Her own transition into a new world was oddly peaceful.  Later, Luzia decided that it was because of the many traumatic things she had already been through.  Perhaps fate had finally offered her a kindness.  For the first time in longer than she cared to remember, Luzia had decided to try and sleep.  She had laid her head on her desk within her office in the Cube and closed her eyes.  For the first time in ages, she had started to dream.  The dream was of very little comfort though.  In it, she saw the city of Hoja Mesto moving faster than it ever had, almost in a dead run.  The city was bouncing its residents around, but it seemed to have a goal in mind. 

Then Luzia saw why the city was running.  The world was falling away behind it.  She could see the Cube and the Black Tower, and somehow knew that her sleeping form was still within the Cube.  The city, and Luzia's dreamform both headed through a crack in the world, as their old home fell away behind them.  When Luzia woke up, the city was gone from her sight, but she had a feeling that it had arrived safely.  And Luzia also found that she was falling. 

At least, that's what it felt like.  The Drakoneir found herself in a strange white void, with absolutely no sense of direction.  But she closed her eyes, focused her senses.  And sent herself towards the strongest source of magic.  She knew that Mendean had to have made the transition, it was just a matter of finding him.  She only opened her eyes once she felt a wind moving through her hair, and Luzia managed to find her feet just before they hit the ground.  Barely.  Looking around, she refocused her senses, finding that sense of the familiar.  But everything seemed to be in flux.  Looking at the ground again, they had been black paving stones just a moment ago.  Now, it was silvery-white gravel.  Interesting.  Looking up again, she saw a familiar and welcome sight.  The Black Tower.  But even as she kept her eyes on it, things were shifting.  But it was her best bet.

Setting off against the shifting landscape, she had a feeling that it would not be so simple as finding the tower and demanding entrance.  With Mendean, it was never that simple.  After a few minutes, and many more landscape changes, she found herself at the base of the Tower.  There were others waiting, of course.  But Luzia was patient.  Her turn would come soon enough.

A storm of shapes rose from the ground, sending people and other entities scattering in multiple directions. Mouths, limbs and cloud-like organs, eyes and other biological features forming from the dust and whirling around in slow arc. The usually orange-red sky seemed to protest, forming odd striations that twisted and condensed into dark lines. The tree roots that slowly coiled around this strange mini-world, seemed to buckle and split into smaller versions of themselves. The air rippled. Only the black tower behind the thing, showed no signs of distortion, disruption or change.

Within the shadowy depths of this phantasmagoria, a single mouth formed. Human in appearance, yet larger than a man in scale. As the rest of the features seemed to settle into a slow orbit around the dark centre, the lips twitched once, as though about to say something, then deciding against it. The mouth spread into a thin-lipped smiled, took a breath, then spoke.

The voice was deep and cold, like a giant waking from a long slumber. Fleshy lips trying to recall how to speak. The mouth was hesitant. Lips pursed for a moment, and then it spoke to Luzia.

The words were not words as such. They were not spoken in any language known to mortals, but the sounds, which were more like vibrations in the aether, conveyed the essence of information. Images, thoughts, feelings and sensations, all rolled into one. A direct experience of language without it being language. This language had no name, but could be understood by the listener for whom it was intended.

The essence of the message was: “We know you, though we do not know you. You are of this realm, though you are not. You have journeyed far. You are an anomaly.”

The mouth drifted forwards. Blurred at the edges so that it was unclear where the darkness ended and the mouth began. Parts of its outer edges seemed to have grown from the flagstones. Tendrils extended outwards, branching and branching until they became invisible strands, blending in with their surroundings. And yet the other organs still writhed and rotated in varying orbits around the central mass of the thing.

There was a weight in the air, pushing through the boundaries of what was and what was not.

She only glanced around when the crowd began to scatter, it amused her somewhat how things had not changed.  People always wanted something from the powerful, but the moment things became strange they left in fear.  But not Luzia.  She knew better by now, especially in this new home of hers.  She studied the strange entity that was forming, it seemed to be made of an amalgamation of everything present within the realm.  But Luzia did notice that the Tower itself seemed unaffected, which meant that a god's hand had to have been involved in its construction.  The only bit of logic that she allowed herself in the face of chaos. 

The manner of speech did not surprise her.  Given that Luzia had once been the head of Mendean's Daydreams, there was very little that surprised her anymore.  Her golden eyes remained calm as it spoke to her, and once the thing was done, she nodded.  Replying in the same way was not difficult, it was similar to a way that dream-creatures often spoke to each other.  "I have journeyed from another place entirely, one where i was the only one of my kind.  And here, it seems to be the same.  I feel alone in a way here, surrounded as I am by those who are like me.  Regardless of what you have told me, I am of this realm.  Of Chaos, and of Dreams.  It is here I belong".  There was a sureness to her tone and posture, and the sense that she would not back down. 

Glancing again to the Tower, she added "You and I are alike in some ways too.  Yet we are wholly different.  It is the simple nature of Chaos.  Will you let me pass into the tower?"  The question was asked with respect, Luzia was still uncertain just what where her place in this new realm was.

The mouth withdrew for a moment, its constituent parts seeming to go into a holding pattern. Was it communicating with another? Was it considering on its own?

Elsewhere, a chamber within the black tower. Something was condensing from the ceiling of that chamber, flowing down the walls in dark rivulets, then running into the centre, where a chair awaited. The only furniture in that place. The chair was a simple affair, wooden and sparse. Not even a cushion in the seat. The wood, dark and crudely stained. Knot-work ran up the back of the chair, its only ornamentation. Someone was standing in the chamber. A dark figure, smaller than a man, but red and sticky in texture. It had no face or ears, but a mouth moved within the centre of that head, making a sound that resembled the sound of a thousand insects chewing.

From the darkness swirling and coalescing in the chair, there came a voice. “Da. Ju pustiti.”

The red thing chattered briefly, then turned and left the chamber, leaving the main occupant alone. He was man-shaped, blurred at the edges. He pushed himself from the chair with a loud creaking snapping sound, but the seat remained intact. The male turned and approached a window, the only source of light in the dismal room. More droplets of dark material scampered across the bare stone floor to join the whole.

The pale face of a young man, just turned eighteen, came into view. His hair was a tangled dark mess and he had the look of one who had seen too much before he was ready. Rubbing an eye, he stood and stared out of the window and down into the courtyard with an impassive expression.

Luzia. He smiled as a part of him recognised the creature, sharing memories with the whole. The young man flickered for a moment. Eyes flashing pale blue before returning to the black irises from before. She had served others in the past, but it was to his realm that she was bound. Long ago she had been something else entirely, but now she was what she was. And she had come home, in a sense.

Somewhere, several floors below, a door had opened. The guardian who had intercepted Luzia had withdrawn back into the flagstones and the air, allowing the drakoneir passage through. The door led to a spiral stairwell, which would bring her to this level.

Mendean went out into the next chamber to meet her.

There was patience in her eyes, Luzia knew when it was a time for silence.  The courtyard was quiet now, but for the sound of the entity before her.  The ambient noises was calming in a way, something familiar to the drakoneir.  Her eyes moved around the landscape, carefully observing what she could.  It was always shifting, sometimes familiar but mostly not.  There was a new world out beyond this place to explore, but Luzia wanted to ensure that she had a place to return to first.  When the entity withdrew into the flagstones, and a door opened, she didn't ask questions.  She only moved to the door before it closed.  It was very likely that Mendean would not be receptive to visitors, assuming that aspect remained the same.

Climbing the stairs gave her time to think.  It was curious for a moment that the stairs remained consistent, though Luzia figured that it was due to the nature of the Tower itself.  Perhaps there were small pockets of order within this realm of chaos.  When she reached the top and found Mendean, she paused again.  "You've changed a bit.  Mostly the same, but somehow different," she said, her head tilted to one side for a few moments.  What it was, Luzia could not put a finger on.  But she was beginning to feel like an oddity, like she was the only thing that had not changed.

The chamber in which he waited was long and narrow. Almost a corridor. There were windows on either side, but no aperture displayed the same view and none of the views were of what was outside. Rather, they showed mostly mundane scenes that shifted as people drifted through them like ghosts, inspecting strange infections or limbs that had spontaneously amputated themselves, usually bloodlessly. Others entered and exited these weird scenes, saying half-formed sentences, or pointing out flaws in others. These were dreams.

The chamber was simple. Square. Rough. Crude dark grey stone blocks arranged and fitted together by builders of no particularly obvious level of skill. Mendean stood at the far end, seeming oddly larger than usual, until sense of scale kicked in and the mind was able to comprehend that the chamber was only five feet across. He stood, arms held behind his back, dressed all in black, as was customary for him. He nodded by way of a greeting to Luzia, but his face remained impassive and unsmiling. Dark eyes twinkled in the shadows. He walked slowly forwards until he stopped, basking in the light of some orange inferno that was taking place beyond the window immediately to his left.

“I am not the same as the Mendean you knew. I am another Mendean. One whose life path ran along different forks from your Mendean.”

Bringing one of his arms around to the front, the god tapped his chest, where his heart would be. “The Mendean you knew is in here. But we are not fully integrated at this stage. In time we will become one. A third entity. But for now, we are blended colours brushed together on a crude palette. We inhabit another world. Even its name is different.”

Stepping to one side, Mendean turned and peered through the window that revealed a burning orchard. Workers, ignorant that they were aflame, continued climbing up and down ladders, picking cherries. A young boy ran up and down the aisles, screaming warnings in words of panicked nonsense. The god indicated the scene with a jab of his forefinger.

“That is the dream of an old man. The old man lives in a palace in a land called Ataiyo. Ataiyo lies along the western coast of a continent called Parvpora. Parvpora exists in a world called Revaliir. It will be familiar to you, but extremely alien. The world you called home is shattering even as we speak. Its gods have deserted it. It may yet survive, but in a diminished form. You cannot return, for the path home has been blocked.”

He twisted his head to look at the Drakoneir with a wry look. Something of the Mendean she knew was in that look. “We might as well make the best of what we have left.” And then it was gone. The workers were blackened skeletons now, but they continued obliviously. Somehow the ladders remained intact.

It felt the same in some ways, and yet Luzia knew it was not.  The windows were curious, and it took her a few moments to recognize just what they were.  But it was the figure within the corridor that held most of her attention.  The way he dressed was familiar, yet there were changes too.  Luzia didn't understand at first what seemed so strange about the young man, then it hit her.  She nodded at the explanation, it seemed that this wold realm was some kind of an analog for the place that she had known.  There was an air of loneliness in her voice, a sort of forlorn emotion.  "I feel like I am the only thing that has not changed.  A remnant of things past and no longer," she said with a sigh. 

A faint smile crossed her face as it finally hit her what was different.  "Your shoes will take some getting used to.  And I am sure there are other things," Luzia said before she stepped over to look at the scene he indicated.  Mental notes were taken on the location, though she found she had no words for what was happening to Daeluin.  It had been her home for a long time, and it was disturbing to know of what was happening.  There was no reason for Luzia to doubt him.  And this new world would take some exploring, that alone was worth it.

The faint smile grew a little when Mendean's expression grew familiar, and she nodded.  It was the reassurance that she needed.  A question was on the tip of her tongue, but Luzia wanted to see more of the scene.  She could see other things beyond the flames, and this Ataiyo looked to be intriguing.  "I see.  This place is my home now.  What would you have of me now?  I do not know enough of this realm to understand my place in it," she asked.  Long ago she had been a soldier, and those characteristics still showed in her posture and questions.

“What indeed, do we do now? My responsibilities have changed little. I am still allied to chaos and I still walk in dreams.” Mendean turned to face a different window. It was different to the others. Instead of depicting a scene, the space beyond was a void. A wavering darkness that rippled with colours that emerged briefly in their brilliance, before receding once more. Striations and swirls, blobs that grew into spiky forms until they seemed unable to retain their integrity. When that happened, the form would break apart and dissolve into the blackness. Mendean peered with interest. Coloured lights reflecting off his face in psychedelic forms.


“But there are many unresolved issues from my life before this place.” He turned and regarded Luzia with the faintest hint of a smile. It was there for just an instant, before becoming lost in the colours playing across his skin. “This is a world of second chances. Things that have not yet happened, but happened in your world, can happen again. We have advanced warning of some of them.”


His face becoming more animated, Mendean put his hands behind his back and began slowly pacing up and down the chamber. Every now and then he would pause and look through one of the many windows, only seeming to half-see what was beyond the aperture. While he did this, he talked.


“I learned that my father died in much the same way he did before. But there were differences. Quite a few, in fact. For example, and this one interests me greatly, my uncle Hector was never brought back into the world. Apparently my father never befriended a number of people who figured greatly back in our former home. Caitlin never became a deity. I feel her presence out there still, but she is much younger here. Lucien does not exist, but that is no surprise. He was from the between regions anyway. Not a part of any world. He is still out there, but he is the same Lucien.


'All my siblings made it across, except one. But I think I know where it may be. I will have to find that one and soon. It has something very important to me in its possession. I will seek out Hector too. I was the one who brought him back in the first place. I know he existed in this world, but he's still out there in another realm. If I can restore him, then maybe I can prevent his evil? After all, the object of his hatred is gone. We may be able to save him without him dying this time. How cool would that be? There's a whole load of second chances out there, just for the taking.”


Mendean stopped, realising he had reached the far end of the chamber. After staring at the blank wall for a few moments, he turned and walked back up to where Luzia was waiting patiently. The look he gave her was somewhat conspiratorial.


“There's a lot we can do here. So many possibilities, but even this world is at risk. The forces that have shattered our former home are still with us. They are calling the phenomenon 'timedeath' over here in Revaliir. But I am confident things will stabilise, or that a solution will be found. After all, they have us here to help them.”


He paused, wincing. Touching his temples, the god seemed to falter for a moment, then quickly recovered. “Sorry. The two of us do not always coincide. Conflicting opinions sometimes manifest in the form of pain. It will pass in time.”


Seeming to regain his composure, Mendean approached the door at the far end of the chamber, beckoning for Luzia to follow. Another spiral staircase. “So yes, we will have to help save the world again. But when we are done, there will be so much more to do. I have plans. Many plans. I have even been toying with adopting some of my father's ideas. After all, he wanted to make a better world, even if our ideas of what that would entail were not quite the same.”


Reaching the top of the stairwell, Mendean climbed up a stepladder, pushing open a trapdoor and climbing up onto a broad flat surface of black stone. It was drizzling and the winds were high, but he was unperturbed, making his way right to the edge where he could stare out across his domain. “What shall we do, Luzia? What do you want to do? Eh?” Mendean shouted over the wind.

What he said of who he was came as a relief to Luzia, at least something would be somewhat familiar within this new home of hers.  Her golden eyes widened at the sight of the void, and she almost missed Mendean beginning to speak.  There was a hypnotizing effect held within that particular window, and she felt as if she could stand and watch it until the world fell apart around her.  But something he said caught her attention.  The idea of second chances was curious to her, and Luzia wondered just what, and who, she would find here.  She wondered if Lumit had existed, if Azrail had, and so many others that had affected her life.  It would be interesting to see.

Her eyes widened slightly when Mendean revealed an interesting change of events here, that alone would be worth researching.  Luzia wondered if she could find a codex of past and present deities, that would likely be of use to Mendean as well as her own knowledge.  "So Lucien is a bit like myself in that regard.  As far as I can tell, anyway.  Interesting…" she murmured, mostly to herself.  Her head tilted, she could guess at which sibling was missing in these lands.  Luzia did wonder if his siblings had found their ways here yet, perhaps that was something that she could assist with, given how many would need a guide home.  The idea of Hector being brought back was very interesting to her, and Luzia found her mind wandering down other pathways, other possibilities. 

Timedeath.  It was a word that she had heard in whispers, and Luzia knew it would be important.  she almost spoke, but Mendean seemed to have a moment a pain.  Nodding in understanding, she spoke after a moment.  "Perhaps that is the first thing I can do here.  I can investigate, and research, and be your eyes in the world," Luzia said, feeling a bit more positive now that she had her own goal in mind.  Following the young man, she listened in silence as they ascended the stairs.  Her eyebrows went up when he admitted to considering adopting some of his father's ideas.  That too was quite the change.

But the question he asked stumped her for a few moments.  It had been quite some time since anyone had asked her that question.  Sitting on the edge of the tower with her legs dangling over the side, Luzia fell into silence for several long moments.  She finally laughed at herself before responding.  "I don't know what I want to do, truth be told.  I haven't had to think about that in quite awhile," she said, her grin showing a slight embarrassment.  It had been many years since she had chosen her own path, and Luzia wasn't sure if she was comfortable going back to that road.

Tall spires, low, squat structures and twisting organic forms rose and fell, like sea creatures frozen in action. An exercise in dynamic architectural forms that seemed to be the hallmark of the Nexus. Chaos given form in a dizzying array of unmoving shapes, and yet there was the sense that somehow, impossibly-so, the whole of the city was in motion. Drizzling rain plastered Mendean's untidy hair to his scalp. He let it hang there like a discarded mop, ignoring the strands that fell across his eyes while he gazed out over the confusing view.


All that he saw was his. He knew that, but it was something that he rarely considered. The arrival of Luzia however, had reminded some part of him that this was both familiar and brand new to him at the same time. Glancing up, the twisted root-like structures hid the white void that he knew surrounded everything. A sky that was not a sky. Infinite nothing. And yet…


The surface of the roof was as flat as such a thing could be. No puddles. Just a thin sheen of wetness evenly spread over everything. He smiled, catching the hint of a reflection, distorted and made unrecognisable as the wind sent shimmering ripples across the meniscus. He reached up into the gloom directly above him, appearing to grab hold of something, then pulled it down. Mendean stepped away from the artificial precipice, booted feet sliding over the slick surface of polished granite.


Seemingly from nowhere, a ladder emerged. The god yanked it roughly until it came to an abrupt halt, inches from the top of the tower. A square distortion in the misty air above him hinted at there being something unseen. “Come on. We have a ways to go. Miles to go before I sleep. Heh.” Mendean chuckled, then without waiting to see if Luzia would follow, he climbed the ladder. A disconcerting moment followed while the top half of his body appeared to be swallowed up and then there was no Mendean. Only the ladder remained.


Mendean emerged to find himself at the base of an immense brick tube that proceeded upwards in a steady curve, until it was out of sight. The tube was almost as wide as the square roof of the tower beneath, but oval in shape. Two spiral staircases, fashioned from many materials and textures, rose some thirty feet, before curling around each other in a double helix, over and over again. To stare directly upwards for too long was a dizzying experience, although somewhat lessened as the dry hazy atmosphere within the tube caused details to fade mercifully from view. Still, there were hints of further levels, more walkways,chambers and levels, all seeming to lurch and tilt to one side as the whole of the structure curved steadily upwards, seemingly into infinity. Warm yellow light spilled down from above with no clue as to its source.


He waited for Luzia to join him, then once she had climbed the ladder, Mendean smiled at her. “You didn't think I would confine myself to a simple tower, did you?”