Sel’Ozsia for a while, sorting through your new memories of L’Neeri, watching the scenery, and being in her company.

The silence feels awkward, but also sorrowful, and you don’t know if you should break it. The small woman does it for you.

“Did you manage to see his Token die?” She says, not looking at you, “All Tokens go out some way or another. It is said to say what kind of relationship you had with your Patron.”

“I have it right here.” You say, producing the chain of beads the color of night.

Sel’Ozsia’s face brightens a little, “So he lives?”

You turn away.

“How is it that you have his Token?”

“...I don’t know. My friend is most definitely dead.” It feels, deep down, like the statement was truly, immutably final. As if the alternatives are lost forever. L’Neeri, Branded One, friend, teacher, was wholly, unchangeably dead.

The two of you sit in silence again. Back to the drawing board.

This time nobody breaks the silence for quite some time, and you cry. You said you wouldn’t, but here you are.

It stretches and stretches, for what seems like hours, until finally, the rumbling baritone of Dah’Grahs sounds from far away, shouting, “Come, my friends, I have extracted what we came for, we must go home.”

You wipe the stubborn tears from your eyes and face, not wanting to seem incompetent to these people, before getting up and pondering what to do.