Taken- A Dream SMP Fanfic

Chapter Eleven- The Land of Night

It was cold and dark. The only light came from the stars above, their chilling glow guiding the way for the moon that soon followed them across the sky. As if in a time-lapse, the world spun faster and faster, the moon rising and setting, rising and setting. But there was something missing in between the cycles of darkness and shadows. 

There was no sun. 

The day was nonexistent in this place, this home of the dark, the home of black and dark green and deep, stormy blue and all the other colors of the night. 

There was no warmth.

Everything was cool to the touch, if there was anyone there to touch things. The world was almost too dark to see, if anyone were there to see things. But there was no one. Only the wind was there to make things move, sweeping through the long grass and rustling the branches of tall, towering trees that had grown for thousands of years, if years existed.

But there was no time.

Everything was on its own schedule. Flowers grew and died without ever blooming. Rocks were formed and eroded by the wind, which wore them down bit by bit until there was nothing left. Mountains rose and fell, a sound that would've deafened anyone that was there to hear it. 

But there was no sound.

Silence covered the land like an invisible blanket, crushing the world in its quiet grasp. Trees fell, mountains crumbled, cycles of the moon went on and on and on, but not a sound was made.

This was Nightworld.

A land of sorrow and quiet and blackness and almost-peace. In fact, there would've been peace if there was anyone there to feel it. But it was a world with no occupants, just drifting along in its own universe, away from anyone who might discover it and make it theirs. Away from the people who would bring their fire, their source of light and warmth, and rob this world of what set it apart. Alone, it was free. No one would ever chop down its trees, cut its grass, hear its mountains fall, drink from its waters, or break through its darkness with their light. No one would ever see its beauties, set time to its rotation, or melt its chilled exterior with their warmth.

It was free. It was alone. It was peaceful.

Then came the strings. 

Stretching from land to sky, they were every size and every color, even the colors that world had never seen. Scarlet reds and vivid blues joined with blinding yellows and vibrant greens to create a spectrum of color and power that even this world's thundering silence could not suppress. The roar of the colorful threads broke through as a trembling hum that filled the land with its suspenseful melody. 

Peace vanished as quickly as the light had come. The world shrank away from the sound, the color, the brightness that threatened its existence. Rivers retreated, their water flowing back upstream to the lakes that fed them. Forests fled, the tall trunks of their trees shaking as the ground beneath them shifted to lead them to the farthest edges of the earth. Mountains moved, their stones trembling as they were pushed to the corners of the land by the ever-blowing wind. 

The world bent away from light, and in that motion, its very being was altered. Gravity took hold of this realm that was night and pulled it to the universe that was day. A universe filled with the light of a sun that warmed everything in its radius. The Nightworld did not want to be in that radius. 

But the force of the light was too strong for it to escape, and it was pulled deeper into the universe. Its cold, hard surface gave off protesting clouds of steam as the sun's light hit and melted through the ground into the world's inner core.

This world was not meant for light. Not meant for warmth. It couldn't survive without the shadows that preserved it. So it did the one thing it knew how to do: resist. Where the light hit, the darkness flooded to smother it. Where the warmth melted the ground, the icy wind blew to cool it again. Where the sun turned its shining face, the moon moved to reflect its light onto other planets in this new universe. 

Then the sun got tired of Nightworld's resistance and flung it off into the abyss of space. Freedom seemed to approach its rapidly cooling surface and its quickly dimming sky. But freedom never arrived. 

Instead, Nightworld was smashed into another planet as it soared through space. This new world was strong. This new world was Earth. 

Earth was unlike other planets. It didn't resist Nightworld's appearance. It never tried to burn Nightworld away with its light. It seemed completely unconcerned about Nightworld's existence.

Nightworld liked this Earth. It wanted to stay here, where nothing would harm it. But it could never be dark again. It finally embraced the strings that had first introduced it to light and color. And in embracing them, Nightworld found that it could move them. The light, like all of Nightworld, would do what it was willed to do. Nightworld blew the wind to ripple the water. Nightworld cycled the moon above its surface. Nightworld grew its grass and forests.

And now, Nightworld shone with its new light. It did its best to supply the strings that brought the light. But the strings wanted more. They needed more light to thrive. So they reached past Nightworld's sky and wrapped around Earth, binding the two worlds together. Nightworld was forced into Earth, into its heat and its sunlight, Nightworld's certain destruction. 

But maybe the universe had taken pity on the small, suffering planet, because Nightworld shifted again, slipping into a new reality. It joined with Earth, becoming a new part of the planet. 

It became a realm.